Food for thought

Life has suddenly gotten more interesting as Hayden is now eating table food. He still has his bottles, since babies are supposed to get the bulk of their nutrition from formula or breast milk for the first year. But now when we eat, Hayden eats with us. Most mornings he still eats baby fruit or yogurt mixed with oatmeal since he can't have whole milk or eggs just yet, but sometimes he gets a bite of french toast or sausage. Lunch has gotten way more fun, since I can just cook up some pasta or veggies and feed it to him, or let him feed himself. I've found he is very tricky when it comes to food. Sometimes he won't take anything I try to feed him because he wants to do it himself. That's fine with some things, but pasta with sauce only works with naked babies! If he's eating dinner with us, he'll let me feed him but only off of my fork. Doesn't matter what I'm feeding him as long as it's off of my fork. Apparently the baby spoon isn't grown up enough for "dinner with dad".

Fruits are still a little tricky since he can't chew most of them, so he's still hanging out with the pureed fruit mixed with oatmeal. We did try a banana the other day, and found that he wants nothing to do with the slimy slices but will happily bite into a half banana that he can hold. He still prefers his food spiced up (not that I blame him, we go through more garlic than an Italian family of 5) but doesn't really care about temperature.

Out of the blue he started enjoying the cup, which means he's getting a lot more juice and water than the two sips I used to fight him for. He gets very excited when he sees his cup and knows the "good stuff" is in there. Eating out is also more fun, since I can share what I'm eating with Hayden. We went out for chinese food recently and I'm pretty sure Hayden had more chicken and noodles than I did! It's fun to see him experiments with new tastes, textures and types of food.