"I will feed myself thankyou very much!"

We are seeing an independent streak in Ryan already; especially when it comes to eating. During at least one meal a day and sometimes 2 - for some reason he never does this at breakfast - Ryan will, not exactly refuse, but make it very difficult to feed him from a spoon. Mostly this consists of waving his arms in front of his face so that getting the spoon to his mouth becomes impossible without him hitting it and sending the food flying.

The first time this happened I thought that maybe he wasn't very hungry so stopped forcing it and let him down to play, which he was happy enough with. The next time though, I gave him some finger food and found that he would eat as much of that as I would give him but still not want anything from the spoon. Ryan now prefers anything he can feed himself, except for the yummy fruit purees or yogurt which can't be eaten any other way!


I now have the challenge of trying to find a finger food to g;o with each meal; we do quite well if there's a combination of finger and spoon fed food. Fruit is not a problem since it's softer and Ryan will eat any kind: pear, banana, mango, avocado (that's a fruit right? it has a stone/pit) he even had papaya this week for a change. (He does get more variety but those are the ones he feeds himself). His staple finger foods are toast and well cooked carrot. I tried brocolli one day but it didn't go so well. I'm going to try butternut squash tonight, he loves it and it's softer. I want to try peas too.

In the photos I was attempting to give Ryan mashed carrot and corn and he was having none of it so I tipped some onto his tray and let him have a go. He managed to get some food in ,but most of it landed on his lap and he ended up getting frustrated. He ate from a spoon really well for the next two or three meals and then Mr. Independent showed up again!!