BLW check in

PumpkinAndThePeanut · December 2013

Sorry, I think I forgot to post this last week! What's happening? How was Christmas dinner?

Since we've been off work for about a week, the girls have been getting 3 meals a day and have been eating what we eat for the most part. Favorites are still spinach, eggs, meat and we've found they also love blueberries. I slice them in half, although perhaps that's overly cautious. I made some guacamole and spread it on toast and that went over well too.

They had two Christmas dinners; I made a roast beef with roast potatoes and butternut squash and green bean casserole for my family the weekend before Christmas and then on Christmas Day it was just the 4 of us so we went to a buffet lunch at a fancy hotel downtown. That was our first BLW meal in a restaurant and it went really well.

I'm really enjoying the cooking too, after months of frozen microwaved meals! I haven't been using the BLW cookbook/website so much, rather, I've been modifying regular simple recipes to reduce sodium. I made a tasty veggie chili on Saturday night (although that was from the BLW cookbook), some baked fish in homemade bread crumbs last night, and today I'm making a chickpea, spinach and tomato skillet for lunch.

I don't want to give them too much meat so I've been buying a lot of beans and looking for good vegetarian dinner options for a couple nights a week.

I have no idea what this meal in the pic was, and I selected the wrong photo but my phone won't let me delete it. Oh well.

bumpuser8130818 · December 2013

I was wondering if you were going to do the check in! For both Christmas meals we had ham, which he thoroughly enjoyed. He also had mashed potatoes and hummus on bread, since most of the sides that people made were filled with salt and sugar. He attempted to pick up a green bean, but still wants nothing to do with them or broccoli. His favorite meal over the holiday was breakfast on Christmas eve, which was Swedish pancakes and an omelet.

I made your pasta sauce and while dh loved it, ds didn't want anything but the turkey meatball. It was delicious though! It seems like anytime I spend a long time preparing dinner it always ends up with him eating just one small part of it.

Something new that he loves is black beans. I spread them on toast and he eats them all off and leaves the toast, which is just fine with me.

The picture with the ham is a little grotesque, so I apologize.

PumpkinAndThePeanut · December 2013

Haha, the ham picture is so funny, @Trish625 - he looks like he's saying, "back up, Mom. Don'choo touch my ham."

I'm glad you liked the sauce! Do you offer him leftovers the next day? If they don't eat much at dinner and we have a lot leftover, I will just heat up the leftovers at lunch the next day and offer them again. Or I freeze them so I don't have to cook from scratch the next time.

Turkey meatballs were a hit here too - in fact they seemed to prefer them to the beef ones I later made.

Did you do anything special with the black beans, or just cook them plain? I bought some to try but haven't made them yet. I've been buying dried beans as they have less salt. Not as big a pain in the ass as I thought they'd be.

KLXVI · December 2013

Last week we took a trip to Portland, OR to visit our cousins and their son who is 1 day older than DS. It was very interesting to see the differences in the two boys and their hand/eye coordination. L ate out at restaurants every time we did on our trip. He liked playing with the celery and carrot pieces, but didn't get much since he doesn't have any teeth yet.

At Christmas dinner, L shoved some steamed cauliflower in his mouth. He put too much in and it was too far back. He looked at me with his mouth open like he was going to choke then swallowed it all. He certainly scared us and the rest of the family. Then, he did it again! The next day I found a large piece of cauliflower in his diaper. I have no idea how it made it all the way through him without causing problems. We're going to try giving him long, skinny pieces so that he doesn't end up with big chunks like that.

PumpkinAndThePeanut · December 2013

@nech0606, I always look forward to your pics each week. She looks like such a happy baby, and like she's happy to be doing BLW! I'm sorry your MIL doesn't get it. Hopefully the more she sees Madi develop her self-feeding skills, she'll come around. My mom has really come around a lot since we started.

@littkek, sorry L gave you a scare! I have been cutting up or shredding all their food into small pieces ever since our choking incident a few weeks ago. They really have their pincer grip down (we have late April babies so are now 8 months) and are able to get pretty much all the food into their mouths, even the small pieces. I feel a lot more comfortable now.

kyliensc · December 2013

What did you introduce dairy with? I have a end of may baby so shes just 7 mo and eats almost everything we eat but im not sure how to do dairy or meat. Thanks

Lolalipsy · December 2013

@trish625 E really likes black beans. I do them with aubergine, lamb, tomatoes and saffron and she loves them. I'd never thought to spread them on toast so I'll give that a go.

We tried watermelon this week. I also gave her spinach. She loved both. She's still not keen on eggs though ( I did scrambled eggs with avocado and she would eat the avocado but pulled a face at the egg).

emmy236 · December 2013

Hi guys, I'm new to this check in because R is a late May baby (just turned 7 months on Saturday). Please don't flame me but R only gets his finger foods for dinner. My mom watches him during the day and is too scared to let him do much finger food so I let her give him purées but he's getting better. He's had most of the usual fruits and veggies and now we're working on meat.

His new food was pasta. I made his penne and added a little bit of butter and a pinch of salt and he loved them. Not sure how much he actually ate but he gnawed on all them. Christmas he harvham too and really loved it. I guess BLW is getting popular here because I've found at our "nicer" grocery store they have all kinds of veggies like sweet potatoes and squashes cut into perfect spears and marketed as "great for kids" All I have to do is roast them.

Lolalipsy · December 2013

@emmy236 I wouldn't worry I would just gradually increase the finger foods you give. As you get more confident you'll start to enjoy it more. E loves meal times because it's fun trying to get all the different things into her mouth. Only thing I would say is please avoid adding extra salt. The daily limit is 1g and that easily adds up with cereal, cheese and butter.

Kashy · December 2013

New foods DS has tried are ham (LOVED it), pineapple, blueberries, grapes and strawberries. Loved it all. Oh and tuna for dinner last night.

I swear there is not a food this kid will not eat.

We also did our first restaurant trip. He did great. We ordered him chicken breast and steamed veggies. He did so awesome! We tipped the waiter extra and apologized for the mess

PumpkinAndThePeanut · December 2013

Lolalipsy said:
@emmy236 I wouldn't worry I would just gradually increase the finger foods you give. As you get more confident you'll start to enjoy it more. E loves meal times because it's fun trying to get all the different things into her mouth. Only thing I would say is please avoid adding extra salt. The daily limit is 1g and that easily adds up with cereal, cheese and butter.

I agree with all of this. Plus the dry uncooked pasta will already have salt in it. The hardest part of BLW is avoiding salt.

PumpkinAndThePeanut · December 2013

@kashy, that's great that your first restaurant meal went so well. I was worried that we'd be getting funny looks from the other diners and death glares from the staff but everyone was pleasant. I used a napkin to sweep up as much food that hit the floor as I could so we didn't leave a total mess. It gave me a lot of confidence to go out again, although I might bring their food from home instead of ordering it out.

PumpkinAndThePeanut · December 2013

@kyliensc, we also introduced dairy with yogurt on pre-loaded spoons. I also added a little shredded cheddar cheese (and spinach) to an omelette. I haven't given them cheese by itself yet, but they eat a fair amount of yogurt and have cheese and cow's milk cooked in things.
ETA - oatmeal "fingers" cooked in cow's milk was an early food I gave.

kyliensc · December 2013

nech0606 said:

kyliensc said:
What did you introduce dairy with? I have a end of may baby so shes just 7 mo and eats almost everything we eat but im not sure how to do dairy or meat. Thanks
We've just done yogurt with fruit (peaches, banana, mandarin oranges) or plain. And for meat we just give her strips of turkey, chicken, steak. Whatever meat were eating as long as it doesn't have too much salt.

ETA: we've also done string cheese.

Ok thats what i was thinking. She does ok with loaded spoons, so i think ill try yogurt this weekend.

jmevol · December 2013

My LO is a late may baby and I have been trying to introduce some new foods, with Xmas everything got a little behind but so far she likes avocado, peas, spaghetti squash, green beans, sweet potato, carrots, toast, I've given her a bit of dough and bits of tortilla at a restaurant too.

I do have one question, I gave her pear and she got a bad diaper rash (from the acid in the fruit I assume) so now I'm a little hesitant to try fruit again...how long should I wait do you think? I picked up some bananas at the store today, figuring they're probably not as acidic...

I posted this pic on facebook and didnt get one single "like" - I'm pretty sure my friends think I'm crazy but LO likes feeding herself so who cares what they think, right?

Eating avocado spread on toast.

bumpuser8130818 · December 2013

@PumpkinAndThePeanut I just cooked them plain on the stove and then mashed some up a bit to spread them. I'm not very creative when it comes to adding flavor. Also, can you tell me how you made your oatmeal fingers? He's not a big fan of it on a loaded spoon.

PumpkinAndThePeanut · December 2013

^ well, I made the oatmeal fingers twice and they didn't really stick together very well. Now they're able to pick it up in clumps so it doesn't matter. There's a recipe for an oatmeal "pancake" on the BLW site (recipes section, under breakfast, which if I remember correctly involves " soaking" oatmeal in yogurt overnight to thicken. The way I made it was to just add a little cow's milk to the oats, cook it in the microwave for 2 minutes (it should be pretty thick) and then let stand until cool and even thicker. Once cool, supposedly you're supposed to be able to cut into fingers but mine fell apart both times.

Maybe someone else has tried and had better luck?

Also, I used the old fashioned oats; perhaps the instant kind would absorb the milk/yogurt better and stay together better.

PumpkinAndThePeanut · December 2013

@jmevol, I'm sorry you didn't get any "likes" on your photo! That makes me kind of sad for your LO, lol. But she's adorable. Very pretty eyes.

I never post pics on fb of my LOs eating though - as I'm sure a lot of my fb friends would be judgy and offer their unwanted opinions.

KLXVI · December 2013

@PumpkinAndThePeanut what size of pieces are you giving them? L is still working on his pincer grip and can't quite get cheerios to his mouth yet.

PumpkinAndThePeanut · December 2013

@littkek, I give pretty small pieces - like blueberry or Cheerio sizes or even smaller. Keep letting him practice his pincer grip alongside larger pieces he can handle (so he doesn't get frustrated) and he'll get it down soon!

jmevol · December 2013

@PumpkinAndThePeanut thank you! It's no big deal really, I just thought it was funny. I'd rather have no likes than snarky comments.

When you do spinach, do you chop it at all or just steam it?

PumpkinAndThePeanut · December 2013

I buy chopped frozen spinach actually. Although I did buy some fresh spinach leaves this week and I tore them up before tossing them into the skillet.

kcwnc · December 2013

Thanks to your suggestions last week we tried sliced avocado, and pieces of carrots & zucchini. I sliced the last two into "fingers" before I steamed and let him have at it. He didn't eat much but he at least chewed and ate the end that he put in his mouth. We're making his purees chunkier too. Easing our way into BLW.

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