Solids

As you know, Connor started cereal at 4 months and it was going so well that I was scared to mess with a good thing by starting the veggies.

These babies are more than enough work at the best of times.

However, someone (Amy) said something like "oh, just do it" and I decided to go for it.

My baby textbook, Baby Sense, said to first start with all the yellow veggies, so he had butternut, pumpkin, sweet potato and then carrots.

They say you should introduce one food to a baby at a time, for four days, to check for allergies, so that's what we did, although some weeks he ate the same veggie for 6 days in a row if I made more than 4 days' worth.

Yes, I make my own baby food - more on that later.

Then we started mixing some of those foods - like sweet potato and pumpkin.

And then we went to see the paed. Can't remember if I said (and to lazy to read through old posts) but he was very happy that they'd started solids (!). He also told me to not blend the food too fine as he's seen lots of babies who eat Purity (that's the most common baby food in a jar here and is so smooth) and now cannot eat anything with lumps or textures because they start gagging and vomiting simply because they're not used to it.

Well, I am certain of one thing - I don't plan to have fussy eaters so I decided to do more textures there and then.

Enter gem squash. Which is stringy..... so I thought, "well, if Connor doesn't like it, then D will have to finish the squash". I'm not one for gems...

Viola (the nanny) told me that Connor LOVED the gem squash and had no problem with the stringiness.

(I've just looked up the reference on Wikipedia and now, for the first time in my life I find that gem squash is a fruit!!!)

This boy likes his food.

We started him on fruits last Saturday - so far he's had Granny Smith apples (my favourites) and bananas. Next on the menu are pears.

As for the cereal, he's had rice cereal and maize cereal. (South Africans, the paed said he could have normal mielie meal!)

He can also have yoghurts and when they're properly 6 months (8 months actual) we can start introducing mince and chicken. Hmmm, I'm a bit wary of that.

But the main thing is this - I got that we can experiment with lots of different textured food.

Lovely!

Now Kendra started cereal a month later, at 5 months.

She is not so keen on the food and eats s l o w l y. Dear Lord, you need the patience of Job.

And, sadly, she eats better for Viola than she does for us. But we've been observing V so now we prop her up in exactly the same way and give her lots of encouragement (lots of "good girl") and it's going a tiny bit faster.

She's also had rice cereal and maize cereal. More keen on the maize than the rice cereal.

On Thursday last week (exactly 6 months) we started her veggies. She's had pumpkin and is now on the butternut.

So far so good.

I think she's getting more used to food because I've actually seen her open her mouth ready for the next spoon. This is huge for Kendra :)

At the moment she's eating half the amount of veggies as Connor and about two-thirds his amount of cereal.

Oh, one more thing the paed said (can you tell I got my money's worth - I peppered him with SO many questions) is that they eat better if they touch the food.

oooh, gross! (I hate messes but I'm learning to tolerate them)

So here we go, Kendra getting into her food.

P.S. you'll have noticed I don't have high chairs for the babies and quite honestly, I don't know that I need them until they can eat by themselves. I have to hold down Connor's hands otherwise there's food EVERYWHERE (worse than Kendra).