Table Foods

[Anonymous]

Marisa is continuing to do well with her purees (knock wood) – she’ll
eat either Stage 1 or Stage 2 fruits and veggies either as is or
thickened with oatmeal (which I make pretty thick). She’ll eat the
chicken soup I make if I blend some of the chicken and carrots with her
pureed veggies. She’ll also eat puffs, cheerios and pieces of bread as
finger food. And this is great, I know!

However, lumps are a no go – by this I mean small piece of chicken or
whatever in her purees. And I can’t really blame her because the
mixture of smooth and lumps seems weird to me too. But we do want to
progress beyond purees – so should we just concentrate on finger foods
for now? I did buy some MSPI safe chicken nuggets – should I bake them
soft and give her small pieces as finger food? Or better offering by
fork? What about hamburger meat – we want to trial beef starting
Saturday – maybe small chunks of cooked hamburgers? And are we best off
giving a good amount of pureed fruits and veggies first (since she’ll
let us for now) and then offering finger foods after that?

If so, should we start trying small pieces of soft fruits and veggies?
So far she’s refused to try those and won’t pick up and try soft cooked
pasta pieces…

[Anonymous]

I’d try what they call “soft munchables” as she’s already doing puff and dissolve. Examples are very soft foods that she can pick up herself like cheese (if she does dairy), bread, peas, corn, cubed squash, sweet potatoes, pasta etc. I would start with things that are easy to mush up with the palate and don’t need lots of chewing. Also good is to start with things that she’s already eaten, just in a different form. So if she likes peas, then steam some soft ones and put them out. If she likes sweet potato do the same and cut them up into tiny soft cubes. If she likes pears do the same with a very ripe pear. That way she only had to overcome the form and not the new taste as well. Good luck.

[Anonymous]

Hi Karen –

Owen never did like the lumps in the purees like you find in stage 3 foods. He went right from stage 2 to finger foods, much like it sounds that Marissa is doing. I did give him small pieces of just sauteed ground turkey (we don’t eat red meat at our house – but it’s basically the same as ground beef). So it was even smaller pieces since it was cooked almost like taco meat, just cooked in olive oil. Owen loved it and has loved meatballs, etc. since. I think that we probably had done chicken nuggets by her age too – and yes, we would just heat them in the microwave until they were warm and then would cut them into small pieces.

Owen’s on all table foods now and he never did like those stage 3 foods – just went from purees to finger foods to table foods and hasn’t looked back. Good luck!

[Anonymous]

Thanks Lori. I have tried some soft cooked pears and some steamed peas
(two of her favorite purees). But she doesn’t like how they feel when
she tries to pick them up and gets frustrated and won’t really try. She
does well with pieces of bread and french fries though. I wish I could
do cheese but no dairy until we see how the formula switch goes in
another week or two! Maybe canned peas would be better than frozen – I
seem to remember them being a bit larger last time I bought/ate them?

Thanks also Laura. So do we do finger foods first and then table foods by fork? So confused!

Also – are hamburger patties I bought from Whole Foods safe to try when
trying beef or should I buy plain ground meat and give her small chunks
instead? Does it matter?

knb182006-5-31 16:8:52

[Anonymous]

I bet the hamburger patties are fine – we just had the big package of ground turkey so we did it that way. We wanted it to be as small as it could be so it would be pretty easy for him but I bet you can do basically the same thing with the patties.

And yes, we went from finger foods to table food but to Owen it’s all been finger foods because he doesn’t want us to feed him! So he just eats everything with his hands. I think that the distinction between finger foods and table foods is kind of blurred – like, Owen had peas as a finger food but he still has them and I consider that table food. I guess the difference is that now we can order him meals in restaurants, etc. and don’t have everything be single ingredient foods. Maybe? I’m starting to think I’m still confused!!!

[Anonymous]

Thanks again Laura. I think we’ll try the chicken nuggets after her
lunch purees tomorrow and see how it goes and the hamburger patties
Saturday. I wish she’d try the pasta with her hand but it seems to
confuse her – just keep trying with soft cooked pasta/no sauce, right?
Are a certain shape easier for them than others? I wish she’d try the
peas – she loves pea puree!

[Anonymous]

Also, does it matter to this that she STILL has no teeth?

[Anonymous]

Kaelyn didn’t have teeth at that stage either and she did fine with finger foods. I can’t remember exactly what we did, but I believe that we offered her finger foods, but also gave her a fork. She really liked having control over her own foods and always wanted to feed herself. This got really messy with purees, but I do think that it helped her to add more foods to her list. She was big on being independent. She also went through a stage where she only wanted foods that came off of our plate. I think that she thought that she was getting something special since it was ours. For a while, we would make her food up, put it on one of our plates and then pretend to eat in front of her. She would come up and try to share with us.

[hellbennt]

for slimey foods, coat in crushed cheerios to make handling easier

hamburger can get dry in their mouths- juicy at first then they somehow suck the juice out and can gag/not like the dry meat that’s left…now if it’s in sauce, that’s a ‘nother story…yum!

try different shaped pastas- you never know what these little ones will like

we gave jonah a spoon to kinda play with, but he mostly used his fingers & we forked/spooned food in to him too

he didn’t get a fork for a looong time…that’s just us I think? we’re odd

[Anonymous]

With my girls and now with Myles I pretty much concentrated on purees at this age, knowing they are getting good nutrition from them and also are learning to like the taste of veggies and fruits. I usually would feed them their baby food about an hour before we all had dinner and then at dinner time I’d give them little pieces of finger foods to try. My girls never ate lumpy foods, either. It was either purees or finger foods. Over many, many months they gradually began to eat more finger foods and less baby foods, but I continued giving them baby food until they were about 18 months (longer for Ellie because she was slower to accept new foods) because I felt that was the best source of fruits and veggies for them until they were competent enough and willing enough to self feed. Like many babies they were resistant to being fork fed any table foods, wanting to be independent, and finger foods were a great source of fun play and exploration for them, so not much of it ended up in the mouth initially. My girls also would not eat soft cooked veggies or fruits until they were old enough to use a fork and eat them….another reason I stuck with purees for so long.

With no teeth, I’d really stick to soft foods that can be mashed by the gums. Choking is a big concern at this age, even with teeth.

I guess my approach may seem weird to some, feeding purees for so long. But my girls are fabulous eaters today. They eat lots of fruits, berries, and vegetables and they don’t have a lot of the common pitfalls that are seen in many toddler/pre-schooler diets today.

I hope that helps, but if you think my approach is strange, I fully understand!

[Anonymous]

Christine – I don’t think that’s strange and all and glad it worked for
you! I do give Marisa her purees first and will continue to do so and
then offer finger foods after that (or later when we eat if she’s still
up). But knowing Marisa, she’ll want to be off purees and eating
totally independently relatively soon – so trying to ease my way in.

Laura – thanks for the tip with hamburger meat – will keep an eye out
for that. What kind of sauce could we try though? And if sauce still
finger food?

Will keep trying with soft foods for now (although she does like the
bread toasted and does like crackers) and will also try coating fruits
with crushed cheerios. I’ve tried soft cooked rotini pasta (screws) but
will try ziti noodles and then shells next I guess.

Kim – I like that story about her wanting to only eat what you had!

[hellbennt]

for sauce, maybe just cook in a lot of sauce?

or pour sauce over pieces?

or let her dip into the sauce?

I avoided tomato sauce for a long time w/ jonah- I was too scared– I used babyfood pureed carrots- sweet and tomato-sauce-like

[Anonymous]

She’s not up to dipping yet. Maybe pour a little carrots or sweet
potato puree over the meat chunks and let her try it? I’m scared of
tomato sauce too!

[Anonymous]

I totally forgot about using purees as sauce – we used to do that with Owen all the time. He LOVED sweet potato over the pasta pieces with peas – so gross, but he loved it. Maybe that could help her with eating the pasta if it’s a little more familiar? I never tried that with meat – I was daring and used tomato sauce – but I bet that would work!

[Anonymous]

Laura – would he eat the pasta pieces and meat pieces that way by
himself (finger food)? How small did you make the pasta pieces and meat
chunks? And with the tomato sauce, did you just cook the meat in it or
pour it over afterward and serve that way?

[Author]

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