Introducing 3rd meal for 9 month olds

Hi,
We are starting to introduce a third meal, and changing their schedule slightly to accomodate this. Currently they are having Cereal & fruit for breakfast along with a bottle, and meat & veg or chicken & veg for dinner. What can I give them for Lunch? I like to give them a variety of foods, but they are still on pureed , slightly lumpy food, they gag if the food is too chunky. Should I be worried that they still haven't mastered 2nd stage foods? They are 9 months old (8 adjusted) Thanks everyone!

 

My girls ate stage 2 for the longest time, they never ate stage 3. When we added a third meal, it was a jar of fruit and a jar of veg. We did oatmeal cereal with fruit in the a.m., fruit and veg for lunch, and then a meat combo meal or veg and rice cereal for dinner.

 

Mine are 5 months old and eat veggies for breakfast -- heck they don't care. I always have pears mixed in with something because pears are better than prunes for constipation.

Heather

 

Mine are the same age as yours and still haven't progressed to chunky foods either. So, we do a cereal and fruit in the morning (usually 4-6 ozs. total), then lunch is the pureed mac and cheese that they love (the 4 oz. jar) OR more fruit and a veg, and then dinner is the meat and veggie combo meals, typically one jar or if they seem up for it I give an extra veggie on the side (2-3 ozs. more)...They seem pretty satisfied with the solid meals I offer - At least I hope so

 

Mine are still on stage 1 foods - as soon as I run out, I am switching to stage 2. For breakfast they have cereal and fruit. At lunch it's a veggie and a fruit. Dinner is meat and veggie.

 

you could try a veg and YoBaby.

We do:
7 AM - nurse
8 AM Breakfast-oatmeal mixed with EBM and cinnamon, share a Stage 2 fruit
9:30-10:30 or 11 (on a good day =) nap
11:00 or 11:30 nurse
noon Lunch-share Stage 2 veg mixed with 1 TBSP rice cereal, share a Stage 2 fruit
1:30 or 2 until anywhere from 2:30 to 4 (on a good day =) nap
nurse when they get up
5 PM Dinner-share Stage 2 veg mixed with 1 TBSP rice cereal, each has her own YoBaby
6:30 or 7 bedtime

With each meal, I put something on their tray for finger food ... Cheerios, Puffs, cut up soft fruit (melons, bananas, peeled and quartered grapes), cut up cooked veggie (I am lazy and just get the canned ones), toast with a little butter and cut up, little pieces of cheese (I get the string cheese and cut it into little cubes) ... etc ...

Mine will still eat the baby food and I tried some Stage 3 dinners tonight ... I gave them Turkey and Veggies ... it actually looked really gross so I don't think I will buy that anymore. They ate it though?! They are really good with the solids and I am lucky that it hasn't been a struggle!

BTW, mine are 9 mos. also ... my Pedi gave me the OK for dairy at 7 months b/c we have no dairy allergies in our families.

Anyway, good luck!

 

We also do a lot of finger foods at lunch. They don't always get a lot of food in their tummy, but they enjoy it more! Lately they're splitting a grown-up container of yogurt while they mess around with cut-up soft fruit (ripe pears, kiwi, banana are all big), little pieces of cheese, toast, unseasoned rice cake broken into small pieces, egg yolk (not a big hit), little bits of soft chicken, tiny bits of broccoli florets, etc. Sometimes I mix some pureed fruit into the yogurt, too.

They're allergic to dairy, so we do soy yogurt and soy cheese.

 

At all meals we do a little of many things, they seem to like this. We do pieces of fruits and veggies, you might try this they may do better than chunky foods. yogurt, cheese, breads,chicken noodle soup mashed, avocados, they love crackers, we try to go a fruit, veggie/meat, yogurt and crackers/bread at each lunch and dinner.

 

Our pedi suggested this food breakdown when adding a third meal.. She said she would make sure they have 2 fruits, 2 veggies and 2 proteins/grains a day. That meant we usually did fruit and cereal for breakfast, fruit and veggie for lunch, and veggie and meat for dinner. Oh and don't worry about the texture thing. One of my girls didn't stop gagging from texture until she was almost 11 months. I worried that I'd have to puree her first birthday cake, but then something clicked and by the time she turned 1 she was on almost all table food.

One thing I did to get her used to more texture was to gradually mix the cereal lumpier. GL!