The Rice Cereal Experiment

Today officially marks the beginning of Week #2 of The Rice Cereal Experiment. We introduced the mashed potato-looking substance to the Wonder Twins for the first time last Sunday. The non-milk sustenance was met with a healthy mixture of excitement, confusion and slobber as you'll soon see for yourself. :)


After talking to the girls' pediatrition, we decided they were ready for more than milk at mealtime. So, we vowed to start feeding them rice cereal once a day until they got the hang of eating. At that point, we'd up the intake.

It seems the biggest roadblock to starting this plan was actually buying the rice cereal. We kept forgetting to pick it up every time we were at the store. (And, frankly, we don't really go to the store that often. Twin transportation is tricky, and there is no such thing as "a quick errand" when you're packing a pair of infants in the backseat!)

After finally purchasing a box of Gerber's finest, we set about mixing the cereal up with some of mommy's milk. Getting the right consistancy proved to be more daunting than we thought. Our first batch? More like gravy than mashed potatoes.

"Oh well," we figured. "They're not going to know."

Ready with our special rubber-tipped spoons and baby-friendly bowl, we put the twins in their new suped-up high chairs and turned on the video camera to capture this historic moment.


I started with Avery. She seemed to catch on fairly quickly to the concept of opening her mouth for the spoon. Swallowing the cereal was a different story.



What you can't see off camera is me trying to imitate chewing and swallowing. Clearly, I didn't do such a great job as instructor, because Avery preferred to "eat" her own way, which entailed pushing the cereal out of her mouth. I'm quite certain most of it ended up on her face and not in her stomach. No wonder the doc said they wouldn't get much nutritional value out of eating for the first few weeks.


Lexie went next. She did not share Avery's ability to "open wide for the airplane." Her mannerisms seemed to say "The airport is closed."



I'm pretty sure Lexie also did not actually ingest any of the cereal. She did, however, do an excellent job of sticking out her tongue and pushing the cereal out of her mouth and down her chin. It's all about baby steps, right? :)

Now a week later, the girls seem to be catching on to the concept of eating. Avery is definitely eating some cereal. Lexie? Well, that's debateable. She is opening her mouth more often, though, so that's a major plus. The on-time arrival rate for Levine Airlines is now at 50 percent!