Photo A Day, Day 14: Eating

For dinner tonight, my kids had hot dogs and fruit. My son (who weighs just over 50 pounds) ate half a hot dog, maybe half a dozen grapes, and half a glass of milk. My daughter (who weighs about 25 pounds) ate two entire hot dogs, a whole pear, a full cup of milk, and a full cup of apple juice. Although my son often eats a somewhat heartier dinner, this is a pretty typical meal for my daughter.

I don’t know where she puts it in that wee little body.

What I do know is how she gets it into that wee little body: a wee little bite at a time.

 Her eating style could be described as both a “Crammer” and a “Choker.” She tends to stuff as much food as possible into her mouth, and she also tends to get things caught halfway down (the latter is quite likely related to the former). Because of that, we generally cut her food into small bites, as you can clearly see in today’s photo. Since she now uses a spoon or a fork to put each piece in her mouth, limiting the volume in each spoonful significantly limits her cramming ability. When you see all those pieces of food on her plate at the beginning of the meal, you would never expect that she would be able to finish all that food, but finish it she does, and often some of her brother’s, to boot.

It reminds me just how much a single person can accomplish when they approach something one small bite at a time. Whoever guessed there would be such a profound life lesson in something as simple as watching a small child eating?

The Toast is Always Browner

My kids are not horribly picky eaters, but they are definitely moody about when, what, and how much they eat. Some days they’ll plow through everything on their plates and beg for more; some days they’ll turn their nose up at whatever I offer them; some days they’ll nibble at one thing and ignore another. Sometimes they’ll gorge themselves at lunch and only pick at dinner. Sometimes they have no interest in breakfast but have third helpings at lunch. My son, at least, is able to tell me whether he’s not eating because he’s not hungry or because he doesn’t like what’s in front of him, and he can tell me when he’s finished eating. But with my daughter, who is essentially non-verbal, I just have to try offering something else or giving her time to eat a few more bites. With my son, my general rule is that once I take his plate away, the meal is over and there’s nothing more to eat until a reasonable snack time. With my daughter, I’m a bit more lenient because she’s not able to express that she’s full.

And since she knows she can nibble after she’s been excused from the table, she will often find a sudden interest in food after her plate has been taken away. Provided, of course, that it’s someone else’s food.

She began that interest before she could even walk. Both kids have high chairs that can either be strapped to a regular chair or sit on the floor. We keep the chairs on the floor in the playroom and often have breakfast and lunch there. I would sometimes finish feeding her before her brother finished eating, so I would let her crawl around while he ate. Without fail, if there was food on his tray, she would crawl over, grab the edge of his tray, haul herself up, and help herself to whatever he was eating. It didn’t matter if it was exactly the same thing she had just had on her plate and ignored. If it was on his plate, she wanted some.

 

To this day, she prefers taking food off someone else’s plate to eating her own. We often have toast with breakfast in the morning, and after nibbling a bit of her own, she will come over and take mine right out of my hand. It’s exactly the same toast. I usually cut a piece of toast in half and give us each a piece, so it’s literally the same slice of toast. But in her eyes, mine is better than hers. Anyone’s is better than hers!

Fortunately, as you can see from the video above, her brother is a pretty good sport about sharing with her. In fact, the two of them tend to like different parts of the meal, so she’ll finish her hotdog and then steal his, and he’ll let her but then ask for more noodles, which I take from her plate because she’s not eating them. This system works much better than just giving her two hotdogs and him a double helping of noodles. Because the toast is always browner on someone else’s plate, apparently.

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!

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.