Rice cereal

At Annie's last pediatrician appointment, the doctor told us it was OK to start solid foods with her. We then had to get a high chair, which took a while. It finally arrived a few days ago, and after the usual hassle of putting it together, Annie has been hanging out in it during meals. She really likes it - I think she likes being able to sit up with us during meals.

Here's a photo of her, clearly impressed with the high chair:

Yesterday, we started Annie on rice cereal. Basically, you mix 1 Tbsp of cereal with 4-5 Tbsp of formula. So it's really, really soupy. Then we put her in a bib, and I had a special baby spoon, and we fed her the cereal. It mostly ran all over her face and some of it went on the bib:

But she didn't complain, and in fact, at times she even opened her mouth for us. I gave her some more this morning, and made it a little less soupy. She ate some of it.

The trick is that she is still supposed to be drinking the same amount of formula. The cereal is merely to introduce her to the texture of food, and perhaps give her a few more calories. (If the baby doesn't sleep through the night, the rice cereal is supposed to help with that, although a lot of people say that that's a myth). The problem, of course, is that after I give her a bottle, she's not really that hungry for the cereal. Yesterday, I waited about 30 minutes before I fed her the food. That might have been a little more successful than this morning, since I waited a little less time. Some people give their babies the cereal first and then the formula, but I worry that that would impact the baby's formula intake. Anyway, like everything else, I think we'll figure it out. We have to continue with just rice cereal for 1-2 weeks to see how her system reacts to it, and then we can try other things, like other grains (oatmeal, barley, etc.). Vegetables come next, then fruits. We have to try each food for a few days before introducing another one, to check for allergies.

Today we're going to try again to drive up to Freeport, Maine to go to L.L.Bean and get out of the house for the day. Hopefully the traffic will be better than the last time we tried this!