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Following! R will eat banana and puffs. I tried avocado and chicken yesterday at lunch. Will eat a couple bites if we put in her mouth. Tried carrots for dinner last night and lunch today. She wouldn't eat them yesterday and I called to check on her and they said she wouldn't touch them today.

It just takes time with some kiddos. DD took a while to get into purees, and then she took a while to get into finger foods but once she did, there was no stopping her. He will eat them when he is ready:) DD didn't eat much in the way of finger foods until she was 10.5 months, and when she did it was french fries that got her into the game.

Then she wouldn't eat anything but broccoli for ages. Now she eats everything voraciously.

@Adira: I offered finger foods first and then topped her off with puree, and I limited the finger food to one meal per day until she got the hang of it. I put the bits on her high chair tray and let her pick them up.

I would just keep offering different things until you find something he likes. C LOVED hummus, so I'd give her bread or crackers with hummus and she'd go to town. She also likes any fruit (I used to cut up grapes and berries (mostly blueberries and strawberries). She also loved sliced cucumber at that age.

I never really worried about cooking things or it being softer, I just only fed her with total supervision in case it got away from her. You can also try putting some good flavoring into it. C LOVES cinnamon and pumpkin pie spice. Baby foods dont have to be bland.

My son didn't like to touch food with his bare hands, so we introduced a spoon very early on in the game, which led him to self feeding his cereal, yogurt and applesauce.

Do you model what he's supposed to do? I had to do that with my son, he didn't get what he was supposed to do with stuff on his tray until I showed him, repeatedly.

@Adira: I forget where I saw this but what you can try is to cut a banana in half and then remove a small portion of the peel, so that there's a "handle" and he can grab it that way. Or you can crush up some cheerios or use baby cereal as "dust" and lightly toss slippery foods to give him a bit of traction.

I gave my son a spoon at around 8 months, not because he could actually manage it, but because he wouldn't eat if he didn't have it. Eventually, he started gumming the spoon and then one day he accidentally got some food on it and it was a magic moment, lol!

@Adira: I offer something new every few days! I'm doing more BLW so like with cantaloupe I give big chunks, maybe 2 inches-ish? I leave part of the rind on so he has something to grip.

S wouldn't feed himself until just a few days before his first birthday. He also had a lot of issues with textures and would only start eating puffs broken up in fours around 10 months. Solids were a big struggle for us at first.

Now that he's 13.5 months old, he's a champ and can't get enough. He won't even let us feed him with a spoon anymore...he wants to do everything himself.

Just try to be patient and keep offering them. He may just not like the texture. Try taking an avocado and mashing it so that it's not solid, but not yet a puree...just chunky and see if he'll go with that first. You can try the same with a banana or the mesh feeders work to start off first as well.

@Adira: We were really worried that he wasn't feeding himself and he was getting so much older. We brought it up to his pediatrician who told us not to worry yet and to just keep trying to get him to do it himself, but help him along. My nephew was also a very late bloomer in feeding himself. He didn't start until he was around 13 months. He's 3.5 years old now and is doing wonderfully.

I think we always worry so much when kids don't hit their milestones exactly when others do...and while that's something to watch, not every baby is the same. Some take much longer to do things than others in certain areas. S started walking a week before his first birthday which was before he started feeding himself! He hit all of his milestones in the same week it seemed!

@Adira: that's how we started. I just stuck with it and he finally changed his mind. He'll eat at some point.

DS wasnt at all interested in finger foods at that age. He didnt even cut his first tooth til almost 9 months. I think he started eating puffs around 10 months, and went almost immediately to cheerios. it was like once he started, he couldnt get enough of crunchy, interesting foods.

One day he'll be a teenage boy eating you out of house and home!

You'll be posting about your sky high grocery bill and trying to figure out how to get him to eat less!