Baby-Led Weaning Update

We're about one month in to our Baby-Led Weaning experiment. I am now armed with Baby Led Weaning by Gil Rapley, THE official resource on the subject. I am getting more and more comfortable with the idea of trusting the process with Taly and her food - letting her continue to get nourished on milk while she explores real food and learns how to eat. The process is very gradual and much less systematic than the traditional Make-Gerber-Rich process that I used with Simon. I like it.

It's interesting to contrast the process I'm in with Taly and food with the process I'm in with Simon and discipline. With Simon, I am constantly reminded of his sinful heart, and that as "good" as he generally is, his heart - like mine - cannot be trusted to go in the right way without discipline. Watching Taly learn to eat, however, is watching a developmental process unfold - one that God created. I love that I'm watching it happen, and it is a wonderous thing to see her desire for food keep pace with her hand-eye coordination and her maturing digestive system. It's like God choreographed the whole thing, and there's a voice in my head telling me to just trust it.

Anyway, I'm combining Rapley's philosophy which is very no-holds-barred-feed-the-baby-lasagna with the American-safety-control-obsession of introducing basic foods slowly. So far, Talya loves loves loves sitting in her high chair and devouring such things as green beans, sweet potatoes, avocados, bananas, and apples. She has also thoroughly enjoyed a flour tortilla, the crust of my pizza and a bowl of oatmeal.

She won't touch her sippy cup of water, but will fight Simon for his sippy of milk, so now that she's officially crawling, I'm having to play some defense.

That's right. She's crawling, pulling herself up to standing, and tearing apart my cabinets. She turns 7 months in a few days and I'm having a hard time keeping up! Here's some pictures of our progress: