We’ve looked forward to feeding Ian as much as we had to feeding Maya two years ago, though this time there are fewer photos. Around four months old, we started. He had already been sitting at the table with us for a while and watched us intently as we ate. We were told we could wait till six months, but like Maya before him, Ian seemed interested enough that we started earlier.

Eating is FUN!

Again, I am making his food. My approach to his purees is not complex. I make a big batch of some pureed fruit or vegetable, and then freeze it in one-ounce servings. I store these one-ounce chunks in labeled zip-top bags and load up our freezer with them. I pull out whatever chunks I want for a given meal and microwave them. If they’re runnier than I want, I thicken them a bit with store-bought (iron-fortified) oatmeal cereal.

I tried giving him plain oatmeal cereal in breast milk exactly once before feeding him pureed apples. The cereal was a non-starter. The apples he loved. Ian is thus far not a big fan of green vegetables. He’s happy to eat sweet potatoes and butternut squash, but he’s ambivalent about green beans and zucchini and downright disgusted by peas.
One of Maya’s favorite things is to help get Ian’s meals together. She chooses whatever bowl he’s going to use and often selects which foods he will eat. Then she pulls the frozen servings out of the zip top bags and loads them into the bowl. I lift her up so she can push the buttons on the microwave to thaw the food. While it’s running, she fetches me the oatmeal cereal in case anything needs thickening. Once I get the heated food from the microwave and thicken as needed, she puts the oatmeal cereal back in the cabinet and takes the food in to Ian. She would really *like* to feed him. The compromise we’ve settled on is to let her feed him one bite with our help. Then she climbs into her chair and has her own dinner. So far, this arrangement is making everyone happy. This includes Ian; he is really fascinated by his big sister.

Thanks to the demands of two children, Ian’s food offerings have rolled out a little more slowly than Maya’s. Right now, in the freezer, we have apples, strawberries, peaches, blueberries, sweet potatoes, cauliflower, peas, zucchini, butternut squash, and green beans. I have some corn to puree for him. We tried him on some canned refried beans and he was unimpressed. Today I cooked him some lentils and mixed them with butternut squash and apricots to sweeten them (they were a hit).
Since Maya was a baby, the new advice is to introduce babies to allergens more quickly. We can already knock berries off the list. We’re about to take care of corn as well. On my to-do list for the next few months is wheat, citrus, dairy, egg, peanut, and fish.

We’ve tried to give Ian a few finger foods to mess with, but he doesn’t really care too much. He’s pretty happy to gum celery sticks. We bought some little rice cracker things that are designed to give them some practice eating something that doesn’t really demand any chewing of them. He’s happy to gnaw on it till a piece of it breaks off in his mouth. Then he makes faces and gags.
From some of the past photos we’ve posted, you can see that Ian has plumped up. Our six-weeks premature baby who weighed 5 lb 7 oz at birth weighed a whopping 19 lb at his six-month well check. The resources we’ve read warn not to progress to solids too quickly because babies should be getting most of their calories from breast milk or formula. In Ian’s case, I think we have some wiggle room on that.