Adventures in Solids

We are having so much fun with solid foods! Elias is doing awesome and loves everything we've given him so far! He has had:

Rice cereal
Avocados
Sweet potatoes
Squash
Peas
Bananas
Apples

Believe it or not, so far his favorite seems to be avocados! He tends to prefer things that are thicker in texture, like the cereal, avocados, and peas, over the runnier things, like squash and bananas. But he chows down on all of it, rarely does he not finish a meal.

He's eating solids with three meals a day now. With his breakfast bottle, he eats cereal. With his lunch bottle, he eats cereal and a vegetable. With his dinner bottle, he eats cereal, a fruit, and a vegetable. Such a big boy! We actually just got a high chair last week, and he ate in it for the first time today. Stay tuned for pictures. He LOVED sitting in it!

I'm having a lot of fun making his baby food, too. Not hard at all, and I'm saving us money! Just for fun, I thought I'd calculate the savings:

Apples: I bought 4 lbs. of apples for $1.24 (Insane deal at Wal-Mart!), from which I got about 34 oz. of baby food (2 ice cube trays + 1 jar). In order to get 34 oz., I would've had to buy 14 jars of baby food. At $0.34 each, that would come to $4.76. So I saved $3.52.

Squash: I bought 2 butternut squash for $1.98, from which I got about 50 oz. of baby food (3 ice cube trays + 1 jar). In order to get 50 oz., I would've had to buy 20 jars of baby food, which would cost $6.80. So I saved $4.82. *Side note: I had no idea the squash would yield this much baby food... He's going to have to eat squash 4 times a week for the next 3 months in order to eat it before it goes bad in the freezer!

Peas: I bought 1 bag of frozen peas for $0.98. I only used half the bag on baby food, so that was $0.49 spent on baby food, from which I got about 16 oz. of baby food (1 ice cube tray). In order to get 16 oz., I would've had to buy 6.5 jars of baby food, which would cost $2.21. So I saved $1.72.

Bananas: Bananas are kind of hard to compute, since the price is always changing. Plus, I don't premake baby food with them - I just mash 1/4 of a banana when it's time for him to eat it, and he eats it fresh. However, that means that he gets 4 meals out of 1 banana, and since he gets 2 meals out of each jar of baby food, I can at least make some kind of comparison. Today I spent $2 on 7 bananas, which would make 28 meals for Elias. In order to get 28 meals, I would have to buy 14 jars of baby food, which would cost $4.76. So that means I saved $2.76.

That's all I can compute since they don't sell avocado baby food in a jar, and the other things I haven't made in bulk to freeze yet. So I'm having fun, saving money, and Elias is growing like crazy!