Busy Eater and Drinker

Graham has been a busy eater and drinker over the past few days.  At 8 months, 18 days old, Graham had his first ‘real’ solid food (as in fresh food instead of pureed food from a jar).  Nick was making a peach salsa and I was acting as sous chef.  The peaches smelled so good, I just had to cut a few tiny chunks for Graham.  Graham was excited to try the chunks and chewed them like a good baby, but he got stuck when it came time to swallow.  He is used to pureed food that slides down his throat or his puffs which eventually disintegrate in his mouth.  Even though he went through the motion of chewing the peach chunks, they were still as solid as when he put them in his mouth.  So after some gagging and looks of panic from Graham, I fished out the chunks and marked his first attempt at solid food as a failure.

But, we were not deterred!

The next day we tried bananas.  I felt safe trying larger chunks because I knew the banana would eventually mush up.  Well… more gagging and a throw-up led to failure number two.

But today, we had a major success!  Although Graham turned down the fresh peaches and bananas, he happily swallowed ‘chunk’ after chunk of... chocolate chip pancakes.  That’s my boy!

After the success of the pancakes we were feeling confident and decided to go all out and see if Graham could drink out of a straw.  I placed the straw in his mouth and he smiled at the new toy.  Then he started to chew on the straw, but still no sucking.  I made sucking faces and he looked interested but didn’t copy me.  Finally, I tried squeezing his cheeks together and almost immediately he took a sip.  Then another, and another, and another, woo hoo!  By the end of lunch, Graham was holding the sippy cup himself and taking sips of his water.  What a big boy our busy eater and drinker is! (8 months, 20 days old):