Finger Foods

At our nine month check-up last week, our pediatrician asked me if LO was using his fingers to pick up smaller objects. I thought of every piece of string, paper, dust (gasp) on our floor that LO finds and tries to eat and said, simply, "yes." It got me to thinking, though, that he probably meant truly edible objects. I've been making LO's food with our fabulous Beaba babycook, so everything he has eaten has been pureed. Should we be trying finger foods with just two teeth? Why not? Of course they'd be small and mushy. Stuff that could be swallowed without chewing.

So three days ago DH and I excitedly met at the highchair to give LO his first finger foods. I quartered some blueberries and put a few pieces on his tray. I have plenty other pieces on standby since I new he was going to need more. Instead, he barely seemed to notice the pieces. My boy who will fight his way across a room to try and eat a speck of lint, didn't care about the blueberries served right in front of him. So I tasted one and made a big deal about how yummy it was. I gave him a piece and he made a face...not very sweet. I mashed some and he loved eating them off the spoon. Eventually (as in about ten minutes later) he carefully pinched one of the pieces. Much to my chagrin, it was hard for him to get, too slimy or squsihy or something. Oh well, maybe some banana? Nope, too slimy to pick-up, even for me. Maybe avocado? Nope, ditto on the slimy.

The next day I just knew I had the right thing. LO tried watermelon on the 4th of July for the first time and LOVED it. So I cut up the one we had in the fridge and gave him those pieces. Success...sort of. He was able to pick it up, but played with it. By the time he got his first two fingers in his mouth, the watermelon piece was between his second and third. Then he put his fourth and fifth fingers in his mouth, but still no melon. Poor kid! It was really funny in a sad sort of way. I let him try some more and he had fun making a mess on his tray. In the end the only watermelon he got though was what I fed him. And so it has gone for three days now. Lots of trying, not much success. Our latest attempt was peas. Seemed perfect to me. Small (check), mushy (check), textured enough to grasp (check), tastes good (check), rolls all over tray (uggh!). Who knew that starting finger foods would be this complicated?