When It's Ok to Play With Your Food

At our 4 month appointment, the Bug's pediatrician informed us we were starting cereal. I had been all about baby led weaning up until daily (sometimes more than once) poop blowouts began occurring and suddenly the prospect of giving him cereal so that I wouldn't be cleaning up poop everyday seemed like an excellent idea!

Except that it wasn't. The Bug was exclusively breastfed and the American Academy of Pediatrics has changed their recommendations from starting solids at 4 months to 6 months and the Bug wasn't ready. Sure he was sitting up with help and meeting most of the "milestones" but his digestive system wasn't ready and after a week, we stopped.

BUT now we have all this stuff and a kiddo who was interested in our food so... we compromised with him sort of...

The mantra I hear over and over now is Food Before 1 is Just for Fun! so I took that to heart!

We got the mesh feeders and started letting the Bug explore breastmilk ice cubes (great for teething though the Bug still has 0...)

Then of course, it was totally finger painting with prunes time! 

The Bug thinks of himself as Spiderman even though we prefer Superman...

He did eat some but that was ok- he was having fun! (And oral exploration is definitely fun...)

As he got a bit older, we started adding things like pieces of banana or avocado to his mesh feeder and taught him how to hold it himself! (This was once the hand to mouth part was better mastered!)

At 6 months, we went crazy! The Bug gets spoon fed a little bit but most of his food is stuff he can pick up! We did abide by the 3-4 day rule between introducing new foods to a point though now we aren't good about it...

He makes a mess but he has now learned to chew and loves Rice cakes and Kix (thus I don't have to buy the overpriced, over sugared baby brands!!!)

So go grab a container of the baby food you can't believe you bought (what? It's not organic???) and let it be part of a sensory experience! 

** Note- it is up to you and your doctor to decide when is the right time to start solid foods for your child!

*** Please make sure your child isn't playing with food they may be allergic too! Rice or oatmeal cereal is a perfectly fine play medium as well as any foods!!!