If you read my recent post, you'll know there are plenty of things I hate about baby led weaning. Of course though it's not all messy walls and checking salt levels. There are plenty of things I LOVE about it too.

So here are 5 things I love about baby led weaning!

No spoon feeding

We have nothing against spoon feeding (especially weetabix, that stuff is not safe to be left with a child). But being able to just all sit down together and eat, without having to think about it is amazing.

There's never been any moments where they've clamped their mouths shout to avoid the food, (a memory I remember so well with my little brother), and no making a fool ourselves pretending to be an aeroplane - well, during meal times that is! Just place the food down, and you're done.

This may have ended in a sink bath...

All eating together

Tied in with the point above, I love being able to all eat at the same time. I can make one meal, we can all sit down, and eat at the same time! All eating together is great encouragement for getting kids to try new foods as well - if they see you trying something they're more likely to pick it up too.

Watching them discover foods and flavours

There's nothing like watching your baby's face as they taste food for the first time. The faces they pull, the inquisitive looks to you for reassurance, it's all so wonderful!

With baby led weaning you can introduce different textures and flavours from the beginning. Indiana has always loved spicy foods with chille and curries being her favourites from the very start! There's no need to keep it bland.

No cooking / making extra food

Of course I still have to cook food, but I only have to make one meal for all of us! I never needed to spend ages making purees or batch cooking meals - a huge relief as there's never any room in the freezer anyway.

The mess!

I know this was in my hates, but most of the time it's actually the part I love. Seeing their cheeky little messy faces is so worth it! It shows how much they enjoyed their food, and is usually a good indicator that they actually ate some too.

The amount of messy weaning pictures / videos I captured is crazy, but they all still make me smile. There's nothing like a yoghurt faced, spaghetti monster! After all #messisbest

What would you add to the list?

Easy Toddler Activities | Pizza Decorating

I'm absolutely loving writing this little toddler activity series. I always seem to find myself googling ideas and looking for inspiration, so I hope they've been useful for others. I know they're nothing fancy, but sometimes it's the most simple ideas you don't think about.

 Today's activity is pizza decorating!

You might notice we've used pre-made bases. I'll be honest and say our idea of making them went out the window! They are pretty simple, but we just didn't have time. Next time we'll definitely be doing them ourselves though (and not leaving it until 5pm to start the activity).

We simply popped some toppings into individual bowls and let the children get creative. We went with things we know they like - cheese, ham, sweetcorn, etc. You can of course pick anything you know your children like, and maybe even something more unusual to see if they pick it up and pop it on!

The kids had a blast, and I was actually quite surprised how little mess they made. That was until Parker picked his up and tried to eat it uncooked! Of course I was sat by them the whole time (Parker needs constant supervision around food haha), so managed to rescue the pizza in time.

The finished result was a little bit of a mess (these two LOVE cheese). But with a bit of a helping hand they turned out pretty good. And as you can tell, they definitely passed the taste test too!