Baby Eating Habits

Kylie, on the itty bitty side, has a pretty big tummy and a decent sized appetite. Some dinners, she literally eats more than me, not accounting for our body sizes.

When she was a newborn, Kylie never drank enough milk. I remember that my mom once made a graph of how much milk she drank every day. It was supposed to be steadily increasing, but Kylie's looked more like the cardiograph diagram of a heartbeat. The amount she took was really inconsistent. When time came for jar food, Kylie definitely had preferences. She hated prunes and peas and carrots, but she liked bananas and some of the other more natural tasting ones (yes, I did try some). She really liked the breakfast flavored ones for stage 2 jar food. But there were few things she hated more than the packaged food that you microwave, jarred meat, and jarred soup. Sometimes, in order to force her to down the food for it's nutrition value, my dad and I tricked her. We'd either tease her into laughing with her mouth open or we'd put something else like a pretzel or a cracker on her lips to get her to open her mouth; it would allow us to stick in that spoonful of food.

Now, Kylie eats everything as finger food-sized. For dinner, we tear up her meat and veggies, and give her small chunks of sticky rice. In Chinese, tang means too hot. She understands what it means, when we say tang tang, but sometimes she'll still screech and cry until we give her the rice or the vegetable that was cooling in her view. She's gone past the phase of hating milk, and now we give it to her instead of water. If she's thirsty, that's what she's gonna drink. She loves Chobani Greek Yogurt, or probably any yogurt (we get Chobani because of its high fat content), and does okay with avocados. I go with my dad to pick her up from daycare every day of the week, and if it's not Monday, we don't head straight home. On those other days, we drive for 10 more minutes to drop me off at gymnastics practice. In the car on those days, Kylie will question my sanity with her tiny eyes and give me facial expressions and funny sounds if I don't bring her a snack. Whether it be veggie chips (not exactly health food for babies there, but she likes them), a whole milk cheese slice with some crackers, or a cup of yogurt, as long as there is a snack, she's happy.

-Chichi

EDIT: And of course, 40 minutes after I hit publish, she tries a new food. Today, Kylie discovered the magic of hard mini pretzels. She's having a hard time sinking in her teeth, but she thinks they're delicious, and is extremely persistent in finishing each one. But oddly, she keeps putting it on the ground and re-picking it up...