We have an eating machine on our hands! Ella was showing such a strong interest in eating what we were that we decided to see how she did with some “big girl” food. Well, let me tell you, there will be no stopping this baby! She will eat whatever is placed in front of her with no hesitation. And she feeds herself too (which is just too cute!)

This picture was taken just a few weeks ago when she was eight months old. Now she’s a whopping nine months old and my baby’s growing up too quickly, but that’s for another post… Anyway, I was having minestrone soup that my mom had made from scratch and I mashed up some of the carrots and pasta shells for Ella to try. As you can see from her beaming parsley and veggie broth covered face, she certainly enjoyed it.

I’m vegan (eat no animal products or by-products) and my husband is vegetarian, and we love to try new recipes and do a lot of cooking at home. It’s nice to know that we’re giving Ella healthy foods that we prepared ourselves, and it’s so much fun to share with her. So far she’s had spaghetti with tomato sauce, macaroni salad, pasta (picked out of a dish with tofu, asparagus and red peppers), and rice picked out of a stir fry. And all this is in addition to her regular pureed/mashed fruits and veggies, cereal, formula, and her all time favorite-Cheerios! I think we may try some avocado and tofu next. Yum!

We’ve also been working on learning how to drink from a cup. She gets ridiculously excited when she sees me with a cup and she squeaks and bounces up and down until I share with her. She’s doing really well with taking sips and swallowing the water. Knowing how excited she is to drink from our cups, we gave her her own sippy cup with handles and thought she’d be thrilled. Nope. Apparently that cup is good for nothing but banging on things. So we’ll keep going with the grown up cups and try the sippy cups again later.