Baby-Led Weaning: Aliens with Solid Foods

You may have gathered Kiddo is eating solids these days...well, we've introduced solids. He was lunging for my food, so I figured he was ready to try them.

He doesn't really eat them. Well, sometimes he does. Sometimes he plays with his food and then licks it off his fingers. Sometimes he just plays.

You see I want Kiddo to regulate his eating himself. I don't want to be one of those food pushing moms that inadvertently makes my child fat because I taught poor eating habits (like eating past full). That's why I decided to try baby-led weaning.
This is where you give baby table foods (healthy whole foods) of a consistency and size baby can handle (mushy for example). You let baby feed himself and only intervene if there is an emergency.

It's messy. Really. And Kiddo is more curious about how foods feel between his fingers than eating. His tasting face always looks like he hates it (The texture? The taste? Not sure). We're pretty sure it's his "thinking face" which makes the whole thing pretty entertaining, even if he decides to throw his food on the floor or squirrel it away in his chair.

So far we've tried the following:

• Rice cereal (before BLW, but Kiddo wanted to feed himself which was...ahem...interesting...see above pic).
• Banana - more fun for fingers.
• Squash - finger fun, moderate tasting action
• Carrot - LOVES to gnaw on large hard carrots. So far the fav.
• Strawberry (frozen in mesh teether) - moderate tasting
• Broccoli - loves. This resulted in the most eating, particularly of the stem from a larger stalk.

Things we plan on introducing soon:

• Zucchini
• Salmon (can't wait!)
• Green beans
• Avocado
• Possibly peas
• Possibly sweet potato
• Possibly apple (in some iteration)
• Pasta is on the radar...as are eggs (though I think I have to wait until he's a year old for those).

I wish he had a few more teeth so I could feel good about Cheerios, but I'm not sure about that at this point.

And you know what? He still prefers to nurse. Actively. He seeks it out. I know there will come a day when he no longer wants to. The thought pains me because I just love cradling him as he eats, staring into his big blue eyes. It's a precious moment and I will mourn it's passing into early childhood.