Food!

Annelise has started eating some foods. Or rather, kind of letting them dribble into her mouth and letting some/most of it go down into her throat.

At Annelise's 4 month check up at the doctor, we got the go ahead to start on some solids. The first week would be rice or oatmeal cereal made with formula or breastmilk, the week after that would be orange veggies like squash, sweet potatoes, and carrots, and the week after that would be green veggies like peas and broccoli. Once she gets through all of those, then she can have fruits. Because fruits are the best. And if we start on those, she'll never want anything else!

So the next day, I went to Wal-Mart and bought both rice and oatmeal cereal. I wasn't sure which one would be good, and they're pretty cheap, so I just bought both! I also had to buy spoons for her since all of ours are much too big for her cute little baby mouth. I figured I could probably get by without special baby bowls for now, so I didn't get any of those. We had received a pile of bibs from Mark's parents before she was born, which I'm grateful for now! (We go through those like crazy! I need to get some more...) I also bought 2 little jars of sweet potatoes, 3 little jars of carrots, 1 jar of turkey and turkey broth, and 1 jar of beef and beef broth. I actually have no idea when I'm okay to start feeding her meats, but they were in that "Stage 1" category, so I figured I'd give it a whirl. That's everything I got, I think. I still need to go back for the green veggies. Not sure how I missed those...

Next step: I had to figure out how to make up this cereal stuff. 1 tablespoon of cereal to 4 ounces of  milk? Or something like that. I just kinda mixed it up until it was about the consistency of the stuff that's in the "stage 1" jars of food. Then I warmed it just slightly, tested it to make sure it wouldn't be too hot, and got ready to go. We set Annelise in her little bouncy seat, put a bib on her, and began the process. A little bit on the spoon, and took it to her mouth. She stuck out her tongue and opened her mouth. I put the spoon in, and at first, she kinda took some. But of course, she spit it all back out. She made a funny yucky face, or maybe it was confusion? Either way, she was definitely not sure about this mode of eating. We kept at it, though, and actually, she was doing fairly well for her first time. No fingers in her mouth or anything! Probably about half of it dribbled down onto the bib, but half stayed in! Woo!

We did this maybe 2 or 3 more times over the course of a week before Daddy decided it was time for sweet potatoes. Now, I wasn't witness to the first time she had them, so I can't comment on that. But when I did get to feed her sweet potatoes for the first time... it was SO much FUN! I put about a third of what was in the little jar into the bowl (she still gets filled up mostly by milk, the food is just for practice and to get used to new flavors right now), warmed it up, and got Annelise ready again. We started out just like with the rice cereals, but this time, she was much more excited! She opened up her mouth and had almost no problem eating up the food! I had to keep scraping a little bit off her bottom lip, but as long as I didn't put too much on the spoon at a time, she pretty much ate all of it without spitting it out! She even had big giant smiles while she was eating it! She seriously loved the stuff. Ate all of what I had made, and wanted more! I put the last third of the jar into the bowl, warmed it, and she ate the rest! It was pretty amazing.

We've since tried carrots, but she doesn't like those quite as much. She puts her fingers in her mouth a lot more often during the carrot times. We're still working on getting her to try some other foods, but we're pretty content with just every once in awhile trying solids at this point. It's just practice, and she does a good job eating, but it doesn't seem like she really needs to eat them twice a day at this point. It's fun, but also a lot of work getting everything ready. And to get cleaned up after. But it'll only get more fun and time-consuming as she gets older, right? ;)

Sidenote: I'm considering making my own pureed veggies. Anyone out there I know do that? Is it worth it? Although, I'm kinda liking the little jars baby food comes in... so many pinterest projects come to mind that I can make with them...