09 | November | 2012 | Yoon Family Adventures

Steak, lobster and cheesecake … has not yet made it to Karis’ dinner menu yet… but she has been eating solids for the past month. At 6 months, our pediatrician said that we could begin solids, starting with rice cereal, then green veggies, orange veggies, and then fruit – waiting 3-4 days after each new food to make sure that there’s no allergic reaction.

I researched online and found that you really didn’t have to start with rice cereal (which is a pretty popular way to start as it is easy to digest, generally not likely to trigger an allergic reaction, and provides the iron that babies start to need around this age). And it really didn’t seem to matter whether or not you followed the green-orange veggie to fruit sequence, but we just went this route anyway.

First the rice cereal.

It was very, very light flaky and powdery. We mixed with breast milk to make a very soupy mush.

I think a part of me was expecting Karis to LOVE solid foods – I mean she’s been exclusively living off of breast milk for 6 months. How has she survived on just milk from me? Isn’t she starving for some deliciously, tasty real food?

But she wasn’t. 🙂 The very first time we gave her rice cereal, she was cautiously curious as the spoon was going into her mouth…

and then she…cringed…. like – wut – is – this??

And that’s the same face she’d make every time we tried something new.

She did pretty well with rice cereal, but sometimes she would get tired of having to eat from a spoon and check out after a few bites, leaning back and shouting/whining – No mas!

It was also initially challenging because she would love to grab the spoon. And this little girl gots her some serious grip. Once she latched on, it was really hard to pry off her wee fingers from the spoon, and food would end up all over the place.

Even if she didn’t grab the spoon, food would still pretty much end up everywhere because either her tongue would get in the way or she’d huff and puff and the food would splatter off the spoon (we made things initially very watery). We’d only really get in a few small baby bites here and there for practice.

She definitely eats the best when we distract her with music or toys or parental silliness (I admit there have been some oppa gangnam style dancing)… or when someone models how to be spoon-fed, like the newly engaged Yale and Sonya. 🙂

Here she is watching a home video on the ipad. You can tell by the glazed look in her eyes. The beginnings of dinner and a movie!

But things have been improving. Tonight, she was gobbling up her food! (menu: carrots and oatmeal). It was just me and Karis but I didn’t have to put on a show. She was actually leaning forward with her mouth open to eat. And she’s learned not to grab the spoon too much.

So far, here is what we’ve given her, in order: rice cereal, green peas, green beans, sweet potato, winter squash, oatmeal, avocados, and carrots. Out of these she likes the green beans, sweet potato and carrots the best, after rice and oatmeal cereal since that’s mixed with a lot with breast milk, and breast milk is still her all-time fav. 🙂

We’ve been pureeing our own baby food with the Baby Bullet we got as a baby shower gift.

Here’s the routine…

I usually boil the food.

Stick it in the blender with some water.

And voila! Pureed baby food. Very easy peas.

Speaking of peas, for any new parents, the peas were initially hard to eat because the shells don’t puree all the way very well. Karis would spit out some of the bits and pieces of the shell as she was trying to mush the food around in her mouth. So maybe not the best food to start off with. I read the same thing can happen with green beans, but I blanched them in cold water after boiling them and they seemed to puree well.

For the sweet potato and winter squash (not quite sure what kind of squash this is), I would pop it in the oven for an hour, then spoon out the insides into the blender…water…blend… done!

The magic bullet system comes with trays to freeze leftover food, but I also ordered a food ice tray from amazon that’s been working really well to freeze one-ounce servings of the food.

I freeze them in here…

Then I can pop them out into a ziplock bag after they are frozen, and bring down at night whatever food I want to feed Karis the next day. Very convenient.

So there you have it. The world of solid food has begun.

Oh! There’s just one more thing… Solid food = real human poop!!

Since we’re still cloth diapering, I was a bit scared for this new stage in life. Since breastmilk poop is completely water soluable, washing diapers have been very easy so far since you truly don’t have to do anything to the diapers – you can just toss everything into the wash and it all comes out clean.

No more, now that solids have come into the mix. To prepare, I got some disposable liners.

And these have been working pretty well! You can just toss the liner and poop into the toilet and for the most part keeps the diaper very clean.

We also tried buying and installing a diaper spray. It’s supposed to easily attach to your toilet and you can spray the diaper over the toilet to get out those messy, mushy poops.

But it didn’t fit our toilet so we had to return it. Instead we got a shower head spray thing. I’ve tried it a couple times but the pressure isn’t that strong so it’s not THAT great. But I think it’ll come in handy here and there.