Food Cards for Communicating with Baby

My first baby was a late talker.. and a picky eater.

R didn't eat solid food 'til he could pick it up himself at ten months (usually for just a small sampling). Trying to figure out what this boy would eat was the bane of my existence.  I would have sleepless nights worried about him getting enough nutrition and gaining enough weight.  Scarred from his "failure to thrive" diagnosis when he was an infant, I worried far too much about what went in and what came out of that boy.  R was also my first child, so when my second came around who was even smaller, no one worried.  Number three was nine pounds four ounces at birth so we didn't even HAVE to feed him.

By the time R was two, he knew at least a hundred signs, which he learned from Signing Time videos.  ( I highly recommend signing to your babies).

We even made up some signs.

Cottage cheese was a mixture of the sign for house and the sign for cheese.

But we just couldn't sign for all our food choices.

So I made food cards.

I took photos of our common snack and meal items, glued them on 3x5 cards and laminated them with a stick and peel laminating pack.

When it came time to eat, I'd choose two to four cards with food that I had on hand and was ready to prepare.  He'd point to the card with the food he wanted and voila!

The cards helped him feel like he had more control of his food choices and they gave us better luck in finding a winner.

Even though sometimes it was fed to the dog or smeared over his body.