Just Eat

A few months ago, I bought a bunch of fresh fruit and vegetables. I roasted, steamed, mashed, peeled, and pureed them into oblivion. I filled little silicon ice trays and froze hundreds of cubes of baby food. I couldn't wait to introduce Penelope to the wonderful world of solids.

She, on the other hand, could wait. After her first meal (bananas) led to a pretty scary projectile vomiting episode (that lasted 2 hours - it was horrible and really scary), she wanted nothing to do with solids. At all. In fact, she would cry and get very upset when we would try again in the months to follow. 

I tried to feed her pureed baby food about once a week for 2 months. She refused it every time. One day, I offered her some cheese and bread from my sandwich. She gobbled it up. The next day, I gave her bites of my avocado. Then smashed blueberries, cherries, and bananas. As long as it was not pureed, she loved it. 

Since then, we decided that baby led weaning was the way to go. It's been really great and very simple. Whatever we eat, Penelope eats. She loves sweet potato pancakes for breakfast (no syrup). Turkey sandwiches are her favorite lunch (she can eat half a sandwich on her own!). Tonight, we shared a pepper crusted filet mignon and steamed asparagus. It has really encouraged me to be more thoughtful about feeding everybody healthy meals since the littlest of us is eating along side us.

There's not a lot that she won't eat. Thankfully, she's not very picky (yet). Some of her favorites are spaghetti with meat sauce, steamed broccoli, roasted squash, carrots, and onions, quinoa, feta, grilled chicken, rice, beans, quesadillas, avocados, peaches, plums, pineapples, roasted green beans, mashed potatoes, roast beef, hummus, and bread.

The hardest part about baby led weaning is knowing when to stop feeding her. Penelope eats and eats and eats. As long as there is food, sissy devours it. She is a piggy.

The only rules we follow with this approach to feeding our baby are small bites and no honey, nuts, eggs, or strawberries before 1. Other than that, she eats what we eat, when we eat. It's so easy. Oh, and messy. BLW is messy. Very, very messy.

Penelope has 1 tooth (it just popped through a few days ago). Teeth are not a requirement for baby led weaning. She has gotten along fine mashing the food between her gums. Sister goes to town on pizza, scones, and sweet potato fries. She is an eating machine.

I always wanted to try BLW with Beatrice, but I didn't know enough about it. I'm really glad we're doing it with Penelope and am having so much fun feeding my baby.

Just eat!