Fun new foods

Recently Allie has been having a lot of new food experiences. The biggest change has been the leap from drinking formula from the bottle to drinking whole milk from the sippy cup!

But as you can see here, she sometimes still gets a little confused about which way is up!

I'd say her most favorite new food is cheese. For awhile I broke the cheese up into pieces, but on Saturday I just gave her the whole slice and she knew what to do. You should see how quickly she scarfs down a slice of cheese.

Another favorite is toast. The transition away from the bottle has changed the way we get Allie ready for work in the morning. We used to get her up and give her a bottle and then she'd have breakfast at daycare. But now that she doesn't have a bottle first thing when she gets up, we need to give her breakfast. Doug and I were both surprised with how easy that transition was and that it is, in some ways, much easier than giving a bottle.

Most breakfast consists of a bowl of oatmeal, a cup of yogurt and a piece of toast. Look how proud she looks here feeding herself!

Some new foods that have been utter failures have been tofu and carrot soup. I've never had tofu and I tried it and I think its gross. So when Allie didn't like it, I decided thats one food we don't need to try again. I'm not going to feed her something we wouldn't feed Monk! The carrot soup is a recipe I actually found on a baby and children focused food blog, but I think it was too spicy for Allie. Mama and Dada liked the soup, though it needs to be a side item and not the main dish.

We have varying success with veggie burgers, chicken, bananas and gerber graduates entrees.

Along with cheese and toast, Allie really loves mixed vegetables, cottage cheese, graham crackers and applesauce. And don't forget the milk. She absolutely loves milk. It took a little longer than I thought it would, but we've stopped feeding the purees. We're doing a lot of finger foods and she enjoys feeding herself, though I'm not sure when to start giving her the spoon. She has a pretty balanced diet but isn't wild about meat. I'm happy that right now at least she doesn't seem to be terribly picky, though sometimes she'll refuse food she likes for no apparent reason.

She's old enough that she can eat whatever foods we're eating, but I'm still a little slow on giving her our food. Part of that reason is that a lot of the time she eats right when we get home and goes to bed really early before we eat. I have a hard time getting meals coordinated for all three of us. Its something I'll figure out though.