Great food for teaching your babies to spoon feed themsleves

With twins it's especially important to get kids learning to do stuff for themselves early. When you have to spoon feed two, for example, it's a real chore. But then I decided to let the girls have at the spoons themselves... I quickly discovered the MESS that two can make when learning to feed themselves with a spoon often takes more effort to clean than just sucking it up and holding the spoons for them.

I discovered the best learner food for using a spoon was mixing whole plain yogurt with a natural food thickener like granola. Initially I mixed a few big spoons of yogurt with a scant 1/4 cup of nut-free granola in a small container. I'd mix it up the night before, let it soften and thicken in the fridge and then give it to the girls to feed themselves in the morning for breakfast or their snack. I found that there's often a nut-free blueberry flavor granola in the bulk food section of many grocery stores. Also Trader Joe's has the Granola and the Three Berries which is nut free. (You could probably make your own too. I don't have my act together for that, but if I did I'd do a nut-free variation on this recipe which is delish).

This is a great paste like concoction that is hard for the toddlers to splatter everywhere. And if it falls of their spoon you can just pick up the little clump and put it back in their bowl. Since they've gotten a little more proficient we've moved on to yogurt mixed with fruit compote (as in pic above). The yogurt's consistency is more liquidy with chunks of cooked dried fruit.

My recipe for compote is basically throwing mixed dried fruits in a pot, say dried cherries, raisins, apricots and nectarines, and then adding 2 cups orange juice, 2 cinnamon sticks and a sprinkle of cloves. I simmer it until it's really soft, but watch to make sure all the liquid hasn't evaporated. Before stirring it into the yogurt I chop it to the appropriate size for their chewing ability.

On a related note: I've been doing this with my girls for months now and it's a still a very messy proposition. So I heartily recommend this piece of equipment: Bumkins junior bibs (see left). Somehow the pocket at the bottom catches almost everything they can throw down and the full shoulder protection is mighty helpful.

We are getting somewhere, though. When they eat things like peas now they insist on spoons and while they put them on the spoons with their fingers, it's still a step in the right direction.