We started baby food with Eli about a week ago. He is loving it! It was a little earlier than I originally intended, but I’m glad we did. Our good friend Tyler is a pediatrics resident at Minnesota and he sent us a really interesting article about when to start introducing food to babies, and it really made Adam push for introducing the foods early. Around here, we obsess over food; what, when, how much, etc. (Thanks Sam). A friend of mine gave me a book on Baby-Led Weaning, and while it was interesting and I can totally see why some people wait to introduce foods, for us, that wasn’t what we felt comfortable doing. To help avoid allergies is a huge plus for us, so that is what we chose! Again, we obsess over food.

Eli has SO MUCH FUN eating. The minute he sits in that highchair he starts banging his little fists–thus, we have realized we can’t put him in there until it is absolutely time to eat. Otherwise, little man gets quite cranky 😉

We use a Blendtec blender– If I can tell you one thing, GO BUY ONE. It is amazing. Can’t get over this awesomeness. I plan to use it for Sam’s blended diet that I will be attempting tomorrow! Anyway– here are some of the things we have fed Eli, and some of the things I have made/frozen. I made all of Sam and Jack’s baby food, and will do the same for Eli. The nerd in me absolutely loves doing this. Plus, I’m the most unhealthy healthy person you will ever meet, so I’ll be damned if my kids will eat something out of a jar that has 14 ingredients for a “banana” blend!

-avocados

-banana

-sweet potato

-butternut squash

-most of the recipes from this blog

Not only do I love making these foods for E, it also saves us a TON of money. We live on a resident’s salary, with med school debt + college debt + mortgage + 3 kids + LIFE, so you get the idea… saving money is a good thing around here 🙂

To be perfectly honest, not only is it fun for us to feed Eli, and fun for Eli, but it has also helped Sam eat a little better too. Well, focus better. I only feed Eli solids once a day (dinner time), and that is usually Sam’s worst time for eating. I don’t know if he’s just tired, or excited that Adam is home, or what, but it’s always a struggle. Anyway, I use my same prompt on Eli that I do for Sam — “Sam/Eli, take your bite!” The first time I said that to Eli, Sam about lost it he was laughing so hard. He thought it was pretty darn cool that his little bro was eating like he does!