Feeding Caleb: Beyond Cereal!

It's full speed ahead on solid foods with Caleb. We've branched out from rice cereal to oatmeal and brown rice cereal. The oatmeal seems to be his favorite - he makes "mmmmmmh" sounds while eating. We also decided to forge ahead with veggies at his five month birthday. This was based on his ability to mow through a bowl of cereal, he makes chomping motions with his mouth and he's thoroughly obsessed with watching us eat our grown up meals. I started him with veggies, based on on the basic knowledge that fruits are sweeter than veggies and I don't want him to expect that sugary taste for all food.

We tried peas first. He made screwed up faces and waved his hands like "get this stuff away from me!" but he swallows everything. No question he's his father's kid - my husband will eat anything even if he's not crazy about it. We tried squash next, which went over slightly better. I'm looking forward to the first food that he really enjoys- that's going to be a fun reaction! Both of the veggies were from the Gerber "stage one" line. Our pediatrician in Wisconsin suggested that I buy a couple baby foods so I could get familiar with the consistency, but after that he supported making our food at home.

Today, I became that mom. The one who bought organic veggies, steamed them, blended them and pushed them through a fine mesh strainer to make homemade baby food. Are we really surprised? No. Frankly, it's really easy. I'll give the caveat that I had the right tools: I own a steamer insert for one of my saucepots, a food processor and a strainer. I put baby food containers on my registry, so those are currently sanitizing in the dishwasher.

I looked at a couple recipes (found on pinterest, of course), one of which suggested cooking your vegetables with some water in a saucepot until soft. For me, the steaming route is much easier: I left the sweet potatoes steaming on the stove while I ate lunch for a good half hour. As long as you don't run out of water in your pot, you can't mess up steamed veggies that are going to be pureed anyway. I ran them through the food processor, then added water until an almost soupy consistency. Now the purees are waiting for the dishwasher to finish (didn't plan ahead on that bit). Before I go back to work in a couple week, I'm going to stock my (tiny) freezer for the weeks of pureed food ahead of us. I'm thinking green beans, apples, peaches and pears.

 Sweet Potatoes on top, Carrots on bottom. The organic sweet potatoes were white-yellow, not orange.

Speaking of Caleb and eating, he's teething! Last week I noticed some extra fussiness during the day and crying for his pacifier at night. On Thursday I let him chew on my finger and felt two very sharp bottom teeth. Now that those two teeth have cut through he's gone back to sleeping through the night. I know more teeth are on the way so I ordered a couple extra teething toys. Recently he's been loving his infantino Elephant - I usually keep it in the car seat for trips to the store, but right now I'm carrying it around the house for him. The legs are the perfect size for his mouth.

One of the best things about life with a baby is that there's something next and exciting every day. Our sweet little man is growing up so fast!