This week Ivy is joining in and playing with her food, she's just turned six months old and has started eating solids! It's been almost a week already, and she is starting to get the hang of it, but she is taking some time to figure it out.  She often sticks her tongue out, she doesn't always close her mouth to swallow her food and she sometimes gags on it a little bit.  I'm not terribly concerned though, she is improving every day, and I think the second time around, I am just a lot more relaxed.  With Ethan we were more concerned, I think that I kept track of how many spoonfuls of food he ate each day!  With Ivy I know that she is still getting enough milk to keep her sustained, and that it will take time until she is eating a significant amount of food.  I am offering her purees and finger foods from the beginning, as Ethan much preferred feeding himself I want to give her the same option.  She is trying to bring the food to her mouth, but mostly prefers squishing the food between her fingers (that's where the play and exploration comes in!)

We have a lot of the weaning supplies left from when Ethan was a baby, but there are a few new things that we are getting for Ivy.  Brother Max have sent us some Catch and Fold Bibs, some weaning pots and a 4 in 1 training cup.  The bibs are very practical with the removable catch all, this comes in especially handy when Ivy is sampling finger foods, as she is often dropping quite big pieces.  The cup is different to any that I used for Ethan as the spout is soft and pliable.  As Ivy has never drank from a bottle she will take some time to learn to drink water, but I like how she was able to pick up this cup easily straight away and drink from it. Probably because she is teething, she bit down on the spout as soon as she got it to her mouth, and that made water come out.  She happily let it dribble back out and tried again.  The weaning pots are also great, they snap together, come with a wipe away pen for labelling and even have a soft spot to push out frozen purees easily.

My plan for weaning is to continue to introduce Ivy to new foods each day, to offer her purees and finger foods for her to explore.  I am not in a huge hurry or following any specific plan, I keep a list of all of the foods that she tries, but there is so much conflicting information about which order to offer foods that I am just doing what feels right for us.  One day she had already had apple puree for her lunch, but after dinner Ethan was having pieces of melon and she was banging on the table like she wanted some.  I was handing her piece after piece of melon, very little of which went to her mouth, most of it was just squished and squeezed and thrown to the ground!  She is definitely having fun playing with her food, and it has encouraged Ethan to do a bit of squishing and throwing as well!  What have we got ourselves into?

• hand - eye coordination

* This post contains review items provided by Brother Max as well as affiliate links.  This is part of a series of posts about food exploration called Play With Your Food in which Ethan and Ivy are having fun while they eat, we would love to try out new foods and products, please get in touch if you have items available for review *