Baby Food

6 months
I started trying to feed the girls solids at 6 months.  The problem was that the girls weren't really ready for them until 7.5 months.  I feel a bit bad that I was essentially force feeding them rice cereal and purees for 6 weeks.  I would keep them happy with easy-to-clean plastic toys and poke in the spoon between toy chewing.  They were very, very keen to grab the spoon from the get go so it was a rather messy/chaotic activity and I don't think it really achieved much.

7.5 months
I would create all sorts of vege and fruit purees that the girls weren't that keen on (except apple and pear....they were always a winner!).  I would even try to get some mince or chicken in there (even less popular!).  Often the only way I could get them to eat these purees was to mix it in yoghurt. So we would start the meal time with the purees as I had made them and as the feeding session continued I would add more and more yoghurt.  I had also started finger food and often tried to sneak in the mushy stuff between bites of the finger food.

Finger food was waaaaaaaay more popular than the mushy stuff.  Their favourites were - watermelon, orange (no pith/skin), cream cheese cubes, avocado chunks, cooked pear chunks, cooked apple chunks, canned peaches, cooked zucchini slices, banana, kiwi fruit.  It probably took a couple of months for them to master eating all of this but we started presenting them at around 7.5 months.

8.5 months
This was the start of the "everything on toast" stage.  They LOVED toast so I would spread all sorts of things on toast like cooked pumpkin, homemade hummus, cream cheese, Vegemite, etc.  In between bites of toast I would try to feed them something like:
- tuna rice (cooked rice, tuna and sour cream mixed together)
- beef stew
- beef bolognese
- scrambled eggs (adding cream seemed to boost its popularity!)
- baked beans
They started to love itti bitti frozen veges around this time too (pea, corn and carrot mix is a goodie).  I also encouraged them to self feed yoghurt with a spoon at the end of the meal which they LOVED!  They always had a bath afterwards :).

9.5 months
I continued the 8.5 feeding strategy but added in untoasted bread, crackers and corn thins.  I also started to give them roast chicken, meatballs and pan fried fish.

10.5 months
Dinner ideas:
- toasted sandwich (ham, cheese, tomato)
- wholemeal pita bread toasted sandwich (frozen vege and cheese filling)
- omelette (frozen vege and cheese filling)
- pasta with basic cheese/cream sauce or passata
- mexican mince with tortilla
- udon noodles with veges
- fried rice
- satay chicken made with no sugar/no salt peanut butter

Vegemite on toast for brekkie. 12 months old.

11.5 months
Mine started to eat regular food like curries and stirfrys and LOVED all the intense flavour.  I am blessed to have pretty good eaters :).

Breaking the rules
As you can tell - I didn't follow the recommended ages for introducing eggs or peanuts.  There is no history of allergy in our families and we were careful to watch them after eating these foods.