adding other solids

[lucyp]

Bub (6months old) has been on rice cereal for about a week now and we've slowly been increasing the quantity and consistency of it and he is taking it quite well. What I want to now do is add mushy apple or other stuff to his 'repoitoire". Do you add the apple to the rice cereal or just give it straight?
Also do I continue giving him the rice cereal in the mornings?
When do I start to give it to him twice a day?
Sorry if this sounds really basic - but I like to have a bit of an idea / structure to things and I am yet to find a book that really spells it out for you.

Thanks

[draught]

You can try him on pureed fruit on it's own or with the rice cereal. I started my girls on pear rather than apple as it is a softer flavour. I mixed a bit into their rice cereal the first day then gave them some separately on the second day.

The advice on introducing a second meal is to wait about two weeks, then another two weeks to the third meal. You can keep giving rice cereal in the mornings if he likes it, or you can alternate it with fruit, or you can give cereal and fruit mixed together (which is what I tend to do). In a couple of weeks try him on toast crusts as finger food after his cereal - spread with the traditional vegemite, or avocado, or hommus.

When you decide to start a second meal, whether it is lunch or dinner, you can introduce vegies (the sweet ones like pumpkin, carrot and sweet potato are always good to start off with). You can also try fruit on it's own or with a bit of natural yoghurt. If you make your vegies too runny, a bit of rice cereal works well as a thickener in my experience!

A lot of it ends up being guesswork - it took me a few weeks to get into the swing of remembering to give solids at consistent times with both my girls. I can highly recommend a small food processor like the Black and Decker from K-Mart - about $23 - it helps to whizz up small amounts of food for them. Then I froze them into ice cube trays which meant that I wasn't having to cook fresh food for each meal. I also found that I could then start to mix different flavours together - one cube of apple and one of pear, or one of carrot and pumpkin with one of zucchini and sweet potato, etc.

Good luck!