A Short History of Zain and Food

Zain loves his food.  But he's recently entered a phase where he wants to feed himself.  Occasionally, he'll still let us shovel it in, but most of the time now he rejects the spoon.  His pincer grasp is pretty good, although usually the item gets palmed and then shoved in the general direction of his mouth.  Shif and I have different feeding styles.  Her theory is "put it all down and he'll eat what he wants" and my policy is usually "a few at a time".  But listening to him grunt and groan his displeasure if I don't get the pieces down fast enough usually leads me to start following Shif's plan.  There's not a lot of moderation for this boy.  If there are five Cheerios on the tray, he'll try to get all five in his hand at once.  Same goes for gooier things like banana.  I've just resigned myself to the fact that we'll be mopping the floor after every meal.  

Here's a brief history of Zain and solid food:

We've made almost all of his food ourselves.  Lots of cereals early on - oats, millet, barley, and rice.

An early (unintentional) attempt at finger food - pureed sweet potato is not the best choice

He's resourceful

Cousin Naeem takes a turn at feeding duties

You may recall Zain's first encounter with bananas.... pure hate

He has since changed his mind

Quinoa is always fun to eat

Our freezer has housed lots of pureed food - including this kiwi and mango

A running list of foods he had tried

Impatient?  Helping himself to some black beans

As finger foods become more popular, faces get messier...

... especially after big, gooey raspberries from our neighbour Michelle's backyard