The next day, we were gifted a high chair from Ikea, and we reaaaally got serious with the BLW. I boiled some florets of broccoli and watched him pounce on them. He sucked on the flowers, he chewed on the stems. Ahh.... you should have heard his sounds. They were rather obscene - he sounded like a starved child. Poor baby. And yes, it was very messy. Don't do this if you're a clean freak. You will be too obsessed with picking up everything, than enjoying your baby's extreme food exploration.
Today, we went to Ikea and picked up a feeding tray that fits into the high chair as well as some Kalas BPA-free cutlery for babes. (P/s: I get all my BPA-free recommendations from zrecs.blogspot.com) Back home, We got REAL experimental. Ma steamed some psychedelic-looking sweet potatoes (they were PURPLE!!!!) with their skin on, and he really went for them. I even poked one with a nice fat baby-friendly green fork which he used pretty well. Man, his face was purple after a while, and he kept pushing all the food onto his lap so very soon he had purplish stuff and broccoli flowers all over his diapers.
Although Ma still thinks we should be feeding him brown rice gruel she can definitely see how this whole BLW thing is doing Val much good. I mean, you can see his eyes light up, and all his senses engaged as he touches the texture of his food, and learns to use his fork. It's fun too cos i eat the same food in front of him so he feels like he's eating MY food which he tried this morning at breakfast when he lunged into my pohpiah. I'm glad my ma isn't a control freak and is happy to see Val mess up his food, in fact he's been drinking from a plastic cup with one handle for a month now, just dribbling water everywhere. We think it's all part of the learning and just let him do this before a bathtime so it's easy to clean him up. You know how some people are quite freakish about 'not playing with food'... anyways, i'm just glad i'm getting some support although i do have to compromise and let Ma feed him some brown rice gruel soon. Well, can't win every battle!
Oh in case you are wondering: no, Val doesn't SWALLOW everything or else he would be the first baby on earth to eat like an adult at 6 months. No, he licks, and chomps with his gums and two little teeth, and then he spits out the chunks or hacks them out (he's quite careful and i am too! i look at him ALL the time when he's doing this). It doesn't matter how much he actually ingests cos it's about introducing him to the idea of whole foods (instead of puree), and flavour-full food without any kind of salt, sugar, or processing involved so that he will (cross my fingers!) become a very UNfussy eater who loves his veggies! The last word: I opened up a sample pack of Nestle brown rice gruel as I was actually entertaining the thought (forgive me!) of letting him try it until i tasted it and realised how incredibly sweet it was. gosh! how can baby food be so sweet! so that's it - end of the story for me and instant baby food.
It just looks a little *scary* to see that he is going at such big chunks of food! ;-P
ReplyDeleteI used to just offer the babies bowls of the ingredients from our slow-cooked soups (we're Cantonese). So they'd get cubes of sweet potato, or potato, carrots, etc, and they'd help themselves.
Erm... broccoli, I usually cut out the florets, but yah - those go into the porridge (if they eat porridge) bc it sure does seem quite fibrous, leh. And I usu steam them in the microwave and add in instead of boiling (tastier).
BTW, our youngest never went thru the porridge phase. He ate white rice from our plates from 6mths+. He just mashed the grains in his mouth. He never liked porridge until like kindy days?