Young toddler food

[MsSassyBaskets]

DD is 11.5 months, and we're in that weird in-between phase of feeding.
- Not weaned yet, still getting bottles and nursing a couple times a day
- Can use a sippy cup, kind of, but can't get enough out of it to switch over from bottles yet
- Can eat many solids herself but takes an hour and doesn't necessarily get that much in
- Can eat TONS of chunky purees or cereals if I feed them to her -- too much, in fact, and I have to be very careful of amounts or she will get burpy/refluxy and sometimes spit up.

I think I need to move away from the spoon-feeding for the most part, because she overeats easily that way and I'm not always good at judging how much she's had/how full she is. But I'm not sure she gets enough solids by hand, and she definitely isn't ready to wean off the bottle and switch to a cup, she doesn't get enough out of the cup yet.

I'm not quite sure how to navigate this phase. I still send veggie purees or puree/pasta blends to daycare for those days when the table food menu is a little too mature for her. She still gets baby oatmeal & applesauce for breakfast, but she could probably switch to toast, fruit, cheerios, etc. She could probably switch to eating many dinners with us instead of separate baby meals, but we are late eaters and it's hard to get dinner ready in time for her to eat and get to bed.

So - any tips? Should I give up the purees and let her self-feed more now? Any good recommendations for young toddler finger foods? How can I be sure she's getting enough? I think if I let her mostly self-feed she's going to be getting less food overall, but at some point I have to let her decide how much to put in her mouth! And how on earth is my sweet baby almost a toddler!?

[Thirteen]

I'd let her practice her pincher grasp with small bites of soft foods. [MENTION=1889]SoonerTexan[/MENTION] did a baby "bento box" method with her DD1 that worked pretty well.


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[oceanchild]

DH (pediatrician) always says that toddler nutritional needs are averaged over a week. So, you don't need a balanced meal every meal, just that it balances out overall. We don't worry about whether DS gets enough to eat. We figure he won't starve himself. (He eats really well at daycare, loves breakfast, and hardly ever eats any dinner.)

I would definitely back off the purees and let her work on self feeding. Babies can eat almost anything as long as it's not a choking hazard (or honey). Unless you have reason to be concerned about allergies.

Also, if family dinners are important to you, start working on eating earlier now. It's going to be years before she can wait until 8 to eat dinner. That was a big, tough shift for us, but now we eat dinner by 6:30 almost every night.

[alotofyarn]

This was E's breakfast and lunch at just over a year:



Some of it she would save for a snack though, I think. The yogurt is overnight oats, and her teachers helped to feed her that, I think.

[MsSassyBaskets]

This was E's breakfast and lunch at just over a year:



Some of it she would save for a snack though, I think. The yogurt is overnight oats, and her teachers helped to feed her that, I think.

Those look awesome. Some of it is still too mature for DD - she needs fruits cut into tiny little slivers, and can't seem to handle cheese or big pasta yet. But much of it would probably work. I could switch to overnight oats or quick oats instead of baby oatmeal, and send it with some cut up fruit or yogurt for breakfast. The daycare provides lunches and snacks, but she still can't handle some of that and ends up eating mostly the bready items like crackers, muffins, bars, grilled cheese, etc. But some days like yesterday they send my lunches home because she ate turkey, sweet potatoes, applesauce, muffin, etc. and didn't need what I sent. So I guess pretty soon she'll be eating the school menu for the most part. I'm probably overthinking this, I just need to keep more easy toddler foods on hand and make dinner earlier.

[MsSassyBaskets]

Also, if family dinners are important to you, start working on eating earlier now. It's going to be years before she can wait until 8 to eat dinner. That was a big, tough shift for us, but now we eat dinner by 6:30 almost every night.

I know, ugh. That's going to be so hard. DD and I get home by 5/5:30 and I pretty much feed her right away. She goes to bed at 7, and we usually eat around 7:30/8. I need to have dinners made by 6 if we're going to fit in bath and bedtime. I'm awful at meal planning, especially quick stuff. I should really just pay someone to make family-friendly meal plans and shopping lists for me.

[OrionGrad]

We used to have the same dinner schedule as you guys, and we finally made the switch to eating as a family between 5:30 and 6 when DS1 was around 2. DH misses dinner some nights, but overall the switch has made life better.

As for toddler foods, have you checked out wholesomebabyfoods.com (or something like that, I forget the url). I remember there being lots of good ideas. Poor DS2 went from purées right to eating what the rest of us eat very early on, but he seems to be doing fine. He's 15 months and he's already trying to use a fork/spoon like his brother.

[SoonerTexan]

Young toddler food

Yes my kids lunches looked a lot like what alotofyarn posted. Weelicious is a good source for ideas in addition to the other site mentioned above, but I cannot remember the exact name either!

I hear you on the early dinner. It was downright impossible to cook anything that wasn't simple in time when I didn't even get home til 5:45. I never really figured out how to make it work, but I did a lot of crock pot meals, leftovers, and "pre cooking" stuff the evening before and reheating it.


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[TulipsAndSunscreen]

You'll be surprised how quickly she is able to handle harder foods once she can self feed. We skipped purees and our kids could handle a lot more than I would expected even with no teeth!

We have the same dinner issue. I plan/make meals on Sunday's and we eat that thru weds. Then sometime from Sunday to weds, I cook another big meal after the kids are asleep that lasts us the rest of the week. I could never manage to get dinner on the table without a detailed plan. I get off at 5:30 or a little later and we eat at 6:15 or 6:30. Mostly because we are waiting for DH. On most nights, I'm simply reheating.

[alotofyarn]

I should add - E may have had one tooth when she was eating these meals. We eat around 5-5:30 most nights. Sometimes hubby makes it home closer to 5:30 and eats with us, sometimes he doesn't. I don't spend more than 30 minutes on meals. I try to make larger meals maybe twice a week, and we'll eat leftovers for another night, and then the weekends we tend to eat out. I prep her breakfast and lunches all on Sunday night.

[MsSassyBaskets]

Wow, see DD has 7 teeth and she chokes and gags on harder foods all the time. I gave her pears tonight with dinner (in juice, from a cup) and they were too hard for her to chew/mash and she basically was swallowing them whole and gagging constantly. I had to smash them with a fork.

[MrsC]

DS eats so fast, he still gags on food sometimes at two years old. At 11 months he was still eating a lot of purees because he was a terrible chewer, and he had plenty of teeth. He would get a little of whatever we're eating and some pureed veg or fruit or yogurt on top of that. He got oatmeal for breakfast. Our pedi said a portion size should be the size of his fist.
I kind of took my cues from him. If he was gagging on something, he wasn't ready for it. It worked well for him, he was over the 90th percentile for height and weight. He'll eat pretty much anything now.
I loved these sippy cups for transitioning from a bottle: http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B003LP...MDL&ref=plSrch

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[MsSassyBaskets]

Make that 8 teeth... Ugh. We tried to do a weekend of only "real" food but she was pretty cranky from the teething and a couple times just refused to feed herself, so we supplemented with some veggie purees. But she did try noodles with peanut sauce, salmon, scrambled eggs with spinach, and cheese ravioli so it wasn't a total bust.

[alotofyarn]

That sounds promising! E never ate well when she was getting new teeth.

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[MsSassyBaskets]

Stupid mama... I didn't realize it was teething until this morning when the tooth was already through. I was at my wits end wondering why she was so whiny.