5 months and solid food

At Tam's last doctor visit, he suggested starting solids anytime we felt like it. I watched Tam and he was totally giving us cues that he was ready for something more than a bottle. He would stare hard-core at us while we were eating dinner. And even starting opening his mouth when he saw us do the same. About 3 weeks ago, we started rice cereal. Brian had purchased white, brown, and oat baby cereal and we eventually tried all three. Our dude LOVED cereal. We began with really watery stuff and eventually built up to oatmeal-like mush. He now gets about 1/2 cup of cereal each day or so.

Eating solid food has taught us some new things. I very quickly learned that I should put a bib on Tam first. Food made it eventually down Tam's throat, but quite a bit ended up on his chin, shirt, hands, pants, hair. Tam still has some tongue-thrust reflex so Bib = good idea to help control goop on front. Then I learned that I should keep a VERY good grip on the bowl. During our third try in the high-chair eating, Tam went smack on the bowl and mush landed on the floor. Lastly, more food means that Tam is sleeping even better at night. I know that there is not much hard-core scientific data that solids cause babies to sleep more. However, my data totally shows that more food in belly, especially a larger bottle at dinner, means that Tam sleeps from 8pm until 4am. Yeah!

We have since tried a week of mashed bananas (My choice). Tam wasn't sure about them at first, but since really liked them. He also liked trying to actually pick up the banana pieces from the tray.

This week we are trying butternut squash (Brian's choice). Tam totally did not like the first few bites! We tried again today with more success.