One of those posts: Eating

(This is one of the posts that I was threatening: a post more for the baby book than for entertainment.)

As his measurements might reflect, Zeke has been doing a lot of growing. I can generally tell how much he is growing by how much he seems interested in his food. Zeke is a pretty good eater. He will eat any fruit, usually with great gusto, but not as many vegetables. He will eat orange vegetables (sweet potatoes, butternut squash, cooked carrots, baby carrots) and only sometimes eat peas, broccoli, green beans, lima beans or sugar snap peas. However, he will eat tons of cooked spinach, so I probably give that to him every other day, if not more. He loves starches, including cous cous, pasta and the Spanish rice that Aaron makes. I do allow some dairy these days, but still do not give milk and yogurt. He does get some cheese sparingly. Until very recently, I was still giving him some baby food purees -- he likes the purees more than the actual vegetables and they are so convenient. Zeke also gets a lot more treats that I wouldn't have considered giving him a year ago, including a nibble of cake like at a party yesterday.

He is pretty fair at feeding himself with a spoon or fork, but in the interest of keeping things tidy, I will often help. He still uses "sippy" cups, though also has some passing skill at using regular cups. He still agrees to wearing a bib and sometimes will wipe his hands and mouth with a napkin. He is, however, a real wiz at washing his hands. He loves it and I have even found him going to wash his hands (and flicking the light in the powder room off and on) without being prompted.

Typical breakfast: a scrambled egg, a waffle or piece of toast, a cup of watered orange juice, maybe a banana or maybe a piece of veggie bacon.

Typical lunch: At home, usually leftovers with some sort of veggie and a protein and water. For school, I have a tendency to get elaborate because his lunch box has four compartments. One section is fruit, one is a snack of a sweet sort (mini-muffin, ginger popcorn), one is a snack or veggie (often dried veggies or peanut butter crackers) and the last section is some sort of main like Trader Joe mini ravioli, veggie chicken nuggets, mini pizzas or other fun foods.

Typical snacks: crackers or fruit

Typical dinner: I try as much as possible to make it some version of what we eat, though he always gets at least one fruit, one veggie and some non-dairy "milk." (He likes soy milk, though I like hazelnut milk.) However, I often feel compelled to make sure he eats healthier than we do, so I might make an extra veggie for him. Tonight he ate pasta, broccoli, spit out the cucumber from my salad but ate the croutons, kiwi and vanilla soy milk. He seems to like "taco night" when I give him rice, refried beans and chips.

I often feel that I am running out of ideas for what to try and feed him, as he doesn't always seem to be interested in some of the things we eat like sandwiches, salads or soups. Poor Aaron, I try a lot of dinner recipes that I know he will probably not be terribly interested in, just because I think they might be something we can all eat that isn't fried, too spicy, or too starchy. For example, last week I made a curry with spinach, sweet potatoes, and chick peas that I knew Aaron probably wouldn't like. Disappointingly, Zeke would not eat any of it unless I separated the ingredients on his dish and even then he wasn't terribly interested. I'm still eating the leftovers. I have high hopes for this week: stuffed peppers, lasagne, salmon, a veggie hash. The upside of this is that it does force me to plan menus and to all get us eating healthier!