Feeding My Kid

I'm joining the other ladies of Mommy Style Monday today, and this week is all about meals for the kids. Before having a baby I dreamed of making my own organic baby food each week.... Ha. For the first 6 months of her life, Gwen ate nothing but breast milk. Life was easy! I mean, it was demanding, but meals were simple- feedings involved no preparation, dishes, or cleanup. I feel pretty fortunate that breastfeeding worked out so well for us. Once she hit 6 months, feeding Gwen new foods became really exciting! It's fun to watch someone experience food for the very first time. But once she started to eat more solids than breast milk, the concept of making three meals a day was hard for me to adjust to. I think we made our own baby food maybe twice, and I'm not sure that she liked it as much as the store-bought stuff. She ate a lot of mashed banana and avocado in those days. 

After more experience with feeding a toddler, I don't put too much pressure on myself to cook three times a day. We usually eat things like lunch meat, cheese, lots of fruit, veggies, crackers, bread, etc. (We also have french fries and chicken nuggets a little too often than I'd like to admit, but what's life without a little junk food?) Here is a typical toddler lunch/dinner at our house: black beans, baby carrots, and cherry tomatoes, topped off with chocolate almond milk. I usually just stick with vegetables that I know Gwen likes because it's too stressful introducing new food sometimes! 

We made the switch to almond milk after researching causes of eczema. Gwen has suffered with eczema for a long time and when I asked the doctor about it, she said that it could be caused by a number of different things. We've used a handful of different body washes, soaps, and lotions, but it didn't really seem to help. A friend of mine recently told me that dairy was the biggest culprit, which made sense to me since Gwen would have a sippy-cup of whole milk every night before bed. I started giving her less dairy and quit giving her milk, and her skin was clearing up! I failed to discuss this plan with my husband at first, so when he gave her milk one night, the next day she was scratching again. We're not exactly sure that dairy is the cause because one day after giving her no dairy and a couple of hard-boiled eggs she started scratching a lot.... So maybe eggs are the culprit? Food allergies are confusing. We'll figure it out. 

Back to meals- I do cook dinner sometimes! Maybe 2-3 times a week if we're being honest, and Ryan will cook something once a week, but there are usually leftovers for us to eat, or sandwich fixings, or cereal, or takeout. Does anyone have delicious and easy dinner recipes that they love? Send me some pins for recipes! 

Check out these ladies' meal time posts!

Kiana at Glitter & Donuts

Madeline at CaseyLand
Bekah at These Are The Days
Britt at My Little Sunshine 
Chelsea at Tessa Marie
Monica at It's All About
Erica at Good Job Momma

Interested in joining us next time? Sing up here or here.