Bring on the Food.... Or Should We?

  Well today we tried out our first solids. Yeah, yeah I know I said Saturday but life got away from us. Yesterday was a busy busy day and well I can't say I'm sad since this just meant that he was one day closer to six months when we gave him his first food. So this morning my husband took a walk with our little one and I cleaned the house and the baby bullet and put the sweet potato in the oven to cook. As the sweet potato cooked we played with our little sweet potato he was thoroughly enjoying playing with two of his toys in his crib and attempting to crawl around while we talked to him. Then I took the sweet potato out since it has to cool off before pureeing. During this time I prepped the high chair (found the table for the high chair), found a bib and of course got our camera and video camera ready. Since I have been feeding our son since day 1, M was going to do his first solid feed. Then the potato cooled off and I added the sweet potato and breast milk to the baby bullet and ta-da the pureé was ready in 10 or so seconds.

    So we sat Alek down in his highchair pulled it up from the semi lying newborn position to the fully seated position, strapped him in and put the table in place and the bib on.

My husband sat down in front of him with the bowl and spoon and I was ready with the camera and video camera. We were both excited and Alek seemed happy and excited too, he was smiling and kept reaching out. Well the first spoon went in his mouth a bit and we saw his expressiong change to....well maybe not disgust but a very obvious EWW. Well we decided to try a few more times and he kept sticking his fingers in his mouth and licking the sweet potato while making a grossed out face. He didn`t cry but he did NOT seem to like it. I then tried to feed him one a tiny bit and it went in...and then came out!

  We then decided to take him out and I gave him to spoon slightly coated in  sweet potato to play with and so that he could learn to hold a spoon. Well he put the spoon in his mouth and he made the same EWW face but kept biting the spoon so maybe he was getting used to the taste?

   Overall we tried about 4ish "spoons" of which he actually ate maybe 1/4 of a BABY spoon so not much. I was never planning to feed him as much as I had put in that bowl...that was just so that the picture would not look funny with under a teaspoon of food in it. Anyway, the plan is to try again tomorrow if we get another reaction like today we will give him a break of 1-3 weeks and then try again when he is bigger.


P.S Yesterday my mom taught me a simple knitting pattern so I could make Alek a scarf for next winter. It's going VERY slowly but I feel excited and maybe if it works out I can make him a matching hat!

Ready or not..

     Well today my son showed such obvious signs he is ready for solids they could not be ignored. As my husband and I ate he kept moving closer and just staring inside out mouths at times chewing his hand all the while. All the other signs are there as well.  Ready or not mommy but give me solids.We already decided that his first food would be sweet potato. Why? Uhhmmm it is extremely high in nutritional value vitamin A, beta carotene, potassium, vitamin E, folate and fiber and so on. An amazing site that should be a bible for baby food for all mom is : http://wholesomebabyfood.momtastic.com and it says  "The Nutrition Action Health Letter rated 58 vegetables by adding up the percentages of USRDA for six nutrients (Vitamins A and C, folate, iron, copper, and calcium), plus fiber. Sweet Potatoes topped the list with a whopping 582 points; its nearest competitor, a raw carrot came in at 434."  The site also claims : "These wonderful vegetables are a great first baby foods,(even for the early solid food starter)."  The second reason I really like this choice as a first food is that we call him our sweet potato so it has an emotional meaning too that makes me smile.

     Since it is late today and tomorrow my husband is away we decided to try a sweet potato pureé thinned with breast milk on Saturday  If he likes it we will continue with solid food if he doesn't we will wait another week or 2 before trying solid food again. The plan is sweet potato then avocado then probably squash and well I haven't thought what will be a first food but I`m really getting ahead of myself. I haven`t even assembled and read all the instructions to the baby bullet that my wonderful husband bought. (Yes in baby items I say this is a useless item. Why do I have it? I had no other food processor so I needed one and I said it is useless only if you already have a food processor.Its also nice to have the little book with the information about starting solids and recipes but I prefer the site above! Also the cube freezer trays and refrigerator jars are nice but could be bought cheap without buying the whole product.). Anyways now I know what I will be doing tonight or tomorrow night. 
 This whole starting solids thing is very exciting and yet there is momentary sadness, and shock on my part. I'm excited because this is another milestone another first. I'm sad because time is flying so fast. I'm shocked he's in the age he can start solids. I also heard that diaper changes are no fun after the start of solids. Also I was hoping to make it to the recommended 6 month mark for starting solids. Why not wait till the 6 month mark then? Well he is OBVIOUSLY ready and beyond interested. Today it was VERY obvious even my mom commented that he has never been been this interested he was watching all the food, the family eating, trying to look in everyone's mouths, all the while pretending to chew (copying the chewing mouth movement) and looking fascinated. I have read to look for cues, what makes reaching a specific day in life make a baby more ready to start solids than the day before? Not all people are cookie cutters and do everything at the same point in time. He is about 3 weeks shy of 6 months but he is very ready. We will try solids on Saturday and I will update then how it went!