It seems as though we’ve come to a turning point in our Baby-led Weaning. From day one, I’ve been handing Peanut very large pieces of food so that she can take bites off. For a long time she didn’t even eat grapes because one time that they made her gag. Now that Peanut is a toddler, we have to cut things up for her so that she can try to eat them with a fork. Not only that, but she wants to pick up the small things. If you give her a plate of Chinese food, she’ll pick all the peas, carrots, and ham out of the ham fried rice and leave everything else.

It makes sense to me that she’s at this turning point. I realize that she still has the ability to choke (heck, we all do), but we’re past the really critical stage. She also wants to use her silverware. She used to dive into casseroles without hesitation and now she gets upset because her hands are messy. It all feels like very toddler behavior, but at the same time it feels almost as if I’m going against everything that Baby-led Weaning has taught me. I need to dig out the book again and read over the 1 year and older chapter(s). Maybe that’ll give me more insight to this.

We got some silverware from Ikea that looks like normal silverware, but smaller. She has some silverware made from corn, but it’s hard to stab things and I think she didn’t like it because it looked different. Peanut kept trying to steal my forks and it made me nervous that they were so sharp. This silverware is sharp enough to poke her food, but not so sharp as to poke herself.

Did you feel weird when you had to start cutting your Baby-led Weaner’s food? Any safety tips you’d like to share for older Baby-led Weaners?