Yum!

Way back when Zep was a baby, I counted down the days until he was old enough to start on solid foods.  At four months exactly we started him on rice cereal and moved on to other store bought baby foods.  

When Bright Eyes entered the world, I held off until 6 months to feed him solids and decided to make 75% of our baby food at home.

Sunshine wasn't fed solids until 7 months and she was exclusively fed homemade purees. 

And now we have Lil' Bit.  She is now 6 1/2 months.  We've finally decided to dive into the world of solids, but this time we're trying a new approach - Baby Led Weaning.  The basic idea is to completely skip the purees and go straight to finger foods.  The baby feeds herself from day one.  Our reasons for trying this method are (1) it makes sense and (2) I have three other kids to feed and barely enough time to feed myself (although from looking at me you'd never know it).  Trying to fit in time to spoon feed a baby seems impossible.  

Lil' Bit was introduced to Baby Led Weaning with a soft asparagus stick.  We placed it in front of her and after about 5 minutes she finally started showing some interest.  It didn't take her long to pick it up and bring it straight to her mouth.  LB doesn't have any teeth so there was no actual eating involved, but she loved sucking on the asparagus.  It was amazing!

Since then we've tried bread, meat, and bananas.  So far it's been a slow going process.  She isn't horribly interested in the food and finds it hard to pick most things ups.  From what I'm reading though, this will change in no time and we'll have a pro on our hands!

November 17th, 2012