Foodstuff

A few people have emailed me in the past couple of weeks asking about how making my own baby food is going, whether I'm happy I chose to do it, whether I have any tips, etc. So I thought I would do a little update on how the baby food making is progressing. In short, it's going great. I am really happy with my decision to make all of Charlotte and Jensen's food...not only from a monetary standpoint, but from a nutritional standpoint as well. I love knowing exactly what they're eating and, for whatever reason, I just get a lot of satisfaction from making their food and feeding it to them.

I make pretty much all of their food in batches: cook, peel, puree, and freeze. The bottom drawer of our freezer is chock full of Ziploc bags full of cubes of fruits and vegetables. Honestly, it's not terribly time-consuming: I usually make batches after Charlotte and Jensen are asleep, or when my mom or Brian are around to watch them. I don't have any special "gadgets" other than my pots and pans and a blender! I actually ordered this...

but when it arrived I took it out, looked at it, put it back in the box, and shipped it back. It looks really cool and I've heard great things about it, but my countertop is so jam-packed with bottle warmers, drying racks, etc. (remember, two of everything!) that I just didn't want to deal with it. (Plus, any time I can save $130 or so, it's always a good thing.) And I've managed just fine without it.

Now that Charlotte and Jensen are getting older, not everything has to be pureed. They enjoy eating tiny bits of cheese (goat cheese is a particular favorite--after all, they are my kids), banana, scrambled egg yolk and avocado. Watching them learn to feed themselves has been so fun! A lot of their food still ends up on their laps, but that's okay...they're getting the hang of it. Charlotte and Jensen now eat breakfast, lunch and dinner...and I know these are my first kids, but it really seems to me like they eat a lot. A few of their favorites are cheese (I know, you're surprised), sweet potato, butternut squash, and they actually seem to enjoy spinach!

And now for the brutal honesty: I am careful--no, make that totally paranoid--about what my babies eat. At Charlotte and Jensen's nine-month checkup, our pediatrician said they could eat anything except honey. Which means that, according to her, they could be chowing down on egg whites, peanut butter, and shellfish with no worries. But have I given them any of those things? Of course not. That would be too easy. Instead, I have been fretting and consulting various print and Internet sources, trying to decide when and if I should feed them those things. But there's more: Should I give them peanut butter or almond butter? Cow's milk or goat's milk? Should I keep them on a gluten-free diet or introduce gluten? Is soy something that needs to be avoided, too? It seems like there is a ridiculous amount of information floating around out there about what babies and kids should and shouldn't be eating...I honestly had no idea that I would have to make this many choices about their diet. It is becoming quite overwhelming.

I kind of just want to bury my head in the sand. And feed Charlotte and Jensen a diet consisting solely of homemade popcicles. I think they'd be okay with that.