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Offline Sydney

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Too young for finger foods?
« on: June 04, 2006, 18:24:15 pm »
dd has recently decided that she no longer likes anything but her bottles and oatmeal cereal mixed with fruit.  So, for lunch and dinner, I struggle with getting her to take any jar food of veggies or fruit.  She just closes her mouth and turns her head away.  So, today I decided that I would put some of those Gerber puffs on her tray and some cut up banana to see if she would be interested in that.

She loved it!  Was very interested in feeding herself.  She is a week and a half shy of 8 months (started solids at 6 months).  Can/should I just give her finger food to eat from now on?  Maybe try the pureed stuff (Stage 2) and if she refuses give her finger food instead or is she too young for this?

I hate to keep buying and waste all this baby food if she isn't interested in eating it.

TIA!
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Offline Richelle

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Re: Too young for finger foods?
« Reply #1 on: June 04, 2006, 18:36:23 pm »

My DD did the exact same thing and has been solely on finger foods since.

She is not too young, it is just a matter of being creative with veggies and proteins to make sure that she has a balanced diet.  Watch out for finger food 'stuff' that you buy (like the gerber puffs) they are loaded with sugar.  Cheerios are WAY cheaper and have less than half the amount of sugar.  Also a lot of the stuff to buy is all made with enriched flour, watch for that as whole grains/flour are your best bet. 

HTH,

Richelle
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Richelle

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Offline Sydney

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Re: Too young for finger foods?
« Reply #2 on: June 04, 2006, 20:07:56 pm »
Thank you!  So, I just went to the grocery store and bought pears, avocado, banana, low sodium crackers, graham crackers and frozen mixed vegetables.  Any other ideas? 

What about protein?  Should I give her egg yolk for this?  What about cottage cheese?  Regular cheese?

Also, when trying pasta, do you use the whole wheat stuff or just plain old pasta?  any sauce with it?

Thank for the tip on the gerber puffs.  I have one jar of these and will finish them up and then go to good ole' Cheerios.  Also, I noticed that they have veggies in jar for toddlers.  Should I use these or are the frozen mixed veggies that we would eat OK as well?  I would rather just have her start eating what we would eat!

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Offline tylersmommy

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Re: Too young for finger foods?
« Reply #3 on: June 04, 2006, 20:17:34 pm »
Although it's great to start good nutrition as early as possible, she should still be getting quite a bit of her nutrition from formula or breastmilk, including protein. Cottage cheese and basically any dairy products are great sources of protein if she likes those.

Beware of the frozen veggies...I often found them to be too rubbery for Tyler to be able to mush around and "chew." It might depend on what kind you get, though. The Gerber veggies in jars are good because they're really soft and easy to gum, and it's easy to steam a batch of your own and freeze them. Just keep in mind that since she's still a beginner, you want foods that either dissolve easily or are super soft so she can mash them up in her mouth.

We just gave Tyler regular pasta without sauce to start with. Plain old veggie puree (leftover baby food!) can make a great sauce. Barilla makes one that's enriched with lots of nutrients. Whole wheat pasta is great too, if you're ready to introduce it...some folks wait until 1 yr because of the risk of wheat allergies, but we started it early and didn't have a problem. Good luck!
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Melissa
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Offline bneydgrl

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Re: Too young for finger foods?
« Reply #4 on: June 08, 2006, 17:19:58 pm »
Ella started wanting to self feed (quite insistantly sometimes) around 7 mo.  Liek the pp said you jsut have to get a little creative and nutritious with the finger foods.  We started first with the puffs just to appease mom that she wouldn't choke and then quickly moved on to cheerios and the following:

veg: french style green beans, corn, cooked carrots (we use the canned kind/frozen, the gerber ones doen't seem to be a good deal)
fruit: crushed pineapple, bananas, gerber apple bites
protein: scrambled egg yolk (ev. other day--she loves it), canned chicken, meatloaf :) - couldn't believe she likes this one, and gerber meat sticks
starch: cheerios (at almost every meal :)  ) , nutra-grain eggo waffles, bits of grilled cheese, plain macaroni

She doesn't really like cheese but i keep offering it and cottage cheese was a no no too but I know a lot of babes who do like it.

Obviously it's taken her some time to build up to differnt tastes textures but if they won't take anything off of a spoon after taking most of their nutritifrom the bottle/breast then i think it's kind of fun to play around with the finger foods :)

Have fun!

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Rebecca

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