Baby Food

He eats! Adam eats baby food! Now that he is eight months old, I feel like it's safe to truly believe and declare it.

If you knew my other two kids as babies, you understand that I approached Adam's six-month mark with a bit of fear and cynicism. Let's just say I don't have the greatest track record with babies and solid food.

The day that Lucy turned six months old, I happily pulled out the carefully-selected organic rice cereal, mixed perfectly proportioned amounts of cereal and breastmilk, and used the perfect little bowl and rubber-covered spoons.

She shuddered and spit it out.

But I was undeterred. I tried again the next day. And the next. And the next. I tried with water instead of breastmilk. I tried different thicknesses. I tried it warm, and I tried it cold. And when I decided to move on to try something different, she was already clamming up at the sight of the spoon. But I was sure that my homemade baby food that I had steamed and put through the baby food mill and carefully and lovingly proportioned and frozen in ice cube trays would be much more appealing.

She shuddered and spit that out, too.

This was our routine for the next three and a half months. That's right. Lucy didn't actually swallow any food until she was nine and a half months old, and then it was straight to table food that she could feed herself. Ugh. It was a long road.

Josiah, on the other hand, was quite happy to give food a try. But his body clearly wasn't ready for it. He ate the food, but then he threw it all up. All of it. Every time. I could set my clock by his body's reaction: exactly two hours after eating, he would begin to throw up. We explored allergies and illnesses, but in the end it left our pediatricians stumped and I gave it a rest for a while, trying again every few weeks. When he was just older than nine months, he finally started keeping everything down, as long as it was not "baby food." Phew!

So, this fall, when Adam turned six months old, I wrestled with even attempting "the dreaded baby food thing" until he was closer to his first birthday. I passed his half-year mark without having purchased a single item of baby food, and the rubber-covered spoons were still packed away.

But at six-and-a-half months old, sitting on the most beautiful beach in Hawaii, I took my first bite of a sweet Hawaiian banana and saw that Adam was watching my every move. I knew I had to let him try it.

I almost didn't get my finger back!

He ate it. Eagerly. And wiggled and bounced happily between each bite.

Since then, he has happily eaten and kept down a whole variety of foods: pumpkin, pears, squash, peas, prunes, apples, bananas, peaches, green beans, and his favorite, sweet potatoes.

This is a first for me: a baby who eats baby food. Who knew?

With my third baby, I'm feeling like a first-time mom. I'm loving the joy of this "new" discovery and wondering what he'll think of Thanksgiving dinner tomorrow...