Eating.

Tell me about your kids' eating habits. Ophelia doesn't touch veggies. We do make her eat at least one carrot. But if we'd let her, she wouldn't touch a pea.

Elisabeth is a whole other story in itself. We gave pre-made baby food... for 8 month olds. She loathes chunks. A couple of months ago she was still at 6 months old pots and only carrots and zucchini'n'tomato. At least now she eats different things. But at nearly 16 months she still doesn't eat chunks. *sigh* (She also still do esn't walk independently, but already cruising.)

Hah, eating. I could post all day about the joys of baby led weaning. Best parenting decision I ever made - no purees, no spooning food into your baby's mouth, self-feeding all the way! We've been very lucky, there's very little Aidan doesn't like - spinach, mushrooms and salad, I think that's about it! He loves peas and broccoli.

Lots of photos of Aidan eating, he started food about 23 weeks http://www.flickr.com/photos/mrsbrown/sets/72157603809350652/

Aidan eating pakora at 6 months

And info links:

Intro: http://www.babycentre.co.uk/baby/startingsolids/babyledweaning/
Book: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Baby-led-Weaning-Helping-Your-Baby/dp/0091923808
Forum: http://forum.babyledweaning.com/

Oh, and he's been eating the same meals as us from about 10-11 months. As I said, we've been very lucky. I like to think it's mostly BLW but there are some mums who've done it and have slightly picky kids

You give me faith, Vicky!

OK, maybe not faith, but hope!

Ophelia was pretty easy. But Elisabeth? No way. I also put foods in front of her (like ours) but she just giggles - not kidding you - and looks away. I put the food in her mouth and she stars gagging. The doctor has suggested that something might hinder her from swallowing properly. So we'll look into it.... :-(

Howie is a fussy bugger. Not VERY fussy but moderately fussy. What he does eat is healthy (any kind of bread, cheese, peas, sweetcorn, yoghurt, fish fingers, apples, grapes and at least two bananas a day) but it's limited. Try getting him to eat a hot meal and it's like you're offering him poison.

Our daughter ate a fairly healthy diet when she was a toddler, but the comedy/frustration was in her mood changing from day to day. "Here's some treetops [broccoli] with ranch dressing, you love that." "I HATE treetops!" "You loved this last time we had it!" "....I hate it now!" "...sucks to be you, no dessert." "Waaaahh!"

I feel very envious when I see babies like Aidan chomping happily on the likes of salami. I put something like that in front of Howie, he just gives me this Look, like "What the hell am I supposed to do with that?"

if beeps had her way all she would eat is cheese and scooby doo multivitamins. a lot like her parents, really.

The only things Alice is guaranteed never to turn her nose up at are yoghurt (soya), rice crispies and humous. But if those are not on the menu then every mealtime is a gamble - is today a liking broccoli day or not? If not then no amount of cajoling or threatening will get her to eat. She'd rather go hungry, it seems.

xp: I ate mainly cheese sandwiches and vitamins until I was in high school.

Luckily, our son will eat absolutely anything, in terms of variety. We got him to eat squid the other night. The problem is getting him to eat enough: two bites "Can I be done?"

Our daughter's best childhood friend had a diet that consisted of cheese pizza, Little Debbie Swiss Cake Rolls, and Sprite. She's in an institution now.

A culinary institution?

hahaaaaa...no.

I think about that girl fairly often...she and my daughter were inseparable friends, and it was awful to watch her lose her grip on reality. I wonder a lot whether a balanced diet could have eased the bubbling stewpot of her brain chemistry.

Progress: ELisabeth is eating chunky potatoes at daycare. Woohoo

Retrograde progress: Howie is now refusing to eat anything off a fork. Will feed himself fish fingers, bread products, cheese, fruit and peas and, er, that's about it. I fear he will end up one of those kids that other parents hate having round for tea...

thats like a myriad of food next to what beats will eat

So do you think I would be out of order to give him fish fingers for tea four nights a week? It's the only thing that's guaranteed to get wolfed down. If he ever goes off those, I'm screwed...

fish is good for you right?? we do chicken about 4 nights a week but 3 of those nights she doesn't even eat it. we have her on multivitamins with iron because she just eats nothing but is oddly in the 90th percentile for weight? we try to feed her something every meal time but 90% of the time its a bust. oh cheese she'll eat but we have to cut it out every now and then for pooping reasons. then its just crackers and yoghurt.

Ophelia eats TWO pieces of vegetable. Yep, TWO. I make her. Otherwise she wouldn't eat anything. She gagged when trying leek. I let her throw it in my hand. But that meant eating another piece of carrot.

Elisabeth now eats veggies. But only half a pot. But WITHOUT crying. Y ou don't know how happy that makes me. Granted it's still the 8 to 12 month range, but I don't care: she eats. She has also been obsessing over slices of HARD bread. Silly bitch. hah

We also do multi vitamins. Otherwise she'd be without the necessary vitamins, I fear. :-(

our 4-yr-old settled into a pattern about a year and a half ago that has proved resistant to all efforts at broadening. he eats:

-- cereal for breakfast (the gerber oatmeal)
-- macaroni and cheese for lunch (we get annie's brand, which is theoretically marginally better than straight-up kraft -- his favorites are the noodles shaped like rabbits, so this is known colloquially as "bunny cheese")
-- chicken noodle soup for dinner (favorites are either alphabet, star noodles, or the ones with dora-the-explorer shaped noodles)
-- with all meals, we still feed him gerber pureed vegetables, because he'll gulp down green beans and carrots all day as long as they're not in physical, crunchy form.

the only major variation to this is that he will eat pizza, so sometimes we do that for lunch or dinner. he also likes cinnamon toast, crackers, oreos and ice cream. and that is really just about it. he has never liked any kind of juice, so all he drinks is milk and water (which doesn't bother me, since it probably helps his teeth to not be drinking anything sweet). our doctor has basically said, as long as he's eating, growing, gaining weight, don't worry about it. i see people feeding their kids indian food and thai food and italian food and get jealous, but then i think about what i ate when i was 4, 5, 6 or 7, and i think it was pretty much cereal, peanut-butter-and-jelly and spaghetti. so i shouldn't complain. we are hoping to get the younger started earlier on eating more things, in hopes of giving him a broader palette and also maybe influencing his older brother.

oh, and the older kid doesn't like any kind of fruit, in any form. it's odd, since he does like sweet things. but i think he has some food-texture issues (which probably tie in to some of his other issues that i mentioned on another thread). in any case, we've found over time that trying to cajole, bribe, bully or otherwise compel him to eat or even try things he doesn't want to is an excercise in frustration for everyone. he's immensely stubborn about this, and he would rather (as demonstrated repeatedly) go to bed with no ice cream than put anything in his mouth that he doesn't want to.

-- with all meals, we still feed him gerber pureed vegetables, because he'll gulp down green beans and carrots all day as long as they're not in physical, crunchy form.

this is interesting because beeps has texture issues too and ate vegetable in puree form quite happily. maybe we should try that again.

Never thought of that. Should have since Ophelia used to eat the veggie pots that Elisabeth ate proclaiming the fruit pots were awesome. roffle. Ah well. I'm not too bothered really. She grows, she's happy. I figure she'll grow out of it. For now I force her to eat at least two pieces of veggies.

A significant portion of my starch is coming from beer.