We started rice cereal this past weekend. With Zuzu we had started at 5 months when the first tooth popped. This time since we were still working on teaching the Quail to nurse we held off, and off, and off… and in the meantime she politely sat at the table in her highchair, mouth gaping and eyes trailing our every bite. She’s ready. Our first dear pediatrician who has since moved had told us we would know when the baby is ready to start to eat due to these very behaviors starting- when we see this it’s time to offer, and offer, and offer. The Quail who has always been excellent at getting her ZZZZs also had recently started waking twice a night to eat, oh say 8-11 oz at a crack. Kathy told us that was also a read flag that she was needing more than just the breastmilk. So the big day came and as you can see above she expressed a full range of emotion over this event. But generally has quickly adapted a full bowl of cereal into her nightly routine. Just 2 nights ago she was even up for seconds. The first few bites came right back out of her mouth. We were unsure if that was due to the tongue thrust issues you hear so much about or just regular baby-first-time-eating-food-on-this-planet sort of stuff. Probably a little of both. We had OT on monday and Kathy was able to help us with the assistance of her trusty syringe to see that the Quail could indeed gobble up her cereal with a little precise angling of it into the back of her mouth with near the 2nd molar spot. Alternating about .7 mg a side for a few and then reintroducing a very shallow spoon with a light press-down motion to the front of her tongue seemed to do the trick. The Quail definitely let us know when she had enough of the syringe and wanted the spoon and vice versa with a little stealthy blocking of the device. All in all she is a happy bird, sleeping a little more soundly in her nest at night. Now if only I could convince her not to practice her raspberries during dinner time….