Zoe and Silas LOVE to eat.
Zoe in particular loves food. Honestly, she is like a different baby. She has always been the crankier baby, crying a lot, etc. Of course next to Silas, any baby by comparison would seem crankier, but I also know babies and do think she has a more difficult temperament. Now that she's eating food, though, she is so much happier!! And Derek and I are soooo happy to see her so much happier! She's also just recently come off the medication she has taken since birth for reflux, so that has been a good thing.
Some of you might remember that Zoe spent 3 weeks in the NICU after she was born. Basically, she was a month premature and she just wasn't ready to be born yet. She slept instead of ate, had a feeding tube, and ended up needing 3 weeks in the hospital before she was ready to consistently eat from a bottle. So feeding has always been a big concern that we have had with Miss Z.
Now that Zoe has discovered her love of real food, she has backed off quite a bit from how much formula she is drinking; Silas, however, continues to love his bottle :) The pediatrician was thrilled that the introduction of food has gone so well, because she said many babies don't do well with this transition and prefer to just drink milk. Because we want to make sure that Zoe is getting the nutritional intake she needs (she is only 28th percentile height-for-weight), we quickly moved to giving them two meals a day. The pedi said to make sure we give Zoe cereal at both meals, because baby food (i.e., fruits and vegetables) is otherwise like diet food.
For fruit, we have introduced them to bananas, blueberries, mango, plums, peaches, avocado and apples; for veg we have had carrots, peas, green beans, turnips, parsnips, sweet potato and squash. Whenever I think about introducing a new food, I check this site for info. Here's Zoe enjoying some wild blueberries.
We are practicing using sippy cups and they get a little water with every meal. Silas is bound and determined to get the hang of it, while Zoe is happy to let Mommy do it for her :)
In order to work on fine motor skills, we have graham crackers sometimes.
Sometimes Silas gets really mad during a meal, and it's because he wants the spoon!
We also found these really cool mesh bags that let the babies enjoy whole pieces of fruit. Silas LOVES frozen mango from Trader Joe's. Unfortunately he has an allergy that results in a rash on his face :( The pedi said that citrus fruits can be allergenic at this age and that we can try again in a few months.
Zoe is not that into the mesh bag, but Silas loves it and has also tried frozen peas and ice cubes that must feel good on sore gums.
As many of you know, schedules are big around our house. It's the thing that keeps us all sane most of the time. Now that S&Z are six months old, we have finally moved from a 3- to a 4-hour bottle schedule. Silas could have moved to this schedule about 2 months ago, but Zoe being a little peanut really needed to keep eating every 3 hours until the recent introduction of food. This means that we now only have 4 bottles per day! Here's what the typical schedule looks like these days:
6:30am wake up
6:45 first bottle of the day
8am breakfast-fruit, yogurt, cereal
9am morning nap
11am bottle
1pm afternoon nap
3pm bottle
5pm dinner-vegetables and cereal
6:45 jammies
7pm books & bottles
7:30 bedtime
Next stop, finger foods!
Zoe in particular loves food. Honestly, she is like a different baby. She has always been the crankier baby, crying a lot, etc. Of course next to Silas, any baby by comparison would seem crankier, but I also know babies and do think she has a more difficult temperament. Now that she's eating food, though, she is so much happier!! And Derek and I are soooo happy to see her so much happier! She's also just recently come off the medication she has taken since birth for reflux, so that has been a good thing.
Some of you might remember that Zoe spent 3 weeks in the NICU after she was born. Basically, she was a month premature and she just wasn't ready to be born yet. She slept instead of ate, had a feeding tube, and ended up needing 3 weeks in the hospital before she was ready to consistently eat from a bottle. So feeding has always been a big concern that we have had with Miss Z.
Now that Zoe has discovered her love of real food, she has backed off quite a bit from how much formula she is drinking; Silas, however, continues to love his bottle :) The pediatrician was thrilled that the introduction of food has gone so well, because she said many babies don't do well with this transition and prefer to just drink milk. Because we want to make sure that Zoe is getting the nutritional intake she needs (she is only 28th percentile height-for-weight), we quickly moved to giving them two meals a day. The pedi said to make sure we give Zoe cereal at both meals, because baby food (i.e., fruits and vegetables) is otherwise like diet food.
For fruit, we have introduced them to bananas, blueberries, mango, plums, peaches, avocado and apples; for veg we have had carrots, peas, green beans, turnips, parsnips, sweet potato and squash. Whenever I think about introducing a new food, I check this site for info. Here's Zoe enjoying some wild blueberries.
We are practicing using sippy cups and they get a little water with every meal. Silas is bound and determined to get the hang of it, while Zoe is happy to let Mommy do it for her :)
In order to work on fine motor skills, we have graham crackers sometimes.
Sometimes Silas gets really mad during a meal, and it's because he wants the spoon!
We also found these really cool mesh bags that let the babies enjoy whole pieces of fruit. Silas LOVES frozen mango from Trader Joe's. Unfortunately he has an allergy that results in a rash on his face :( The pedi said that citrus fruits can be allergenic at this age and that we can try again in a few months.
Zoe is not that into the mesh bag, but Silas loves it and has also tried frozen peas and ice cubes that must feel good on sore gums.
As many of you know, schedules are big around our house. It's the thing that keeps us all sane most of the time. Now that S&Z are six months old, we have finally moved from a 3- to a 4-hour bottle schedule. Silas could have moved to this schedule about 2 months ago, but Zoe being a little peanut really needed to keep eating every 3 hours until the recent introduction of food. This means that we now only have 4 bottles per day! Here's what the typical schedule looks like these days:
6:30am wake up
6:45 first bottle of the day
8am breakfast-fruit, yogurt, cereal
9am morning nap
11am bottle
1pm afternoon nap
3pm bottle
5pm dinner-vegetables and cereal
6:45 jammies
7pm books & bottles
7:30 bedtime
Next stop, finger foods!
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