Food, Glorious Food!

As I mentioned, Sam has started to eat his veggies. High chair time has become a completely new experience now that we're offering something that actually has taste, as opposed to that nasty, cardboard-tasting baby cereal. He now actually opens his mouth in anticipation of the next bite, rather than having to be convinced and/or tricked into taking another bite. With his favorites, which is Butternut Squash so far, we sometimes can't feed him fast enough. He actually whines if we don't shovel some more into his mouth within what he considers to be a reasonable amount of time. Buddy, we have to get more on the spoon before we can get more into your mouth! Now we are mixing veggies with his cereal and it goes down much better as well :-)

Sam is a good eater! Right now he's eating 7oz of veggie puree and 5-6 tablespoons of cereal a day, on top of nursing 5 times per day. Maybe we'll add some of that weight back on soon. He's still a messy eater, though. The small drips onto the bib aren't bad, until he takes a break to try to eat his bib and ends up rubbing the drips all over his face. Or he decides to start sucking on his fingers before he swallows his bite of food. Oh, dear. Oh, and sneezing with a mouth full of peas creates a lovely green splatter pattern all over baby, mommy, and high chair. Its not that hard to clean up, but he doesn't like to have his face wiped off. Hopefully he'll get over that!

Because his skin is already so sensitive and I've read that skin problems can be connected with allergies, we are trying to take our time introducing new foods to make sure he isn't allergic to anything. So far we have squash, peas, avocado, sweet potatoes, and zucchini on the approved list. We're going to try out bananas tomorrow!

I'm trying to take the route of making all of Sam's baby food. I found a produce market where I can get farm-fresh, seasonal fruits and veggies just a few blocks from my house, and I have a food processor that was itching to be used more, so I figured why not? I'm actually really enjoying it, and find it to be really easy. I like that I know exactly what's in his food, and that I feel like I'm already "cooking" for him. And now Sam has his own shelf in our freezer for his food.

Oh, and the best part...he's sleeping better! I'm getting 2 two-hour naps per day and he's sleeping about 11 hours at night. Sometimes he still wakes up overnight, but usually a paci is all he needs. This is a major improvement over the 1-3 times/night he was waking up just a few weeks ago!