Solid!

If you've been following the recent Owen pictures on the right, you already know that 2007 has brought some big changes in Owen's gastronomical options. On New Year's Day, we gave Owen his first taste of solid food. He had been showing some interest real food for a while (when one of your favorite activities is putting things in your mouth, how could you not be interested in stuff that even mommy and daddy put in their mouths!), so we decided that Owen's New Year's resolution would be to start eating real food.

I've waited a little while to write this post, because after we prepared Owen's first meal of ground up rice cereal mixed with breast milk, the adjectives "solid" and "real" didn't seem to apply to the type of food we were introducing him to. He didn't seem to mind though, and reacted to his first bite as if it were the most interesting thing he ever felt in his mouth (which it probably was). We spent the first week adjusting the whole family to our new routine. After the first feeding we quickly realized that it was time to add a high chair to our stable of baby accessories. We also decided that messy process of transferring food from bowl/chin/bib to Owen's mouth was a job best suited for daddy.

Owen's culinary adventures really began in his second week on solid food. While the rice cereal was a pretty uncontroversial choice for his first food, the real debate began when deciding what his second food should be. The choice really comes down to fruits vs. vegetables: some argue that fruits like bananas are best because your baby is already used to the sweet taste of breast milk, and the sweetness of fruits make for an easier transition; others argue that if you introduce sweet fruits first, it will be harder to convince your baby to eat vegetables later. We decided to split the difference and start Owen off with avocados. Avocado is a good Texas food, and while technically a fruit, it's not too sweet, and hopefully it will convince him later in life to love guacamole! Thankfully, Owen took to the avocado like a champ, and he really seems to enjoy dinner time. It looks like introducing him to a world of new flavors is going to be a lot of fun!

So how did that first meal go? Take a look for yourself...