Baby E is slowly transitioning from purees and mashes into finger food! Yay! Yay? Good for him, but a goddamn mess for us. When we first gave him actual pieces of food to eat, he flung them all off his highchair tray and looked at us like "All done!" Since then, he's been managing to get an average of 45% of the food into his mouth and swallowed, with the rest being flicked onto the floor or spit out onto his bib when he can't quite chew it. Each finger food meal is followed by a dip in the tub and I'm now finding chunks of avocados and Cheerios in our shower drain. It's an adorable mess.
Here's what we've had success with so far in Baby E's first attempts at finger food.
- Diced avocado. This is tricky -- the firmer it is, the more trouble he has keeping it between his teeth and gums; but the riper it is, the more he just wants to squish it in his fingers. I usually feed him avocado chunks instead of letting him go after them himself.
- Mozzarella cheese. Fresh, real mozzarella has been a huge hit. I chop it into small sticks that E can grab and bite. He'll bite half of a stick and chew it with his gums and then go back for the rest. This is the only finger food he has completely mastered on his own.
- Cheerios. Baby E loves to scatter his Cheerios all over the living room. He can easily pick them up with his pincer grasp and has no trouble getting them into his mouth, but things get complicated when he attempts to chew them. He's about 2 for 10 currently. At first, I thought he just liked spitting stuff out, but then I realized he attempts to chew with his tongue and the roof of his mouth. This approach is not very efficient and involves most of the Cheerios being thrust out of his mouth and onto his bib.
- Fruit. Diced apples, pears and mangoes have gone over pretty well so far, but they pose the same challenges in terms of chewing as Cheerios. He's had success with frozen blueberries, but holy shit, those are messy. And bananas are a disgusting, smushy mess. We'll leave those for more advanced levels.
Baby E still has bottles in the morning and before bed with us, and one or two at day care. We're still using Dr. Brown's bottles because they have done wonders with alleviating E's reflux, but their shape is hindering our attempts to teach him to hold his own bottle. When we get around to it, I think we'll give these Avent bottles and training cup a try. He also has a lot of trouble with sippy cups (we've tried both the OXO Tot and Playtex versions so far). He's more interested in flipping them upside down and investigating the plastic lump on the bottom of the cup and we just can't seem to help him make the connection between holding the cup and drinking from it all at the same time. He'd rather we just do it for him, like a little dictator. E's nine-month check-up is next week, so we'll definitely be pumping our amazing pediatrician for information and tips on making the transition to big people food successful.
E's bib is handmade by my mom. He has quite the collection of bespoke bibs.
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