Mark's Firsts: Eats

Every once in a while I have a "don't grow up baby" moment about time passing too quickly but my overall feeling is one of excitement and joy and wonder as we watch our little baby turn into a tiny boy. And as we've entered into the food realm those feelings have heightened. We've had a very positive experience so far and I wanted to share. 

For now I've been making all of Mark's foods and I plan to keep with it for as long as I can. Like anyone that makes baby food at home I do it for the lack of "extra" ingredients, I do it so I know exactly what's going in his little mouth, I do it because it's fun. Here's what's been on the menu.

peas + nutmeg   //   gala apples + cinnamon   //   butternut squash + thyme

blueberries + sweet potato + cinnamon   //   carrots + nutmeg

sweet potato   //   green beans + parsley   //   peaches + cloves

(not pictured are bananas and avocado that we mash up right before he eats)

We started with mashed banana and skipped right past all the rice cereal business. It was really easy to smash up banana with a little breast milk and we figured it'd be nice and sweet for him. His most recent food was avocado and like the bananas we also just smashed them up. When I'm actually making foods I cook a few batches in an afternoon (usually requiring steaming or roasting), blend them smooth (in either the magic bullet, blender or food processor) and pour the purees into ice cube trays to freeze overnight. Once they're completely set I pop them into freezer ziplock bags labeled and dated. When we serve him solids I grab a cube from the freezer, put it in a tiny glass tupperware bowl and heat it just slightly in the microwave to melt it and make it not too chilled.

Our method for food introduction has been alternating fruits and vegetables. Which is always comical when we go from, say, apples (sweet & tasty!!!) to something like squash (also tasty but a very different flavor). It catches him by surprise every once in a while. We started feeding him just once a day in the afternoon to make sure if he was going to have a reaction to something we'd catch it before he went down for bed and now have moved to twice a day. When we introduce something new he gets solely that one item for the next three days to also check for negative reactions. So far we've only had a bit of diaper rash that I believe was due to the carrots but everything else has been golden. Since his nutrition is still coming solely from milk/formula we aren't concerned about how much he's eating but just for reference we give him one cube which equates to one ounce twice a day. Maybe twice has he not finished the bowl and once we offered him two and he gobbled them up.

Now that we've made it through so many different flavors and he's getting the hang of it we're going to start mixing things up. A different food at dinner compared to lunch, making new combos (up next on the list is an apple/spinach/pea combo) as well as starting into a bit of baby lead weaning. While he hasn't totally enjoyed everything we've given him (i.e. carrots and green beans weren't a huge hit) he's definitely enjoying the process and so are we.