Food

I started giving Jordyn solid food at just over 4 months, and after talking about it with her pediatrician. She's a HUGE eater, and can down ridiculous amounts of formula, so I felt it was time to at least introduce the idea of food. The pediatrician agreed - after hearing how much formula Jordyn drinks, she said, "give the kid some food!".

She loves it.

Well, almost all of it. She was downright horrified by green beans:

and she's not really into hummus. But pretty much everything else I've given her has been at least a partial hit.

We started with sweet potato - real, baked sweet potato mashed up on a plate with a fork and then fed to her on my finger. No water or anything else added to it.

So far, she's also had avocado, carrots, apples, bananas, peaches, peas, squash (whichever kind they make baby food squash with - I think yellow), baby oatmeal, and maybe a couple more things I can't remember. My mom gave her butternut squash yesterday and today, which she loved. I wasn't surprised  because it's listed as one of her donor's favorite foods (although, so is hummus, and she's not impressed with it, at least not yet). Plus, she loves all things orange so far - sweet potato and carrots are two of her other favorites.

And then the other day I was eating minestrone soup, and I gave her some of the broth without any chunky stuff. She loved it. And then I was eating vegetable soup a few days later, and did the same thing with the same result. I also gave her a mashed up piece of carrot out of the soup (figuring it would have more flavor than baby food carrots), and a mashed up piece of potato, and one mashed up kidney bean minus the skin (just one as I was afraid of the consequences if I gave her more!). She liked it all.

Oh, and guacamole.

Wait, GUACAMOLE?!?

Yes, guacomole. At five months old. Complete with jalapeno peppers, onion, and whatever else is in there. Weird, right?

We were at Tot Shabbat last Friday which includes a free(!) dinner, and Jordyn was sitting on my lap as I was eating. She was watching every move I made, but I hadn't brought any baby food with me (I'm pretty much only doing solids once a day right now). The only thing that even sort of fit the bill of something I could give her, in terms of consistency, was guacamole. I figured, well, she's had avocado and didn't hate it, so what the hell? Worst case, I give her one bite, she makes a terrible face, and that's the end of it.

Except that wasn't the end of it, as she kept leaning forward with her mouth wide open, wanting more! So, I gave her some guacamole, completely flabbergasted at a 5-month-old liking something with so many "grown up" flavors and spices!

So I bought guacamole, which is a different brand than the first one, but she likes that one, too. So the kid legitimately likes guacamole. Go figure.

I mentioned it to her pediatrician, who wasn't at all surprised. She said someone once came up with this theory that babies only like plain, bland foods, but who says that's true? Her own daughter liked baby oatmeal only when it had cardamom, cinnamon, and ground up dates in it. So she said I can continue to give Jordyn whatever foods I want (other than raw honey and cow's milk, but I think that's it), and that I don't have to wait 3 days between new foods. As I may have mentioned before, she's a very laid-back pediatrician! I also read something in a parenting magazine recently about how there's a window of time, I think from when you start solids until maybe 18 months or two years or something, when you can introduce new foods and have a good chance that the child will end up liking them. After that window, it gets much harder. Not that I think food pickiness will ever be an issue with Jordyn!

And I should mention that I'm really not too worried about allergies as I don't have any, and neither does her donor. Plus no one in my family or his does, that I know of. But I do know what to look for, just in case.

Anyone else's baby eating interesting foods? What should I try with Jordyn next?! I wish I were more of a cook (I'm really not one at all).

And I have to decide what I want to do regarding meat. I'm basically a vegetarian - I haven't eaten red meat since I was 14, I haven't eaten pork pretty much ever, and I only recently started trying to bring a little bit of poultry back into my diet, since I haven't eaten it since I was 14, but I don't really like it anymore. I don't necessarily want to prohibit Jordyn from eating meat, especially poultry, but I don't want to have to cook it for her. I think I may have her eat poultry, but not red meat or pork, like me. Plenty of kids are brought up as vegetarians and are plenty healthy, so I figure it doesn't make me a bad mom to decide that for her.

I love feeding Jordyn solids, because she makes the greatest faces - whether she likes the food or not, the faces she makes are hilarious! She also sometimes gets so excited that she literally shakes in anticipation of the next spoonful. And we make such a mess! Sometimes I end up laughing out loud, and she looks at me, and then laughs, too. We have such a great time with food!

I call this one "Adventures with Pears" (and minestrone broth):