Baby Led

We made all of Akilah's food when she was a baby starting when she was around 7.5 - 8 months old. At the time I knew nothing about the concept of Baby Led Weaning. "Weaning" in the sense of an introduction to solid foods, NOT in the sense of ceasing to drink mama milk.

This time around, well, let's just say this route makes much more sense for us. SO. MUCH. more.

Kaia will basically spend some time "playing" with food. We will never feed her any. She will teach herself to learn to chew through this play, etc. I could go on and on, but honestly I have a knitting project awaiting me so I am just gonna get to the photos.

Caution - cute baby alert! Oh and there are a zillion photos but the progression is priceless!

"What? Me?"

"Ooooo I think I got something!"

Eeeeee what IS this?!

So this baby led deal is incredibly messy. It didn't take Annabelle too long to figure out where the best place to be during dinnertime is! (There was not actually much that ended up in her mouth. She was trying to figure it out though! It was rather priceless to watch.)

(Apparently I didn't give her big enough pieces of carrot. They are supposed to be long thin sticks. Oh well. Nothing fancy going on around here; I just grabbed her some pieces out of my soup and stuck 'em on her tray. Up until today she was completely content playing with a spoon. She has, however, been more and more interested in what the big kids are up to during meal time. "Food before one is just for fun" is a really common saying in our world of parenting, however, I want to add "and learning" to that phrase. And so we begin. The learning and exploration phase!

"‘wean’ - This is meant in the Brit sense, not the American. In the UK, ‘weaning’ means ‘adding complementary foods’, whereas in the States it means ‘giving up breastfeeding’."

"Introducing solids to your baby using "table foods" rather than purees is what Baby led Weaning is all about."

More info here and here. And I just recently picked up this book.