Em's eating habits

Before Em was born, the hubby and I always talked about how we hope she will have a wide palette and love all kinds of food. I love my food and ate pretty much everything I was "allowed" to during my pregnancy, so we often said how Em must be enjoying all the wide variety of food too.

When she hit 6 months and was ready for solids, I started off by giving her mashed bananas. That was the easiest food to start with. No preparation (apart from mashing), just scoop and feed. At first, she loved it! And then one day, I must have overfed her, giving her a full nursing session and then immediately sitting her down for some bananas. She projectile vomited not long after her meal and since that day, has refused to eat bananas or anything even banana flavored. 

From there though, we progressed to puréed pumpkin and that remained her favourite food for a long time. She would gobble up every scoop you presented to her and didn't seem to tire of it. I started being adventurous, mixing pumpkin and apple, pumpkin, sweet potato and carrots, pumpkin and peas, pumpkin and pear, etc. Sometimes she ate it, sometimes she didn't. Unfortunately, the days where she didn't want her food became more and more often and I momentarily gave up cooking for her, switching to pre-packaged foods by Happytot and Plum. At least if she didn't eat those, I didn't feel like she was rejecting my cooking.

Yep, it was the beginning days of wanting to be independent and wanting to feed herself. So the only way I could get her to eat again, was to prepare finger foods, stuff she could pick up and feed herself with her fingers. Her favourite became bread and I'm glad I started her on wholemeal because now she wouldn't have any other type of bread.

Since then, her favourite foods also include cheese (absolute love), pasta (spirals), and macaroni!! Lately, we've also added mee tai bak, laksa noodles (just the noodles, not the laksa soup), tofu, fishballs, chicken and fish (especially salmon) to the mix!

Wow, looking at the list above, I feel a sense of achievement in the sense that she seems to love adult food. I can take her to the food court and order her a bowl of chicken macaroni, sliced fish noodle soup, or fishball mee tai bak and I can guarantee you she'll gobble it up!

My only gripe at the moment is that still have trouble trying to get her to take her puréed pumpkin and I'm still searching for ways and means to sneak some green veg into her. So far, she seems to love carbs and meat! The only way I've been able to do this is through pasta sauce, but I don't want her to get sick of pasta, so I'm spacing out her pasta meals. She's ever changing though, so I really shouldn't stress about it, some days I'm just glad she eats!