About six months ago I wrote about starting Elliot on solids. We took the babyled weaning route, and six months on, I can whole-heartedly say it has been fun and relatively easy. It’s a constant pleasure seeing Elliot discover new foods, and the only barriers are the ones in my own mind, he seems copacetic with pretty much everything I hand over for him to eat. Or, more likely to be the case these days, he grabs from my hand!
Many people ask me what he eats in a given day, so here’s a sample menu:
Breakfast
Scrambled egg made with cream and butter, no salt
Toast fingers with cream cheese (I make my own bread generally, so I know what’s in it)
A prune or two
Half a banana
Lunch
Fusili pasta
Leftover bolognese sauce from the night before, homemade with no salt added (with beef, veal and pork mince in it, as well as courgette, carrots, onions, etc)
Shredded raw courgette leftover from a recipe I was making
Carrot sticks
Snack
Slice of mature cheddar in pieces, as stolen from Mummy’s snack
Organix rice cakes
Dinner
Same thing as we’re having, for instance – chicken stirfry with soy sauce added after Elliot gets his portion, including the rice or noodles; roast chicken, potatoes and broccoli; pasta with pan-fried salmon and peas. A pot of Rachel’s yoghurt, or any full-fat yoghurt with no refined sugars.
Occasionally I will give him something quite salty, like halloumi or sausage, but not a lot of it and only once in awhile.
The above example doesn’t mean this all goes into Elliot. Like all little people, he has days where he eats everything and demands I rummage in the fridge for more and days where he throws most of it on the floor or at the dog. I follow the ‘in a week’ idea – as long as he has a mostly balanced intake across the week I don’t worry about it. Just leaving him to get on eating what he wants, he seems to take what he needs. Our mealtimes are mellow (for the most part!) and I barely take anything except rice cakes when we go out as he just shares whatever I’m having.
That being said, we always eat together. He never has a meal on his own, ever. We sit at the same table and share. I think this has made a big difference, because if he’s not showing any interest in something in his dish, if one of us takes a bite of it and hands it back, he almost always then eats it himself.
And no, don’t feel like you have to bake your own bread. I am one of those crazy food people who like to do things like that.
I find baby/toddler trousers such a pain. They’re either too long so Elliot will step on the cuffs and walk himself out of them, or so bulky he looks like he’s fighting them with every step. All of this goes doubly if you’ve got a crawler. All those pointless pockets and fastenings just look so uncomfortable when they fall asleep in the pushchair too.
