Finger Foods

Last Monday, we took Nora in for her nine-month well-baby doctor’s visit. I always look forward to these appointments (especially now that they’re three months apart, which seems like forever!) because it gives me the opportunity to ask 10 million questions. It also reassures us that we’re not total screw-ups as parents, so that’s nice.

Oh, but before I say more–Nora is now 16 lbs., 4 oz. and 26.75 inches long. That’s approximately the 7th percentile for weight, and 18th percentile for height. Still technically a peanut, although she certainly seems huge to us!

Anyway, at the appointment, we spent a lot of time talking about eating habits and what the next three months will look like. Nora’s a great eater. She gobbles everything up like a champ, and does not seem to be a picky eater–at least not at this stage of her life. She pretty much eats whatever we give her.

Lately, though, she’s been grabbing the spoon when we try to shovel in her purees. It’s like she’d rather take the puree off the spoon and feed it to herself. You can imagine how well THAT goes (HUGE MESS). Our pediatrician said that this is a sign that she’s done with purees and ready to strictly feed herself now.

Whoa.

We had been giving her teeny pieces of some real foods–banana, watermelon, peas, green beans, cheese shreds, breads, and of course, puffs. She’d been doing well, but I wasn’t expecting to be completely done with purees just yet. And, well, to be fair, we’re not. I still have a bunch of frozen puree cubes left in the freezer, so we’re at least going to continue until those are gone. Plus, sometimes it’s still EASIER to feed her purees because we’ve become quite efficient at it over the last three months. Letting her feed herself is a whole different ballgame!

But now that Nora has been “cleared” to eat anything, it’s been fun to do a little experimenting the last week or so. We’ve started giving her pieces of whatever we’re having. I still cut everything up into miniscule pieces because I’m paranoid like that (the girl still doesn’t have any teeth!), but she’s handled it all well. She didn’t seem to be TOO big a fan of our slow-cooked mexican chicken dish (too spicy?) but she DEVOURED dinner tonight.

Peas, green beans, leftover pasta with meat sauce, chicken french, a little sausage… girlfriend was eating it up faster than I could lay it down. This was her first meal during which we didn’t give her ANY purees.

My baby is growing up so fast!

Now, we are officially entering the wonderful world of finger foods. We’ll continue to give her things that we’re eating, but I wouldn’t mind having some other things in the rotation for her. Anyone out there have any advice/suggestions for good (nutritious!) things for her to eat?