I can’t believe that we’ve been weaning Charlie for two whole weeks now. Progress has been a lot slower than I expected; it’s still difficult for Charlie to move food from the tray of his high chair to his mouth though his progress is brilliant, and it’s still intensely frustrating to feed him purees and baby rice  – we never know ahead of time whether he will wolf the lot down or if we’ll have a meltdown on our hands. We’re now pursuing a mixture of baby-led-weaning and the traditional method. I am still disappointed that we didn’t manage to get to six months of before weaning him, and sad that we’ve abandoned our original intentions by introducing baby rice.

Charlie is still getting an opportunity to have finger foods each day. Toast is perenially popular, and carrot and pear are still winners. Parsnip is mighty slippery to hold. And cauliflower met with disgust.

Phil is feeding Charlie his teatime baby rice at this moment. Charlie is more interested in the baby rice box than the stuff itself, and tonight Phil is better at dealing with his apparent disinterest in eating than I am. Charlie needs to be wholly occupied with some other activity and then he’ll happily accept a whole spoonful of baby rice. For someone as gluttonous as me, I find the lack of enthusiasm for the food in front of him a bit difficult to understand.

Whilst I’ve been writing this post, Charlie has been steadily eating his baby rice as we sing to him. His mouth opens wide in a smile at ‘Old MacDonald’ and the baby rice dribbles down his chin. How is it that babies can dribble upwards as well as downwards? I’m always finding crusty baby rice and porridge in his eyebrows of all places. Photos of the messiest baby in the world will follow soon.