Our first finger foods (simply stuff we had around that went over well):

• Banana
• Ripe mango, melon, peaches, plums (peeled, pitted)
• Avocado
• Roasted potato or yams
• Roasted or steamed carrots, broccoli, cauliflower
• Strawberries that had been quartered lengthwise
• Bagels and whole wheat toast “sticks”
• Cheerios or the equivalent (but please do not get me started on how much I disliked so-called various organic Healthy O’s. I will clear the room with my rants)

Our second finger foods:

• Bits of roasted chicken, broken-up meatballs
• Soft, fresh mozzarella
• Softly scrambled eggs, pieces kept large (see my technique here)
• Halved grapes
• Blueberries, raspberries, blackberries
• Bits of pita dipped into hummus
• Hard-boiled eggs, chopped into chunks
• Any roasted vegetable

Some fun stuff we found at the market, once he got that early stuff down:

• Doughnut peaches (yup, their little hands can hold them, just try to get the pit away before they eat that too)
• Seckel pears (ditto, except I didn’t get the core away in time and it was… gone)
• Baby apples (excellent photo op, too!)
• Quartered teardrop tomatoes, which are often softer and sweeter than the greenhouse grape ones
• Sugarsnap peas (not saying I think these are the safest, but the baby went apey over them)
• Fresh lima beans, lightly cooked
• Tiny seedless grapes

How I approached it: Although we started with the recommended “bite-sized pieces” I noticed that the baby was best able to manage foods cut into a “finger” shape — about 1 to 2 inches long and a 1/2-inch thick. It’s hard to do much with a little cube but pop it whole into your mouth, but the baby could hold onto one end of the longish piece while nibbling on the other, just like you or I would eat a carrot stick.

Next up: I freak out and start making a lot of soup.