Have a couple of questions..........

Hi ladies, my twins are almost 9 months old & I can't believe how fast it is going by! Both are growing great & reaching their milestones within a couple of weeks of each other. Both were crawling & sitting before 7 months, they have been on baby food since 4 months, etc. Now after months of eating great DS hoovers everything you feed to him but DD has gotten very picky. She hates the jarred meats and dinners unless it contains sweet potatoes or some type of fruit mixed in & she also turns her nose up at everything I cook for them. She will take a few bites & then not open her mouth again until it's time for fruits, then she's all over it. The last couple of days I have given both of them the Gerber Pasta Pick Ups in the Spinach & Cheese Ravioli to see if she would eat them on her own & she attacked them. I also gave them the diced apples & she did the same with them. DS also ate them well with self feeding but then ate a whole jar of Stage 3 food after. Could it be that maybe DD is ready to start consistently feeding herself? I just figured it was still too early to start them on self feeding, but she is doing very well with it. DS does a good job, but doesn't hit his mouth as consistently as DD does. Also, for those of you who have started yours on table foods, what age did you do this? And if you prepared your own baby food, what types of seasonings did you use? I'm trying to stick to salt-free herbal seasonings but it is just not making the cut. CAN I use a little salt or season-all? Just not sure what to do with their meals at this point.

Next, they will drink from the Nuk Sippy cup that has the silicone spout like the bottle nipples, but how did you guys teach them to drink from a straw? I've tried and all they want to do is chew on it. I've also tried the sippy cups with the harder plastic spout & they are lost as to what to do with them as well. Any advice? Thank you so much!

 

I suppose I fall in the minority on this one, but I have been feeding my babies table foods since they started solids. I completely skipped purees and baby food. They are a little over nine months and have been eating table foods since about 8 months. (Called baby-led weaning) Anyway, you could be right that your LO's are ready to feed themselves. Mine love being able to feed themselves. I don't season food while cooking it or if I do I put some aside and season our food to our liking. Seasonings and different flavors are great for them. Obviously you are doing right by not adding salt to their food. We don't cook a lot of processed food so that helps us in making sure they get nutritous foods.

 

I think mine started on finger foods around 9 months. My husband loved spoon feeding them so he stuck with it until they were about 15 months, but with me they were eating on their own most of the time by about 10-11 months. It's messy, but great that they can eat at their own pace and choose what to eat.

We almost never fed table food until they were about 14 months because we were dealing with allergies (and still are!) so I often had to make separate meals for them. However, when I did make meals we could all eat I would just leave a little to the side for the boys and then spice everything else up to our liking. I used all kinds of spices to flavour their food, just skipped the salt. Curry powder, cinnamon, oregano, basil.... anything! They seemed to like trying all kinds of new flavours and textures and aren't picky eaters now, so hopefully we did something right there.

 

Mine started on table foods around 8-9 months as well I always just gave them un-seasoned food and on occasion they would get some of the processed foods we sometimes eat. Seasoning is great for them, I just wouldn't over do it

As for the straw cups, my boys loved the Munchkin ones as does my DD. I didn't have to teach my boys but to teach my daughter so I wouldn't have to buy new cups I used THIS cup and I am a huge advocate of it! I used it twice and my DD could drink from the straw at 7 months

Keep up the great work Mama!

 

Thank you ladies so much. I'm definitely going to try the self-feed route and see if that's a little more successful. And thanks for the sippy cup reference. I happen to have a couple of the ones that you gave the link for so I'm going to just keep persisting with it. Eventually they will grasp the concept I guess!

 

I would totally do baby-led weaning if I could do it over again. I didn't worry about mine liking fruits b/c they liked veggies, too. How about some frozen peas and carrots for her? Those were big hits around here. Other veggies that are good are squash, sweet potato & zucchini- I add a little butter (you could use olive oil), a little bit of salt and pepper & roast them. If you cut it into bite sized pieces it's really soft and tasty.

Mine did not catch onto the straw thing for awhile. What I did was take my straw, put 1/2 in of water in the bottom of it, clamp it with my finger and put it in their mouth. When they sucked on it, I let go. They eventually got the hang of it, but were somewhat confused that the straw was coming into their mouths from downward instead of upward, if that makes any sense.

 

At nine months all three of my kids were eating table foods. Annabella especially was not fond of the baby puree's. I would definitely start table foods. Life was so much easier! And your ds will get the hang of picking up the food the more you put it out in front of him. As for spices-whatever we cooked-they ate! The only thing would be spicy stuff, but that's mostly dh anyways, and he adds it after it's all been cooked. A whole new world awaits!

As for straws...I heard this trick from other moms on here. A juice box. Seriously. I had such a hard time getting the boys to use a straw, they couldn't figure it out. So I think around 18 or so months I read about the trick of a juice box. It was INSTANT. Then, when dh was playing soccer last summer, I brought juice boxes for the boys. Annabella was still in her stroller, not walking, and crawling. I would say 11 months old. The boys left one of their juice boxes in the cup holder. She picked it up-and drank it! Granted-it was just about empty-but she figured it out pretty darn quickly! I only buy the small 4 oz juice boxes, not the big ones. And I'm not saying you have to go buy a whole stash of them-one should do!