First Foods

Week one of solid foods: rice cereal, mixed with breast milk, increasing in thickness.
Week two of solid foods: real food! Fun! Up first: pear, because I had prepared some in October when our pear tree was full of ripe pears. Not really: we have a fruit-eating enemy in the backyard called Mr. Squirrel, but that's another story. So I cooked the pears down, mashed them, and froze them in ice cube trays. After they were frozen, I put the pear cubes in a plastic bag and waited for my baby to grow big enough to enjoy them.
It worked pretty well, an ice cube sized amount is a decent amount for one serving. I put it in a dish with a little breast milk and put that in a pan of water to heat it up. I have read several warnings about microwaving breast milk- something about microwaves breaking down something in the milk- but I don't own one, so I am already an expert at finding ways to heat things up non-microed.
We found that heating it hotter than you think is safe is typically they way to go, because by the time it gets stirred up and to the table and a bib is put on the baby, it has cooled to about the right temperature. (If not, I add a splash of cool water)
The looks on his face were great, can you imagine tasting FLAVOR for the first time?!
Next was avocado, which I knew he would love. Why? Because it's not always easy to find a decent organic ripe avocado and they are usually pretty expensive! but New Pi has them on sale for 99 cents right now, and they all happen to be perfect! I just mashed a little bit with a fork and added some breast milk to it, and it's like his own guacamole! I wouldn't recommend eating his version, though. Avocado+milk= no thanks.

Then we tried banana, and he ate a lot! Again, I just mashed it with a fork mixed w/ boob juice. It had some small chunks which he tended to spit out. I didn't think I would be the kind of dork that played "airplane" and such games while feeding my baby, but I find myself doing whatever makes him giggle! And every time I feed him the spoon "car" speeding up, shifting gears and then hitting the breaks and crashing into his mouth- he giggles and eats it! I guess I'm starting to learn WHY parents are such dorks!
I found these spoons on Amazon by Dr. Brown's. They promote being long so that you can get to the bottom of tall jars, but I don't know what tall jars you would be feeding a baby out of. It is nice, though, to have a long spoon so that your hand isn't getting too close to the gooey pile that has formed on his face. And the flat part is convenient for the chin-scrape of escaped food.