First Foods are Finished!

We have finally made it through all of the baby's first foods!  Just in the nick of time, too, as he will be 6 months old in a couple of weeks.  I don't know that the 6 month mark is necessarily much of a distinction as far as the foods go, but the baby food packages all have "6 months and up" printed on the second foods.  (I am nothing if not a consummate rule-follower.)  I am so excited for him to start the new food combos - he can have stuff like quinoa, green beans, spinach, mangoes....the list just goes on and on!  Although I have not made any food for him yet, I am actually pretty excited to be able to do that as well.....my hope is, once produce starts showing up again at my favorite farmer's markets, that I will be able to get some fresh veggies, bring them home and cook them for the whole family (baby included) that day.  We will see - for those of you who may read my blog and are outside of my immediate area, my home state is stuck in the middle of an epic drought which has pretty much scorched everything grown outdoors.  Lovely.  Anyway, and regardless, he should be able to try lots of new foods very soon.  We actually bought him a multi grain cereal yesterday, so I can soon add spelt and millet to the list of foods that he has tried.  As of last week, he has enjoyed sweet potatoes and bananas, in addition to his other favorites.  I was a little surprised that he took so well to the bananas because he has not shown a strong affinity to any fruits (save prunes - he is such a little old man).  Honestly, I was a little put off by the bananas (from the Sprout line) because of their bizarre color - pink.  Seriously, I was a little concerned until I noticed that the jarred bananas are the same color.  I don't know if the color comes from the fact that bananas suffer from oxidative browning or what, but the baby food purees are all a really pretty shade of pink.  (At first, I was going to blame it on Tyler Florence's affinity for roasting fruits.....yes, the bananas are also roasted.....but, based on the comparison at the store yesterday, I don't think that was the cause.  You lucked out this time, Tyler!)  My husband is really excited about a feeding gadget that he found at the baby store yesterday: it is a spoon that will attach to a baby food package that has a spout on the end.  I don't know how to describe it other than that - it is literally a spout that you uncap and squeeze the food out of.  The packaging is actually really cool and my husband was pretty excited about being able to travel with food slightly easier.  (Saturday night, we found out the hard way how hard it is to feed the baby in the middle of a child's birthday party.  It took both of us to get the baby fed while our older kids were running amok.) 

I think the only other "new" food related issue is my continuing effort to go dairy free....I don't think it is having an effect on the baby's skin issues and I am seriously missing cheese and chocolate these days.  I am going to give it another couple of weeks to see if we notice any improvement, but, as of right now, I am not convinced the problem is the dairy.  On the plus side, I think I have actually dropped some weight - I had not realized just how often I was consuming cheese, yogurt, milk and other assorted dairy products.  Let's just say....A LOT (side note: this was totally necessary during my pregnancy, for obvious reasons).  So, to wrap up, I should have some new baby foods to document in the next couple of weeks and I am looking forward to the weather cooling off, so that we can all enjoy some of my favorite winter dishes (which I also plan to share on here).  Until next time, have a great week and Happy Halloween!