When it comes to BLW...Start big!

Often you hear to "start small". If you're going to run a marathon, you shouldn't run 26.2 miles when you start. If you're going to open a bakery, you probably shouldn't buy a space and open up without selling a few cupcakes out of your home kitchen first.

However, if you're going to introduce your baby to food

without relying on purees, you should start big. This was Chicken's lunch the other day: avocado, cheese, peach, potato pancake (leftover from a trip to Perkins), carrot and green bean.

I offered Chicken an bunch of options, all cut into shapes/sizes that she could handle easily. She tried everything eventually and got some more avocado and peach throughout the meal when there wasn't any left on her tray.

I noticed, during this meal, that Chicken ate with more gusto when she mushed, crumbled, mangled her food into smaller pieces. As I wrote last week, she's become an efficient raker. She passes little bits of food from one fist to the other, hand-over-hand, until they reach her mouth. I find it really interesting that she's making these developments from eating big pieces of food to choosing chunks that she wants and working them up to her mouth. Check her out:

She'll also eat this off of the back of her hands, which is good since lots of things end up there.

If you're wondering what a "finished" meal looks like, it depends on Chicken's mood really. Last night she was too tired to sit and eat dinner so her tray looked pretty much the same at the end of dinner as when she started eating. But, on this particular day, Chicken really enjoyed a lot of the food she was offered. She did a great job working a good bit of it into her mouth too.

Yeah, the bib pocket is kind of gross, but at least it does its job! I've started scooping out all of the food and putting it on top of the dogs' food at dinnertime. I figure if its healthy enough for Chicken, it's healthy enough for them too. :)