Starting Solid Foods
Within a week he had enthusiastically knawed on a chicken leg bone (with the meat taken off) and had finger-fed himself some banana and pear.
For the banana, at first I cut it in tiny pieces and put it on the table in front of him; soon I just gave him a hunk of banana and let him squash it himself (it was a soft banana). A neat idea that came in handy at restaurants was to peel a banana and scrape off some banana with a spoon and feed it to him that way.
For the pear (it was a pear from a can of chunky fruit in fruit juice) I cut it in tiny pieces and then squashed them with a fork.
Within a few months, some of his other favorite foods became rice cakes, bits of mango, applesauce (yes, he fed himself!), and noodles.
I made sure that breastmilk continued to be his main source of food until around his first birthday, but from the very beginning my son enjoyed his food very much, and we have always had fun watching him eat it. He loves to feed himself, and uses a spoon pretty well, but it does get quite messy sometimes. For a while there, he had to take a couple baths a day. Now I try to plan it so that usually his messiest meal is supper, and then afterwards he can take a nighttime bath.
He had been exclusively breastfed until his first taste of solid food, so we skipped bottles all together. Around the time that he started solids foods, I started offering him sips of water from my cup, and he enjoyed it, but he didn't need it everyday. Then he learned to drink (and loved doing it) with a straw and from a sippy cup.
After several months, I began putting a little water in a cup without a lid, and he slowly learned to drink from it. Now, at 18 months old, he drinks well from a regular cup. I avoided juice until he was over a year old, but he drinks juice some now, though I try to give him mostly water. He also enjoys drinking blender drinks (made with fruit, yogurt, water, and milk) and chocolate rice milk sometimes. His main source of liquid is breastmilk.
There is no special age by which solids need to be introduced, and there is no
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