Max, I'd like you to meet solid food.

Yep. In amongst all of the sickness this past month (me twice, Max twice including a current phlegmy/vicious cough combo, and now Holly too), we've still decided to advance Max down the path to becoming a foodie. Apparently, babies don't nutritionally need anything beyond breast milk until they hit 6 months, but most babies apparently start needing a little something extra around the six month mark to get them the energy they need to crawl, walk and stuff. No, Max is not even remotely mobile, but I suppose one can always prepare.

Holly had already picked up a high chair about a month ago, so last weekend I put it together. On Sunday (again, last weekend), we decided to give the feeding thing a shot. Apparently, the best time to introduce breastfed babies to solid foods is in the evening, when Mom's milk supply is lowest. I guess the nice part about this timing is that Mom can pump or just store up a full tank for the last night feeding.

So, as we were sitting down to eat dinner, we prepared Max's first bowl of rice cereal by mixing up a teaspoon of cereal with a tablespoon of breast milk. I have to mention here that one of our reference books actually says that babies don't know that breakfast should come in the morning, dinner at night, etc. and that it's ok to mix these meals up. Yeah, like I was hoping to schedule Max's rice cereal for the morning so that he'd have room for that porterhouse in the evening.

We had been told to not expect much from the first feeding - that this was a whole new mechanic for Max: new tastes, eating without sucking so much as slurping, swallowing without sucking, etc. Who knew what would happen? Max managed to get about three or four baby spoonfuls in his mouth before deciding he had had enough. A lot of it ended up right back on his sleeper and face, but we were pretty sure that some of it was ingested. This was more an exercise to get him used to the new flavour and texture of the food anyway. That and getting us to master the upper lip sweep.

Since then, Max has moved up to being able to eat the entire teaspoon of cereal and topping it off with a few baby spoonfuls of banana for dessert. He seems much more interested in the banana, but I suppose that's to be expected. Frankly, if someone offered me a blob of Cream of Wheat or anything else (say oyster shells, for example), I'd get out my coupons for anything else. I've read that Max's tummy is about as big as his fist, so I doubt there's room for much more in there in a single feeding, so I think he's doing pretty well. He's still very interested in Holly at the moment so we're not pushing too hard to switch him off.

Epilogue: I won't go into too many details (you parents out there KNOW), but the most interesting aspect of all of this (aside from perhaps chiseling the dried rice melange out of Max's eyebrows) is probably the post-banana aftermath. Until that first banana went in, we really had no idea of Max's digestive capabilities or what a really dirty diaper was like. Well, needless to say, now we know. I was surprised that the turnaround time on the banana was three days, but then again, Max's system had never seen this kind of stuff before so I guess that it makes sense that the intestine, gut and colon spent a bit of time in the huddle before proceeding. It's not like the Jeopardy! tune was playing or anything.

We're not sure what the next new flavour will be, but we'll be sure to keep you posted. Here's the evidence: