But needless to say, I'm being overly cautious about what I feed her, in terms of solid food, directly. So we started with the most benign, least allergenic food of all, rice cereal, at about 6 1/2 months old. I never got around to posting these pictures then, so here you go.
First bites of rice cereal:
She loved it! (Of course it was mixed with b-milk, so what's not to love, right!?!?) ;)
We gradually progressed to orange and yellow vegetables, then green veggies, then eventually fruit. Norah got this mesh feeding bag in her stocking last Christmas, and it has definitely seen lots of use!
Filled with frozen peaches, steamed or raw carrots, and even a banana a time or two, it has elicited looks of concentration...
...happiness...
...and even occasional sly mischevious grins. We have loved this particular feeding accessory.
But lately I feel like I've hit a baby food "wall" so to speak. There are certain foods I'm trying to avoid giving her, at least until she's 18 months, maybe 2 years old. I'm most concerned about avoiding cow's milk, eggs, and wheat, (since these foods took the longest for her to tolerate through my diet, and are known to be common allergens.) Avoiding dairy and eggs is relatively easy, but wheat...yikes, that's a hard one. It's in everything. Let me take that back: it's in everything convenient. Puffs, crackers, cheerios...you know, all that stuff that's easy to throw in the diaper bag and feed on the run. Or put on the highchair tray while you're getting the rest of dinner ready. About 2 weeks ago I decided to do a brief trial run with some organic puffs, and I really thought she was doing okay with them. They had a little wheat, but it wasn't the primary ingredient. She seemed to do okay. But then I really tested the waters and gave her a little graham cracker. (Only 1/2 of a square!) And the poor girl had diarrhea for almost a week. And if I'm really being honest, she's been pretty whiney and kind of crabby for the last week or two, so now I'm starting to wonder if the puffs did indeed upset her little tummy too. So I think maybe we need to stop those as well. But we're stuck in a rut and I'm running out of ideas on what to feed her.
Thus the reason behind this blog post. Any suggestions!?!? She's starting to shun a lot of what I puree. (So sad. I knew it would happen as soon as I got my new blender!) She really wants to just feed herself. But she only has 2 teeth, which tends to limit the finger foods. We do lots of avocado, rice-pasta, Rice Chex cereal, peas, steamed carrots, blueberries, bananas, pears, and applesauce. We recently discovered that she loves green smoothies, too. We used to do a lot of squash, which she intially liked, but we probably overdid it because she's clearly starting to get tired of that. Thanks to my KitchenAid meat grinder attachment, she tried some chicken last night and is now officially a carnivore.
She's not a huge fan of carrots though, as evidenced by this video clip from a few months ago. I never got around to posting it then, but thought I'd share it now, just for fun.
So there you have it, folks. Seriously, I'm looking for ideas. What do you feed your babies in that in-between-purees-but-still-gumming-all-finger-food stage? (Without any dairy, egg, or wheat products?) I'm all ears...
