The first food I plopped in front of Winter was an avocado when she was one day shy of 6 months, but it was so very slippery, there was no hope. Then I realized she was “good” at picking up her blankets and clothes. The food that mimicked that the most was some wavy lettuce, so I pulled out some leaves from a mixed greens bag I had and sure enough it was instantly picked up up. Her third attempt at it that day she managed to actually ingest some, and the next day I found it in her poo. Success!


1 day shy of 6 months: lettuce

After that day she was more adept at bringing things into her mouth, and the leafy greens couldn’t be chewed very well so I moved on to other things (I don’t recommend starting with leafy greens because of this!). She was able to wield a celery stick very adeptly, and knew to stretch her neck to get her head up and over it to get her mouth on it. It was raw, so it was just for “gumming.” During the first month I did a lot of handing her the sticks of food, because things like avocado were so darn slippery, but then I realized that with time she could pick them up, and she rarely got frustrated. I also realized I might be inadvertently training her to be right handed!

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6 month lunch: beet stalks and romanescu. I would steam one beet stalk, but then somehow she would polish off such a fibrous food in no time.


7 months: cucumber

Within the first two months she had eaten:

  • Avocado
  • Broccoli
  • Bananas
  • Romanescu
  • Carrots
  • Beets
  • Peas
  • Sprouted beans
  • Chopped up chickpeas
  • Oranges
  • Pears
  • Match stick slices of apples
  • Mango
  • Tomatoes
  • Asparagus
  • Watermelon
  • Kiwi
  • Millet porridge
  • Slow cooked coconut curry chicken
  • Slow cooked Hungarian beef stew

Broccoli stems were my favorite easy thing to prepare for her for the first two months. They have a bit of a tough outer skin, so I peeled them, then steamed them, and she munched them down. Aaaaand they weren’t messy. Broccoli with the crowns created a big mess.


broccoli stems


the aftermath of broccoli stems with crowns

Tomatoes seem to give her face a bit of a rash where the juices sit. I realize that tomatoes are one of those “allergenic” foods, but neither my husband and I have any food allergies so I had no hesitation to test anything. Perhaps if I had tomato juice sitting on my face for 45 minutes I’d develop a rash, too.

They say that if the baby has a reaction to something, to take a break, and maybe try it later. I personally think abandoning allergenic substances altogether doesn’t let your body deal with it frequently, and a bigger reaction may occur the next time it’s introduced. A good friend of mine had this happen with corn – she grew up with it all her life and corn is in everything. She was tested for allergies and corn came up. She eventually decided to go cold turkey and avoid corn altogether, and since then has extreme allergic reactions if she has anything with corn. This happened to me with pets – I grew up with cats when I was young, and as soon as we no longer had a cat for a couple years, I was suddenly severely allergic to cats. Then my family had dogs for 10 years, and I had no allergies. I moved away to college and, bam! Now I’m allergic to dogs, too. I had some allergy testing as a child and apparently I was allergic to bananas, but I’ve never noticed a problem with them.


Slippery mango and abandoned banana chunks

Now at 8 months she’s got the pincer grasp down and can pick up little cubes of food. I have been constantly surprised about what she can eat – even at the 6-7 month mark, after that first day, nothing proved too slippery. She’d polish off what was on her tray in seconds, and it always seemed like I never made her enough food. At six months I remember her eating an entire half an avocado in one sitting, and she could probably easily down an entire small banana at that point, too. She chows everything down and finishes everything she can possibly pick up. The baby that hates the bottle absolutely loves food. The only thing she has chosen not to eat after giving it a taste is carrots, and she’s not very interested in polishing off peas, but they’re a good time waster because she’ll pick them up and make half-hearted attempts to eat them.


8 month dinner: Annie’s Mac and Cheese with asparagus – she polished off everything except for one shell that got wedged by her tray. She also had one and a half slices of an orange afterward.

I used to steam her bits of vegetables from our CSA box or give her parts of a mango, avocado, or banana that I eat for lunch, but now I’m being more conscious of what I cook, like I use unsalted butter instead of margarine, and I am giving her more of what we eat. Every time she is presented with a new food, she picks it up and marvels at it for about a minute before deciding to taste it, and then eat it. It’s the cutest thing! For lunch today I gave her a few cubes of my chicken that went in my wrap, a leftover mango, and she had her first taste of grapefruit that I ate. She made so many sour faces but she ate it!

It took me a couple months to realize I should roll up her sleeves before she eats or they will become absolutely caked with things like avocados and bananas.

Do you have a “good eater?” What are you baby’s favorite foods?