adventures in solid foods

As is probably the case with most parents, some of the best photos we've taken of Ewan in recent months are of him learning to eat. We started dabbling in solids early, when Ewan was only four months old, just to see if a little rice cereal in the evening might help him sleep better, even though we'd heard that this was an old wives' tale. It turned out that it didn't do the trick, and we went back to the original plan of waiting until he was at least five months old to really start on solids. We got a couple of super cute photos from that very first feeding, though: We started for real at just about five months, a few days before we left for NY and Ohio for the holidays. We thought it would be fun for our families to share in some of Ewan's first meals. We started slowly, with just a little very milky rice cereal, and slowly started adding some pureed fruits and veggies. It was clear by this time that Ewan was more ready. He caught on quickly, and gobbled down his meals with great enthusiasm. Here is a video of his first non-rice cereal meal in NY, applesauce, and what might be considered his first tantrum when we couldn't get it to him fast enough:

first applesauce from Rebecca Turvy on Vimeo.

And a few photos from that same and a subsequent feeding:
with my mom and Troy:with my sister Katherine:
and with my dad (one of my all time favorite photos of him):Ewan went on to try his first sweet potatoes in Ohio, which I pureed for him. He's since tried over a dozen other fruits and vegetables, about half of which I've made for him and half of which have been jarred. He's accepted most, but isn't the biggest fan of anything green. Avocado is the only food he's flat out rejected. And I've already gotten in the habit of polishing off my kid's leftovers. Baby food is pretty good - something about the simplicity and pureness of it, and it just goes down so smoothly. I'm with Ewan on the peas and green beans, though. They definitely need some butter and salt or something. Anyway, in the last month or so, the novelty of solid foods seems to have worn off a bit for Ewan. He still eats, but with much less gusto, and he's pretty distractible. He now prefers drinking from his sippy cup, which he can do pretty well these days. Ewan's also never been obsessed with nursing like some babies, and I can just see where all of this is leading, especially if he's anything like his daddy used to be, which he seems to be... we'll have ourselves a skinny little picky eater who's way too busy to eat, who, when you ask him what his favorite food is, says that it's water (or "waday" as Troy used to say, as in when he peed his pants and refused to be changed and would say, "It's just waday, Mama." He still sometimes maintains this mentality, such as on long bike or motorcycle rides. But I digress.) I'm exaggerating a bit here, of course. Ewan's doing fine with his eating (and Troy, too, when I remind him to eat) and is obviously growing well, and we're all having a lot of fun with this new adventure.