I never really posted about solid food again after I initially mentioned starting Baby Led Solids. I guess Miles was a little over 6 months old then. Sometimes you can't see the benefit of something until a little time has passed; back then he didn't seem to be able to eat much with his early raking grasp, but now at 9+ months Judy tells me he's better with finger foods than one of the 12 month olds in daycare. So maybe the early practice did help him with motor skills.
He never did like to be spoon fed, because he is NOT a passive baby. Sitting around swallowing a puree is BOOOOORING! He always fussed and tried to grab the spoon and squirmed in the seat, leading me to believe he wasn't that fond of solid food... but in fact he wasn't that fond of being fed. Once he developed a workable pincher grasp he went to town on finger foods. It's a lot easier and more pleasant to eat meals now that I can sit him in the high chair with a tray full of food to manage himself, and eat my own meal alongside him.
It is surprising how many foods a baby of his age can eat with only two teeth. I try not to give him anything that's overly salty or sugary, and I try to give him more fruits than I eat because I'm pretty bad with that, but much of the time he is eating whatever we're eating. He's had veggies of all sorts, tofu, pasta, bread or toast, beans, even pizza. One night he ate black beans, mushrooms, and bok choy seasoned with curry powder - the same as me. And he loved it! He can handle fusilli pasta like a champ. He adores Brussels sprouts. As long as a food is not too hard and crunchy (like an undercooked veggie), he can eat it.
Judy said that once he's totally done with purees and on table food (which I think he is now) I don't have to send food with him anymore - she cooks and feeds all the kids herself. I'm kind of taken aback by this because she really does not charge much for daycare - certainly not, it seems to me, enough to feed four little kids lunch for free! Besides that, we are going to be a little fussy with Miles's nutrition and probably have him be vegetarian like us... so I'm probably going to tell her I'll just send easy lunches that she doesn't have to prepare. He usually doesn't go every day anyway.
Our pediatrician is cool with the whole vegetarian baby thing, especially since we do eat cheese and eggs. We figure once Miles is school aged, we're not going to make him refuse to eat a slice of pepperoni pizza with the other kids at a birthday party or what have you - but for the most part he'll be veg like us. It's not always easy, socially, to be a vegetarian in Nebraska, so we don't want to make life overly difficult for him, but we do prefer that he not eat much meat and we don't serve it at home.
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We are vegetarian too and we plan on just having no meat at home. We won't offer it but if she choices to eat meat somewhere else we'll be fine with that. We'll explain why we don't eat meat and let her choose if she wants to eat it when it is offered to her but we don't plan on offering meat at home.
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