Starting Solids...oh boy.

Now that the babe's six months old and as interested in eating as you can possibly be, we're starting the foray into the world of solid foods.

Although he started showing strong interest and watching every spoonful we ate in his presence (starting around 5 months or so, I decided to wait until the full 6 months because although his head control was good, he still wasn't sitting up real well on his own. Also, he still has digestive issues. Plus, he wasn't acting particularly hungry. If anything, the recent trend I've noticed is that he kinda slowed down and went from polishing off 6 oz at a time (at 3-4 months) back to 4 or 5 at most meals.

So I went out and invested in a high chair (I was able to find something that wasn't the size of a Hummer and ridiculously overpadded courtesy of IKEA) and a 6 pack of those silicone-coated baby spoons. I should have totally skipped rice cereal though. Everyone and their cousin says, "Start babies with RICE CEREAL!" Yeah right, total waste of time and money. Fuggedaboudit! He was NOT interested in that bland pasty goo, and made a huge yuck face. Tried it a few more times. No thank you. Never ate a bite of that vile-looking stuff. Can't blame him.

Next...

We tried apple sauce.

And got the yuck face. Too sour/acidic I guess.

Then we tried bananas. Not a hit.

Then we tried pears.

BINGO!

The kid LOVES his pears. (Kinda like my student, Bob*)So we worked on that for awhile. Turns out he's pretty good at eating--most of what goes in stays in. Didn't take him long to figure out the mechanics of eating.

From there, we were able to branch out a bit, and he decided that bananas and apple sauce were actually okay after all. Unfortunately he was dead set on the smooth creamy texture of $1 a jar baby food, so no luck just mashing up stuff I'm already eating. He won't eat anything with texture yet. (sigh)

The routine has been a once-a-day feeding ritual. I usually do it when I want to eat lunch, or occasionally dinner. I don't wait until he's starving, but rather do it when he's in a good mood, basically eating my own lunch or dinner at the mid-point between two regular feedings. I'll go ahead and fix whatever we're eating, then pull out a jar of something for him, and pull his high chair up to the table and plop him in there. Then I'll have a bite of my food, then feed him a bite of his (and praise his efforts), the rinse and repeat. That works pretty good. We get to eat in peace, and he gets to watch us eat, and we get to watch him eat. It's pretty effortless.

Right now he eats about half a jar of whatever. So far I've introduced apples, pears, bananas, butternut squash, carrots, and sweet potatoes. Based on his behavior, I'd say that sweet potatoes and carrots are his favorites. (Good baby...they're super duper nutritious, and he'll be seeing a lot of them in the future.) I'm going to hold off on any more grains until he's ready for more textures...then I'll just give him whatever I'm having (rice porridge, grits, oatmeal, etc) instead of the processed stuff.