Esme Tidbits: Food

When Esme was still a newborn, I planned to wait until she was eight or nine months to start her on "solid" foods. (I always find the term solid a little confusing, as it's used to describe foods that have been blended to a liquid state.) My reasoning for waiting? Mama's milk is free and convenient--let's stick with that as long as we can! My pediatrician was in favor of this plan... but as it turned out, Esme wasn't!

By the time she was just shy of seven months old, it was clear that this girl was hungry! Mama's milk is all well and good, but when there's not enough of it to keep a growing girl full, well, we have to explore other options. We started with avocado, which was Matthew's first food as well. Here's how it went down:

I gave her the first bite, and...

In summary, "No, thanks, Mama."

After we tried avocados one more time to a similar reception, we moved on to sweet potatoes.

Despite another shell-shocked first reaction, this feeding resulted in a happier baby, and ultimately we were able to sneak the avocados back in, under cover with the sweet potatoes (bwa-ha-ha-ha!). I no longer remember the order of the foods that followed, but Esme now eats these purees: applesauce, banana, green beans, peach, nectarine, kiwi, spinach, broccoli, kale, mango, carrot, plum. For protein, she's had egg yolks, full-fat yogurt, and quite a bit of hummus. She's had bits of fresh pineapple, tiny flakes of salmon, a piece of bread here and there, pretzels, and lots of crackers. After the initial rounds of avocado, she never met a food she didn't like. Oh, and she now loves avocado and eats little chunks of it with her own wee, skinny fingers.