Adventures in Eating Real Food!

We took a bit of a break from eating baby food while we were moving.  TerraDactyl's never been all that into real food and everything was just so hectic that it was just easier to breastfeed.  I didn't have to worry about refrigeration/heating, spoons, bibs, high chairs, or clean up.  It's actually quite handy.

Bananas!

When we got back to eating again, TerraDactyl was just as resistant to baby food as ever.  And at her most recent doctor's appointment the doc said that at some point, babies prefer regular human food, not just pureed mush.  Especially things they can feed themselves.  So we've started experimenting.  Bananas went pretty well for a while.  But only the super ripe ones with quite a bit of brown on the peel.  The beautiful yellow ones got rejected.

Every cup is a sippy cup - it all depends on whether or not you're sipping!

The doc also suggested getting TerraDactyl to try and use a cup.  We didn't have any sippy cups on hand, so we started out with a tiny big of water in my camping mug.  It was a bit messy, but TerraDactyl had a blast.  She loved licking it, grabbing the handle, and dumping water on herself and the tray.  I think she even swallowed some of it.

Cheerios!  (And bananas)

One of the questions on the survey the doctor gave me was "how does your baby do at picking up Cheerios?"  I had no clue.  She's 9 months old, but she just barely got her first two teeth in.  But they're both on the bottom, so I haven't been giving her solids that she'll have to chew.  But, it turns out that two bottom teeth are in fact capable of chewing a Cheerio.  Oh, and TerraDactyl is totally capable of picking up Cheerios using a pincer movement.

Riley enjoys Cheerios as well

Riley also enjoys being present for meal time.  He's more than willing to clean up any mess on the floor.  Except vomit.  He's not super interested in that, for which I am grateful.  As we've been eating, we've come up with a few rules:

1. Do not eat pine needles.  They get puked up.  (obviously, this was an accident, I was not feeding her pine needles - they just get tracked into the house).
2. Serve the most solid foods first (Cheerios) before moving to things that require less chewing (rice puffs).  Otherwise, the Cheerios get swallowed whole and then puked back up.
3. While spinach was going well initially, TerraDactyl has become overconfident is is trying to swallow giant chunks instead of chewing off tiny pieces like she used to.  The giant chunks get puked back up.

I think that's all the rules we've discovered so far.  It's really too bad we've got to back off on the spinach, because TerraDactyl really did like it.  And it's easy.  With iron.  And healthy.  Hopefully when we re-introduce it later she'll still like it.  But here's proof that TerraDactyl does indeed enjoy eating spinach.  (this was not puked back up).

Oh!  And we've finally got some actual sippy cups!  They're also a big hit.  Here's TerraDactyl having a blast playing with a sippy cup.  Sometimes I think she even gets water out of it.