Have I ever actually been wordless for one of these? Probably not. But I thought a post that highlights photos was a good time to talk about photos. I meant to participate in Project 365 last year, but forgot until sometime well into the year. I’m determined to do it this year. There are many incarnations of Project 365, with the basic premise being just to take at least one picture every day for a year. I plan to scrapbook each week of the year. I hope to be able to keep up with the scrapbooking so I will actually have a finished book at the end of the year! I’ll likely share the lay outs here, or maybe I’ll start a new blog for it, I haven’t decided.

My goal is to learn to use my camera better. I’ve had it two years now, and still rarely venture out of program mode when I’m shooting the kids, and use aperture priority for non-moving objects that I can take my time. It just seems like so much work. So my goal is to take at least one fully manual shot every day. That picture doesn’t have to be the one I use for the scrapbook, but by the end of the year I’d love to be comfortable using the manual functions even to take pictures of a moving subject like kids.

More Wordless Wednesdays at Hobo Mama, Simply Whimsy, and Natural Parents Network.

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1. Wordless Wednesday: First step
2. Wordless Wednesday: Snow!
3. Wordless Wednesday: Best Friends

I feel that we eat very healthy compared to most of the population. Our suppers are pretty much all home cooked and from scratch. I make my own broths, and I plan to can tomatoes and make sauces and salsa this fall. We have grown quite a lot of our own vegetables this summer, and I’m trying out a winter garden this year. I started that pretty late so I’m going to try and not be too disappointed if that’s a bit of a flub though.

All that being said, we eat healthy, but we don’t eat a huge variety. We have lots of great tried-and-true recipes, but I find it difficult sometimes to get out of the comfort zone of recipes I know we all like, and try new things. There’s also a lot of vegetables we’ve never really tried. Not because there’s anything wrong with them, but because I know we like other ones. In fact, when I was looking over the list of vegetables that work well in a winter garden, I almost gave up on the spot simply because a lot of the vegetables on the list are things we just don’t eat. (Cabbage, swiss chard, beets, parsnips, to name a few.) But then I changed my mind and went ahead and ordered them.

While I wouldn’t consider Meredith overly picky, she’s certainly suspicious of foods she’s never seen before, and she doesn’t like leafy greens much (though she ate almost an entire bunch of fresh spinach from the garden to herself once!). I think a lot of it is a texture issue. She used to eat mushrooms and onions no problem, now she pulls out even little pieces from ground beef. If any of the above foods actually do grow this year, I obviously want them to get eaten. So I’ve been reading a bit about hiding vegetables in food. There seem to be two sides to the issue: those who feel it’s best to get vegetables in your kids any way you can, and those who feel kids should be exposed to lots of foods and that you’re not doing them any favours (or giving them much credit) by hiding vegetables in food.

I agree with both sides. I want vegetables to get eaten, but I want them to be seen and enjoyed for what they are too. I don’t agree with forcing kids to eat things they don’t like. We don’t have a one-bite rule of any sort, though there have been times I’ve encouraged her to try something. With Meredith’s personality, it often works best if I offer it to her and then drop it and leave the food in front of her. Often she says no, but then if I drop it she will try some and before I know it she’s done hers and trying to steal mine too!

My way of going about “hiding” foods isn’t so much about hiding as it is about masking flavours and textures. When having pasta, we’ve always cut up and added onions, peppers, zucchini, mushrooms; basically whatever we have on hand. But even that she will sometimes pick out. I was reading about pureeing foods and decided to give that a go this week. Meredith often helps me cook, so it’s hard to hide something when she’s the one adding it to the food processor. She still sees the vegetable, I tell her what it is if she asks, she helps me pick them out of the garden, and she knows it’s in her food. My plan is that as she gets used to the tastes, I can puree it less and less and hopefully eventually just be chopping it coarsely. We also still offer other vegetables that we know she does like at every meal as well, so she’s still getting lots of exposure to different vegetables.

So far, it’s been fairly successful. We made sloppy joes with zucchini, green peppers, carrots, and onions pureed into the sauce, and then corn and mushrooms  in bigger pieces. We had curry last night with lots of peppers, mushroom, and onion. I have a menu plan for the next week all ready to go, with plans to add things like cauliflower, broccoli, zucchini, and most of the above vegetables to various ones. We’re going away next week, but when we’re back I want to try buying some vegetables that may be out of my comfort zone and starting to add those in as well. Hopefully this will help get all of us eating a larger variety of vegetables, not just Meredith.

This post is my contribution to Food Renegade’s Fight Back Friday this week.

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1. Fight Back Friday
2. Snacking
3. Muffin Tin Wednesday

I spent this morning going through our cupboards and the flyer for the grocery store and have put together a meal plan for the next week and a half or so. I kept it mostly really simple, so it would be easy to start up again. I have a few recipes for next time that I want to try, but this time I just stuck with things I know we all like and that are simple to make. I haven’t included the veggie with a lot of these recipes, because that will depend on what’s looking good at the store.

Here’s the list, in no particular order:

• BBQ steak with bbq baked potato and mushrooms
• Shepherd’s pie
• Sticky chicken
• BBQ salmon
• Tilapia with homemade fries (sweet potato and regular)
• Pasta with mushrooms and capers in balsamic reduction
• Ham and butternut squash with apples and maple syrup
• Spaghetti with homemade red sauce

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1. Meal Plan
2. Meal Plans
3. “Hiding” Vegetables

Kyre posted about Muffin Tin Wednesday on her blog. I’ve seen the idea before too. I have actually been watching on Craig’s List for a mini bar fridge that we could have set up that she would be able to open herself and we can keep food in for her to go in and have whenever she wants. But for now, I thought having some grazing foods in a muffin tin would be a good idea. I only put out half a muffin tin to start. My tin has buttered cheese bread, cheese, farmer’s sausage, orange, banana, and pear. So far it’s gone over well. She’s tried some of everything except the pear. She’s going through a bit of neophobia, though not as bad as I’ve heard some kids get. She’s cautious about new foods, but will normally at least try them, especially if we have it on our plate and let her eat directly off of ours.

Tomorrow I think I’ll try hardboiled egg too. We had a huge variety of fruits for a while but I’ve eaten them all and need to go shopping again. (And yes, I know it’s Thursday, but Kris was off Monday so it seems like Wednesday to me. )

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2. Wordless Wednesday: First step
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 VANCOUVER — It’s time to pack up the pea purée and toss the baby rice. No more blending beans, mashing bananas or whipping sweet potatoes.

Fed up with rigid timetables for the introduction of first foods, a growing number of parents are giving up on spoon feeding and letting the kids set the pace.

The “baby-led weaning” movement, a term coined by a British former health visitor and midwife Gill Rapley, is mushrooming over the Internet. In the new book she has co-authored, Baby-led Weaning: Helping Your Baby to Love Good Food, Ms. Rapley argues that once a baby is six months old, parents should just cook up some vegetables, cut up some fruits and let the kid go crazy.

“Now that feeding guidelines are to start solids at six months, there is no reason to use purées or cereals,” Ms. Rapley explains by phone from Britain. “A developmental milestone at that age is for the baby to pick up an object and bring it to his mouth, so it’s a natural time for him to start feeding.”

There is no need to introduce foods in a particular order, or individually, she says. “Those guidelines were created because a four-month-old baby’s stomach is not ready to cope with food, and care needed to be taken.” Soft foods had previously been recommended for four- to six-month-olds to bridge the gap.

Her theory is that children will regulate their own intake, setting them up for future portion control and taking the pressure out of family mealtimes. In the process, children are less likely to use food as a control mechanism or become fussy eaters, Ms. Rapley says.

Common sense is advised: Don’t let your child eat unattended (though a baby’s natural gag reflex may be enough to prevent choking, you need to watch them) and be aware of family allergy issues.

“I don’t think this is revolutionary,” says Ms. Rapley, who adds that many hundreds of parents have been using baby-led weaning without realizing it. “It’s just never been written about before.”

Nevertheless, the movement is turning into an industry. Though part of its appeal has been the rejection of rules, the new feeding regimen is developing its own guidelines: In addition to Ms. Rapley’s book, a recipe database has sprung up on the Internet, and moms try to outdo each other in chat rooms with fancy recipes to tempt their little ones.

On Vancouver Island, Lindsay Wilson started looking into baby-led weaning when she saw her sister-in-law lose patience with baby food. “Her baby refused to eat it, so she just started with regular food.”

Ms. Wilson was preparing to introduce solids to her daughter, Meredith, when she turned six months. “I read all about baby-led weaning on the Internet and decided to try it.”

In the beginning, Meredith simply played with the food. “By 10 months, Meredith was fully feeding herself with finger foods and with a spoon.”

Now 15 months, Meredith eats a wide range of foods without fuss – while still nursing. “It makes it very easy to trust her and let her make her own decisions about what to eat and when, because any nutrients she’s not getting in solids are made up for in breast milk,” Ms. Wilson explains.

A Health Canada spokesman said that parents should refer to the guidelines for weaning and child nutrition posted on the department’s website.

Danielle Donders turned to baby-led weaning with her third son, Lucas, after having been through two different sets of guidelines with sons Tristan and Simon, now 6 and 4.

“With Tristan, it was cereals at four months, then vegetable purées introduced one at a time, wait a week, then try a new one,” she says. “With Simon, the guidelines had changed to starting solids at six months – and nothing but rice cereal for a while.”

By the time Lucas came along, Ms. Donders, an Ottawa-based communications officer, says she was just more relaxed about everything. “At 5½ months he was starving,” she says. “My mom was nagging me to feed him – so I put some Cheerios in front of him, not really thinking about what you’re supposed to do.”

Then someone posted about baby-led weaning on her blog, Postcards from the Mothership. “And I found out I was part of a whole movement.”

For Ms. Donders, though, letting Lucas, now 10 months old, feed himself was more about the demands of a large family and less about a new orthodoxy. “I realized that it just isn’t that easy to break him,” she laughs. “Although it is great to be able to feed him without feeling guilty that I’m not doing it the right way.”

Source: Globe & Mail

There’s an enormous picture of Meredith and I in the print version too. There are a couple really nitpicky things I could say, but I won’t bother. Overall I’m really happy with how it turned out. Hopefully it will get some awareness out there about how unnecessary jarred baby foods and spoon-feeding are!

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1. Today
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So I agreed to the interview, and I think it went well. I’m a little nervous about the article, as there is often a lot of misunderstanding or misconceptions about baby-led weaning and I worry that I’ll be misquoted or something I said will be taken out of context. I don’t want to come across as this crazy mother who’s endangering her baby’s life to rebel against the baby food industry! When in reality I believe baby-led weaning is safer than spoon feeding and allows Meredith to control her own intake of food and decide for herself when she’s full or hungry. Overall though, the reporter was really friendly and nice, and seemed very open. I’m really looking forward to how it turns out.

Today a photographer came to take Meredith’s picture for the article. She was really nice and great with Meredith. Very understanding of the fact that she is fifteen months old and sometimes has her own agenda. Actually, Meredith has been eating a lot more solids all of a sudden the last couple of days, so it worked out well as she was more than willing to sit and eat while having her picture taken. (She’s been nursing a lot more too, as can be evidenced by that fact I’ve gained a cup size or two in the last week lol! She must be going through a growth spurt.)

At one point while watching Meredith eating yogurt with a spoon, the photographer said: “Parents don’t give their kids enough credit”, which I think is so true. We have video of Meredith feeding herself with a spoon at ten months old. It was a little messier than it is now, but no more messier than any spoon feeding I’ve witnessed. Especially when the kid is being tricked into opening his or her mouth so the parent can shovel more food in, while the kid tries to spit it out. I have video of her first time eating soup too, around 11 months, though that was messy haha. She seems to find it a lot easier now that the spoon fits in her mouth a little easier. We never “taught” her to use a spoon. We just gave her a spoon (or a fork depending on what we were eating) and let her experiment on her own. Below is the soup video.

The photographer also commented I was brave giving her glasses and ceramic dishes to eat out of, but she’s probably broken less dishes since she started using them than Kris or I have. We did use some plastic that had been given to us for a brief time when she was enjoying throwing it on the floor, but by the time she actually started eating she was well past that phase and is quite careful with any dishes we give her.

Anyway, I’ll definitely post the article here when it comes out. I’m looking forward to it! I don’t think I’ve ever been in the newspaper before.

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1. Bye-bye mush. So long, strained carrots.
2. Baby-Led Weaning
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I’ve always planned on nursing to at least two years. After that, we’ll see. I can’t see myself ever forcefully weaning for any reason. Though thinking of nursing a four year old seems odd to me too, but I think that’s more because of the society I grew up in and not because I think there’s anything wrong with it. Most people know that the WHO recommends breastfeeding to at least age two. I’ve heard various arguments against that, the most common being that other countries don’t have clean water, but here in North America we don’t have to worry about that. Health Canada and Breastfeeding Committee for Canada both recommend breastfeeding to two years or longer though, so that argument doesn’t make sense. (Both Canada and the US should have longer maternity leaves if they want mothers to realistically meet these recommendations though, and should also make information about delaying solids and baby-led introduction to solids much more available. I think even making it to a year in the US is something to be proud of these days.) If you read the article I linked above, she discusses studies that have shown clear benefits to breastfeeding for two years or longer.

Meredith is still nursing as much as ever (if not more, as she gets bigger). Considering that when she was younger she seemed so interested in solids that I was worried she would wean early, now she barely touches anything besides breast milk some days.

Speaking of animals and weaning, my mom has a cat who had kittens last year. Two of the kittens lived at their house for over six months. (One is still there.) Both of those kittens would still nurse occasionally at 5 months old (when they were bigger than their mom), which is the equivalent of a 6 year old human child.

Aristotle at 5 months with his mom Kat

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3. Bye-bye mush. So long, strained carrots.

Around five months, she was sitting up on her own and really interested in food. It became impossible to eat while holding her, which is where she had been eating up until then. Suddenly I was torn between delaying solids as long as possible and following her lead. We bought her a high chair, and gave her a spoon and bowl, which kept her happy during meal times for a while. She never liked breast milk popsicles. We managed to distract her until she was six months, using toys, her own bowl and spoon, empty cups, a Klean Kanteen sippy, and sometimes just by eating separately, with one of us holding her while the other ate.

At six months she started to become harder to distract again, and one day grabbed a raw carrot stick. She has no teeth, so we let her play with it. She loved it, and spent that meal playing with it, gumming it, throwing it on the floor, and banging it on the table. Watching her happily playing with the food, I decided that if I was committed to a baby-led introduction to solids, I needed to really let her lead. While I do believe that breast milk is best until at least one year, and that solids just take up room in the tummy where milk could go, I didn’t want to turn meal times into a battle, whether the battle was trying to get her to eat or trying to keep her from eating. I believe at that point she was mostly just wanting to take part in what she saw us doing, and not that she was hungry or needed the nutrition.

So we started letting her play with carrots or celery if she seemed to really want food. Once I let go and let her have food once in a while, I was surprised at how infrequently we needed to do this. I had been so worried that she would start wanting to eat at every meal, and that wasn’t the case at all. Between six and seven months she probably only got food once a week or less and it was always a raw veggie that she could suck and gum but she didn’t eat. Between seven and eight months we started giving her food off our plate, though again only when she seemed interested. It was still only around once a week and tiny amounts (about as big as the tip of her pinky). It seems that once she realized she could have food if she wanted, she no longer seemed so determined to have some every meal.

So far, she has had yam fry, asparagus, avocado, banana, rice, and green pepper. All very tiny pieces. I tried to give her a bit of hummus at a friend’s party over the weekend. It was the first time I had actually offered her food without her being interested first, and to my surprise she wasn’t the least bit interested. I had offered because it was homemade and all the other kids there seemed to love it, so I was curious what her reaction would be. Last night I gave her a small piece of my salmon. She mostly played with it, and I think most of it ended up on the floor.

She doesn’t have teeth yet, but she’s been able to chew and swallow anything we’ve given her with no problems. Once she has teeth, I will be more careful about giving her things like raw carrots, as I don’t want her to break a hard piece off. She has gagged a couple of times, but just to bring the food up so she could chew it more and swallow again. I was expecting a bit of gagging so I didn’t find it scary at all and just kept a good eye on her.

Our plan is just to keep following her lead. We’re going to try and cut out most dairy from our diets so we can keep offering her food right off of our plates when she is interested. I’m hoping it will continue to be a very gradual process. Right now I would say all her nutrition is still coming from breast milk, and I’d be happy if it remains that way to at least a year.

Related posts:

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3. Bye-bye mush. So long, strained carrots.