“Solid” Foods.

A few weeks ago, we started introducing “solid” foods.

We’re going strong with the beginner stage of solid foods. Single fruits or veggies. We are also doing a rice or oat cereal. We mostly still stick to formula and breastmilk. At dinner time(4pm) we give each baby a quarter of a jar of food. Going at that rate, a jar of food lasts us for two meals. We try and alternate between a fruit and a vegetable. So we’ll do a vegetable for two days and then a fruit for two days. Don’t want the girls to develop too much of a sweet tooth! And, doing one kind of food for a couple of days gives us an opportunity to watch them for an allergic reaction of any kind. Then, at supper time(7pm) we give each baby one serving of rice or oat cereal.

It didn’t take too long for the girls to realize what a spoon and bowl meant. And didn’t take long for them to get the hang of eating something other than liquid. For the most, they now open their mouths wide and expectantly; it is really cute. Anton and I are fairly maticulous about keeping their faces clean while we are feeding and we always scoop up any food that makes its way back out of their mouths. We haven’t really gotten to the stage where the girls can help, although spoons have been our new play toys during the day. Maretta instinctively puts the spoon in her mouth, right way around. Shula usually looks at her spoon and then throws it at the dog or on the floor; whichever happens to be closer.

Feedings have been going great. I imagine soon enough we’ll move on to 6month foods. Blends of different fruits and veggies. And bigger quantities. But, for now I’m enjoying the two feedings that we’ve got. The girls make some of the cutest and ugliest faces I’ve seen. Peaches brought on a great “ugly” face from both of them the other night.

We did buy our high chairs the other weekend, but we don’t really use them much for feeding. We throw the girls in them when we are working in the kitchen or living room to give them some opportunity to work on their core muscles and be at the same level as we are. But, for the time being we prefer to just use their bouncy chairs. That way they don’t have to concentrate on sitting up as well as concentrating on eating. It’s a bit painful on our backs to lean down towards them, but it only takes a moment to unkink!

Bibs have become our new favourite item. I hate to say it, because we really prefer shopping at local, canadian businesses but wal-mart has the best bibs. George brand. They are nice and big and have a large neckhole. A lot of the bibs we tried were not accomodating in the neck and either seemed too tight or fell off way to easily. I would say before we starting giving them solids, bibs were not an essential wardrobe item. Now that we have though, I couldn’t imagine going through a feeding without them! I’d much rather change out bibs then give the girls a new outfit a couple more times a day.

Without being too fussy about the items we use for feeding time, I’ve really come to like the gerber/nuk feeding spoons. Plastic spoon with a metal handle. We had originally gotten some really cute munchkin spoons. They are all plastic but the spoon is a little too deep for new eaters. I’m sure they will come in handy when they are a little older though. As I mentioned above, I love the wal-mart George brand bibs. The high chairs we have are Ikea brand. 25 bucks, nice and simple. They are perfect. The bowls we use are generic.. bowls. I’m not sure if the type of bowl would change the experience at all?!