The babies are 6 months old! How did that happen?!? We started solids today (actually a week ago, I’ve been slacking a bit on the blog) which was super exciting. We started with avocado because it’s soft and nutritionally dense. With Kate, we did Baby Led Weaning (here’s a book if you’re interested) and we loved it. Basically, you skip purees entirely and just let the kids eat real food. Xander was all for it!
Kate was all about helping. Don’t worry, she didn’t actually shove food in his mouth. lol.
I love his expression in this one. He’s like, “Why did I just put that in my mouth?!?” 3 seconds later, “OMG, give me more!” Do all babies react to solids like this or is it just my kids?
Mia was more of a challenge. We didn’t want to spoon feed her, but she wasn’t quite ready for BLW either. After discussing it ad naseum with her occupational therapist, her speech therapist, and her nutritionist (wow, that was crazy to type out) we decided to do kind of a hybrid approach. Our goals are to explore food and have fun, we’re not bothered about them actually ingesting anything, which makes it easier.
Our speech therapist suggested using her chewy stick (it’s like a therapy teether) sort of like a spoon. We also loosely mashed up her avocado instead of giving her big chunks, but we didn’t puree it. Since it’s not smooth, we’re hoping to avoid texture aversions later.
We’re also following her lead as far as when she wants more and when she wants the chewy in her mouth. It’s a lot more work than straight BLW (which is like the lazy parent version of solids and I love) but we feel like she’s still getting a few of the benefits without being so worried about her choking.
Incidentally, I freaking love our high chairs. They’re pricey, but we were lucky enough to have received both as gifts. One we still have from when Kate was a baby. We didn’t think we’d be able to have more kids, but I just couldn’t bring myself to part with it because I loved it so much! And after seeing daily use for almost 3 years, it still looks almost new.