Adventures in Baby Food

Well, we have managed to make it through another milestone and remain intact...trying out solid foods!! As new moms know, like anything related to babies, this is a huge decision that is made based on weighing the many pros & cons. When to do it, where to do it, how to do it....there are so many studies and facts and statistics about when and how to introduce baby food, it will make your head spin. And I wonder how much of our taxes are put to silly studies such as "Should babies be introduced to fruits before vegetables?".

There is the mentality from our parents' generation that is wondering why we hadn't started putting cereal into the bottle at 4 weeks to help get them to sleep at night ::gasp:: while the newest information out there states that you should never feed your baby (or babies in my case) cereal until after they turn 6 months old. Some people are so adamant about this that they use the favorite method of the Catholic Church - Fire & Brimstone - when it comes to feeding your baby before 6 months. Oh, the digestive track is too immature, it can cause obesity issues (really, if your baby has a few pureed pears a month early, they are going to get fat??)...blah, blah, blah. And based on all this information overload...I just shut down and decide that when it 'feels' right to try baby food, I will do it. Statistics and news articles be damned!!

So at 5 months, it looked as though Josh was really starting to dig adult food. He would watch memorized while we were eating our pasta, and he was only ever that memorized by the Olympics on the TV...so we decided to delve into the adventure that is baby food!! Lo and behold, they actually seemed to like it! At first they weren't quite sure to think of the whole spoon-feeding scenario, but they are starting to get it and it's becoming quite fun! Just the sight now of the spoon coming to their mouth sends them in a tongue-sucking frenzy since they don't yet understand the whole "open mouth, insert food" concept. It is quite hilarious to watch them trying to suck the spoon like it is their bottle, and immediately get angry when the spoon has been taken out of their mouth to get more food.

It is not the cleanest thing to do, feeding twins. Luckily, right now it's more for practice than anything else...but I see my future very clearly, and am very glad that I painted my kitchen fern green and eliminated white from the wall repertoire. I might even only feed them green foods, so that the splatter is totally undetectable! For now, they are only messing up themselves since their new favorite thing is to shove their fingers in their mouth to scoop up any baby food that might be hanging out on their face. So it proceeds from face, to hands, to chest, to feet...and someone who doesn't miss a beat, is our Lucy. She is my cleanup crew, and I am sure she is already dreaming of that beautiful future where more food lands on the floor than in their mouths :)

I have heard that it takes something like 15-20 introductions to food before the baby starts liking/disliking items, but for now it seems that they don't mind anything we have given them. Brown rice cereal, oatmeal, bananas, they inhale (literally) it all. I am hoping this is a good sign to come and that our children will be foodies just like me (minus that mac and cheese kick that starts about age one and ends at age 3). I can see my boys already, gobbling down escargot at age 4 just like their mother...well, here's to hoping at least!!

So here are a couple of shots of the boys eating:

I'm sure in the future, I will have many more hilarious photos, but this is all I got for now. Now, on the the next adventure...