All About Eating

Over at 5 Minutes for Mom, Jennifer blogged about how to get your kids to eat more veggies.

Jack has been a big eater from the very beginning. I don't think he ever threw up any of the nasty formula that he had to start with

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When I got him home and my milk finally came in, he nursed ALL THE TIME. I think alot of it had to do with his breathing. He seemed to have to take a break to breathe every now and then. The whole breathe, suck, swallow routine was hard for him but he chugged right along.

As he got older, his diet expanded beyond milk from Mama

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He used to love love love chompin on some bananas. Strangely enough, he now has an aversion to their texture. If we mush it up or manage to help him realize he likes the taste BEFORE he spits it out he's still all about it but don't let him just touch a banana to his tongue or it will be spit back out at you.

As he continued to grow and we added peanut butter and jelly sandwiches to his menu, he realized that he had to tidy up after eating

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At some point, we introduced hamburgers and apple pie. It did not take long for him to figure out how to hold an apple pie just right so that you don't squish out the deliciousness before you get to eat it.

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Because of Jack's fine motor difficulties and his disinterest in eating foods with utensils, it took us quite a while to get him to independently eat with a spoon but he's a pro at spoon feeding now.

Back to the original topic.....Jack is a good eater although he is still very particular about textures. If we can get the food in, get him to taste it and realize it's pretty good, he will eat it but getting that far can be a battle. So what's a Mama to do? Right now, David and I try keeping most of his foods at a soft texture but we slowly try to add other textures. We can get Jack to eat most anything if he gets a bite of a roll or cracker with it. In this way, he eats quite a wide variety of foods. If Jack really just won't accept the textures, I can get him to eat practically anything that you can mash up, mix with mayonnaise and put between two slices of bread.

Jack's teacher, Ms. Sunny, reports that he will try most anything he can pick up when he is at school so she is going to keep encouraging that. They also eat different foods at school than we usually eat at home so it's great to expand his repetoire.

Then I learned from this post by Alisa at http://www.onefrugalfoodie.com/ that you can add spinach to a fruit smoothie without changing the taste. She pointed out that blueberries make a good cover for the spinach but I put Jack's "fruit drink" in a colored glass anyway and he doesn't care what color it is. I vary from her recipe. I generally use water instead of milk and I use frozen blueberries so no ice. ***Edit add on. After I posted this, I realized that I don't really follow Alisa's recipe exactly. I use a whole banana and I don't add as much water. Also I don't usually measure the blueberries. I just keep blending until it looks good and add water until I get the right consistency.***I don't add sweetener and Jack and I love these "smoothies". I have found though that kids that are used to those ice cream/yogurt/milk smoothies that are sold commercially do not love our fruit drink like we do so you'd probably have to modify the smoothie a bit if your kids are used to the other stuff. Anyway, if we eat junk like hot dogs and fries or hamburgers for dinner, it makes me feel better by giving Jack one of these fruit drinks. He likes it and I know that he has had some fruit and veggies for the day.

We are working on encouraging Jack to use a fork but he's not real keen on it yet. With Ms. Sunny saying that he is willing to eat anything he can pick up at school, I'm wondering if we should back up and allow more finger feeding for awhile. Maybe we could finally get him to eat things like sliced raw apples, carrots, and celery. I don't know if it's just hard for him to chew this stuff because his teeth aren't all in and they are not lined up well or if it's just a texture thing or just unfamiliarity. You got any ideas? I'd love to hear them.