1st Rice Cereal

First time eating rice cereal. He was just too hungry and it wasn't coming fast enough.

He started to like it more towards the end, but poor little guy was so sad and hungry.

A week later I tried mixing sweet potatoes into oatmeal and he LOVED it!

Yummy! I love to eat now!

A couple of weeks ago we gave Ryker his first taste of rice cereal. It wasn't the best first experience for him. I think I waited a little too long and he was just too hungry and it wasn't coming fast enough for him...so he was crying almost the whole time. Plus...he just loves to nurse and he would have just rather been doing that instead. The first week he was just not that interested and wasn't liking the spoon and would spit it all out with his tongue. It was just so different from feeding Brody...he caught on right away and would have rather just eaten solid foods than nurse. It's been interesting seeing the difference. I knew that Ryker was ready though. He had been licking his lips every time he would see us eating something and would even grunt and reach for the food. Maybe it was the bland taste or the texture of the rice...but I kept trying.

After the first week I decided to try oatmeal instead to see if he liked the taste any better...and he did, but still wasn't too excited about it. So, I tried mixing sweet potatoes into his cereal/oatmeal and he absolutely loved it. I've been worried about trying food with Ryker because of his acid reflux, but the cereal seems to be helping him and so far he hasn't had any issues with the sweet potatoes or pears. It gives me hope that he'll do okay with other things I try in the future. He gets so excited when it's eating time now. I feed him before bath time every night while Brody has his bedtime snack. He does a cute little excited grunt the whole time I'm making it for him. Brody loves to help feed him, but he gags every time he gets a spoonful ready...so hilarious. Haha. I'll post a video of that soon, because it is really funny.

Ryker is going to love eating solid foods. He finally has the process down and is hardly pushing any food out with his tongue anymore...I guess he just needed more flavor to get him interested, because now he can't get enough. I gave him a slice of cucumber the other day, (with the seeds removed so he wouldn't choke), for him to suck on and he LOVED it. He cried so hard when I took it away. I also let him suck and chew on a slice of apple and gave him a little banana in one of those mesh things they make for babies to put food in so they won't choke. Oh my goodness did he love it! Every time I slice a cucumber up for Brody now he wants a slice too. I hope it's not too early for him, but he's just sucking on it and gumming it. I don't see any harm in it. I hold it in my hand so he doesn't shove the whole thing in his mouth and choke.

Even though it took him awhile to get the hang of it and it took adding veggies/fruit to get him interested Ryker is doing great with it now. And it has helped him sleep from about 9:30pm-6:00am pretty consistently. I'm loving that! My cute little Ryker is growing up too fast!