Too many snacks? And other question re: 1 year old

[ladymugg]

My one year old daughter is a good eater but I have two problems:

1) I re-read "...solves all your problems" today in terms of the 1-2 year old section (well I saved that until now pretty much).  I am wondering if I feed my daughter too many snacks.  Tracy talks about having 3 squares a day and maybe a bottle or two depending on where you are at, and then maybe very small snacks like a small slice of cheese or a small piece of fruit.

My daughter typically has a bottle on wake up (which I'm currently reviewing), then a slice of toast about 1.5hrs later.  Snack at 9.30ish before her 10 am sleep.  In the lead up to Easter this was usually a hot cross bun or at least half a hot cross bun... sometimes it is a corn scone type thing I found on a baby website or some crackers etc.  Then her in-between meals snack is pre her 3 pm sleep, it is again some fruit or cracker with hummus or something else.  Lunch isn't huge and neither is dinner but then I figured maybe she just doesn't need that much.

Should I downsize her snacks to up the size of her main meals?

2) She loves loves loves meat and bread.  She does like fruit and veges but when there is meat and/or bread or other carby type things on offer the fruit/veges get ignored mostly.  How have you overcome feeding your kids a varied meal if they are addicted to meat!  I would love her to eat her greens a bit more readily .  The other day I offered her a chunk of pumpkin (squash) as a snack and she was into it, but then when a piece of sausage was offered she completely ditched it.

Any ideas please? 

Thanks in advance. 

[creations]

Sorry looks like your post was missed.

Are you still having doubts about your snack portion sizes?
It sounds like what you are serving is fine but all kids are different as to the portion size they can take without impacting on their appetite for main meals. I really don't feel main meals need to be massive at this age, it's ok to have calorie intake spread across the day (milk, 3 meals, 2 snacks, maybe a supper snack too). I think the real reason we would like LOs to be hungry for the main meal is if the snacks are limited in their food groups (ie all fruit or all carbs as these are easy options for snacks). One way around this is to offer veg as a snack, another way is to not offer carbs/protein at the main meal so that the focus is on a different food group.  It's totally up to you which food groups you'd like to offer at which time of day.  It would be ok for example to cook an extra portion of veg when you prep the evening meal for the family and save it for her snack the next day (and just do not offer any carbs or protein at that snack time) but equally ok to offer meat for snack and focus on veggies for main meals.

Another idea is to offer those things she is less likely to eat for breakfast. I was advised to try this with my DS who stopped eating protein.  Instead of cereal for breakfast I gave him omelet and he just ate it.  I was really surprised. So perhaps a fruit or veg breakfast could help balance her food groups? It really helped me as I didn't have to 'worry' all day about it once I had that portion in him in the morning otherwise every snack/meal has the repeated problem doesn't it?

hth