solid foods project: 6 months

It has been a long time since I have updated the solid foods project, so I thought I would catch you up on what we are doing.

• CEREALS:  After about a week of rice cereal, we switched to oatmeal cereal since the rice cereal seemed to be constipating for him.  This seemed to help a good bit.

• 5-MONTH FOODS:   We did 2 meals/day - one after his 10:30am nursing and one after his 4:30pm nursing.  
• 10:30am Oatmeal cereal
• 4:30pm  One of the new foods.  On the first day of trying a new food, I would switch and do the cereal at this feeding and the new food in the morning so that I would have the day to watch for any allergic reactions. 
• I cut the foods into 1-inch cubes, steamed all of them (including the fruit) before pureeing. With the exception of avocado and banana, all fruits should be cooked for babies younger than 6 months.  Then I put into storage cubes to freeze.  
• To thaw, instead of using the microwave, I have started getting the cube out in the morning and putting it in a container in the refrigerator to thaw during the day.  Then I add a little formula or breastmilk to thin it out.
• Using the 4-day wait rule, these are the foods I introduced.  
• sweet potatoes
• pears
• peaches
• plums (made him have a poopy diaper every day)
• carrots (Earth's Best jars - from what I've read, you should not make your own carrots until baby is at least 7 months old.  This is due to the possibility of carrots containing nitrates which baby food companies can test for, but at home we cannot).
• I just rotated these foods along with avocado and banana until he was 6 months.

• 6 MONTH FOODS:
• He nurses five times a day, and still only two solid food meals a day.  I might add a third soon, but I want to make sure it doesn't lessen the amount of breastmilk he gets.
• 10:30am nurse, then homemade whole-grain brown rice cereal (will post the recipe next) with bananas or peaches.
• 4:30pm nurse, then a rotating food (from the below list, using 4-day wait rule for new foods).  Fruits do not have to be cooked anymore, just pureed.  We rotate these with previously introduced foods.
• peas
• butternut squash (he spit up a lot with this - so we're putting a hold on it and will go back to it later.  not sure if it was the squash or something i ate.)
• mango
• papaya 

Jude eating uncooked, pureed peaches for the first time - he LOVED them - like a birdie opening his mouth and dive-bombing for the spoon!
• I picked up a couple of things at Whole Foods that I'll be introducing over the next month or so - I'll post as we start those!  
• Whole grains:  whole grain brown rice, millet, and oat grains
• Legumes:  fava beans and lentils
• Fruit:  Mango and papaya
• Vegetable: butternut squash and peas