What my one-year-old eats in a day

Now that Maggie is a toddler, she’s starting to eat like a regular person, or as we tend to say, like a big kid. At the time of writing this post, she is 13 months old.

She has three servings of whole milk a day, three meals a day, and usually one snack a day but sometimes two. She also drinks water and sometimes diluted juice to help with her digestion.

I am still figuring out how to keep up with her appetite but I thought it might be helpful to share what she typically eats, along with some questions that have come up with friends.

Let’s start with typical toddler feeding questions.

Did you do purees or baby led weaning?
I did purees to start. I thought about it and almost started to do combo feeding early on (purees and BLW foods), but with a few gagging incidents decided it was not for us. My husband was pretty nervous about the gagging and I’m glad we didn’t keep trying to feed her soft solids when we weren’t ready.

I started giving her teething crackers at 7 months, puffs at 8, very soft fruits like smashed blueberries somewhere around 7 and also tried a mesh feeder for fruits in that age range too. Once she was around 9 months, she was able to eat a bigger range of textures and pick food up better. My goal was to get mostly on table foods by 1 year and I would say she is there now.

Does she eat what you eat now?
It depends on the meal and the day. I would like to say yes, but truth is she eats more fruits and vegetables than Paul and me. She has purees a few times a week for convenience sake and has processed toddler snack food too.

Is she a good eater?
I feel like she’s too young to think about that much. From what I hear, lots of kids tend to get more selective about what they want to eat around the age of two. For now, I serve Maggie a good variety and she eats most things. Lately she hasn’t been eating as much of her vegetables as she used to. But I’m not stressing about it. Maybe this time next year I will be.

What my toddler eats in a day

The photos below show initial servings. I start with a little and give more when she asks for more or starts to run low.

Breakfast: Oatmeal, mango and banana

Favorite breakfast things include eggs, oatmeal, frozen waffles and yogurt. It’s usually one of those things and fruit.

AM snack: During our morning walk, she had Happy Baby teething crackers.

Lunch: Strawberry chickpea cookies (MJ and Hungryman ebook Baby Led Weaning Beginner Bites), sweet potato curry crackers, broccoli, cherries

I pulled all these items out of the freezer the night before and packed them in a bento box food container thing from Target to thaw out in the fridge. Then I washed the food container and packed her dinner while she was taking a nap.

PM snack: I forgot to take a picture. She had the other half of her banana from breakfast and I served her jackfruit for the third time that week but she didn’t really eat any.

Dinner: White rice, broccoli and peas, quesadilla, mango. I made her half a quesadilla, and she ate about 1/3 of it. I saved the rest for the next day. The white rice was leftover from dinner the day before.

Here is the box I mentioned. I just got it recently and I’ve found it to be pretty helpful for planning sake.

I hope that if you’re a parent, this post has brought you some ideas and reassurance. I dont mean to add any stress or judgement to your life. Feeding kids is hard and the way you choose to feed your kid and your family is personal.