Om Nom Nom

We're making progress, you know.  Squeaky has moved on from a single teaspoon of baby rice in some breast milk, to more than one teaspoon, to baby porridge, and in the last week, to VEGETABLES!!  So far, she's tried carrots, butternut squash, a jar of Heinz veg medley (or something along those lines), with pretty good results.  The pre-made jar was the least appreciated, while she liked her first meal from it, her nose was firmly turned up at the second.  Butternut squash is definitely the front runner at present, and is also the most likely to stain clothes, furniture & anything else it lands on.  I wonder if the two are somehow related.

And today, for variety, we had apple, mixed with a little baby rice to thicken it up.  As usual, the first couple of mouthfuls are met with confusion, and a look that says "What ARE you doing to me, mother?", but then she soon realises that it's food and it tastes good, and rather than complaining about being fed, she'd rather complain about not being fed fast enough.  Back on the veggies tomorrow, but I wanted her to try a little bit of fruit, just so I know that she'll take lots of different foods.

I'm going down the (nowadays) old fashioned route of puréed vegetables, and spoon feeding her.  I've got friends who've recommended Baby Led Weaning, where everything is finger foods, and what goes in, goes in.  But to me, that seems a) chaotic, b) messy as hell, and c) likely to be really wasteful.  At least if she doesn't want the purée, there's only a couple of spoons of it to throw out, and the rest can go in pasta sauce (more on the subject of pasta to follow), but if she's squishing broccoli florets into her hair & throwing carrots across the room, that's a lot more food to get through without eating it.  YMMV and all that, but my hand blender is my best pal, and I'm going to use it til I burn the motor out.

And I'm making a chart.  With what foods she's had on each day, written if necessary, but with lots of pretty clip art pictures of carrots & apples & etc.  Then I can print it out and put it in her scrapbook.  Oh yeah, I made a scrapbook too.  And every time we go somewhere and she gets a sticker or similar, I make a page in the scrapbook for it, stick it in, and write about what she did to get the sticker.  I think that means we should have more outings.