It's common practice to wait three days between introduction of new foods to a baby. The reason is if the baby has an allergic reaction, you're able to identify which food caused it. It's also common practice to abandon this practice with second and third babies after your first born had no reactions at all. Being the fourth-born in my family, I'm quite sure my mom was giving me whatever she had on hand at the moment.
Still, we're sticking with it for now. Sydney had a finger serving each of carrots and bananas. She seemed to like it at the time. Sydney went crazy for her first full meal of solid food, and she enjoyed her second solid food: blueberries. I blended up some organic New Jersey-grown berries and stirred it into her cereal. The only down-side was the crib-staining spit-up. When our CSA share included carrots and peas, I was optimistic. First we tried the peas: boiled them for a few minutes, chopped them up, and... rejection. She managed to eat some, but clearly did not enjoy it (see the video below). Her reaction to the carrots was pretty much the same. The good news is that she was not allergic.
Why the rejection? Babies have sweet-tooths. Humans are hard-wired to seek out carbohydrates & sweet foods because they contain more easily-accessible calories. Calories are units of measurement for energy. Energy is good. But so are peas and carrots. And they go together nicely, as Forrest Gump once pointed out. Sydney did enjoy her bananas and plums, and, again, no allergic reaction. I'll be putting together the first real recipe for Sydney soon: combining carrots with a date to give it a bit more flavor. More to come!
