I have been blown away by how much people have been into my posts on what my kids are eating on instagram [follow me @micheleolivier for pictures of food, babies and my life in general:] but I am also blown away by how many questions, comments and overall well wishes I get from you. While Pinterest is by far my top link for people to find my site, I feel like in Instagram, there is a sense of community that I don’t get on Pinterest, plus it’s always fun for me to see pictures of your cute baby!

So this post, which I am thinking will be a monthly post [let me know what you think of that] is really just a visual food journal of what my baby and toddler are eating these days.

But first things first,

In theory – I trryyyyyyy to feed my daughter healthy, colorful and diverse food all the time. In reality – this happens maybe 80% of the time. Life happens. We eat out. I have a rough day and pop some chicken stripes into the oven [which is more for me since Ellie won’t eat them]. I do serve boxed mac and cheese sometimes. I am a mom. I am human. These meals are not perfect and no, neither of my kids eat everything I make all the time. I do my best to make and serve good meals to help my girls have a god relationship with food.

Toddler – Ellie’s Meals

Breakfast 

This is by far Ellie’s favorite meal of the day! I am pretty sure she is going to be BIG on brunches when she gets older. The above pictures are what I serve her, and then somehow during the meal she manages to work extra food off of my husbands plate and weaseled another piece or two of fruit off of the counter.

Top Left
Meal – Whole wheat ‘almond joy’ pancakes with cacao nibs, coconut flakes and almond slivers, 1/2 egg with himalayan salt and pepper, apple spears with blackberries. Verdict – She ate 1 bite of the pancake, 1 bite of the egg, both blackberries and no apples. I got up early to ale her a healthy and special breakfast and she didn’t eat any of it. Next time – I am sleeping in!

Top Right 
Meal – Homemade granola bar, mix of dried cherries and pistachio nuts and slices of orange. This was actually a snack, but since snacks are usually on the go I thought I would share this one. Verdict – she ate the cherries and 2 hunks of granola bar, the oranges (which used to be her favorite) she tossed on the floor.

Bottom Left
Meal – Homemade oatmeal with blueberries, pecans and chia seeds, 1/2 hard boiled egg with himalayan sea salt and pepper, and a green smoothie with spinach, carrots, cucumber, apple, orange and almond milk. Verdict – She ate almost ALL of it!! Then she swiped some of hubbies avocado and bacon off his plate.

Bottom Right 
Meal – Homemade oatmeal with apples, almonds, chia seeds and a little maple syrup, 1/2 an egg (seems like we eat a lot of eggs in our house), handful of blueberries, 1/2 piece of whole wheat toast with butter and jam. Verdict – nibbled on everything but didn’t finish it all. I saved her oatmeal for snack but of course completely forgot about it and then found it a week later.

Lunch/Dinner 

The lunches I make are usually leftovers or look exactly like the dinners I make so I lumped these two meals into one category. Lunches are usually our most rushed meal because I have pushed it WAY past nap time and I usually have one or two crying kids on my hands. I will try to snap some pictures of lunches for next months post.

Top Left 
Meal – chicken teriyaki meatballs with pineapple, red and yellow peppers, rice with cilantro and coconut oil, cucumber slices. Verdict – she ate 1 meatball, all of the rice and pineapple and none of the vegetables. I then gave her a little of our salad dressing and she ate 1 bite of cucumber! Which felt like a winner to me!!

Top Right 
Meal – chicken sausage pasta with tomato sauce and parmesan cheese, chunks of avocado, for dessert she had baby’s peach puree [every thing baby eats, Ellie needs to eat as well] with cinnamon and blackberries. Verdict – she fished out all of the pasta but somehow managed not to get a single piece of chicken sausage into her mouth, ate none of the avocado and all of baby’s peach puree.

Bottom Left 
Meal – leftover hamburger and fries from our night on the town, blueberries and a smoothie of mixed berries, tons of spinach and almond milk. Verdict – she ate all of the fries:) and all of the blueberries but none of the smoothie or the burger.

Bottom Right 
Meal testing this Mexican style Tater Tot casserole for the book, with chunks of broccoli and golden beets and some pumpkin seeds. The pumpkin seeds are random, but Ellie has been having some serious growing pains in the middle of the night and magnesium from the seeds are supposed to help. Verdict – she didn’t eat a single bite! Just shoved her plate across the table and cried the entire meal. Awesome!

Baby – Parker’s Meals

Baby Parker has just started eating purees!!!! So this section will continue to grow as her appetite does.

Top Left
Meal – smashed avocado. Verdict – This was one of her first and probably favorite purees. She loves avocado and will eat it above almost anything else I serve her.

Top Right 
Meal – Pear and date puree with cloves. Verdict – I made this because she was a little backed up and not only did it work, but it tastes amazing. She loves this puree [and so do I, so I totally sneak bites in-between hers].

Bottom Left 
Meal – her first double puree meal – butternut squash and acorn squash mixed together and a side of peach puree. Verdict – she wanted nothing to do with the squash puree but devoured the peach puree. I even tried mixing the squash puree with the peach puree and she didn’t want anything to do with it. Maybe she will like it next time I serve it:)

Bottom Right
Meal – Butternut squash puree. Verdict – ate 2 bites and then just wanted to stare at her sister who was making monkey noises at her.

So I would love to know, what do you feed your baby or toddler?  Take some pictures and lets #kiddomeals this together. And if you comment below, I would love to follow you [and stalk your awesome posts in the middle of the night, no it’s not weird] on Pinterest or Instagram.