Celebrating 11 Months

Today we celebrate 11 months of having Anna in our lives. To commemorate the day, I thought we might try something new for lunch. Anna has mastered the art of baby fruits and veggies, deli meats, chicken chunks, and real fruits. However, we haven't tried many pastas or grains and we haven't been too great about the veggies. Looking for a new way to get some nutritious and different things, we picked up a few Gerber Toddler Graduates meals at Target this morning. They looked good - particularly the one with pasta stars in meat sauce and a side of real green beans (not the mushed up ones).

Very excited to try it, I heated it up and even tasted it myself. Pretty good! So, while the pasta was cooling I had Anna try a green bean. You would have thought she was being poisoned. She sat there and cried (loudly) until I had to take my finger and sweep the bean out. Hmmm. Time to try the pasta. Same thing.

So, I resorted to thinking about what some of the parenting books I have been reading as of late have talked about. Basically they stress that mealtime at this age should be focused on discovery and learning, and not necessarily on what actually gets eaten. "Let them touch the food, play with the spoon and make a mess." So...that's what we did, and with spaghetti no less.

It worked. She didn't eat ALL of it, but she sure ate more with her hands and by manning the spoon herself than I could get in her mouth. Too bad those books don't tell you about the hour it takes to clean up afterwards - the bath, the wash down of the floor, table, high chair, and that you *may* ruin an outfit. Oh well, it was worth it.

** I am having some difficulty with the flash on my camera, so these pics are a little dark.