Green Beans and Apples

Ava Holt BEFORE her big moment...

Friday, May 2nd, was a memorable day for the Garrison clan, namely Ava. It was the first time we fed Ava real food. She had eaten oatmeal three separate times before this day, but she had never tasted real food.

After making some of Ava's homemade baby food that afternoon and getting the go ahead from her pediatrician that morning (reference the previous blog), Ava got to sit in her Bumbo with a big girl bib on and eat ORGANIC GREEN BEANS as her FIRST meal.

All the books say that you can expect your child to eat about 1 teaspoon of food the first time you feed her and to expect food to be falling out of her mouth in disgust (especially with the green vegetables), but this was NOT the case for Ava Bear. Nope...the kid ate 2 ounces of green beans, followed by 1.5 Tbsp. oatmeal cereal mixed with breast milk. She LOVED the green beans, which surprised us, and she couldn't get enough of them. She would have eaten more if we would have offered it to her, but since it was her first time to eat solids, we didn't want to push the size of her stomach (since we didn't know how big it was) or cause any un-necessary sickness from the change in diet. Here she is trying her green beans for the first time. Again, I apologize for the poor video taping, but Matt refused to hold the camera and I was stuck taping with my left hand and feeding Ava with my right. That stubborn boy!

Here's more of Ava eating her yummy green beans and enjoying her big girl moment...

Ava didn't have any allergies or reactions to the green beans, so we gave them to her again on Saturday night. This time Ava ate 2 ounces of organic green beans, 1.5 Tbsp. of oatmeal mixed with breast milk, and 1 ounce of homemade organic applesauce. Yes, that's right...applesauce (in addition to the 3 other ounces of food that she consumed). The pediatrician said that we could give Ava fruit as a 'dessert' after we fed her her vegetables. I asked if we had to do the 4 day trial period with every single food (at that rate, it would take us a year to introduce singular foods without any combinations!) and he said that we should be safe introducing fruit like apples and pears. So, we went ahead and gave her some homemade applesauce.

Well, Ava LOVED the applesauce. At first, she wasn't sure of the sweet taste but after the first bite, she loved it. She was just so cute eating her new foods. She did so great eating from a spoon and we didn't have any problems getting her to open her mouth or swallow her food. She couldn't get enough of the green beans, the oatmeal cereal, or the applesauce. She just sat in her chair watching the spoon while trying to grab the bowl from our hands (with her mouth open, of course).

So, after two days of solids, Ava's a fan of green beans and applesauce! Yay!