Asher the lazy eater

Asher stares on in horror at Shawna licking her plate clean... | Pic taken on 7th April 2012

Asher and Shawna are as different as twins come. As you can see from their sizes, Shawna definitely eats more than Asher does. But then, anybody can easily eat more than Asher does, even a 10 month old, I'd say. That's coz Asher doesn't eat much at all.

While Shawna took to solids with great gusto, trying almost everything, lapped up the porridge, then rice, and now noodles and meat and vegetable... Asher just didn't eat. He survives mainly on the formula milk he drinks. Other than that, he doesn't seem interested in most solid food. When we fed him solid food, he used to gag, no matter the amount of food we fed him.

With most kids, when they take to solids slower, people just wave it off as a "late" bloomer. But with a twin sister around, people kind of assume that you should be more or less the same pace as the twin, if not, something must be wrong. Everyone was very concerned. Were Asher's tonsils too big? Is his tongue stuck to the bottom of his mouth? Are his teeth too small? His tongue too short? Too big?

The boy and his chocolate cake | Pic taken on 30th December 2011

Rubbish. You know what gets his mouth open? CHOCOLATE. This boy luurrrves chocolate. He had his first taste of chocolate when he was about 18 months old, in Margaret River, Perth, Australia. Chocolate from the Margaret River Chocolate Factory. You could feed him a whole chunk of chocolate, and he'd know how to bite it, chew and swallow it. So there's nothing wrong with his teeth or his tongue or his throat or whatever. He's just inherited my love for chocolate - though he's much more extreme than me!

He's just a lazy eater with a sweet tooth. He used to only take cereal for his meals. And it's not cornflakes kinda cereal, it's the Nestum, Quaker Oats kinda cereal - the really runny and gooey stuff. He likes gooey stuff, apparently. Just swallow. Asher's improved a bit lately. He likes spaghetti, chinese thin noodles, and sometimes takes rice. Recently, we even resorted to giving him "spaghetti rice" - rice with spaghetti sauce on it. Though with him, we tend to have to cut up the noodles and meat a bit, coz the lazy eater him just swallows his food.

Comparatively, Shawna and Isaac are much easier to feed.

No, she didn't eat ALL of those...

Above two pix: The kids first taste of hawker food. | Pix taken on 19th February 2012

Shawna likes most food but we realise that she likes variety. She may love the food you're giving her, but if you give it to her too often, she starts to reject it. So even though she likes rice, she started rejecting it for awhile. Until I realised that she wants variety. So now, I make sure we stock up on different types of pasta: abc pasta, macaroni, angel hair, spaghetti, the shells, etc. 

Isaac has his favourites that are good fall-backs: chicken rice, char siew rice, pizza, spaghetti... He used to be really picky till he started childcare, so he's pretty good with eating most stuff now.

It's good that they all like spaghetti. We're ready for a trip to Australia now :) kekeke...