food ideas for my little one!

[amybrg86]

Our baby boy (7 1/2 months) loves to eat, but I'm kind of feeling at a loss as to what else to feed him.. Currently, we don't have a high chair (just ordered one yesterday though) so that kind of limits what i can give him at this point. We have only been during primarily pureed foods, but I've read/hear that feeding babies on a spoon can be sort of back-tracking...like you're not helping them to learn how to chew, etc. Soooo...without continuing the purees, I'm pretty much lost as to what to feed him! I don't want to give him anything that has lots of salt, sugar, and so on because I don't want him getting addicted to all those bad foods...I want him to grow up eating pretty healthy (example: I'd like to start giving him pieces of toast, but I'm not going to give him the nasty enriched white bread and I wonder if the healthy nutty breads are okay for him to eat at this age..). I don't know, maybe I'll just keep doing the darn purees for awhile--at least i know what's in them & i know it's healthy. In any case, what kinds of foods are you feeding your little ones around this age??? Also, are crackers and cheerios okay??

 

[WndrlndsOwl]

We do whole wheat toast and plain cheerios are fine. My daughter love them. I've also cut up bananas and string cheese into cubes for her so that she can start feeding herself with her pincher grasp. you can cut up almost any fruit/veggie as long as it can be mashed between fingers they can have it to feed themselves. She likes potato sticks, egg yolk that's been cooked in a frying pan, or hard boiled.
She's had salt free saltine crackers, you can give them rice cakes, pasta that's cut up into smaller pieces.
The list is endless. and I still give her purees also, I mix them into her oatmeal in the mornings (the fruit ones) and I have the meat in purees also.

 

[amybrg86]

We do whole wheat toast and plain cheerios are fine. My daughter love them. I've also cut up bananas and string cheese into cubes for her so that she can start feeding herself with her pincher grasp. you can cut up almost any fruit/veggie as long as it can be mashed between fingers they can have it to feed themselves. She likes potato sticks, egg yolk that's been cooked in a frying pan, or hard boiled.
She's had salt free saltine crackers, you can give them rice cakes, pasta that's cut up into smaller pieces.
The list is endless. and I still give her purees also, I mix them into her oatmeal in the mornings (the fruit ones) and I have the meat in purees also.

Okay great thank you!! So could we give him slices/pieces of pears, peaches, apples, strawberries? Are those fruits okay?? I really want to give him Cheerios, but for some reason those worry me! They're so tiny and it just seems like he'll choke on them!

 

[Rachel_C]

Have a look at the BLW threads - you can give a 6 month old pretty much anything you'd eat with a few restrictions e.g. salt, honey, whole/chunks of nut and the things you tend to avoid in pregnancy like undercooked eggs.

What are you pureeing? Why not just give it unpureed? LO can have any fruits and veg you'd normally eat, however you'd normally eat them, whether that's mashed, in chunks, sticks etc. He can have pretty much anything you'd eat yourself so give him whatever bread you think is okay to eat! You can absolutely give things as small as cereals (I won't say Cheerios as they're evil Nestle!). LO's gag reflex is a long way forward at his age so if he doesn't want something in his mouth it'll just get pushed out. IMO it's actually far more dangerous to wait until later to introduce small things (as the reflex will be further back by then and you've not taught them to deal with small stuff properly).

 

[catty]

You can give chunks of fruits, my boys favourite when he was a bit younger was watermelon as it's quite easy to hold and very soft.
Banana, mango, melon. Now he's older I don't really cut much up just give him a big bit of fruit and he does most himself (lots on the floor though)
For breakfast he has cereal, i will give him some to feed himself then il spoon feed the rest, followed by banana and maybe a breads tick or something.

Lunch I do spoon feed some meals but he can easily have a cheese toastie, bagel, basically anything you would consider a healthy meal.
He has the brown nutty bread because that's what I eat and I'm not buying 2 loafs.

Dinner he will have something like broccoli, chicken in a sauce (I feed him this) then give him a selection of foods he can eat himself.

It can be very messy and sometimes half a sandwich turns into 1000 bits of bread all over the place but it is fun to watch him.

snack wise I give yoghurt, breads ticks, rice cakes, fruit, veg - like carrot sticks or broccoli, cheese - he likes baby bel. Now he's 10 months I'm a little less strict so he can have the odd biscuit, baby crisps etc I try and limit these but I don't see the harm every now and then.


Forgot to say yes cheerios have been fine here, I put it in the micro for 30 secs as he likes it warm and they go soft. I'm sure crackers are totally fine although now I think of it he hasn't had that as not something I buy.
I don't do BLW as I still spoon feed him his main meal but it's not really pureed just mashed.

My son has choked twice, it was scary as he barely even made a noise just changed colour but a few hard pats on the back and the food came out, I must mention one of the things he choked on was a pureed apple so it's not always the hard and 'scary' looking things - you just have to trust them.

 

[Smiler82]

You don't have to give up purees entirely if you don't want to, you could do a mix of purees and finger foods - that's what we do. I just made the purees lumpier and it has helped him to learn how to chew as he can eat any finger foods I give him like toast, banana, cucumber etc etc. For lunch he has little sandwiches and dinner I basically make things we would eat but without adding salt. You can buy stock cubes that are suitable for babies to add flavour, or make your own stock. I batch cook things and freeze them so I have a selection of meals in the freezer ready for each mealtime and he gets something different every day without too much hassle for me I've been using some recipes from a book by Annabel Karmel (if you're in the UK) but otherwise I just adapt meals that we would have and avoid putting in salt or sugar.