Moreaya will be 4 months old this week! These last 16 weeks have flown by and are a bit hazy… how can she really be this old!? I am planning to start her on infant cereal soon and it got me to thinking about how we’ll introduce other solid foods.
Happy Girl Moreaya.
With Sophia, I started cereal around 4 months and then a couple of weeks later I started with Green Vegetables then Orange Veggies then last came Fruits. I did it that way after a pediatrician told me that if you started with Fruits, the baby may associate all foods with the sweetness of fruits and dislike the veggies more. So, we did it. Sophia was the best little eater. She actually seemed to prefer her Peas and Green Beans over Fruits!
When she started eating table food, she loved broccoli, asparagus… She was such a good girl with her veggies! Our family was always commenting on how well she ate.
Sophia and her Peas.
And then… she became…a TODDLER! Now, even with a good foundation of healthy foods, she despises broccoli {I know she still likes it deep down, even though she pretends to despise it, right!?}, won’t touch her asparagus and goes straight for the fruit on her plate – after requesting cookies for dinner – which she doesn’t get!
So, what happened to my good little veggie-eating girl!? I certainly hope this is a phase and it gets better!
Now your little baby is a toddler, and you still have a lot to learn about feeding your toddler! At this stage, your toddler’s growth rate and appetite slows down. A toddler’s first agenda is to establish himself or herself as an individual. Stubbornness and fierce independence may be displayed at mealtime. A new challenge emerges for you because “toddler-hood” is an important time to establish healthy, lifelong food preference and eating habits. In order to do that, it helps to know what you’re up against and how to deal with it. Here is a great article from Earth’s Best on how to deal with this new “challenge”.
3 Days Left 
My 18 month old would be happy eating black bean, black olives, bananas and waffles all day. Honestly, if I just gave her black olives I think that is all she would eat! Daycare swears she eats chicken and other stuff at lunch…maybe I will have to try the cheering method Tiffany mentioned – we use it for brushing her teeth and cleaning up, so why not this?!
We offer Darah VERY high praise when she is what we call an, “adventurous eater.” We let her know at pretty much every meal how wonderful it is to try new things, and how much we value that. For the most part, that gets her to at least try a bite of everything. We also don’t make her eat more than 1 bite of anything. So far, believe it or not, this has worked! Sometimes she really doesn’t like something, and she sees that we respect her opinion. Most of the time, she tries something, and then decides that she wants to eat it, which gets her high fives from mom and dad and the praise of being our adventurous eater, which makes her proud. I know one day this tactic will stop working, but we are going with it for now!