Levi's Adventures in Food

Levi entered the world of food exploration at just about 6 months! We learned about a method called baby led solids, which introduces whole, solid foods from the very beginning. No rice cereal at 4 months or purees. While we believe that there is no one best method of doing anything with babies, the philosophy of baby led solids made sense to us. Babies get to make choices from the very beginning and eat as much or as little as they want in the early stages. Food before 1 is just for fun!

We started with avocado, which Levi seemed to like despite the fact that it was a little overly ripe for him to handle. He truly enjoyed licking his fingers! We followed with broccoli, teething toast, sweet potato, egg yolk, asparagus, zucchini, carrot, guacamole and now banana. His early favorites were broccoli, sweet potato and egg yolk. At the beginning he mostly just licked and sucked on his food but quickly got the hang of what to do with the food once it got to his mouth. He quickly learned how to bite small pieces off and how to keep it in his mouth instead of spitting it out. In the first few weeks, he would get frustrated at times but once he got into it he did just fine.

We gave most of his foods to him in stick shapes so he could grab onto one end and eat at the other.  With baby led solids, you don’t spoon feed  - you let them decide what to pick up and eat. At first, he had no interest in eating from a spoon but we worked on it and he got the hang of it quick. We are still working on him using the spoon, so we help, but he eats his yogurt willingly. Once he developed the pincer grasp at around 8 months, he had more fun with small foods.

We started him in our travel high chair  (highly recommend the phil & ted’s travel high chair.) and moved him into his big high chair at about 7 months. He sits at the head of the table and each of us sits next to him. At first he looked like he was swimming in his high chair, so you can really tell how much bigger he’s gotten.

Now Levi can pretty much eat anything we eat, but his ultimate favorites are turkey meatballs, greek yogurt, bananas, strawberries, oranges and pears. See a pattern? Yes, despite our best efforts to introduce vegetables first, he still loves fruit more. It has been so much fun to watch him try new foods - both meals we cook at home and meals we eat out. He will always accept puffs or mum mums for a snack!

We hope that baby led solids promotes healthy eating, results in an adventurous eater! So far so good!

A montage of his food journey so far...