Griff turned 7 months old on Sunday! He’s crawling like a champ now, and we’re slowly turning the living room into a giant playpen.

Along with feeding Griff homemade baby food and baby oatmeal, we decided to give “baby-led weaning” (aka “baby-led solids”) a try as well. No, we’re not trying to wean at 7 months! The idea is that instead of purees, you give the baby pieces of food that are soft enough to eat with limited toothage, and big enough to grip well so the baby can self-feed. Babies Griff’s age don’t have a well-developed pincer grasp yet, so they need something larger than little bite-sized chunks, with a “handle”. There are videos of 9-month-olds being handed a whole apple and just gnawing away with no assistance.

We started out by giving him a quarter of a peach (stone removed, of course). We gave him chunks of peach in his mesh feeder as well, and he alternated between them, which was interesting.

Here he is, breaking up the peach into chunks with his gums and two little bottom teeth, and sucking the juice out.

Here’s what was left of the peach. There’s a fair amount of waste, but he ate a good amount of peach juice and peach bits.

Avocado slices were also much enjoyed. This one required an entire wardrobe change. I have some oilcloth for the floor under his chair coming in this week. 🙂

Griff loves his sweet potatoes, so I made him a batch of sweet potato “fries” to gnaw on, sprinkled with a little cinnamon and nutmeg (he’s had both already with no bad reaction). This was a big hit.

The sweet-potato-smeared aftermath:

So far we’ve had no choking scares; if a piece is too big, Griff just pushes it out of his mouth and gnaws on it some more. He still really enjoys the oatmeal and purees, so I think we’ll keep using both methods to feed him.

Griff has been sleeping better this week, so I’ve started feeling like doing things like making him shirts again. Here’s his Halloween shirt. He’ll only get to wear it for about a week and a half, but it was quick to make.

And here he is, modelling it. His little face looks more mature every day! We look back at his newborn pictures and can’t believe it’s the same baby.