Sooner or later, your baby will surely need more than one bottle every two hours during the day. Plus, if you offer plenty of nutritious home-cooked meals throughout the day, a couple of snacks will certainly give your growing baby a little extra nutrition and satisfy that pesky craving for something to eat.
Start with soft, ripe fruits, like bananas cut into small pieces or chop hard-boiled eggs into small, easy-to-get pieces. Cut the crust off a piece of whole wheat bread and cut it into small dice. Steam or bake the sweet potatoes and chop them up. Your baby will surely like the sweet morsels and will surely benefit from the organic nutrients. Puffed infant cereal is also a wonderful source of additional nutrients.
If you’ve been feeding your baby cereals and purees for a while, now would definitely be the time to introduce them to something that they can exercise their small motor skills on, like Cheerios and small pieces of whole grain crackers. Don’t be too quick to offer a much fancier menu, but stick to simple meals between 6 and 8 months of age.
An indicator from the American Academy of Pediatrics calls for introducing new foods one at a time so you can monitor your baby’s response to new fruits, vegetables, and meat. Soft, textured foods can be given when your baby is 8 to 10 months old.
Easy snacks to give your baby consist of banana slices, thin slices of soft cooked carrots, or short string cheese chunks starting at 9 months of age.
Below is a sweet potato snack recipe that your baby may enjoy:
Peel one 8-ounce sweet potato and cut into 12 1/4-inch-thick slices.
Place slices on a microwave-safe plate. Include 1 tablespoon of water and cover the dish with waxed paper.
Microwave on high for 2-1/2 minutes before moving the potatoes to a parchment paper-lined baking sheet.
Brush the sweet potato slices lightly with olive oil. Sprinkle the potatoes very lightly with salt and pepper, or not at all if that’s your choice. Bake at 450 degrees F for about 25 minutes. Flip the potatoes after 15 minutes and test with a fork if they are tender and golden.
This easy homemade breadsticks recipe is good for a teething baby:
Heat your oven to 200 degrees F.
Cut a few 1/2-inch slices from your bread of choice. Avoid seedy breads for this first bread choice for your baby.
Cut your slices into strips about 1-1/2-inch wide and place your breadsticks on a plain, ungreased baking sheet. Bake until bread strips are dry and crisp, about 1 hour.
When the breadsticks are taken out of the oven, they may be soft, but they will surely set up once they cool.
A truly healthy and balanced treat for your baby is a couple of small pieces of avocado. This fruit is a healthy and balanced fat that is excellent for the mental development of your baby. It is widely believed that it consists of everything we all need to survive.
To enhance the “appeal” to your baby, mash up the avocado with applesauce, bananas, or yogurt. Offer small tastes at first. Remember that sometimes it takes repeated exposure to a food to prove it.