Homemade baby food does not just include purees. Now that Judah is able to pick up food with his fingers and feed himself, finger toast has become one of our favorites. I've only served it for breakfast, but you can certainly accompany these with lunch or dinner, too.
Up until recently, I would cut the finger toast up into small bite-sized pieces to keep Judah from cramming the entire stick in his mouth at once. Now he can handle biting it into pieces on his own. Warning: Your baby will want to crush the toast in his fingers and place maybe half of it in his mouth and half on the floor, his body or his face. I suggest feeding to your baby before dressing, so he's only in a diaper and can be easily wiped down of crumbs afterwards. 🙂
You can get creative with your toast and use spreads of your desire. Judah seems to like cream cheese, avocado and apple butter on his. Not necessarily together. 🙂
My adventures in homemade baby food have been fun. I still have some more posts to share my experiences, failures, likes and dislikes. One of the areas where I have lacked is making Judah's meat purees. I've found the recipes to be a little time consuming and they never end up being the consistency he likes. He still doesn't have teeth, and once he does, it'll be easier to just cut down the food we're eating instead of making him his own. So, I've turned to the store-bought jars for lunch. Lunch is when Judah gets his meals that include meat.
In my baby food basics post, I promised I would keep you informed on Judah's feeding schedule. Here's where he is now at almost 10 months (I can't really give the size amounts anymore as I haven't kept track):
At 9 Months:
Breakfast - fruit (either pureed or diced), baby oatmeal cereal or finger toast or egg yolk omelet
Lunch - protein (chicken, beef or turkey puree - Stage 3 store bought baby food), cottage cheese
Dinner - veggies, baby rice cereal, baby yogurt, meals we eat (if appropriate)
Snacks - twice a day (mid-morning, mid-afternoon)
4-6 ounce bottles, 4 times a day (total of 18 - 20 ounces per day)
