It's bab-e food

Any former d.co members get the joke in the title? Probably not... anyway...

A few people have wondered how solids are going. Since we didn't do solid foods the traditional way (although I think what we did is very, very normal) I decided to revisit the subject.

Quick overview: the babies didn't really get any solids until they were 7 months old. We skipped the classic rice cereal and went straight to avocados, bananas, pears, etc. We dabbled a little into baby-led-weaning, although we didn't do it 100%, so I can't claim we followed that routine because those mama's are hardcore about it.

These girls love to eat and we've pretty much every way under the sun. I've made a lot of food by mushing it up myself (I think the phrase 'making your own baby food' is silly though. I mean, anyone can mash up a peach or stick a sweat potato in a blender. Is that really 'making' something? I find the phrase funny...), we've purchased jar and pouch baby food, and have handed them slices of melon or other fruits and let them chomp away. I absolutely love having these options.

Their newest obsession are peas, which is funny, because somewhere on this little blog of mine are pictures of their first experience with the vegetable. They did not like them and the pictures were funny. I'm too lazy to find them for you though...sorry... At first, I was a little nervous to throw some peas down on their tray, but these girls are excellent chewers (gumers?). They're really good about pinching just one and chewing it until they go for the next one. Last night, their dinner was a bottle, peas, some watermelon and some shredded cheese. Sophie was a wise little soul and magically ate all the cheese and watermelon, but 'accidentally' let 90% of her peas plummet to the floor. She definitely takes after me and now I know that cheese needs to be a desert for her that she gets after her other food.

Like I said, these girls love to eat. Off the top of my head, I can say they've had

Avocados (mushed up/whole)
Cucumber
Bananas (whole)
Scrambled eggs
Pears (whole)
Apple slices (whole)
Pancakes
Tomato
Broccoli (usually cooked, but this weekend they tried it raw)
Apple sauce
Honeydew
Gram crackers
Cantaloupe
Blueberries (mushed up and whole)
Bits of rolls
Olives
Green beans
Pasta
Peaches (purchased baby food...can't wait for fall!)
Scrambled eggs
Mandarin oranges
Sweat potato
Yogurt
Squash
Carrots (cooked whole)
Cheerios
Prunes
Lemon (surprisingly they liked it)
Oatmeal
Grapes (usually cut in half)
Watermelon...

...and several other food via pureed baby food.  One thing I never gave them was pureed meat. I'm not the biggest fan of meat (I eat it, but in very small amounts. I've been that way since I was a kid) and the thought of pureed meat make me gag. Seriously, ground up, liquefied meat? That might just be the grossest thing on the planet and I didn't want them eating it. Recently, I've been giving them chunks of chicken and turkey. We haven't done ground beef yet, because that also seems gross to me. I'm sure I'll give them beef soon...the next time we eat it, but who knows when that will be. Oh and I also never used those mesh feeders. I don't think there's anything wrong with them, but that was just one more thing to prepare and clean and honestly, I didn't want to deal with them. Plus, I like the idea of the girls getting used to the actual texture of the food and I didn't think they'd get that with the feeders. Lillian has never choked and I don't think I'd consider Sophie's incident choking either. Josh was feeding her a hard-boiled egg once and she ended up throwing it up. I got a little scared, but she handled it really well and worked it up on her own.

So there you have it. A pretty boring post about what the twins eat.  My goal is to get them eating basically what we're eating in the next few weeks. That's the whole point of baby-led-weaning, but people do it from the start of introducing solids. Our usual routine is they'll drink 6-7oz bottles and then I'll give them 'food' 3 times a day. It varies completely though because I don't eat 3 times a day. I'm a snacker (this is probably the core problem to my weight gain). So, if I'm eating an apple, I'll cut off a few chunks for them and let them go for it. We're also working on sippy cups. I really want the girls to be weaned off the bottle by a year (or maybe 13 months since that's their developmental 12th month). They're not taking too fondly to it though. I've discovered I can't expect them to drink their milk from them because they freak out because they still don't really get it. Oddly enough, when their cups are filled with diluted juice, they do pretty good. I don't like giving them sugar-loaded juice beside for constipation purposes, so I usually just put a little water in them.

Aaaaand that's how we do it.




Chompin' on cucumbers and tomatoes.  

and one of Sophie devouring a tomato because it's hilarious.  

They love their food!