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Friday, March 06, 2009

Glorious food

It is so much fun teaching Stardust how to enjoy his meals. Stardust eats well and is quite adventurous - happily eating foods in a wide variety of flavours, colours and textures. He approaches new foods rather apprehensively, but I am pleased that he at least gives everything a taste. If he rejects the new food outright, I usually take it away and try re-introducing it a week or so later.
Not all babies are ready for solid foods at 6 months, which is the recommended age to begin weaning. Stardust certainly was not ready for solids but I was in a hurry to get him weaned at the time, which meant that mealtimes during the first few weeks were rather a struggle.
Limited mealtimes are a big help in maintaining my sanity. If Stardust is refusing food or eating reluctantly, I will end his mealtime after 45 minutes and just assume that he's full. I know some very patient and longsuffering parents spend an hour or more trying to coax their baby to eat. However, I personally feel that it is not worth the stress just to force another 2-3 teaspoons worth of food into a protesting baby who is just plain tired of sitting still.
One another thing I refuse to do at mealtimes is try to entertain or distract Stardust so that he sits still long enough to eat. At most, I'll sing or talk whilst feeding him but I will not prance around with the spoon pretending it's an aeroplane. He isn't allowed any toys either - the only object he holds in his hand during mealtimes is a damp cloth for wiping spills.
Once we got over the initial difficulty of weaning, everything just fell into place. I love how his face just lit up today when I brought out a steaming bowl of stewed pumpkin, golden and smelling of sunshine. And how his eyes grew big and round when he had his first bite of it.
Mama's little baby loves pumpkin, pumpkin
Bebop-a-lula, pumpkin pie!

6 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

:) It's lovely that he loves food! Soon he'll be at a stage where he prefers your food to his own - point and "ah!"

4:36 pm  
Blogger jadeite said...

:( i like pumpkin.

Me please!

My family once spent an entire night falling about ourselves laughing helplessly at the sight of my sister trying for the first time to feed herself. She just couldn't aim the spoon at her mouth.

It makes for great hilarity - and about an hour of cleanup after!

6:51 pm  
Blogger tscd said...

Hamster: He does that already - that's why he pretty much eats what we eat (except with no added salt or sugar)

jadeite: Pumpkin is great! I haven't taught Stardust to use a spoon yet - not convinced he is co-ordinated enough...or maybe I just don't want to deal with the mess.

11:42 am  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

It's quite fun to share food - I let my son bite a bit of watermelon off my piece before I eat a big bite. It's very cute seeing the bitemark left behind by him - it's really like a mouse ate a bit of my watermelon. On top of that he always opens his mouth as wide as he can go in the belief that I will put more in, and then refuses to bite down unless there's a bigger chunk in his mouth. Is Stardust like that?

12:40 pm  
Blogger tscd said...

Hamster: hahahahaha that is cute! Stardust can be quite greedy about food that he likes too - sometimes he will even put his finger in his mouth to make sure that the food is still there.

1:11 pm  
Blogger Jo said...

claire finishes her food in like 15mins. and a big bowl of food at that. the thing i've been worries about though is that she doesn't chew (her porridge. strawberries and what nots she does), instead she swallows it down very quickly. and sometimes there are bigger bits in the porridge and hurts her and she cries (just for a bit - she's not the cry baby sort). and she eats everything! even my wallpaper for that matter!

5:40 pm  

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