We’re three months in to baby led weaning, and I doubt that after this I’ll have much more to say on the topic. Evelyn’s eating is going great; it regularly astounds me how much food she can put down. I feel like we are in a pretty good eating routine. I have a handful of basic things that she eats, and I try to give her one or two new foods a week.
I still have to prepare a good amount of her food separately. I’ll steam vegetables for her instead of giving her the ones I’ve roasted for Gerrit and me. I keep a batch of either roasted sweet potato or zucchini fritters at all times, especially for lunch (next challenge for me, expanding our lunch repertoire so that I’m eating less peanut butter and jelly and we’re eating more of the same thing…but that’s another story for another time). Whenever I can though, I give Evelyn what we’re eating, or at least a version of it that is appropriate for her.
Her favorite foods right now are sweet potato, banana, blueberries (oh my goodness this girl loves her blueberries), zucchini fritters (I’ll have a recipe up soon), and chicken (chicken is always the first thing to be eaten when she has it on her tray). She doesn’t seem to love Cheerios, but does like puffs. She’s also been enjoying yogurt (although I haven’t been enjoying the mess she makes with it…the one thing about baby led weaning is that she now insists on holding the spoon on her own). Going forward I’m trying to incorporate more dairy (like cheeses) into her diet, and be more consistent with giving her what we’re eating and not having to always prepare something different for her. Now that she’s older she can handle more, and even if I don’t want her to eat a lot of what we’re having (mostly I’m concerned about controlling her sodium levels and not giving her anything with added sugar in it at this point) I want to be giving her the opportunity to be trying as many things as possible.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, I’m so glad we decided to go the baby led weaning route. Watching Evelyn eat and explore food is a joy; and whether or not it reduces her tendencies to be a picky eater in the future, it just works so well for us right now.
(Want more about Baby Led Weaning? I have three other posts: an intro, a 1 month update, and a 2 month update.)