Rice Trice Tries Rice

Some of you may remember Caroline's first nickname, Rice Trice, that seemed to stick after I mentioned something about our "rice sized Trice" in an email in the early stages of my pregnancy.

Fortunately, no one calls her Rice anymore--but she was a little rice covered Trice yesterday when she tried her first solid food. I resorted to using the video camera to take still shots, and that didn't work out very well, but at least we have some fuzzy shots to document the occasion.

I started with this

and this

It took some of this

and this
and this
before we got this

and finally ended up with this

and this

Unfortunately, you can't tell from these grainy pictures, but, thanks to her recent discovery of her feet, she literally had rice cereal from head to toe. It was caked on on her calves and even in her eyebrows. Needless to say, she went straight from the Bumbo to the bathtub.

What I've learned in our three and half days of "doing solids":

• Caroline strongly prefers "mom's milk" to formula or water as a mixer.
• The runnier it is, the better is goes down. I started with consistency of grits and learned that the consistency of a melted milkshake is better.
• The longer it sits, the runnier it gets...so if I start with grits, we have melted milkshake by the time we get to the end of the bowl.
• The portable swing with a changing pad cover works better than the Bumbo since Caroline still isn't very steady in the Bumbo.
• Letting her suck her fingers between each bite is the best (and only) way to get her to swallow. And it really takes two people to feed her and stop her from putting her fingers in her mouth at the same time so there isn't much of a choice when I'm solo. It's not ideal because I'd like to be sure she won't be on her first date and have to suck her fingers between each bite of her salad to get it down, but I'm sure that will work itself out.