Lots of questions

RetromamaJess · 12-12-2006, 10:55 PM

I was just watching surviving motherhood, and the episode was about a 15 month old who wouldn't eat. It sounds very familiar to me, so i wanted to know what everyone else was doing......

Michael has his good and bad days.....some days he eats, some days he won't. He likes to throw the food on the floor...i know they go through this cause and effect thing because they want to see what happens.....is that why he is doing it?

I have a 80lb lab, and when Michael eats, she either sits right at his feet and puts her head in his lap, or she follows him around, and takes it out of his hand. I can't lock the dog up all day. I have tried putting her in my bedroom when he eats, but then he sits in his chair and "calls" the dog and won't eat until she comes out

He is sitting in a booster at the table with us. Sometimes he eats ok there, and sometimes he eats better in the highchair. What is everyone else useing?

Michael has started to refuse his bottles. At first i thaught it was ears/teeth, but now i don't think so.....he likes to take it out of the fridge, and then he puts it right back in and shuts the door. If he does drink out of it, he takes like 2 sips, and swallows like he would with a cup. Tonight was the first night since Friday that he took a bottle before bed. Is it normal to try and wean him already(even though he's weaning himself)? Should i just not offer the bottle, even though he asks for it by name, and then throws it down when i give it to him?

I need some healthy snack ideas....i seem to always resort to cheez its and sugar wafers. He likes apple slices, but he never eats the whole thing, and he tries to give it to the dog....but other than that...something he can feed himself that is healthy that i don't have to worry about being messy...is that too much to ask?

What are good snacks for the days i have a ton of errands? I know this is horrible, but somedays I notice it's 11, and he has had nothing to eat since say 7:30 or 8....i run through a drive thru (usually chick fi la) and get him some kind of chicken sandwich or something to eat..or we end up at Starbucks with shortbread cookies, and a latte for me ....

Do you sit your dc down for a snack, or do you let them walk around and eat a snack?

TIA for reading all my questions.....

Mommy2Meghan-Caleb · 12-12-2006, 11:10 PM

Jess...

Caleb throws his food on the floor ALL the time. And anytime he is eating anything the dog is right there waiting for something to get dropped. Totally normal. If he is hungry he'll eat and then start throwing food and if he isn't and starts throwing things then I put him down and the meal is over.

Caleb eats better in a booster seat at the table with us. I use the highchair some but not much.

He is still breastfeeding so we don't give bottles much. He uses a sippy cup during the day and nurses at night. Very rarely I will give him a bottle of milk when he wakes up if I am trying to get ready for work. I can give him a sippy of milk as well and he is just as happy with it. The bottles are pretty much gone for us. When Meghan was this age we weaned her to a cup by about a year old and replaced her nighttime sippy cup of milk with water (slowly watered down the milk until it was all water.) She still goes to bed with a sippy cup (sports bottle now) of water.

I don't let Caleb walk around with food much. It gets everywhere and drives me crazy, I also can't watch him for choking if he is running around out of my sight with food. Occasionally I will let him have crackers in the playroom, but most snacks are in the kitchen or dining room either in the highchair or booster seat. He loves string cheese, canned or fresh fruit chunks, deli sliced turkey or roast beef, crackers, goldfish, cheerios, and grilled cheese. I do let him carry a sippy cup of water around and he drinks about 10-12 ounces of water a day.

Hope that helps!
Suzanne

jillian1527 · 12-13-2006, 12:18 AM

consider yourself lucky he is self weening! really, its not easy to get that one done if they are attached.
as far as eating he seems really normal to me. Ty has gotten to the point to where I don't feed him at all. He has to sit on his own chair at the table and have a plate and fork like everyone else. some food gets thrown but its mostly sippys. Then he hollers at Chloe to pick it up for him.
Ty is picky too. He will not eat meat of any kind. Hot dogs are as close as it gets for us. fruit cups, pudding cups, fruit snacks, bananas,kiwi,apples,oranges,Mandarin oranges,see the fruit pattern here?

he is on a cheese and bread kick right now too,Spaghetti O's...any finger foods we try,but I just leave it out so he can piece as much as he wants.Sounds like you guys cant do that.

fyrestar · 12-13-2006, 02:17 AM

Parker's very bad about throwing food on the floor (he learned from the best though!

) and is just now starting to get very picky. He used to eat anything and everything we put in front of him, but now he's more interested in playing. He's been in a booster seat since he was about 11 months old, although we do still keep the tray on it (versus Cade, who has the same booster but eats pushed up to the regular table.) Once he gets a bit less messy we'll get rid of the tray. He never ate well in a highchair, hated the cushiony sides (feeling of confinement I guess lol.)

As far as bottles, Parker's been off the bottle for 2 months now. Just like Cade we took that away at 14 months. It's good Michael's self-weaning, the more teeth they get in the more they say bottles can be damaging. Right now he uses the Nuby cup (the one with the soft almost nipple-like spout) for milk and I still offer him a cup when he wakes up, one before his nap(s) and one before bed. He's definitely not drinking as much as he would if he had a bottle, but still getting his daily recommended amount and then some. We'll have him off the Nuby and onto regular sippy cups by the time he's 18 months old. He'll drink out of a regular one now, but at this age he's more interested in dumping it everywhere

The boys get a morning snack around 10 (unless Parker woke up early and is down for a morning nap) and then another snack between lunch and naptime, around 1pm. Usually I'll give them each a bowl of crackers (Triscuits, goldfish, Ritz, etc) or string cheese, cubed cheese, grapes or apple slices, raisins, teddy grahams or graham crackers, etc. plus some juice or milk. I let them walk around with their snack or put in a video so they can sit and eat it (although Parker doesn't care for TV so he usually just walks around with the bowl.) Once in a while I'll give them something a bit messier for a snack (celery with peanut butter, yogurt, etc) and then they'll go into their seats in the dining room.

belinda · 12-13-2006, 10:21 AM

From personal experience...the earlier you wean them from the bottle, the better it is. Especially before bedtime or naps. When I got involved with David, Katelynn was 1 1/2 and was using a bottle...by the time I moved in with him, he was STILL giving her a bottle (well after the age of 2) and it was HORRIBLE getting her weaned off of it. Zachery was weaned off the bottle at a year and onto a sippy cup.

I've taught both of them (from the get go) that eating and drinking are only allowed in the kitchen (unless it's water)....this has GREATLY helped as they've gotten older and wanted to eat in front of the TV or playroom or throughout the house. Sippy cups were lined up on the table or counter (they each had a specific color so that they weren't confused on who was which cup) and they could go in there and reach it whenever they were thirsty. Although, this is just a personal preference for me...that way, you don't find sippy cups of milk under or behind things a month later! (had that happen too). BLAH!

Zachery ate in a booster seat at the kitchen table with us for meals and snacks. Snacks usually consisted of apples, grapes, oranges, cherrios, crackers, yogurt (he LOVED yogurt - I just had to be sure to buy the THICK yogurt so that it wasn't messy

) Food was not allowed in any part of the house. It's been awhile, I'm trying to remember anything else. Hope that helps.

Good luck hon!

Lisa · 12-13-2006, 10:53 AM

The girls have all given you lots of ideas. I agree about the weaning from the bottle, my niece is 22 months and is still attached to hers. My sister is having a horrible time getting her off of it. Kaitlyn was on sippys as soon as she was able to hold it herself 3-4 months because she never liked the bottle. She refused to drink the bottles at daycare, so one day the dcp tried one of the sippys I had left there for the future when she would need them, I told her do whatever you can do to get her to eat, and she took to it like a champ. The bottles went bye bye that night and she has used them ever since. I started with the take n toss and went to the nubys, but she realized if you pound the nipple on something the liquid comes out. So now we are using the playtex sipsters. She loves them, they dont leak as long as the valve is in correctly and she can carry it around with her wherever she wants. I give her juice or water to carry around with her and only give her milk with meals, plus she nurses in the morning before daycare, when we get home from daycare, before bed and usually a few time during the night. The only food she gets when she is not in highchair sitting down is cheerios. I figure they vacumn up pretty easily. As far as meals, she eats what we are eating plus sometimes I just give her the gerber graduates meals. She loves the ravioli ones. She gets deli meats(turkey, ham, bologna, chicken), cheese(string or i rip up pieces of sliced cheese), crackers(ritz, goldfish, graham,animal, soup), newtons(fig and raspberry), apples, oranges, melon, strawberries, pineapple. She loves the gerber graduates cereal snacking squares. She will sit and eat them all day long if I let her(they have banana and vanilla ones), plus salerno mini butter cookies, and fruit snacks too. She also is one that throws all her food on the floor, once she starts throwing it,it usually means she is done and i get her out of the highchair. Unfortunately we dont have a dog to clean up the mess.

Also she really likes the yogurt smoothies that you can buy, i cant remember what brand they are but they are just big enough to give her with a meal in place of milk, they have tons of flavors, they are by the kids yogurts.

Koloe · 12-13-2006, 12:54 PM

Liriel starts tossing her food when she's about done eating. Or if she doesn't like what ever I've given her. If there are 2 things on her try and one she doesn't care for, she will toss the item she doesn't like on the floor to get to what she does like.

Very normal behavior - I just wish I had a good clean up helper like you do.

I've purchased the Gerber freeze dried fruit - ussually more for traveling away from home. Fruit cups. Crackers - goldfish are popular and come in different colors and flavors. Cheerios. Cheese - cut/cubed or American Slices. Yogurt - I've been getting the Yo-Baby yogurt because it's made with whole milk and cost about the same as the other stuff I normally buy for me. Frozen peas and corn. For awhile I could skip cooking them, but she's not too fond of frozen vegies anymore. So now I heat them up again. She also like carrots - which need to be cooked to soften them up. I cook her vegies in the microwave. Bannas and grapes are quick and healthy. I will try other soft fruits when I have them too. I've given her beef sticks - but have to watch for choking with that, because she can't always handle the skin of it and will some times shove it all in her mouth and choke on it. But when she doesn't do that it works well.

I prefer her to be sitting down in the highchair or elsewhere to eat, as when she's walking around she likes to toss her food where ever when she's done with it. I also don't like her out of my sight for long as she still chokes on stuff, even things she shouldn't.