Sesame Street Blog

Word of the Day: Finger food

Our pediatrician said it’s time to move Lyra and Ripley away from bottles and baby food and more to self-feeding. I still can’t fathom giving up their morning and evening bottles in place of a sippy cup. Where’s the comfort in a sippy cup? We are quite ready to try the palate of choices with finger foods. My mornings are now spent cutting apples, bananas, strawberries and even blueberries into miniscule bites fit for little mouths. I’m still petrified of the choking factor so even the blueberries get cut into quarters. The girls are embracing their new freedom of choice with glee. Ripley is a shoveler—she grabs whole handfuls and shovels them in her mouth. Good thing her bib has a little pocket so I can rescue half the morsels that fall out of her fingers before they hit the target. Lyra is far more delicate, picking up one piece at a time and placing it pristinely into her mouth. Recently, she took the empty container of puffs and started to place them back into it one by one. She does this when she’s bored of feeding the big dog her puffs. Will she be our natural organizer? Every meal now requires a little more thought and time. What fruits or vegetables do we cut up? When do we still rely on the organic, store bought ready-to-go mashed fare? And of course, how small can we cut food down without pulverizing it? We do give them sippy cups now at dinner rather than the water bottle to wash things down. We’ll cross the comfort-bottle bridge later. Did I mention it’s now a cleaning job from hell after each meal? Bless our dog Nell who likes fruits and vegetables.