more thoughts on blw AKA food for thought

Liza is 7 months old and eating real food.  Not purees.  Not mashed up food.  Real food.  As in, she picks up food off her tray and takes perfect little bites that are just the right size for her perfect little mouth.

A few weeks into solid food, she has tried and liked:

lentils cooked with garlic and dill -- possibly her favorite but her tummy wasn't very happy that night... peanut butter and jelly, banana, avocado, a boiled egg yolk, scrambled eggs, potato frittata, kiwi, homemade bread, hummus, orange, steamed carrot, sweet potato, spinach, green peas and probably other things I can't remember at the moment.

But, Laura, you are breaking all the rules.  You are introducing fruit before she tries all the vegetables.  You aren't feeding her purees on a spoon.  You didn't start with bland rice cereal out of a box.  You aren't giving her Puffs and MumMums as her first finger foods.  You.  You.  You.

Food for thought:  Maybe it's time these rules are broken. I want my kids to love whole foods not processed food out of a jar.  I want my kids to know that fruits and vegetables are a good thing and not just something you eat in order to get dessert.  I want my kids to stop eating when they are full not just because the bowl is clean and the spoon isn't coming their way.  I want my kids to know that snack time doesn't have to consist of dry crunchy highly refined grains out of a box or canister.

Can you tell I consider teaching my kids healthy eating habits one of my biggest responsibilities as mama?  You see, we live in Mississippi aka "the fattest state in the country".  My state proudly touts our status as birthplace of Elvis, William Faulkner and the Blues but we are also have the highest rate of childhood obesity, diabetes, and heart disease in the entire country.   

I refuse to let my kids become another number in Mississippi's dismal health statistics.  And, the more I think about it, the more I realize that baby-led weaning creates the building blocks needed for a lifetime of healthy food choices.

Okay.

Maybe she didn't really like the kiwi....

But, she gave it a try and that's good enough for me!

We love BLW!

What's not to love about baby-led weaning?

It certainly is working beautifully for our little girl:

 a whole egg yolk

chunk of steamed sweet potato

handful of chopped spinach

slice of potato frittata - she loved the different flavors!

homemade bread

------------------------

More details about why we love BLW to follow in another post on another day.

BLW.

I've been getting the same two questions over and over again concerning our little girl:

1. How is she sleeping?

Ummm, she's not.

You might remember I'm not worried about the fact that she doesn't sleep well at night.  She is a baby and that is what babies do, or rather what babies don't do.  So yeah.  She hates to sleep at night.  It might irritate me in the middle of the night when I prefer to sleep but once the sun is shining, I am fine knowing that interrupted nights are a fact of life with small children.

2.  Is she eating solids yet?

Ehhh, not really.

After dealing with Henry's aversion to solid food, oral defensiveness and all-around control freak behavior, I had a lot of emotions and thoughts to sort out before giving Liza any solid food.  Thankfully my friend, Google, is there to hold my hand and teach me new things..... even if I feel like Google failed me during Henry's infancy -- how did I not know about baby led weaning (BLW)?  In a nutshell, BLW calls for skipping the rice cereal and purees and going straight to finger foods that babies feed themselves, i.e. avocado, a whole steamed carrot, butternut squash chunks, etc.  Not only is BLW perfect for little control freaks that hate foody spoons coming their way, it is also perfectly adaptable as a gateway to table food once baby no longer likes runny purees.  

So yeah.  I really do think we could have avoided Henry's hatred of all foods solid if we had put the ball in his court from the get-go.  After all, his first real food was homemade red beans and rice while sitting on a favorite blanket.

But, this post is about Liza.  Is she eating solids yet?  My plan has been to wait until she truly shows interest in solids before making them a regular part of her life.  After all, breastmilk is all she really needs and at almost 16 pounds, her mama's milk is treating her just fine.  

Yesterday at the park in the middle of an in-depth conversation with Alisha and Mandi about BLW and how to teach our kids healthy eating habits, Liza grabbed Henry's peanut butter and jelly sandwich off  the blanket and proceeded to eat half of it without me even realizing what she was doing.

So yeah.  I think she is ready for solids.

Is it bad to wish she wasn't ready because I don't want to clean up after another messy eater?


It's not bad of me?
I'm glad to hear.