Family Dinner

One of Ryan’s latest developments (other than walking) is that he’s eating a lot more table food. Instead of a jar of baby food, I can now give him a slice of cheese, some yogurt, a chunk of apple or banana, a spoonful of mashed potatoes, a wedge of bagel, or a piece of carrot. I love being able to share my own lunch with him – he gets a wedge of my grilled cheese sandwich, or a spoonful of my cereal, or a bite of taco meat, or a mouthful of lasagna. It gives me a whole new use for leftovers!

I’m especially happy that this happened now that we’re getting into the cooler weather season, because this is when my cooking really shines. I love cold-weather comfort food. Shepherd’s pie, lasagna, chicken-rice casserole, homemade macaroni and cheese, soups and stews…these are the things I love to cook. And these are the things that are easiest to share with a little one! Ryan loves pasta in any form, and any dish with kid-sized chunks of meat and vegetables is great for him to feed himself. So all my oven-baked favorites are just perfect. And thanks to the magic of the microwave, I can warm up a spoonful or two of my last night’s dinner for his today’s lunch.

But I think the very best part of Ryan being able to share our dinner is that it makes it so much easier to have family meals with all three of us. Until recently, I would usually feed Ryan earlier and then while Herb was putting him to bed, I’d make a late supper for us. It’s always lovely when the two of us can share a quiet dinner together, but I grew up with the whole family eating together nearly every night and I’ve looked forward to being able to do that with my little family.

Last night was a wonderful example. I gave Ryan some cheese and a handful of Kix to snack on while Herb and I ate our salads. But after that, we all got some steak and macaroni and cheese. Of course, Ryan got just a little chunk of meat, which he tasted once or twice and seemed unimpressed by, but once I cooled off some macaroni and put it in front of him, he was much more interested in eating. It also makes it so much easier for me to eat my own dinner now that he can feed himself finger foods. There are still a lot of things I need to feed him, or at least help with, but being able to plop a few things in front of him and let him take care of himself is hugely liberating. And I think he thinks so, too!

The Mom Diet

When people hear the word “diet”, they generally think of a weight-loss diet. But the word diet simply means “a particular selection of food”. For example, a vegetarian diet includes no meat or animal products, a high-fiber diet is high in fiber, etc. I’ve always eaten a reasonably healthy diet, probably kind of skimpy on fruits and vegetables, but with a good balance of lean protein, complex carbohydrates, and low-fat dairy products. When I became pregnant with Ryan, my diet consisted almost entirely of grilled chicken, Ensure, and cinnamon Altoids. But it’s changed even more radically since he’s been eating more table foods, and eating at the table. I’ve declared my new eating habits the “Mom Diet”.

When he began eating baby food once or twice a day instead of just having a bottle, I found myself either skipping breakfast or having it quite a bit later in the day. Feeding him just took too much attention and concentration to feed myself at the same time, and once he was finished he was never content to sit and wait while I ate my breakfast. So if I did have breakfast at breakfast time, it was often a piece of toast (or half a piece of toast, depending on how energetic he was that morning) or a few bites of a granola bar and a couple of sips of coffee. When his naps began to fall consistently around lunchtime, I was very good at having a sandwich or a bowl of soup for lunch before he woke up and wanted his own lunch. But when his schedule changed so that he was getting up just when I was ready for lunch, my lunch menu turned into a glass of milk and a piece of deli turkey, or occasionally a flour tortilla with a handful of cheese melted onto it. Often I didn’t even get that lunch until 2 or 3 o’clock, but that actually worked out well because Herb and I soon gave up on having dinner when Ryan did and waited to eat until after he was in bed, which resulted in dinner at 8:30 or 9pm. But at least then we all got a real dinner, complete with meat, vegetables, and bread. So that was generally my nutrition for the day.

But now that I’m trying to get Ryan to eat more table food than baby food, I find myself making meals out of his leftovers more and more often. My breakfast is now the Cheerios that I pick up off the floor as he tosses them down (don’t be too grossed out: I wash the kitchen floor frequently, I stick to the 5-second rule, and I avoid the damp O’s) or the majority of the piece of toast that he’s eaten the crust of. I just bought a tub of vanilla yogurt that I’ll mix with fruits to go with his lunch, and I’m sure I’ll end up eating whatever he doesn’t finish. I’ll pack a handful of few animal crackers or Cheezits for an afternoon snack when we’re out shopping and I’ll eat the rest of the baggie when he loses interest (just so they don’t get stale, of course). And if I’m making something for supper that he can share, like mashed potatoes or squash, I’ll put an extra serving on my plate which of course he won’t finish but I will. So essentially, the “Mom Diet” is actually the “Leftovers Diet”.

And you can see that such a diet will never be confusing with a weight-loss diet. In fact, it’s likely to be a weight-gain diet if I don’t watch out. With only a few minutes to prepare and eat breakfast or lunch, it’s very tempting to just grab a pop-tart or a granola bar or a buttered roll or a handful of tortilla chips. With my hopeful outlook, I’ll always put a larger portion of food on my plate than Ryan will eat, plus it won’t occur to me to take a smaller portion for myself.

Fortunately, he’s still enough of a bag of rocks that toting him around burns off quite a few calories, and once he starts walking on his own I have no doubt I’ll be running around more often than I am now. So for the moment, my energy intake is still balanced by my energy output. I just need to remember that the “Mom Diet” is only successful when it’s used as a very temporary measure. But then, by the time Ryan is a teenager, it’ll probably be all I can do to grab enough calories to barely sustain life before he’s eaten everything else in the house.

Eh, it’s all good. (And I'm not just saying that because today's lunch consisted of some chocolate ice cream that Ryan and I shared.)

What Are You FEEDING Him?

Ever since Ryan was about 4 months old, every time someone asks how old he is, as soon as I answer, the next question is nearly always, “What are you FEEDING him??” And my answer is generally, “Anything he wants!”

He is a good-sized kid, and he has an appetite to match. When he was first born, he had some difficulties with eating for a week or two, but ever since then he’s been making up for lost time. When he was strictly on formula and breast milk, he’d easily knock back 10 ounces or more in a single sitting. Now that he’s eating baby food, he’ll go through two 4-ounce packs of fruit and veggies three times a day with snacks and formula in between. He loves everything from bread to watermelon to Cheerios to sweet potatoes to oatmeal. The only things we’ve found so far that he doesn’t like are chicken and turkey!

Now that he’s mobile and on the go every waking hour, he’s started to gain weight a bit more slowly. But he certainly hasn’t slowed his food intake one bit! His menu for an average day is something like this:
Breakfast: 6 oz. banana puree, 3 oz. rice cereal, bit of toast, few chunks of watermelon
Morning snack: 10 oz. bottle, handful of Cheerios
Lunch: 4 oz. sweet potatoes, 4 oz. green beans, 2 oz. oatmeal
Afternoon snack: 10 oz. bottle, few chunks of watermelon, handful of rice puffs
Dinner: 4 oz. mixed vegetables, 4 oz. carrots, small piece of bread, 2-4 oz. apple-berry puree
Bedtime: 10 oz. bottle

For most moms with a 9-month old who weighs 18 or 20 pounds, that amount of food in one day is inconceivable. For most moms with a 2- or 3-year old, it sounds about right. And why shouldn’t Ryan eat like a 2- or 3-year old? He weighs the same as most 2- or 3-year olds! And he works out all day long, pulling himself up on the furniture, marching around the house, crawling around at top speeds, trying to open drawers and closets and doors. Pound for pound, he probably burns off as much energy as a personal trainer working an 8-hour shift.

And every day we try to find a new and different food to try: melon, berries, granola, apples, peas, and every kind of bread. Sometimes it’s baby food from a spoon, sometimes it’s table food in his mesh bag feeder, sometimes it’s grownup food cut into little bits so he can grab it with his own fingers. He’s sampled toast, pasta, cantaloupe, cheese, and yogurt. He’ll happily gnaw on a lemon wedge for several minutes. He’ll carefully examine a piece of cracker for a few moments before giving it a cautious taste, licking the salt off the edges and eventually putting it in his mouth. (Of course, he does the same thing with rocks, attempting to lick off the dirt and get the rock in his mouth before someone stops him, but we discourage that as much as possible.) He’ll drink a bit of diluted apple, orange, or cranberry juice from his own sippy cup, or have a little slug of juice or water from Mummy or Daddy’s cup. He’s even happy to slurp icewater from a spoon.

Having been an EXTREMELY picky eater myself as a child, I am delighted at his willingness to explore the wonderful world of food. I look forward to introducing him to slightly exotic foods like mushrooms and sushi and cheesecake when he’s older. I imagine teaching him to cook for himself, first simple things like scrambled eggs and grilled cheese, then working our way up to meatloaf and chicken casserole, and eventually maybe even something as fancy as beef wellington or stuffed acorn squash. But whatever his future in terms of food, I just hope he continues to explore and enjoy. And as long as I can, and as long as it’s healthy, I have every intention of continuing to feed him anything he wants!

Gag Me With a...Pea

When Ryan was four months old, we started giving him "solid" food. I have to put the word solid in quotation marks because the stuff we gave him could only be defined as solid in the absolute loosest sense of the word. Baby rice cereal, applesauce, pureed pears, and mashed sweet potatoes are more liquid than solid. But they've got more to them then watery formula, so "solid" it is.

And over the past two months, we've been working our way up to foods that are a little closer to the true definition of solid. We've been mixing the rice cereal and oatmeal thicker and thicker each time. We've recently experimented with Stage 2 foods that are a bit less finely pureed and have some texture to them.  We have a couple of little mesh feeder bags that we've given him with ice cubes or chunks of melon to suck on and to gnaw on a little. And in just the past couple of days we've tried teething biscuits. The initial reaction to the teething biscuits was less than stellar: Ryan gnawed happily for a bit until a few crumbs came off in his mouth, then he made a very strange face and made the "hairball" noise (anyone who's ever had a cat will recognize that sound). He did NOT like that texture in his mouth one bit. But the ultimate food rejection so far was last night when Daddy gave him a mashed up pea.

Never have you seen such elaborate gagging faces as his reaction to said pea. You'd think we'd forced him to eat a cockroach or raw octopus. I guess the sweetness of the nice fresh pea was lost in the unpleasant (to him) mouth feel.

So I guess we're back to smoother foods for a while yet. But we'll keep trying new things. Who knows, maybe it'll be something like cockroach or raw octopus that appeals to him.

The Reign of the World's Biggest Baby Continues

This morning Ryan had his four-month checkup, and I am proud to announce that he has kept his title of World's Biggest Baby! At 25 lbs. 8 oz. and 28-1/2 inches long, he is off the percentile charts for both height and weight. The good news is that since he was only in the 97th percentile for height (but over the 100th for weight) at his 2-month visit, he is actually slimming down (proportionately, anyway). He is in all respects a healthy, happy, strong, and strapping young lad!

And since he is doing so well, our next adventure will be starting on solid food. We stopped at the grocery store on the way home from his appointment to pick up some rice cereal for him to try. And of course, I had to pick up a few jars of stage 1 baby food for when we're ready to move onto that, as well. I don't want to rush anything, but the way he stares at us with such great intensity and interest when we're eating leaves no doubt that he's totally ready. He's fascinated by food, and I've been giving him baby spoons to play with and chew on so they won't be completely unfamiliar when we start putting food on them.

I'm a little sad to be leaving this part of infancy behind so soon, but Ryan is already starting to look so grown up and more like a toddler-to-be than an infant (ha! he really only ever looked like a tiny infant for about a week) that I might as well accept it and embrace it. My beautiful little baby is growing into a beautiful big boy, with all the new skills and excitement that come with that next step.

Before I know it, he'll be waving goodbye from the window of a school bus, asking to borrow the car keys, and filling out college applications. For now I guess I'll just enjoy him needing me to carry him around, and feed him, and dress him. And years from now, when it feels like he doesn't need me quite so much, I can remember these days when he was lost without me and know that somewhere deep inside, he will always be my sweet little boy who grins with delight at his mommy and daddy.