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Upstate NY Babies
What do your toddlers eat?
I feel like the older my son gets the pickier he gets with food. He used to LOVE fruit and now I can barely get him to eat any of it. And I feel like he won't eat anything really healthy. He'll eat frozen chicken nuggets, but if I make chicken nuggets myself by breading them and baking them he won't touch them. Basically, anything I cook that follows a recipe he won't eat. I just worry I'm not feeding him healthy foods. On a positive note, he does well with veggies so at least I have that going for me. Anyone else in the same boat? What kinds of things do you feed your LO's?
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Re: What do your toddlers eat?
Evan would eat ANYTHING while he was in the puree stage...but things have changed drastically.
I'm hoping my difficulties are coming from him not having many teeth but also wanting to only feed himself. It's a pretty hard stage for eating. You are probably like me right now I'm sure - I get pretty pissed when I cook something for him and he doesn't want it. So I've been kind of lax about it recently. I try to make up for it by using organic for almost everything...makes a difference in my head anyway.
What and how are you feeding him veggies? This is my main concern right now.
For breakfast I give him cereal (cheerios, kashi) and soak it in milk a bit. For snacks he really likes yogurt, graham crackers, really small apple chunks, bananas. Lunch is usually a cheese sandwich - or sometimes I'll make grilled cheese with tomato sauce - so it's sorta like pizza. He likes pasta (of course), pirogies, raviolis (frozen, not canned) he LOVES banana pancakes. I make him green bean casserole - just on the stovetop...and over cook it a bit so it's mushy. We do turkey sausage, all beef hotdogs sometimes, I tried garden burgers but he wasn't into those. I make him eggs - either like a sandwich cut up with cheese, or sometimes I'll do a quiche so I can put some veggies in there. He loves blackbeans - but only out of my burrtios if we pick them up from a specific place. I will dump maybe a half cup of them on his tray and he'll gobble them up...but if I make them for him he doesn't like them. He has like those non-breaded gordon fish patties that you bake or microwave - butter and garlic flavor, only. He has liked some other frozen veggie combos with sauce - there is a pinto bean and spinach one that is a fav. I've tried glazed carrots - but they are still too hard for him yet.
On top of that (which I'm sure there is more of) he'll eat anything that we are eating...so we let him eat with us sometimes too.
When in doubt - we give him a banana. Haha! Last night he downed his milk in about 5 second and then got pretty mad when it was done. So we gave him a banana before bed. Ate the whole thing on top of 8oz milk!
Hummus on toast or crackers?
Peas and/or corn with butter
Fake chicken nuggets with loads of ketchup
Fruit cups, applesauce, dried fruit chips, squeezable fruit
Yogurt, yogurt/fruit smoothies
Pureed squash with cinnamon and nutmeg
Rice pilaf, or orzo.. you can mix in things like peas or diced tomato.
Pesto pasta (you can make pesto that doesn't have pine nuts, if you are worried about nuts).
Get mini rolls and make mini cheese/veggie burgers
I have a couple ideas in my babyfood blog in siggy.. I haven't updated it in ages tho.
One hint.. my toddler is totally enticed by packaging and "sauces". For example, she will eat 1-2 whole tomatoes if I dice them up and put "spppppecialllll sauuuuuce" on them (balsamic). Or she'll eat things she can dip.
Or for example, she loves divided plates with different portions on it. Or, we went to the store the other day and they had a tiny plastic container with Dora on it that had hummus & crackers in it. Let me tell you, she used to eat tons of hummus & crackers, but then she got tired of it.. well she saw that Dora container and went nuts and has been eating it. I saved the container and put my own hummus & crackers in it, and she sucks it right down.
There is a "movement" out there called muffin tin meals, for toddlers.. you literally take a muffin tin and put a bunch of diff things in it and kids generally like that. the variety, diff color foods, cut them up in fun shapes, etc.
Nest Bio ~ ~ Baby Food Blog
G will eat yogurt, cheese, baguette, applesauce, banana and beans/lentils at any given moment- too bad for her none of those things are actual meals.
She is pretty good about other stuff too like noodles, soup, ravioli, hummus, veggie chicken nuggets, meatballs, waffles, except for she will spit out most meat unless it's been finely chopped up. I struggle with incorporating our meals into her diet but she will usually at least try some of what we are having. Sometimes if I can get her to just taste a little bit of a new food on a shiny spoon she will be into feeding it to herself with her fingers off the tray.
Justin goes through stages. The week b/w his bday and thanksgiving I was SO busy that I will shamefully admit he ate a lot of chicken nuggets and now he whines for "bucka bucka" (chicken) every nite.
There are a few things he'll ALWAYS eat; apple slices, bananas, eggs, waffles, grilled cheese, spaghetti, yogurt, cheerios, crackers, PB&J etc... I'm trying to be creative and give him a varied diet but it's SO easy to go back to the old standbys. DH isn't home til 7:30 most nights and Justin's already asleep so I'm always stuck making 2 dinners.