One more at the dinner table

The time has come!  Emma has started solid foods today.  This day was a few weeks in the works.

Up until a few weeks ago, Evan still used his high chair so I ordered him a booster seat so that Emma could start joining us at the dinner table in the high chair.  She was pretty thrilled to literally be elevated to this new seat.  Up until then she had been sitting in her rocking chair on the floor, while we dined high above her.  She's been watching us so closely while we eat, so I know she's interested in food and would soon be ready to try solids.

Having moved Evan into a booster was also nice for him to actually scoot up to our table instead of using the tray on his high chair.  We'd have let him do that already but the arms on his high chair seat stick out too high for it to be pushed up close enough for Evan to eat off of the table.

So we prepped her for this day by letting her sit with us at every meal for the past few weeks.  We had our food and she had her toys.  Then I bought some organic brown rice cereal on my last grocery trip and we figured today, at 25 weeks old (just shy of 6 months!), would be as good of day as any.  We were all home for a nice big breakfast together this morning; John cooked scrambled eggs and we had some leftover homemade pancakes...Evan's favorites!

He refused to smile or look at the camera, so here's a genuine action shot instead.

I mixed up Emma's really running cereal mixture with some breastmilk and got her new bib on her (it was awfully big on her still!).  When I snapped some "before" photos, I decided to give her the spoon to play with.  She immediately put it in her mouth, which she does with pretty much everything now, but the way she did it seemed as if she knew how to use the spoon already.

"I already know what I'm doing!" 

Then I fed her spoonfuls of the running mixture and she drank it from the spoon with an often confused look on her face, but she continued to lap it up regardless.  The first half of the feeding most of it "drooled" back out down her chin.  Then she seemed to get the hang of it and was drinking it off of the spoon, however toward the end she wasn't keeping as much in her mouth again (maybe she was getting full?...nah, not my Emma!).

The first bite...

"Hmmm...what is this?"

Dribble dribble!

Really getting the hang of it!

Success!

Afterward she was pretty happy, which allowed me to then eat my breakfast too while she went back to  playing with Sophie the Giraffe.  Now I just need to sort out a new feeding routine for her, and soon start trying other foods too.