How much and how many times a day should I be feeding him solids? Introducing your baby to solid foods – sometimes called weaning or complementary feeding – should start when your baby is around six months old. It’s a really important step in their development, and it can be great fun to explore new flavors and textures together.
Our baby been Eating Real Food for over a year now, and looking back I can condense dozens of trials and errors into a list of 14 products that have made feeding Mazen easier. From the first purees to the messy finger foods, may these help you turn your baby into a mean, green, real-food-eating machine!
1. A good high chair. It’s an obvious start, but you really do need something for baby to sit on and for containing the inevitable mess he’ll make! I’ve used a handful of different high chairs while traveling and at friends’ houses and have learned that the things most important to me are a medium-sized flat tray (too many nooks and crannies just gets messier and medium so it fits in our sink!), a really easy to wipe seat (again, nooks and crannies are bad!), an easy-to-remove tray (some of them are tricky to figure out for grandparents and visitors!) and a stylish look (not the most important but nice to consider.) This is our OXO Tot highchair and we love it!
2. A mix of good spoons with both shallow and deep bowls. When we started feeding Mazen, he couldn’t get his lip into a deep spoon bowl, so these OXO Tot Spoons were our favorite. They are super soft and durable and the shape was great for parent feeding. Now that Mazen can feed himself, we love these Munchkin spoons – because the bowl is so deep, the food stays on his spoon better as it heads toward his mouth. A plus is that they are super cheap.
When Mazen first started to eat purees, I made most of them myself. This was not nearly as daunting as it seemed at first thanks to a few great pieces of equipment.
3. Ice cube trays. The OXO Tot Baby Food Freezer Tray is great because it comes with a lid (so there’s no need for plastic wrap) and the shape of the cubes makes the frozen food cubes really easy to pop out.
But of course, a cheap ice cube tray works too – especially when you want more food per cube. These are harder to get out, but after a little thawing, I could dump them all into a zip lock bag for storage.
4. Freezer storage. Sometimes I wanted to put more food into one container for a bigger meal so I found these OXO Tot Baby Blocks Freezer Storage to be great. They even had their own little tray to keep them organized in the freezer.
5. Reusable pouches. These were also great for anything pureed, and we still use them for yogurt and applesauce some of the time (like when we’re on the go). These saved us a lot of money because we didn’t need to buy a ton of the pre-filled pouches, and of course they’re better for the environment too.
6. A baby cookbook. When making purees, I knew how to steam and blend, but a good baby cookbook will give you lots of inspiring ideas and take the guesswork out of wondering exactly how long to cook the veggies or how much water or milk you needed to add to puree. The Best Homemade Baby Food on the Planet was my favorite reference – it was simple with lots of information.
7. A stick blender, food processor, or blender. I find all of them to be super helpful in blending up purees and smoothies. Mazen can’t really chew greens yet, so green smoothies have been a nice way for him to get more of them. And our stick blender was great for pureeing in the same container I cooked the food in. I found my regular kitchen appliances to be easy enough, I didn’t consider a specialized baby blender or steamer.
8. Premade squeeze pouches. Of course I couldn’t make Mazen’s food 100% of the time, so I do always have a few squeeze pouches in stock. Our favorites are vegetable-heavy and low in sugar. For bigger “meals,” I look for ones with protein from beans or meat. These two are our favorites: Carrots + Broccoli Pouch and Ella’s Kitchen Four Bean Feast. Mazen loves the carrots + broccoli, but I gotta say, it doesn’t smell delicious to me!
9. The perfect bib. We love the soft plastic bibs with the deep bowl for catching food. {Like these} We also put a Command hook on the back of Mazen’s high chair, where we store the bib between uses. This way we don’t have wet bibs hanging all over the kitchen and it’s tucked out of sight : ).
10. Baby dishes. Once Mazen started to want his own spoon and fork, we had to get a few of his own bowls. I’m such a huge fan of the OXO Tot line that I got him this set. The non-skid bottoms and curved lips are great.
11. I have written about sippy cups before, but our favorite after a year of using them all are the OXO Tot ones with straws. I will say that this cup’s straw is open, so it’s not ideal for a first cup that will end up sideways all the time, but as M has gotten older it’s our favorite all-around cup mostly because it’s really easy to clean and does well with water, milk and smoothies. Straws that you have to bite to suck aren’t as good for drinks other than water because the gunk gets caught in the straw. This straw is easy to get in and out for washing and washes out easily. And the cup is leak-proof when you close the lid.
12. Snack containers. Another must-have is the Munchkin Snack Catcher. What did moms do without these? We still fill them with cereal or cheddar bunnies if I need a quick on-the-go snack. It works great with fresh fruit like blueberries too (although that’s messier if they fall out…which they do).
13. Disposable placemats. Ones like this Neat Solutions Table Topper were great when we would eat out in restaurants before Mazen was old enough to not send a plate flying. They stick to the table and your little can make as much mess as he or she wants. Also, there’s no need to worry about how clean the table is! And after the meal you just ball it up and toss it. M is old enough now to be fine with a real plate, but these were lifesavers in the earlier months.
14. And finally – Lunch Skins! These reusable pouches are wonderful for sending snacks to our gym’s Kids Zone. I fill them with everything from fruit to pretzels, a roll or whole apple. I will say that the gooier the food, the harder they are to clean, but they are dishwasher safe so it’s not a huge deal. They come in dozens of super cute patterns!
And there you have it – 14 of our finest feeding props! Was there something you used and loved that I have yet to discover?
Source: babykerf.com
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