So tonight was our 3rd softball game of the season (which we won – and I made an AWWWWWWWESOME catch, which basically made me feel like an athlete after years of not feeling like one).
In the meantime, Nana (my husband’s Mom) was in charge of the baby at home, and as we were leaving, I showed her “Stella’s shelf” in the fridge.
Anything on that shelf is fair game — it’s either food she has already been introduced to, or food I am a-ok with her trying in the immediate future. Like I mentioned before, we are basically going with Baby Led Weaning, which means we are giving her hunks of food to gnaw on (usually anything in our fridge which is 1/4-1/2″ thick and a couple inches long)…and just letting her experiment with all of the textures, flavors, etc.
My daycare provider said, “and you don’t worry about her choking?”
My MIL said, “and you don’t mash it up?”
Um, nope.
I have absolutely nothing against purees and “regular” baby food, which for ease of feeding, I will probably send to daycare (for example, we have given her pureed carrots, and she ate them just fine, and then was much happier just grabbing a stalk of carrot and chewing on it). It just made sense to me to give her hunks of food and to let her figure out chewing before swallowing, since she was 6mo old when we started solids and able to do that. It also means that she is a part of the family dinner without one of us actually feeding her the entire time – win/win!!
At any rate, we got home from the game tonight, and I asked my MIL if she had given Stells any solid foods from the shelf, and she said…”well…a little of the cantaloupe (which I’m sure she thought was weird that I left the rind on for Stella to hold onto)…and a little broccoli (Stells loves holding the stalk of the broccoli and gnawing on the floret).
Sweet.
I can definitely tell she wasn’t totally comfortable with the non-mashed/pureed thing, but thank God I have an awesome MIL who trusts my parenting ideas and just goes with it. 🙂 It’s so wonderful to have her around.
Stells eats some solid food y’all. INSANE.
