He is my Nr 4.
He was BF to 13 months.
Weaned on my usual haphazard combination of purees/lumpy food/finger foods at 6 months.
He will take smoothies (commercial or homemade) or banana milkshake if offered in an open cup with a straw 
which means I have to hold things for him as I'd have to redecorate if I left him to it... Also smooth yoghurts sometimes work.
He will (sometimes) tolerate tomato sauce - either Dolmio kind of stuff or baby jar stuff or spaghetti hoops type crap
He has never ever taken a strawberry/raspberry/grape/piece of banana to his mouth - he has mashed them/thrown them/decorated the room with them, but that's it.
He used to allow me to spoon feed him, but no more - he is Mr Independent.
I am not too worried about him as he is the picture of health and is thriving just fine.
But I don't understand what's going on?? And is there anything that has worked for you if you had a colourful-stuff-refuser?
BTW my other three (8, 7, 3 years) were fed/weaned pretty much the same way and are all pretty good eaters - they have their foibles but are easy to cook for. I fully expected DS4 to be sharing family meals by now, but no....
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Eating fruit/vegetables seems to be against DS (17 months) deepest held beliefs <<baffled>>
PacificDogwood · 09/08/2011 20:51
Oh, shrinkingnora, I think our DSs were maybe seperated at birth 
!
Interesting that you think that having been ill triggered him becoming more picky about eating... My DS had a very badly infected mouth (bit his tongue, badly, got an infection that required hospital treatment and survived on milk only for 2 weeks at the age of 15 months) which made things worse.
I couldn't claim that things were great beforehand though...
DS refused all veg including potatoes from 12 to 15/16 months. I just kept offering the veg we were having and he suddenly ate a piece of carrot, then worked his way up from there. I have no idea what changed. Exactly what he'll try at any given meal is hit & miss now (19 m.o.) but he will eat plenty of veg now.
I have found that he's more likely to eat things he's 'helped' shop for or prepare. First he started talking about the veg I was preparing, and throwing it on the floor, then he progressed to wanting to eat it. That didn't work very well with raw garlic or onions, mind. 
No, no, no hijack, 'tis all interesting 
.
I was once told 'no baby has ever starved in the presence of food' and I take comfort from that.
However, my previous 3 would have long at this age been keen on a little bowl of grapes/strawberries/raspberries to feed themselves with . DS1 was awkward in that he would not touch anything remotely wet/sticky so used to eat his half-grapes with a little fork , but eat them he did!
And, oh yes, we get a lot of food flung here as well.
DS4 'helped' me make dinner tonight and had a piece of raw carrot in his mouth for several minutes and may accidently actually have chewed off several atoms of it - before he spat it out. But it's a start, right?!
So, today DS4 had (gallons of) smoothie, 1 banana as a milk shake and absolutely snaffled up a tomato and pasta frigging baby jar! It was left over from our holiday and having my lovingly made lunch thrown across the kitchen, that's what he got (his 3 year old brother ate egg+cucumber+bread from the floor - who needs a dog?? ).
He did poke some holes into the cucumber slices so is 'exploring' different foods
How is everybody else getting on?
We have a similarish problem here, but with meat. DD will eat her own weight in fruit if allowed, and eats a bit of most veg, but will hardly touch meat in any form (other than the little sausages that come in tins of beans 
). Our 'strategy' (using that term loosely) is to just keep offering it, and hope that eventually she'll give it a go. And we give her plenty of eggs, cheese and yogurts in the meantime to get some form of protein into her.
If you think he should be getting more fruit/veg, could you try sneaking veg into the smoothies (carrot, spinach, cucumber), and maybe pureeing other veg into tomato sauces (peppers etc.)? Would he eat mushy veg dishes like ratatouille?
It might be a bit late in the year now, but growing veg helps too...apparently peas straight from the pod that have been grown from seeds are worth trying! I took him to the PYO farm last year and he picked tonnes of strawberries but wouldnt eat a single one but you may have a better sucess with that.
Oh, thanks, lots of good ideas (see, I hoped knew I couldn't be the only one with this problem amongst the MMMM ).
Yep, my next project is dusting my juicer off and trying him with some carrot/apple juice.
I have been trying to 'hide' vegetables, pureed or blended, but unless it comes in a tin or jar he is wise to it...
At least he is not stupid
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