When Emery was a baby I knew that nutrition and food would be really important. I was able to breastfeed, switched to a pump once I had to go back to work, up until Emery was nine months old. I wish I could have gone longer, but at the end of the day, I wasn’t able to keep up with Emery’s appetite. Mom Tip: Pump as soon as your milk comes in, and store whatever you can if you plan on going to work and want to continue to breastfeed. Still, I’m definitely a breastfeeding advocate. We mommies produce milk for a reason, and no matter how much “closer” formula is getting to breast milk, it’s still not the same. So I believe that if you can breastfeed, do it.
Now, once I had to switch over to formula I was at a loss. Which formula would be the healthiest for our baby? We tried Similac for a good while before finally settling on Enfamil. Had I known then that there was a pretty good selection of organic baby formula; I probably would have gone that route. But, this mommy never bothered to look it up. Major mom fail. We also have a very limited selection of places to buy our “baby supplies” here in this small town. None of the stores around here carry any kind of organic formula at the moment. So buying online would have made it that much harder to get if we ran out at some point. Because let’s face it the first few months you start out pretty forgetful thanks to that new mom brain. I’ve heard it only gets worse. Still, I tried my best to inform myself about the ingredients in order to select a brand that worked for us.
Then, when she was able to have baby food my husband and I both agreed that it didn’t matter what the cost was we were feeding her only organic food. But when it came time to actually go shopping for the organic baby food we found that it was a bit more difficult than we originally thought it would be. Our local Wal-Mart had a very limited selection of
Sprout Organic Baby Food, but a bit of a bigger one with
Earth’s Best. I ended up mixing and matching. She loved pretty much everything that we gave her, and I was really happy that we weren’t feeding her junk. It wasn’t until she was about ten months, that we decided to check out H-E-B and I’m really glad that I did! They have a wider selection of organic products and an even bigger selection of organic baby foods.
SCORE! So this made things a lot easier for me and gave Emery more of a variety.
But now that we’re in the toddler phase I'm at a loss again. Only recently has she been able to chew her food really well so I’m about ready to promote her to “big kid" food status. Her molars are coming in nicely, which is great because before she would occasionally choke on her food and it would scare the living crap out of me! Now that they’re coming in she’s been able to eat a lot better with no choking scares. Thank GOD! So with that out of the way, I'm now left to worry about WHAT we’ll be giving her to eat. It’s about to be up to me to cook and prepare her food and this has me really nervous, and a bit worried. Confession: I’m not a very good cook. Aside from lemon pepper chicken, spaghetti, and anything that involves instructions on the back (no more than 3 steps) I have no idea how to cook. It’s a really foreign concept to me. How have we made it this far, you ask? Well, my grandmother and mother insist on feeding us. If we don’t go over to eat, they bring it over to us. Those ladies are firm believers in having at least 5 meals a day. Since we don’t have an actual stove in our house, we stick to microwavable food or easy stuff like sandwiches or fruits. Now, this is perfectly fine for us adults, but it’s not the healthiest thing for a growing babe.
So what should I feed an almost 1 1/2-year-old? How much, and what is too much? My kid is a vacuum and she’ll eat pretty much everything on her plate and then some. I usually stop her before we get to that “bloated belly” point, but then I feel like my kids on a diet and I feel all guilty for taking it away. That's when I start to fear that I’m starving her by doing this, and end up giving her the plate back. So, if she’s going to be eating a good amount I want to make sure that it’s at least HEALTHY. But where do I start? I’m perfectly fine with munching on an apple or even tomatoes for dinner, but that doesn’t strike me as a healthy, well-rounded dinner for a toddler. So if anyone knows of any cool food blogs or even just some suggestions for some easy meals, I’d really appreciate it!
Let me know what you feed your little ones!
