Bring on the food -- or not

Yesterday, at 6 months and two days old, we finally gave Owen his first taste of solid food.

He was excited to play with the spoon.

But once he got to tasting the stuff, his expression stayed pretty much like this:

mildly repulsed.

He didn’t spit it out, but he accepted about a third of his two-tablespoon portion before losing all interest. Will was convinced he loved it; Rob and I, not so much.

We began to wonder if we had a less voracious, more finicky eater on our hands than Will had been as a baby and toddler. (Will devoured his first portion of rice cereal at Owen’s age.) It’s also possible that he had a tastier meal than Owen’s today. (After flirting with the idea of launching with something other than rice cereal with Owen, I decided to stick with the old standby – only I used an Earth’s Best whole grain rice cereal on Owen and I think Will may have had the traditional white Gerber stuff.)

At the end of the day, we pulled out an old video of Will eating his first rice cereal at 6 months. As he would with most meals in the days and months to come, Will gobbled the stuff and still wanted more. “He’s eating it all!” Will said as he watched himself (sporting a head of hair that makes him look like some kind of baby-man beside Owen). “That’s you!” we reminded Will. And he corrected himself: “Will’s eating it all.”

It was hard for him to believe that he was looking at a younger version of himself – hard for Rob and I too. And even harder to imagine that before long Owen will be a walking, talking self-feeding kid himself.

On the subject of introducing foods, a report in the January issue of Pediatrics suggests that neither what babies eat nor what their breastfeeding mothers eat has much effect on whether they will develop any food allergies. You can read about it here.