"Please, sir, can I have some more?"

We noticed that over the past 10 days or so Julian's interest in our food has gone from passive to almost desperate. He looks longingly at my yogurt, hopefully at my scrambled eggs, and hungrily at my soup, so we figured it may be time to at least try some solid foods. I know I am supposed to wait until he's 4 months old and can sit up by himself to introduce solid foods but he was already 16 weeks and he does enjoy the tasting things so, heck, why not?

This saturday we mixed some rice cereal with some breast milk and used our fingers as spoons to introduce this new substance to our liquid-diet son. At first he looked at us like we were crazy. "What is this mess you want me to do? You want to put that in my mouth? Well then...I guess I'll try it." At first he made a funny face but after a couple more tastes he was ALL about the rice cereal! He was even opening his mouth for us when we'd put our finger up to his mouth wit some gruel on it. After a few bites (enough to amount up to 1/2 a tablespoon) we stopped there and cleaned him up. Since then he has shown a lot of enthusiasm for our food and hopefully we can give him a bit each day until he is showing a strong ability to swallow the food safely, and then we'll up the amount. I am thinking of trying some sweet potatoes tonight....