Monday, January 19, 2009

Things to eat

Cooper is a funny eater. He seems to prefer things that fall into a few categories. For my own amusement, I will list them with examples.

Dairy
- yogurt
- grated cheese
- cottage cheese

Pick-up-able
- blueberries
- pear mini-cubes
- peas
- corn off the cob
- tiny broccoli florets

Crunchy
- saltines
- graham crackers
- toast
- cheerios (also belongs in "pick-up-able" category)

I need to diversify his diet a bit, which to make my life easy basically means I need to make new foods fall into these same categories. For instance, he really is anti-pumpkin puree lately. However, I recently tried mixing pumpkin puree with yogurt about 50/50 with good results. Voila! Dairy category!

I think what his diet is mostly missing right now is meats. We just don't really have a lot of meats in the house, so it is kind of a challenge. I think I just need to start buying them more regularly so that they are around, and then they'll naturally end up on the plate with Cooper somehow.

His water drinking skills have progressed amazingly in the last few weeks. He now can drink at least half of his little plastic cup of water, with no help from us aside from a watchful eye, without spilling. He's obviously very proud of himself and smiles between each gulp. It is a relief that he is so good at this- come this summer, his anti-sippy cup crusade plus high temperatures and low humidity could be very bad. With good cup drinking skills, this will be less of an issue.

2 comments:

Jennifer said...

Eleanor loves eating beans, which fall in the 'pick-up-able' category and provide a quick-and-easy protein.

You can also try fake-chicken-nuggets, which are also a quick fix and tend to be pretty popular.

We also try to have frozen meatballs available, because they microwave up quickly. You can buy them by the bagful, or make and freeze them yourself. The nice thing about frozen food is that you can choose portion sizes - sometimes dinner is for all three of us, and sometimes it's just dinner for E.

In other news, E drank from a cup like a champ today, all on her own.

MissoulaChick said...

We are attempting to introduce beans. Cooper is not fond on them (yet) but because they are pickupable and mild in flavor, I think that he just needs time to get adjusted to the new taste and texture. My guess is in two weeks or so he'll love beans.