If you read my old blog, you may remember that my husband is a horribly picky eater. To be fair, he has improved a ton and now eats a lot of foods he would never have even looked at 5 years ago. Still, the list of things he hates is still long enough to make meal planning a bit of a challenge.
I’m the opposite. There are very few foods I don’t like and even fewer that I flat-out hate. I decided long ago that our future kids WERE going to follow in my footsteps because I refused to raise fussy eaters. Yeah, about that…
We started giving Easton solid foods a few days before he turned 6 months. The first day he had mashed avocado, and he did surprisingly well.
The next day, I tried feeding Easton some more avocado and he was NOT having it. He pursed his lips together and turned his head every single time the spoon came near. I shrugged it off and figured he wasn’t in the mood. But the same thing happened the next time. And the next. And the next. I tried feeding Easton mashed bananas, sweet potatoes, pears, and oatmeal but nothing interested him enough to even taste it. I occasionally managed to sneak a bite or 2 into his mouth when he was distracted but he always gave me a dirty look while spitting out the entire bite (and once even bursting into tears). So I took a break for a few days while I tried to figure out how to get the kid to eat. The problem wasn’t that he didn’t like the taste of some foods, he just didn’t even like the idea of food in his mouth.
I decided to give baby-led weaning a shot. I gave Easton a wide array of foods like steamed green beans, carrots, apples, peaches, and whole wheat crackers and let him “feed” himself. So far, that hasn’t worked either. He spends most of each meal playing with the food and dropping it over the side of his tray. Occasionally a piece of food gets into his mouth but it’s always spit back out again.
The other day I was eating some leftover baked ziti while I watched Easton fling his carrots onto the floor. As an experiment, I placed one of the noodles from my plate onto his tray. He picked it up and stuck it and his mouth and his face lit up. He gnawed on that one piece of ziti for a good 10 minutes. He only managed to actually eat about 1/3 of the noodle but he was clearly loving it.
Since then he’s eaten pasta a second time and loved it just as much. He also started chowing down on bits of cheese but few other things make it into his stomach. While I’d love to blame the fussiness all on my husband, a love of pasta and cheese clearly makes him his mother’s child. Apparently he just doesn’t want bland vegetables and fruits, he’d prefer flavorful spices and adult food. I guess I’m just going to go with it, so tomorrow on the menu is prime rib!
