Eating her Veggies

After Olivia started eating solid foods, C started suggesting that I look into making her food myself at home. I have to admit that my first thought was to suggest that maybe HE could make Olivia's food during HIS spare time, because I haven't had much in the way of spare time in the last seven months. He didn't really push the issue, however, and we tried the Gerber stuff.

But on a lark, I found and purchased a "Cooking for Baby" book at Target a couple of weeks ago to at least see what I would be getting myself into. It turns out that making Olivia's food isn't that hard, I can offer her a better variety than we have found in the jars at the store, and I know that it's fresh. Best of all, it is SO much cheaper. I can't believe how much less it costs to make her food instead of buying the Gerber stuff, which can be about a dollar per container.

And really, depending on what you're making, it's not hard. You just have to work on it during nap time or while someone else is around to keep an eye on the baby. I've made big batches of sweet potatoes, apples, and bananas so far, and then I freeze them in ice cube trays and store them in large ziploc bags. Then I just pull out 2 cubes to thaw when it's time to eat!

The only thing that we've fed Olivia so far that she didn't like was green peas. She adores sweet potatoes, and with everything else, after adjusting to the new taste in the first few bites, she is happy to eat whatever we feed her. But green peas? No thank you. There's gagging and coughing and spewing and flailing. Mom said that she had a hard time getting me to eat anything green as a baby, so I thought it might be a lost cause. The cookbook suggests zucchini, though, and you don't find that in baby jars, so I decided to give it a try before I wrote off green veggies.

Well, I think we have a new favorite vegetable in zucchini. She was so excited about eating it today that she was straining to reach the spoon if I didn't move quickly enough. Of course, when we pulled out the camera she was too busy watching it to really focus on her eating, but you get the idea.