Eating Healthy

I got teeth! (^_^)

This post will be about some of my frustrations lately, so proceed with caution.

A week from now, my daughter will turn 11 months old. (Man, where does time go?) She's growing beautifully, reaching all her milestones as she should. To this day she can stand as long as she holds onto something (though yesterday we noticed her standing on her own for about two seconds), has three teeth, with the fourth coming in any day now, talks all the time, and she still breastfeeds plenty (though it's getting less and less). She seems overall to be a happy baby.

However, she is almost 11 months old, which means weaning will be soon on us. There's really no problem with that, it's the natural order of things, but I realized something couple days ago. While she's been drinking less and less breast milk lately (on her own), we failed to up her nutrition during regular meal times. I've been living in "7-8 month old baby"-mode for the past 3 months, where most of her nutrition still came from breast milk.

Don't get me wrong, she is being fed, but she generally eats what we eat with my husband, and it's not always the most balanced. We don't eat anything heavily fried or unhealthy, though, so that's at least a plus, but I doubt we reach our daily requirements of fruits and vegetables, for example. Maybe I kind of do, since I eat school lunches at least 4 days a week. (Don't think about US lunches here; Japanese lunches are healthy and delicious. Here's an article from the Washington Post about Japanese school lunches.) But I doubt my husband cooks a separate lunch for himself, which leaves our daughter eating either last night's dinner, bread, or apple slices (on a good day) during the day.

So what do I do? Last night I decided to google "healthy weekly meal plan for toddlers" because A, I have no idea how much of what she should eat daily or weekly, and B, even if I knew the amounts, I doubt I could make it varied. But, it couldn't be that complicated.

What I found made me a bit upset. "Turkey Avocado Pitas," "Belgium Flax Waffles," "Pasta with Homemade Marinara Sauce," "Quinoa Fajitas," and don't forget "Vegetarian Tamale Pie"... I don't even know what that last two supposed to be, forget about making it! Yes, yes, I'm sure, if I googled it I could find a recipe or something, but that's besides the point. When did toddler nutrition become so.... sooo.... complicated and fancy? I understand variety, and I appreciate it, too. But, and correct me if I'm wrong, the shopping list for these meals seems like something I could only get in WholeFoods (costing an arm and a leg) and not very season-friendly (one of the breakfasts had blueberries... in February...). And considering how little a toddle eats per meal (according to Health24 a one-year-old should eat a tablespoon of each food), a weekly meal like the one above doesn't seem at all cost efficient, especially considering that even the smallest packaging tends to be pretty big, or if not, quite expensive.

There was one website that seemed a bit better, since I actually knew what most of the meals were supposed to look like and they put little reminders of making batches and freezing it for later. They even pulled the meals apart by food categories: grains, fruits, veggies, dairy, protein. Also, since it was a single sample weekly meal plan, I could even forgive them for having blueberries and peaches in there. Thw few problems I did have with it were not being able to buy some things (like turkey) in Japan and fish or beans/lentils missing completely.
The best looking guide I found was from a Canadian website, and it came in the form of a pdf. They included not just nutrition but things about keeping active as well. It's a start.

This is going to be a three-day weekend for us here in Japan. I'm going to spend it by making an extra effort in creating nutritious and healthy meals for my child. Because nothing says "I love you" better than a good meal... well, at least for a Hungarian. (^_~)v