Adventures in Finger Food: Take One

I actually had my camera handy for Fynn's first official forward crawl last week.  I wasn't in a hurry besides the fact that I could tell it was frustrating for him when the only direction he could manage was backward.  But forward he went at our friends' wedding reception on the 11th. Ah, my little baby's getting so big!  He has now decided that baby food is just too, well, babyish for him.  I mean, he is a big boy who can crawl now, and sporting four teeth, no less! =)  I was able to prolong them a little bit by thickening them with rice cereal or fine oat meal, but now he'll just take one bite or two, then decide he'd rather have whatever Josh or I are eating.

We have been giving him little bites of whatever we're eating, enough to make little meals lately, but I find he really wants to feed himself sometimes.  So I'm diving into the world of finger foods.  I'm afraid I can be one of those people who learns by trial and error with some things, and this was one.  I want to find a simple way to do things that will work for us.

Okay, so I had a sweet potato (one of Fynn's favorite baby foods) and tried to prepare it a little differently this time.  I cut it down into french fry-sized pieces, then put half in a pot of water to boil and the other half I laid out on parchment paper to bake.  Of the later I sprinkled a third with nutmeg, a third with paprika and left a third plain.  These I baked at 350 for 10 minutes.

The boiled strips got done first, so this is what I gave him for lunch.  I guess I boiled them too long, because they just fell apart in his grasp.  So I hand fed him the little portions and made the rest into the old baby food.  You never know, maybe I can talk him into eating it later!

The later half got done and cooled while we were eating.  They turned out the consistency of half dried apples: still moist, but floppy.  I tried them all first and the ones with paprika just tasted bitter so I threw them out to the chickens.

I was so excited for Fynn to try these, I gave him a plain one right away, but by this time, he was quite full from lunch and had no intrest in eating anymore, but at least I know he can grip them: