Wednesday, December 14, 2005

Give Peas a Chance I forgot to mention that Oliver's been eating solid foods since last Sunday.  He had sweet potato for his first food, and he quite enjoyed it.  (Most experts these days are saying that the first food doesn't have to be rice cereal, and some are even going farther with their food recommendations.) Tonight he had peas, which, for those of you who may not be aware, are green. He was wearing a white sleeper when he ate peas for the first time. Are you seeing where I'm headed with this?  Peas everywhere.  In his hair.  On his eyebrows.  Under his chin.  On his cheeks.  Behind his ears.  All over his chair, and his outfit, and his tray, and his sippy cup.  Hooboy, was it a mess.  I had to fish the pea chunks out of his seat belt buckle with a q-tip.   He needed an outfit change after the excursion.  The good news is that he's not one of those kids who rejects food (yet.)  He quite happily shoves the spoon into his mouth - and usually, leaves it there for a minute or two.  Sometimes he moves it around, and even shoves it back to test the ol' gag reflex.  And once, he tried to stick it in his eye.  Luckily, his aim isn't all that good.  So now that it's working, we're going to start experimenting with more new foods once a week.  Apparently, it's even okay to introduce things like chicken or turkey now.  The one unexpected problem we've run into is actually preparing his food.   Neither of us thought much about this, but you've got to do something to mash the stuff into a palatable form.  My food processor has proved useless for mashing quantities like three tablespoons at a time - it just splatters food all over the sides of the bowl.  We've resorted to mashing his food through a strainer to get it to the right pureed consistency.  There are apparently food mills available for this sort of thing.  I pooh-poohed the idea originally, but I think we're going to have to break down and buy one of the wretched things.  7:28:44 PM     Speak up!  []