Grown-Up Food

I've realized that if I don't want Peeper to eat something, I probably shouldn't eat it in front of her, because she wants some of whatever I've got, and she usually gets it.

Today, she had sweet and sour rice/chicken/onions/peppers and Sante Fe style rice, with beans and corn. (I believe corn is the defining characteristic of "Sante Fe style," isn't it?)

She seemed to really like both, but they also frustrated her, because they were not very finger-feeding-friendly.

At lunch, with the sweet and sour, she was in my lap and I held the spoon out, to see if she'd take some off of it. She grabbed it with two hands, right at the "neck," put it in her mouth and ate it.

Okay, that'll work.

At dinner, I put some Sante Fe rice on her placemat (it's stickier, with no sauce) but she couldn't really handle it alone, because she can't open her fist on command to get the food out of it - let alone having any sort of pincer grasp yet.

So, I handed her "loaded" spoons again, which worked pretty well.

Both things rather frustrated her, though, so maybe I need to try to focus on eating food with "handles" myself for a while, so it's easier to just give her some of it.

In other new-food news, she's eaten "regular food" at two different restaurants in the past few days.

On our weekly trip to TGI Friday's on Monday, we got her a side of avocado (ok, that's a special order) and a bowl of steamed mixed veggies - broccoli, green beans and wax beans. The only food we took along special for her were some crackers.

I did realize after she'd eaten them that the mixed veggies were cooked with butter, but I rinsed off the leftovers before serving them to her again, and I haven't seen any signs of a problem (the huuuuuge poopy she made yesterday had no blood in it) so I'm considering it to be a possible maybe first test of the dairy, although I still don't plan to give her (or me) any more intentionally for a while yet.

She started fussing about the time our food came to the table (she already had some avocado that she was working on), but settled down when I dipped her bean in my barbeque sauce. I think she was pissed that I had some and she didn't!

Yesterday, we had Chinese food for lunch, and gave her a few things from the buffet.

She was in a bit of a mood, and also hungry and/or tired, so she didn't eat a lot, but seemed to like what she did have: cantaloupe, green beans (with some sort of sauce), broccoli (raw), carrot (raw, with a vinegar-based dressing of some sort, and "crinkle cut" - very good for holding!) and maybe some cooked broccoli with sauce, but I'm not sure if she ever got to those.

I know that "she was hungry, so she didn't eat much" doesn't sound quite right, but at this point, she doesn't associate eating solid foods with relieving hunger, nor does she really eat enough to make much of a dent in it anyway.

So, if she's actually hungry, she needs to nurse (which she did, and then fell asleep) because that's where she's really getting her tummy full, and getting the vast majority of her nutrition.

Not to mention the fact that if she's starving, struggling to pick up a piece of broccoli will really piss her off.