Solid Foods for AGR

Today marks two successful weeks of solid foods for Alastair. Well, by "solid", of course, I mean foods that were at one point solid. I tried to convince Emily that beef jerky would be a good place to start, but she issued the mommy veto.

We started with the traditional rice cereal. I'm of the opinion that this was a waste of time...I think he gets more substance and nutrition when he gnaws on Brown Bear, Brown Bear than he did from the rice cereal. I know that the whole purpose of the rice cereal is to introduce solids with something that has almost zero chance of setting off an allergic reaction, but that makes it B-O-R-I-N-G. Here's a video of his first taste.

[EDIT: Sorry I put the sweet potato video in twice. Here's the proper video of the rice cereal. -MR]



The food was boring, but its effects were pretty humorous. About an hour or so after Alastair's first taste of rice cereal, he turned into a complete madman. Screaming, carrying on, standing, waving his arms. He had the spirit and needed to let it out. Maybe he has an allergy to boring food and this was the symptom. Check out the mania.



After a week of rice cereal we moved on to Gerber's organic sweet potatoes. Sounded more exciting than rice cereal, and Alastair certainly liked it better. He took to chomping down on the spoon with his two little teeth. It was also much more gratifying to Emily and me from a comedy standpoint. Having your baby smile at you with orange mush all over his face as if he just gorged on buffalo wings never fails to make you giggle.



We shifted from a once a day schedule to a breakfast and dinner schedule, so Alastair had lots of opportunity to develop his taste for sweet potatoes. By the end of the week he was lunging for the spoon and swallowing very well. We even made it through one feeding with a clean bib. Still need some work in that department though.



Today we started on peas. We're not drawing conclusions yet, but initial returns aren't positive. The peas are slightly thicker than the sweet potatoes, which are nice and smooth. The mashed potato consistency clearly took Alastair by surprise. Peas aren't as sweet either. So we're going to have to keep at it...if daddy has his way AGR will be loving peas by the end of the week. Next week will bring yet another smooth treat.