When I had Maggie I decided I wasn’t going to start her on solids until she wanted them. I wanted to keep this baby a baby as long as possible, and in all honesty, starting solids just causes more work for me. There is nothing as easy as whipping out a breast and being done with it. No prep, no clean up, just instant lunch. I was hoping Maggie would be content with this until she was one. She isn’t.

When we were traveling she grabbed a cracker out of my hand and went into a state of joyful delirium gumming it until it melted and crumbled and I had to fish the tiny pieces out if her mouth with my finger. When I took the remnants away from her, she burst into a well executed torrent of tears that told me not only was she miffed at losing the cracker, but my little angel had discovered the art of manipulation. As soon as I gave her a new cracker my sunny baby reappeared. By the end of the three hour flight I had an entire package worth of soggy cracker bits on my tray table and a daughter who now knows I will give her whatever she wants if she just whimpers.

On our first trip to the commissary after returning home I picked up rice cereal and some carefully selected first foods for Maggie. I have this theory that if I start them out with veggies they will be more likely to accept them in the future. If I start them out with fruit, all they will want if sweet stuff and they’ll never learn to appreciate the flavorful and more nutritionally sound vegetables. I did this with Jonas when he was a baby and it worked according to my hypothesis until I started Jonas on fruits.

I made the gross error of choosing a baby food called Blueberry Buckle as Jonas’ first fruit. I figured it was a good choice since blueberries are loaded with antioxidants and very, very good for you. I assumed that Blueberry Buckle was just a cute name for pureed blueberries. It is actually a cute name for blueberries in which the first ingredient is sugar. Why Gerber even manufacturers infant desert food is beyond me. Anyway, Jonas adored the Blueberry Buckle. In fact, it was all he would eat for the next three days until, on a whim, I looked at the label and realized I was pumping my kid full of sugar. Now I read labels.

For Maggie I chose green beans, sweet potato and pears, to be introduced in that order. So far we’ve done the rice cereal, which she passionately loves (gag), and green beans which cause her to shudder and contort into hilarious expressions. Since we kept laughing at her faces, she kept eating the offending beans. With every nasty mouthful she gave us a look that clearly said, “What is this stuff?” Then she would laugh, blow green bean raspberries at us, and take another bite. Once I got enough pictures to keep me laughing for a long time, we quit torturing her with the green beans and brought the yummy rice cereal back (I’m not that mean.) I guess we’ll try the sweet potatoes next.

She Likes Her Some Rice Cereal. . .

Not So Much With The Green Beans. . .

And, yes, that is a “spit happens” bib.