I have been told that I do not write enough about Cedar on this site, aptly named Cedar’s Story, so I am going to try to share some of the information and posts I put up on our other social media sites like our Facebook Page and our Instagram account.  Those two places are where I share daily pictures and snippets of Cedar’s life but with all the requests, I figured he needed his very own corner here too.

Cedar has been working on feeding lately.  There are some areas of development that he is directly on target with where my typical children were at his age, and others, like his gross motor skills (sitting, crawling, etc) where he is on his own time table.  However, his feeding skills seem to be pretty much in line with my other children.  He has been nursed since birth and though it was significantly more challenging than nursing my 5 other typical children had been, it has been so worth it. (you can read about one challenge here)  I do believe that his nursing has helped him, at least in this area, with having better oral motor control than he may have had if I had been in the position to have to bottle feed him (for the record, this kid won’t take a bottle).

**DISCLAIMER** if you are reading this and some issue has prevented you from breast feeding your babe, just know that a well fed babe is by far the most important thing so please don’t be discouraged, this corner is just Cedar’s journey and is not meant as a “how to.”

One of the things that was a bit different for me with Cedar is that when it was time to start table foods, I usually do this around 6 months, Cedar was not quite able to steady himself in the highchair sitting position.  His sitting required some rolled towels on either side of him to keep him from leaning or flopping to one side or the other.  We also put some towels behind him because I found that when he was more reclined he was not as alert and into feeding as he needed to be.

Once we got the positioning right I found that he was unable to pick up the small foods (like puffs or small bits of soft food) like my other children had been.  That’s when I began thinking of all the things in the refrigerator that I could feed him that he would be able to grasp, yet I wouldn’t fear him choking on.  Bring on all the BIG things.  Carrots, Celery and Cucumbers are favs.  He doesn’t really “eat” much of them but, the items are big enough for him to grasp and he is rewarded by some taste differences as he masters getting the items to his mouth. (Ignore the funny conversation in the background, I do, afterall have 5 other kids)

The larger food items also allow big brothers to help with feeding, something they enjoy (with mom’s close watchful eye of course!)

His latest favorite food is now corn on the cob. He doesn’t actually get any of the kernels off (he is still toothless) but it is great that he can manuevuer it to his mouth and be rewarded by some sweet juice when he gums it long enough!

The self feeding is really just practice, I also make Cedar’s baby food (It is not hard like you would think) and he has been doing very well with eating.  His favorites are butternut squash, sweet potatoes and any banana combo mom creates.  I have noticed that since begining solids Cedar has had more problems in the diaper department so I have had to move very slowly (1 meal of homemade baby food a day) and everything either has a side of pureed prunes or we drink some prune juice from a straw with each meal.  This has helped us regulate from dirty diapers only happening weekly to dirty diapers every 3-4 days.  I have to watch this area very closely so he doesn’t get too backed up.

So, we began the whole self-feeding process at just shy of 7 months and have been working on it for the last several weeks. Over the course of these several weeks Cedar’s chair sitting has improved significantly and has made it so that he can focus more on the food that is on his tray than the necessity of keeping himself from falling to one side or the other while trying to sit. Cedar is almost 8 months now and just yesterday he mastered his latest skill that has this mom’s heart aflutter…he can straw drink. When I posted this video on Instagram I was flooded with questions of how I taught him this skill and I kind of chuckled because it was the same way that I taught all of my other children to straw drink, I believe it was my mom who first showed me how to teach my now 17 year old daughter how to drink from a straw when she was just a wee babe. So, here is Cedar demolishing my Strawberry-Mango-Banana smoothie that I really didn’t want to share. I will be doing a post on how to teach your little one to straw drink as well so all the other mamas can get in on this sage wisdom that came from my mom, and likely hers as well. You will be amazed at how easy it really is!