As a follow up to my Journey Into Solids post earlier this week, I wanted to share some of Finn’s recent eats. I think I’ll do this once a month. It will be fun for me to document and I hope it gives you guys some ideas!

Even before I had Finn, I LOVED it when my friend Brittany from A Healthy Slice of Life would post her kid’s meals. Just last week she wrote a post with 12 kid-friendly meal ideas as well as what her girls thought about each of the meals at 4 and 7 years old.

For the last week or so, I’ve been snapping photos of Finn’s meals. Note, I do not serve the food on the plates you see. I mostly put everything directly on his tray. I have one of the EZ PZ mats but it doesn’t stick well to the Ikea high chair. Finn thinks it’s super fun to pick it up and dump it out so we don’t use it right now.

Speaking of the Ikea high chair, I received so many requests to report back on my thoughts on it after using it for a bit.

IKEA ATILOP HIGHCHAIR REVIEW

WHAT I LOVE:

• Super economical at just $23. I spent $31 total by adding the support pillow and cover.
• Simple to assemble.
• Lightweight (just over 7 lbs) and easy to move around.
• The chair having no fabric makes cleaning a breeze! Super easy to wipe down and some have even told me that they take it outside and hose it off after especially messy meals.
• Clean lines, modern design.

WHAT I DON’T LOVE

• There is no footrest. We all know how much Finn likes to kick his little feet and man do they ever move while he’s sitting in the chair. I feel like he’d be more comfortable with something to rest them on. I also learned more about the benefits of a footrest form Feeding Littles. There are tons of hacks online to add one and even after-market footrests like this but it’s more expensive than the chair!
• The cushion insert that you can buy is rather cheap/not the best quality. It’s an inflatable thing that you blow up and one side of mine has already deflated. I don’t know that I can blame Ikea for that though because it’s entirely possible that Zoey could have been going after some food while on clean up duty and punctured it too.
• Tray is hard to remove.
• The restraints are totally fine for now but they don’t seem like something that would adequately constrain an older child. Although, I might be totally wrong here since I’ve never had an older child. If you have an older child in this chair, I’d love your thoughts!
• I’m not sure if it’s the positioning of the chair, Finn’s height in relation to the tray or what but I can’t use pocket-style bibs like this one.

I’m honestly not sure whether I will keep the Ikea chair or upgrade to something like the Stokke or Abiie. Unfortunately, with my current table/kitchen set up I can’t do a booster/compact-style chair or a clip on. I’ll keep you guys posted! 🙂

Okay! Baby eats!

FINN’S RECENT EATS AT 9 MONTHS OLD

BREAKFAST

Scrambled egg cooked in butter, orange segments, carrot maple oat banana bread with butter on top. He ate all of this plus more of the bread and a few more bites of eggs. He really liked the orange! It was his first time having it.

Half a Dave’s Killer Bread Cinnamon Raisin Remix bagel sprinkled with hemp hearts. A defrosted frozen peach slice on the side. He licked the peanut butter and hemp hearts off 2-3 slices of the bagel and just kind of gummed on the bread but didn’t eat much of it. He tasted the peach but didn’t eat it.

Half a Dave’s Killer Bread English Muffin with butter and cream cheese and a Little Spoon pitaya, pineapple spinach, banana and coconut oil cup. He half the English muffin and tasted the puree.

Braised red cabbage with apples, roasted cauliflower, turkey, cheese, avocado (I cut this into two long slices after photographing), grapes. This was his first time having grapes. He tasted them but did not eat them. He ate some of the cheese, turkey and avocado. Tasted everything else but didn’t eat much of it.

Trader Joe’s carrot and pea cake, apples sautéed in butter and cinnamon, Little Spoon Baby Blends mix of kale, white bean, pear, basil, quinoa and avocado oil. He ate all of the veggie cake…he goes crazy over these things and veggie burgers! He tasted the apples and licked/sucked on them quite a bit. He did not like the puree.

Braised red cabbage, grapes, cauliflower, diced sweet Italian chicken sausage. He didn’t eat much of this at all. It was one of those meals where he was just not feeling food and restless in his chair. He did eat some of the sausage. He really likes meat!

Butter, smashed avocado and hemp hearts on a toasted Dave’s Killer Bread English Muffin with Little Spoon mango puree. He ate the avocado off of three of the strips and gummed on the bread a bit. He tasted the mango. So did I and it was delicious! I couldn’t believe he didn’t eat more of it!

Deconstructed shrimp pasta skillet. He LOVED this! Ate two whole shrimp (I kind of smushed it and broke it up a bit for him), four or five noodles and a few pieces of kale. He seemed to really like the flavor/seasoning of this dish.

Leftover pasta, meatloaf, kale and asparagus. More of the Little Spoon mango for “dessert.” I left this for my babysitter to feed Finn while I was teaching a class and she said he crushed it! She said he ate it all!

As I mentioned in my Journey to Solids post, purees just haven’t really been Finn’s thing since we started on the solids train. The team at Little Spoon offered to send me a sampling of their amazing baby blends and I was hoping that Finn would like them since they had such interesting flavors but…not so much. I don’t know if it’s the texture or what but he just doesn’t like purees.

That being said, I tried several of them when I opened them to feed him and I thought they were delicious! So if you are going to to the puree route with introducing solids, or if you have a baby who likes purees, I would totally recommend the Little Spoon Baby Blends!

Here are some additional details.

• Quality nutrition during the First 1000 Days of a child’s life is vital to build proper cognitive development
• Little Spoon‘s baby blends are made from over 80+ organic, locally-sourced ingredients (no preservatives, additives or stabilizers!)
• Little Spoon offers a service that allows parents to customize their child’s meal plans that are delivered directly to your doorstep each week.

Note: Little Spoon provided me with the blends free of charge but I was not compensated for this mini review. We still have a few more left to try so I’m hoping he decides he likes them. I might just let him dig in on his own because he really is not a fan of me trying to feed him with a spoon. Haha.

Well…I hope you enjoyed another 1300 words from me on feeding a baby. Please feel free to skip the baby posts if it’s not your thing. I promise to keep posting workouts and recipes too but the mom stuff is taking up a lot of space in my brain right now. 🙂

QUESTIONS

What high chair do you use? If you use the Ikea high chair, any hacks/tricks to share? If you use the Stokke or Abiie, do you think it was worth the splurge? It is hard to justify going from $23 to $200+ when what we have now is workable.

Always looking for more ideas for Finn’s meals. Send any recipe ideas my way that your babies/toddlers love. I would especially like more breakfast ideas!