What I fed my toddler for lunch this week

One of the most surprising aspects of motherhood for me has been how hard it is to feed a toddler. Luckily my little guy is a pretty good eater, but for some reason, thinking of easy toddler lunch ideas is SO hard for me! I tend to resort to the same few meals over and over. I want him to be exposed to and learn to like lots of new foods so I’m trying to break this cycle ASAP!

We did baby led weaning, so I know that he is technically supposed to eat the same thing I am eating. Buuuut realistically, for breakfast and lunch that doesn’t always happen. He often eats at a different time than me because sometimes I just like to eat my food in peace 😉

When searching Pinterest for “toddler lunch ideas” I found tons of adorable lunches, but for me they weren’t very realistic. When Henry is hungry, he is HUNGRY and doesn’t want to wait for me to cut his food into animal shapes.

I wanted realistic, easy, quick toddler meal ideas using ingredients that I already had in the fridge. Since I couldn’t find much online, I decided to challenge myself to get creative and make a different lunch for Henry everyday this week.

So here you will find lunches using common ingredients. They are nothing super fancy, but were meals that Henry enjoyed eating and were a little more exciting than the PB&J rut that we had fallen into!

Here is a week worth of easy toddler lunch ideas:

Monday:

• Pizza crackers (he loved these!)
• Watermelon
• Cucumber

Tuesday:

• Turkey and hummus roll ups: Cut the crust off a piece of bread and use a rolling pin (or a cup) to roll the bread so it is nice and thin. Put the toppings on and roll it up! He really liked these and they were much easier for him to eat than a regular sandwich
• Cucumber and tomato with hummus
• Banana slices with peanut butter (Henry loves these but rarely will eat banana plain)

Wednesday:

• Annie’s Mac & Cheese (I usually make a box every week and then he can have it for a quick lunch or dinner on nights when we are short on time)
• Strawberries
• Corn and black beans (left over from dinner)

Thursday:

• Crackers with organic hummus
• Grapes and watermelon
• Cucumbers and a cheese stick

Friday:

• Toast with cream cheese and strawberries
• Whole milk plain yogurt
• Hippeas organic chickpea puffs

Saturday:

• Half of a cheese stick and deli turkey roll ups
• Organic peas
• Bananas slices with peanut butter

He LOVED this meal and ate it all!

Sunday:

• Annie’s Macaroni & Cheese with steamed broccoli mixed in
• Organic hummus with cucumbers and tomatoes to dip

These are all meals that he liked and he ate at least half of all of them! Some of the foods like tomatoes and cucumber aren’t his favorite, but I think that repeated exposure is important. You can see that I tried presenting the food different ways to encourage him to keep trying it. When I knew that a food wasn’t a favorite, I made sure to serve something else that I knew he liked, to make sure he would have enough to eat.

And yes, Henry actually uses this dino plate for every meal. We just hand wash it–it has held up great and we haven’t found a need for more plates!

I hope this was helpful! If it was please let me know in the comments below and I will make sure to do similar posts in the future!

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