Finger Food

Well, it appears I'll have to find someone to take the extra jars of baby food in my pantry, because Eva won't touch them anymore. She wants what we're having, and she wants to feed herself. That means I have to start dinner much earlier, instead of waiting for Dave to get home. He'll be re-heating whatever I made rather than getting it fresh, like he has up to now. He tends to not get home until 6:30, and Eva can't wait that long.

I want her to love healthy foods, so I give her as much variety as I can: potatoes, carrots, corn, peas, beans, asparagus, squash, broccoli, green beans, avocados, tomatoes, peaches, pears, bananas, apricots, plums, kiwi, mango, mandarin oranges, grapes, blueberries, strawberries. She also eats small amounts of cheese, yogurt, chicken, fish and beef. As long as it's chopped into small pieces, she'll eat it. For snacks on the go, I give her Cheerios, Kix, Teddy Grahams, veggie crackers, Goldfish, teething biscuits, or fruit and cereal bars.

If she doesn't seem interested in a food, I don't let it phase me. I know it can take up to 20 tries for a toddler to accept a new food, so I'll wait a couple days and re-introduce it when she's really hungry. Usually that's all it takes for her to eat it. I know I need to be persistent in feeding her healthy foods, because this is the time when her lifelong tastes are being developed. Later on, it will be much more difficult to introduce anything she hasn't already acquired a taste for. She always gets water in her sippy cups, never juice, and doesn't know the difference. She loves water, especially if I put ice in there to sooth her sore gums.