I had a plan. I was going to try to wait until my daughter was closer to a year to introduce solids into her diet. I felt like I forced my son into eating solids before he was ready. Even though he ate most of the baby foods that I made for him, he never really showed an interest. When he did start to really want foods, he only wanted foods that had a smooth texture, like the purees I made him. Regardless of when my daughter started eating solids, I had decided that I am not going to puree anything for her. My thought is that if she cannot eat it as (with a little help from a fork for mashing) than she cannot eat it….yet.
In an attempt to improve my parenting skills, I was going to let my daughter lead. I was pretty sure that she would want solids until at least nine months or so. I was wrong. As soon as she started teething, she wanted food in her mouth. At around six months my daughter pretty much demanded her first tastes of food. It started out with sucking/gnawing on organic carrots. However, once she got her first taste of organic apple (she pretty much grabbed the apple I was eating out of my hands and starting sucking on it), she would get extremely excited whenever she saw an apple. Once I took a bite out of the apple it was all over because she had to have some too. Her next taste was of an organic nectarine (one of my favorite summertime fruits). She loved the nectarine more so than the apple. She no longer got overly excited about apples but she did get extremely excited at the site of nectarines (or peaches). Given the softer flesh of the nectarine in comparison to the apple, my daughter was actually able to take “bites” of the nectarine…
(To be continued…)