Food Favorites...and not!

So, after all the hard effort and months of steaming, pureeing and mixing your homemade baby food you are now a big enough girl to make decisions about what you want to eat. Oh I certainly did my darnedest to set you down the right path! You are very clear when you like a particular food, as you excitedly sign "More" over and over again and chirp "Mo! Mo!" An example of that type of food would be any type of fruit. Fortunately for me, baked salmon also falls into that category, as does fresh avocado cubes.

Then there are the items there are no way you are going to touch, that you don't even want to try and taste and insist they get off your tray, NOW. Examples of that would be cheese, hard boiled egg, pasta and chicken breast or any red meat. You emphatically shake your head, sign "no" and say "no-no" over and over again. You sure know how to get your point across with limited language skills!

Then there are the fence sitters. Take for example garbanzo beans. You see them on the plate and you point and say "Bee, bee!" and I gather that means you want them! Yay! But after chewing it either for a few seconds or even minutes, it all decides to make a reappearance. How in the world do you manage to store it all in there while eating other food and still pull out beans from your mouth!! Amazing. Same goes with omelette's these days. In a not so ladylike way you stick your fingers in your mouth, pull out the offender and ever so gently put it in my hand. Oh how glamorous motherhood can be!!

If it were up to you...you would snack all day. I want so badly to set you down the right food path (and have even become a household joke in some places with my 'Finley Food Rules' - you know who you are :) but like I said, you are a big girl now, almost one and a half, and have developed your own taste and preferences. I'm happy though that we've avoided most salts and sugars for the most part, and I am even getting more relaxed about that, feeding you homemade banana bread where I only cut the sugar in half, rather than eliminate it completely, as I usually do! Anyhow, cheerios and organic cheese crackers and dried fruit would be your main staple if it were up to you! You could eat these it seems by the handful all day long if I let you.

In the meantime, I can say that you are healthy and happy and as well fed as I could manage at the moment. And that will just have to be good enough for me :)