Baby's first time eating avocado

Today we fed avocado to baby for the first time, and it was a success!  Being from the east coast, I didn't try and avocado until I was in my 20s probably.  Our baby is about 5 1/2 months old and he's already had it.  That might account for why I was so excited for him to try it, and also because I really love avocado.  In sushi, guacamole, sandwiches, anything.  I wonder if they make avocado ice cream.

We use the Beaba baby food cooker above, which is really just a food processor mixed with a steamer. We have a lot of kitchen gadgets, so we probably could have done without it, but it was a gift from family and it does work well.

My wife read somewhere that you could measure out servings of the food in ice cube trays once it's steamed and ready, that way you'll have little servings that can be taken out of the freezer any time they're needed.  It's easy enough to do and utilizes something we already own, so there's no added expense.  We take them out of the trays once they're frozen and put them into glass leftover containers because we're trying to limit his food's exposure to plastic.  Even if the trays are BPA free (which I'm not sure they are) they'll find something else in plastic that's bad, so I'm sticking with glass as much as I can.

We went on a little mini vacation to visit my parents on Cape Cod, and met some neighbors with a new baby about the same age.  Their child is a little older, and had already tried avocado.  He did not like it. I was worried, because I had built up avocado in my mind knowing that it's full of nutrients and good fats.  I found this California Avocado Nutrition Website with lots of information about the avocado; they really are amazing.

Before we left my wife prepared apples, sweet potatoes, pears, nectarines, and avocados in the Beaba, so when we returned we had our choice of what to give him.  We went with avocado and he seemed to love it.  There were a couple of times he made funny faces, like when he ate the applesauce for the first time, but only once or twice and not on his first bites.  The applesauce we had to mix with the rice cereal to get him to eat without making faces, but the avocado he ate all by itself with no problem.

He ate the entire ice cube of avocado, and almost all of his rice cereal immediately afterward.  We'll feed him avocado for three more days then try something else, probably the sweet potato.

First day of applesauce

Today we introduced baby to applesauce!  He's been eating formula mixed with rice cereal for a few weeks now, and the doctor told us we should introduce bananas or apples next.

He's done very well with the rice cereal so far.  A few people told us we could mix the rice cereal with formula in his bottle and that it would help him sleep through the night.  My wife read that the rice cereal doesn't always lead to better sleep, and some paperwork from the doctor said that we should never mix the rice cereal in the bottle.  The paperwork told us that part of the reason to feed him rice cereal is to give him practice being fed with a spoon rather than eating from a bottle.

He enjoys eating the rice cereal and is getting the hang of eating from a spoon.  Up until this point all he has "eaten" is liquid through a nipple; I put eaten in quotes because he is technically drinking after all.  When we first introduced the rice cereal we mixed very little in with the formula.  Each day we mix a little more rice cereal to get him ready to eat solids gradually.

Today my wife went to Whole Foods and bought some organic apples to make applesauce.  We were given this Beaba babycook machine that blends and steams fruits and vegetables in one cool little device.  I haven't used it yet but my wife mixed the apples earlier this afternoon so they'd be ready for his evening feeding.



When it came time to actually feed him my wife prepared the rice cereal and formula as usual, but also had a bowl with applesauce in it.  His first few spoonfuls were rice cereal, then she began mixing it with the applesauce.  It was really cute to watch, and funny to see the facial expressions he made as he ate the applesauce.  My wife tasted it and said it came out a bit tart because there's no added sugar, but I also tasted it and didn't find it to be tart.  Mostly I found it to be bland.  It could also be because I'm used to the taste of apples and baby isn't; it's really the first thing he's ever eaten with real flavor.  I guess the milk and formula have flavor, and the rice cereal probably does too, but not much flavor.  He pursed his lips and made funny faces and I was worried that he wouldn't like it, and I might be right.  But there are a lot of foods you don't like as a kid, and it's a new experience for him.  He did a little crying, but sometimes he's too hungry and/or impatient to be fed with the spoon and we switch to the bottle to get some food into him so he's in better humor.  We gave him some spoonfuls mixed with rice cereal and a few of pure applesauce.  He didn't like the pure applesauce too much, but we got as much in him as we could.  We'll see if he likes it better tomorrow.

For the next three to four days we'll be giving him apples, then we'll probably introduce bananas after that.  This is something else we learned from the doctor; this way if he's allergic to the food we give him we'll know right away what he's allergic to.  If we fed him several different things and he has an allergic reaction we won't really know what caused it, so it's important to introduce foods one at a time.

In one month we'll start feeding him vegetables, but until then it's all fruits.  We'll do bananas next, then avocados.  It's a lot of fun to feed him with the spoon, and I can't wait to see how he reacts to all the new things he's going to get to taste.