Monkey Business

AJ received this cute monkey bag from my friend, Andrea, at his Chicago baby shower. It came filled with books, but we have taken to using it for his food bag whenever we go on an outing. While it would be more efficient to pack the food into one bag with his diapers, I like the idea of keeping the food separate from the poopie diapers.

The second picture shows a typical menu for a meal for AJ: a banana, a jar of turkey and vegetables, a jar of carrots, and some crackers. He would mix in a little bit of table food from our plates with this too. Yesterday he tried part of a meatball sandwich from Potbelly's that was a big hit with him, and tonight he had some lasagna off my plate. I hear that kids are supposed to be able to be 100% transitioned over to table food only by a year, so we are working on getting AJ to eat more big people food. Anything pasta related seems to be an easy sell so far. I am going to have to start working on a wider variety of things. This is good for us, because it gets Joe and I to focus on eating a wider variety of things ourselves. Joe is especially predictable in his food choices to the point that I can order for him off a menu at a new restaurant without any input from him. The algorithm goes something like this: (1) pesto pasta; (2) if 1 is not available, then something with sausage; (3) if 1 and 2 are not on the menu, then a cheeseburger...and so on. You get the idea. My parents did a good job of getting my siblings and me to try new foods when we were little. I remember calamari, Moroccan lamb, oysters, cow's tongue, Japanese stir-fry and similar things that seemed very exotic to my small town Iowa roots. I hope to be able to encourage AJ to be an adventurous eater as well.