Feeding the Little One

Perhaps the biggest struggle I currently have with our little one is knowing what to feed her.  I continually hear about younger children who only eat table food, and then I see us still feeding her some jarred baby food. 

Around her first birthday, she finally began at least putting the table food into her mouth.  Before that, she would only eat Cheerios, toast, and cheese.  While she would put some of it in her mouth, she still would not eat much of it, so I continued to give her some jarred baby food to make sure she received enough to eat.

Some of my struggle with this issue lies in not knowing at what age a child really should no longer eat jarred baby food.  All the resources that I look at just say what foods kids should and should not eat at certain ages, but they do not really address how to go about making the transition from jarred food to table food. 

I decided this week to try giving her more table food.  On Wednesday, I gave her a meatball (cut-up of course) and some vegetables.  At lunch she did not do a very good job of really eating much of the food.  She would put it in her mouth and then spit it back out again, so I decided that we would try again at supper, and I did not give her any jarred food.

That night at supper, she did a much better job of actually eating the meat and the vegetables.  On Thursday, we went out of town for the day, so I gave her some jarred food for lunch, but at supper we ate a pancake and some more vegetables. 

This small bit of success has given me hope that we are close to finally making the transition to only eating table foods