What about cereal??

First of all, babies don't need cereal. It isn't much different than the cereal that you or I would eat, which is essentially carbs with some added vitamins & minerals. Cereal is bland so it's a good way to ease into foods if that's what you choose to do. I tried cereal with Chicken before committing to BLW and she didn't seem to like it or dislike it.

Just because we didn't start with cereal (really), doesn't mean Chicken doesn't eat it. I eat oatmeal most mornings and sometimes Chicken does too. I eat the instant maple & brown sugar kind. For now, Chicken eats the instant, flaky kind made for babies. I tend to give her cereal only when I have some pumped breast milk in the fridge. I can't bear to defrost "stashed" milk for the sake of cereal. Once we run out of her cereal, I'll probably start making real oatmeal for us both.

You may be wondering how Chicken manages to eat oatmeal if I'm not spoon-feeding her. Well, there are two ways. Sometimes I "load" the spoon and hand it to her. It helps to have more than one spoon handy because she either holds onto one to play with or sometimes tosses one overboard.

Yes, it gets messy! But, babies generally get messy even when they're being fed. Anyway, the other way is for Chicken to just dig in with her hands. Interestingly, she wanted no part of playing with the cereal or eating it off her hands at first. It's only recently that she'll put a little hand in the bowl and then suck the cereal off of her hand. She still doesn't seem to enthusiastic about cereal, but it's got a cool texture and makes for some fun!

She recently tried yogurt using the same technique. She seems to enjoy yogurt more than cereal, but yogurt is harder to keep handy since it's perishable and leaves a stickier, stinkier mess behind!