Sunday, June 10, 2012

First Solid Food

The advice on when to start feeding a baby solid food is all over the place but it typically goes from 4-6 months and I chose the latter. In all honesty part of my delay has been selfish, it's very convenient to only have to feed him a bottle. In my own imagination I have thought that solid food means, more time to feed him, a mess to clean up at every meal, and more interesting poop coming out of him! All of which I am happy to take care of, but I'll admit that I was also happy to hold off just a little longer. And besides Hydee convinced me that it is better for the baby because their digestive system is still forming and if you introduce them too soon it may cause allergies to those foods. So why not be on the safe side and have the convenience of a bottle just a little longer right? :)

Now that he is only a few weeks away from being six months I have decided that it is time. Matt has been eager to feed him for a while now so we are delaying no longer. I did research for a few weeks deciding which high chair to get (and then it took a few days to decide which color), and yesterday the one I so carefully selected and ordered online (Peg Perego Siesta in orange) finally arrived. I was a bit surprised when Matt and I got home late last night to see it sitting in the drive-way outside of our gate! We had been out all day long and I wondered how long it had been sitting there for anyone to walk by and steal, so I was extra grateful to see it still there. At 1:30 in the morning we took it out of it's box and tried to figure it out. Not too hard, the most difficult part was trying to figure out why the tray seemed to be angled so that all of the food would slide down towards him. When we realized that one of the things I was holding in my hands was a set of wheels for the back it became obvious that the wheels were the answer. Installing the back wheels was the only assembly we had to do before we went to bed with his new high chair ready and waiting. I do have to say the orange was a little more pastel looking than I thought it would be so I had to question whether or not I chose the right color, but in the end I still went to bed happy.

This morning we got up and again played with the high chair testing it out to make sure all the things I bought it for, like being able to move it up and down to different positions so he can sit with us at the counter or at the table, etc. really worked. And then we put Ollie in it for the very first time. He wasn't too sure about it at first:


But after checking it out he seemed perfectly fine with everything.



That was until we put the tray on.



Matt checked his legs and I think he had one knee still up, a quick adjustment and he was happy again.


One of the reasons I got this particular high chair was because it reclines, so we tested it out, I think Ollie approved!


It was getting time for Ollie to eat and Matt was ready to let him start eating solid food, so the debate began. I wasn't really ready to start feeding him because we never made it to the grocery store yesterday, however a friend of ours had given us a sampling of baby foods some time ago that was sitting on our shelf in the pantry. We had one veggie, a few fruits, and a veggie and meat mix, as well as a few rice crackers. Like the complete rookies that we are I insisted that Matt google how to introduce foods while I went and pulled out "The Bible" a book from the American Pediatric Association called "The first few years" that my sister-in-law gave me so I could get a little refresher on what I had read months ago. Matt wanted to go ahead and give him his first carrots, but feeling completely unprepared and wanting to actually have a supply of food and a plan in place of which ones we were going to introduce first (knowing you should only do one at a time and give them the same one for several days to see if they have any reaction to it) I eventually convinced him that it was better to just wait until tomorrow to start really feeding him. Plus I want to start with cereal. I hope all first time parents go through this and that we are not the only crazies!

After all of that Ollie really was hungry and sitting there all cute in his chair looking all grown up I decided it wouldn't hurt anything to give him a rice cracker since I'm going to start him on cereal. So this became his first meal. Matt told him it was a surf board since it was shaped like a surf board- how appropriate!



A few chomps in I remembered that this was going to be messy and got his bib on just in time!


It was all new to him, but putting something in his mouth and chomping on it was perfectly natural, he just had to figure out how to swallow it, which was strange for him at first but didn't take him long to decide it was ok to swallow.


So there it is, his first solid food. Just as we suspected he still loves to eat! The rice cracker wasn't enough so we laid him back in his chair and he was happy to suck down a bottle. We were happy to be able to eat our breakfast with him in his own chair right by our side. And then Ollie made his poop face so Matt grabbed him before he made a mess, and I was left in charge of clean up. Already there were a few crumbs in the cracks and I thought to myself how this will probably be the last time it is perfectly clean, but we are looking forward to all the fun experiences ahead of us that we will have while he is in this chair!




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