We started Austin on “solid” foods a few days ago, on January 7th. Solid is in big quotation marks, because right now he is just getting oatmeal, which has the flavor and consistency of paste. He loves it. 
Austin looking cross-eyed at the food going into his mouth
It was definitely a new experience for us. We gave him a few spoonfuls, and after getting over the initial newness of it, he was quite eager for more. If we hold the spoon in front of his face, he will open his mouth greedily and sort of lunge forward for it. He will also start fussing and whining a bit if you go too long between spoonfuls.
Drew getting a chance to feed Austin
Getting tired, but still eating
We’ve got some thinking to do on the bib situation. The photos show our hard plastic bibs, which we tried first but don’t really work. Since he still needs a fair amount of support to sit, we’ve got him wedged into the chair pretty good…so the hard bib presses against the tray and it doesn’t look comfortable at all. He actually didn’t get any food on his bib this time, so the next time I tried him without a bib. You can probably guess how that went… 
After that, we tried the traditional cloth bib, which was the best situation. Still, he loves to “help” with his hands, and it gets spread to his face and the bib and the tray and his clothes…it just isn’t meant to be a clean process right now.
At this point, we don’t have a clear agenda with the food…we’re just letting him get used to the idea (and us too). We are having him sit at the table with us for dinner, and giving him some food makes it feel like a family meal. He’s also still getting over the tongue-thrust reflex (his ‘chewing’ is an odd combination of jaw motion, lip smacking, and sticking out his tongue), so we’ll let him figure that out before moving on to something truly messy, like sweet potatoes. 
