Like any sport, eating requires lots of practice.

Sunday morning, Jameson insisted on eating yogurt himself. He took a few bites from dad, but then refused any more.

So I plopped it into a bowl and let him have at it.

The experience was funny for mom and dad, and rewarding for Jameson since it wasn’t too difficult for him to at least get a little something in his mouth with the spoon.

And he got a new favorite, pineapple, when he was done.

Aside: The bib there? It is fabulous. The whole thing is a soft plastic, so it’s comfortable and easily washable. It doesn’t wrinkle like the cloth-backed ones, and it has a pocket like the harder plastic ones but much more comfortable. We have just two (as compared to the 20 or so cloth bibs we used to own and go through like no tomorrow!).

We had a great weekend, despite transitioning Jameson to a sippy cup. Can’t wait to share how it went!

I’ve given some thought recently to having Jameson quit the bottle. I know he could, he’s got the suction (so to speak) to use a straw, and he knows to tilt his head back to get at the sippy cup now. Maybe we will give it a shot soon? I’m only concerned about his attention span and actually drinking all of the milk.

But last night, it was in the 50’s so we went for a walk which was so nice, and  since he didn’t have all his bottles at daycare, I poured one into a sippy. He drank well over half of it by the time the walk was done.

We are also “practicing” (using the work practicing implies that learning is happening, of which I am not sure of) with the fork and spoon, but right now it’s mostly going like this:

Purely by accident though, last night we got a successful bit of food in the mouth via the spork. Way to go Jameson! (Repeat performances are not to be expected)

And yes, that is the photo wall in the background, still up. Jameson loves to point at the pictures and say “Da?” (I think that’s his word for “that?”)

Last night he was messy enough (and it was only 20 minutes until bedtime) that I stripped him of his shirt. He enjoyed the experience, pointing at his belly as if to say, “what’s this?”

Jameson now eats anything we eat (except honey per doctor’s orders), as long as it can be made soft enough for him to easily chew.

He gets baby food and some finger food at every meal, though it is getting harder and harder to get him to eat the baby food. To distract him, we offer him a little empty cup to play with until we’re done eating the baby food. Then he gets some finger food.

His favorite foods are meat and peaches. He particularly likes chicken! But peaches are his favorite.

Transitioning to finger foods has been a little tough because baby food was so easy. Not only are we thinking about dinner now, but a few weeks ago we started sending him to daycare with finger foods as well. Here are a few things that have worked for us:

• The fruit cups in fruit juice, not syrup (the peaches don’t have to be cut up, but we’ve been cutting up pineapple and tropical fruit for now) – thanks to Breann for this tip!
• Steam fresh veggies, particularly peas which don’t have to be cut up at all. I’ve heard this is a good first finger food.
• Beans! Kidney, Pinto, Lima, Northern. We haven’t made these yet, but if we made a bunch we’d be good for a while, and it is a good source of protein. – thanks to Babble for this idea
• Pasta – butter is okay (I have read that you need to be cautious of salt, but a little butter is fine). I’ve tried rice too, but it’s hard for him to pick up.
• Homemade teething biscuits. I like to send him to daycare with this in case he gets fussy because he loves this.
• Chicken and other meat – we usually save this for dinner only, but we make extra for a couple nights of food
• Everything else. This is easy for dinner, harder to send with for daycare. He gets what we eat, so if we are having lasagna he gets some of that, and he’s even had a little pizza!

Jameson also wasn’t a big fan of water, so we started adding just a little bit of white grape or apple juice to his cup for flavor and he really enjoys that.

It won’t be long now before we’re making the transition to all finger foods, but I am concerned with how much he’ll be getting to eat since he’s so messy right now. It doesn’t seem like much makes it into his mouth!

I also hope that we can continue to make healthy meals for him. One big thing we found recently is a meat farm! We found a local farm with fresh organic meat that we can buy in bulk for a price very close to the grocery. We feel very lucky to have found it! (And Brian’s happy that it is close to one of the stores he gets beer brewing ingredients and materials from)

This post here is a confession to bad parenting, I’m sure.

Jameson is now crawling all over the house on his hands and knees, plus eating finger foods.

This makes for a bad combination for illness. Jameson has just gotten over yet another cold, and I just can’t be sure if it wasn’t us who gave it to him via a less-than-clean floor and lack of hand washing, or if it was daycare.

After several unsuccessful days of remembering hand washing, I finally put this note on his highchair.

Guess what? It’s working. It’s been one day and he hasn’t gotten sick again, and we’re actually washing his hands.

I think it’s time I put notes on everything we are forgetting: Vitamin D in the morning bottle; Brushing teeth; Washing face on non-bath nights (there’s two sinks in the bathroom so I suppose I could put on post it in each); Putting stain remover on his clothes.

Please don’t worry until I start sticking the notes to his body (clip fingernails).

At Jameson’s 9 month appointment a few weeks ago, the doctor told us that we could now give Jameson whatever we wanted (except honey). Even eggs were on the list of “whatever we wanted”. He then qualified that the choking hazard was our responsibility (as if we weren’t already well aware of that).

We immediately decided to give him some eggs to try the very next day while Brian and I ate breakfast. Then we gave him some lasagna noodles at our visit to Brian’s grandma.

Then we got lazy, and just started giving him Cheerios in addition to his usual melt-in-the-mouth puffs, yogurt drops and mum mums.

It was about another week or two before we started saving some of our dinners for him to have as leftover finger foods.

This past week, we’ve tried to give Jameson finger food as a dinner supplement every night. We usually start off with some baby food and then give him finger foods to stuff in his face.

And he does stuff his face. The child that was always a picky eater doesn’t seem to have any problem stuffing his own face. I should’ve known, considering he tries to eat everything in sight (socks, leaves, grass, pumpkins, dog toys, rugs, clothes, furniture…).

He hoards pieces like a chipmunk and stuffs his face until he sometimes gags a little. Having read a little bit about how babies manage their food, the gagging is tolerable to me (it helps them bring their food back to the front of their mouth). In fact, he rarely gags at all now, so I let him go for the most part.

What does give me a minor heart attack is the new half-laugh he has discovered. He sucks in his breath like a loud wheeze and holds it for a second. He does it with or without food in his mouth, and it gets me every time. I’m hoping that particular sound will lose its novelty real soon.

A few weeks prior to the doctors appointment when he was around 8-1/2 months, we had already started giving him thicker baby food in preparation for finger foods.

The reason for our preparation was that our neighbors had been told by their doctor that around 9 months babies should start eating whatever the adults are eating, so we were preparing for that. It turns out, our doctor is a lot more casual in that regard and didn’t really care what we did. Presumably, all babies eat regular food in good time… you don’t see adults eating baby food (except the crazies).

We started out with a stage 2-1/2 food that we found at Wal-Mart which is a perfect mix between stage 2 and 3, which seemed too thick for Jameson to tolerate. I also mixed some of my homemade baby food into the pureed stuff to make some thicker.

We did this for a couple weeks before giving him finger foods, but I am not sure that we really needed to since Jameson took so well to eating on his own.

Now we do pureed to chunky to finger foods and everything in between. We have daycare feed him the easy stuff while we experiment at home in the evenings.

Jameson was not a big fan of the stage 3 corn. I am just glad we have Sasha to clean up after him.

P.S. We still don’t have the hang of all eating together, since Jameson goes to bed at 7. But we did have a successful first dinner, all together (even Sasha), last Saturday, celebrating Sasha’s birthday (belated) with a steak. She got a little one too (Jameson didn’t).