Olivia has been eating solid foods for just over a month now, and it has become very apparent that she does not prefer foods being fed to her. She also doesn't really care for puree baby foods all that much either. We even tried to pour puree food on the highchair cover for her to possibly grab and eat herself.. both messy and very ineffective. So here we are sitting in the same position that we were with Ava bug just three years prior. With Ava, we continued to push purees and eventually she just jumped on board. Justin and I decided we didn't want to take that route with Olivia. Thus the reason decided to look into baby led weaning. 

Some of you might be wondering: What is baby led weaning?

“Baby Led” is an approach to weaning and introducing solid foods to your baby.

Introducing solids to your baby using “table foods” rather than purees is what baby led weaning is all about. I will be honest, I associated alll the negative stigmas with baby led weaning. More so because I've heard SO many incidents where babies are choking, (in some cases) dying, and overall not having good experiences with being fed table food without proper precaution. I've also never been comfortable giving our babies solid foods when they don't have teeth to chew. With all this in mind, we decided to take a leap and start Olivia off on a very, very ripe banana. Each piece of banana was the size of about a pea (or a tad larger, at first). To our surprise, she picked up every single piece given to her and ate it. Without trouble. Without hesitation.

I then decided to make the ripe banana pieces slightly larger - about the size of three baby puffs stacked together. Our girl did wonderfully with those sized pieces as well. After watching Olivia eat an entire portion of banana, we realized this would be how our daughter would be eating her foods from here on out. 

This afternoon (after her nap), I tried the same route with pears. TOTAL HIT. She loved it, ate most of it, and lunchtime ended with a happy baby Livy! 

♥- Leilani

Baby Food

Miss Ava will be six months before we know it, and I have already been on the hunt for tools to make her baby food with. At first, I was going to go with the baby bullet. I mean it's in the name, clearly it's for a baby. Then I thought, oh no, let's buy something more expensive (a steamer and a food processor all in one) I read the reviews on some of those items geared for babies.. So many reviews claimed that the parts broke easily, the product didn't work for very long, etc. After all that research, Justin and I have finally come up with a preparing/storing plan.

Instead of relying on a quicker less satisfying way to steam Ava's baby food. We are using a traditional method:

A stainless steel vegetable steamer! It does take longer, but the water has a lot of vitamins in it that you can add to your pureed foods. This method is extremely cost effective and you don't have to worry about it not working properly. It just fits right into any saucepan.

We are using the magic bullet for blending baby food. I watched a ton of youtube videos, read a thousand reviews, and asked close friends their thoughts about this blender vs. the baby bullet. 95% of them chose the magic bullet. I saw the puree difference. The baby bullet left chunks, the magic bullet did not. Since this is just a normal blender, we are able to use it in our home once Ava is done with her pureed stage foods. 

As far as storage, we plan on freezing a good stock of her home made baby food. I am using Beaba freezer trays for this task. I got to play with one of these and it was awesome! Super easy to pop out frozen portions of food. Each container holds 2 ounces. Perfect serving size! 

We are also using Beaba for a few other baby products for Princess A after she's got the hang of solids.

All of the items for making and storing Ava's baby food combined are less than $100.00.  One month's worth of organic jarred baby food  would cost me over 60 bucks, this is not only a healthier option for Baby Ava, but a cost efficient option as well. 

Do any of my readers make their baby's food? If so, what tools do you use? I'm always looking for feedback or more insight! 

Make it a great day!