Starting solids was something I dreaded with our baby. I had heard the horror stories of messy babies, babies who didn’t want to sit in their high chairs, babies who didn’t want to eat what you gave them, and the stinkiest poops! We held off on giving solids to our baby until she reached 6 months, even though I could tell she was ready after 4 months.
The general rule is that if babies can sit well without support and they don’t automatically push food out of their mouth with a tongue reflex, they should be ready for solids. Our daughter was an early sitter by 4 months and always eyed our food during meals. But I just didn’t want to deal with the mess and the whole slew of other gear and equipment to get! Sigh… but that is why I wrote this post to share my favorite items we used in the beginning.
Once I started her on solids though, I was pleasantly surprised. My daughter loved all foods and loved to try new things. We opted not to start with baby-led weaning, which is a popular UK method of having babies start with self-feeding and not pureeing everything so babies get a chance to self-regulate their appetite and explore new textures. I think I was just nervous that she might choke on something.
I would do most of the feeding in the beginning to prevent messes, but occasionally I’d let her feed herself something easy and soft like bananas. It took awhile for us to get comfortable with letting her feed herself, mostly because of the mess and inefficiency, but I could tell she did like to do it. Sometimes she even pushed my hand away and grabbed her spoon for herself!
And now that my daughter is a year old and I find she can eat a lot of things, it’s fun taking her out to restaurants and having mommy-daughter dates while I was on bonding leave! Although, since COVID-19 and sheltering in place started, we haven’t done any of that, of course.
Packing up to go out can be a hassle to have all your gear handy, but I’ve heard so many people tell me that we have some of the coolest gadgets when we take her out to eat with us. I thought they were pretty common items, but since a lot of people ask about them, I thought I’d share a post of my favorite items that we’ve been using since starting solids. (And because blogging gives me a slight sense of normalcy in the time of coronavirus…)
1. Summer Infant’s Pop n’ Sit SE Booster Chair
I get by far the most questions about this little pop up booster chair because we take it everywhere we go when it’s around meal time. Everyone always comments on how small it packs up, how cute it is, and how clean it is! My husband first got it to use at my sister and best friend’s wedding (in the same weekend) so that our daughter would have somewhere to sit at the weddings. She was just about ready to start solids then, but we were planning to start with her after getting back from my best friend’s wedding and mini getaway in SoCal.
It was a hit at my sister’s wedding and my daughter was a champ in the chair! After that, we realized we could use it for restaurants too, especially since our daughter was a little too small for restaurant high chairs and she could potentially wriggle out. And let’s be honest, the real reason was because my husband and I are major germaphobes and this way we could make sure her chair was cleaned properly and no one else’s kid’s germs would be on it! Judge away, but in the face of this COVID-19 outbreak, we’ve been careful about this stuff all along already. You know who didn’t run out of hand soap or hand sanitizer…
The chair is essentially a little folding chair, or as one of my daughter’s godmother calls it “her little director chair!” Yes, indeed. She is the boss of me.
There are adjustable straps to tie to the back and bottom of any chair, which has been pretty easy at most restaurants. There are occasionally a few restaurants with chairs that are a bit extra and have weird backs or holes in them that might make it harder, but we’ve always managed to make it work. In those cases, we try to get a booth because it’s quite stable to be placed on a flat cushiony surface like booth seats. We buckle her in, and the best part is that she has her own little high chair tray that attaches to the chair so she does not need to touch the table surfaces. That, and she’s kind of small for sitting at the table too.
I’d highly recommend this chair to anyone since it’s so portable, cute, and clean for your babe! Many waiters and waitresses have been highly impressed with it and so have our friends. And it’s also useful for taking to the grandparents’ so you don’t need to put a separate chair at their house! The only down side is that when your kid gets stronger, they could potentially kick off the tray. And it does make it easier to have two people there when you need to use it since it does take some set up work to make sure the seat is secured to a chair.
Luckily, my daughter behaves pretty well and if I do find myself alone eating out with her, she can sit on a nearby chair and wait patiently for me to finish setting up her chair (for now). I know most mamas might not have that luxury though, so I still suggest having someone around to help you!
2. EZPZ Tiny Cup
This is another item that I get surprisingly a lot of comments about from friends who find it very neat and useful. The EZPZ Tiny Cup is a small silicone cup made to fit baby hands better so they can grasp it to drink from. My mama bestie recommended it to me and after trying a few other cups, we really liked this one! The cool thing is that it is also weighted, so it doesn’t tip over as easily. It’s like a shot glass or sake cup for babies, as some have compared!
When I was researching sippy cups for my daughter to learn how to drink from, the main thing I learned was the sippy cups are actually not the greatest for babies because it inhibits speech development. The ultimate goal is to teach your baby to drink from an open cup, so just keep that in mind. Sippy cups were only designed for ease of cleanliness and reduction of mess. Many articles I read suggested straw cups as better alternatives to sippy cups. So the EZPZ Tiny Cup is basically your ultimate end goal!
We had started with the OXO Tot Transitions Straw Cup (pictured above) at 6 months when we started solids because I saw another mom friend have good success with her kid using it. (She also gave me the Spinach Pancake recipe above too!) It was a less messy and time-consuming method at that point since our daughter was just getting used to drinking water and not from a baby bottle.
So we did like that cup quite a bit too, especially when she got sick and I wanted to feed her fresh squeezed orange juice. It was the one time I’ve seen her not spill or waste a single drop of liquid from that cup! However, it’s not a true straw since you do have to bite on the straw like a bite valve to get liquid out. But I still use it when I want to contain a mess and have her self-feed! And we found that she still figured out how to use a regular straw after having this cup too. We got these soft silicone BPA free straws for her and she uses them just fine!
We also tried the popular Munchkin Miracle 360 Trainer Cup, which is another step closer to drinking like one is drinking out of a normal cup. This teaches babies to tilt and lift the cup to allow liquid into their mouths. However, they do need to learn to suck on the cup lid to get the water out, but I found this useful for a few times to get my daughter learning to lift up her cup.
3. EZPZ Mini Mat
Once you get into letting your baby self-feed, having one of these EZPZ mini mats is a nice way to display an assortment of food for your baby to choose what to eat. Even if you are not letting baby self-feed, letting them see the different foods is also a good practice. These mats are nice because they are easy to clean and stick to the high chair table surfaces easily. However, my daughter will sometimes still peel it off and flip over the food. So, it’s not completely going to suction down, but it does the trick for the most part!
There are other shapes and sizes and companies that make these too. We just happen to use this one! And different stores might also carry different colors. This sage one we have was from Pottery Barn Kids.
4. Munchkin Stay Put Suction Bowl
If you want stronger suction for a food container, Munchkin makes these suction bowls that will adhere to a high chair tray as well. They do tend to lose suction/stickiness over time, as we have noticed. And my daughter is now strong enough to pull it off, but it worked well in the beginning. I’ve since given up on things being clean when it comes to her eating, but that’s just a reality every new parent gets to eventually. EZPZ also makes a “bowl” in a suction mat format, but it looks a bit shallow to me to be a true bowl. The Munchkin set is a pretty good deal for 3 bowls of different sizes!
5. Munchkin White Hot Safety Spoons
The concept of these Munchkin spoons are pretty cool (see above picture with the Munchkin bowl), but the spoons are not perfect. We started off using these spoons because they would turn white when it touched something that was too hot. It’s good for starting out with purees with babies and if the parents are feeding them, but not so great for self-feeding in the beginning since babies could easily jab their mouths with it.
However, I also found the white hot sensor to be a little slow at adjusting back to its original color once it touched something hot. So when food was warm enough to eat, it would still show white. Eventually I still had to temp check myself otherwise the food got cold! Another thing is that if you feed something like carrot puree, it can stain the spoons orange, so it makes it hard to see the white! Just a note for people to be wary about.
I do like using these spoons to feed with if I am the one doing the feeding, as they feel very soft, yet sturdy. But I don’t let my daughter self feed with it, in case she pokes her eye or the roof of her mouth or something.
6. Olababy Spoon
This Olababy spoon was also recommended to me by mama bestie, and it is a really great self-feeding spoon, especially if you’re planning on doing baby-led weaning! (And even if you’re not!) It’s super soft, being 100% silicone, which means it won’t hurt if babies jab themselves with it (as much). It also acts as a teether and I often found my daughter gnawing on it. The design of it also lets it stand up on its own on a flat surface if you need. It’s better for picking up stickier foods like oatmeal, avocado, sweet potatoes, carrots, etc. but as your babe gets better at self-feeding, it’s also practical for things like yogurt or congee.
7. Silicone Bibs
These silicone bibs were recommended to us by friends so we had put them on our registry. And apparently silicone bibs are not all created equal.
I recently wanted to buy some more for my daughter just to have a few extra and to keep one in my diaper bag (not that we go out much these days…but for some time in the future) and to my surprise, there are a lot of different ones on Amazon! Some have super cute designs too. However, as I was reading reviews on a lot of them, people have complained about warped bibs and bad quality of some that don’t hold their shape after a few uses. Time is money, so I just decided to stick with these bibs we got before because I know they work well!
Silicone bibs are easy to clean and catch food droppings much more easily than a standard bib, even with a plastic catcher. The bowl scoop shape is essential for this. But the downside is that if liquid ends up in the bowl, you do want to be careful when removing the bib as it can often spill out. Also, sometimes my daughter likes to fish out a puff or blueberry that she has dropped into the bib bowl and put it back in her mouth, which can be kind of gross. Ha. Just watch out for it when your babe eats!
For going out in public, I often just have some of these Summer Infant disposable bibs already in my diaper bag in case I don’t have time (or space) to stuff one of these silicone bibs! They’re not the greatest bibs, but they ARE compact and helpful to have in a bind!
8. Boon Grass Drying Kit
Along with tools to feed your baby, you might want to consider a separate drying rack for their utensils. We like using the Boon items like the Boon Lawn for bowls and spoons. The accessories stems that come with the lawn in a kit or separately are pretty cute and work well to hang things like straws/tubes and small cups so they don’t get lost. We also own a travel one for when we go out of town and it helps for drying bottles and spoons and bowls and comes with its own bottle brush too.
It’s definitely a preference thing to have this, but I like to separate my baby’s dishes from ours. We also use special Dapple baby bottle soap as well to wash her items with a separate sponge. I know, we’re kind of crazy germaphobes, but look what the world has become!
9. Graco Blossom 6-in-1 High Chair
Honestly, this Graco high chair probably comes with more functions than I even know about since it is “6-in-1” but we bought it because my daughter tried it at a friend’s house and seemed to like it! According to their description, “The Graco Blossom 6-in-1 Highchair grows with your family, offering multiple seating options for infant to toddler, and can seat two children at once if family grows. It transforms seamlessly from an infant highchair to a traditional highchair, an infant booster, a toddler booster, and finally a youth chair.”
Don’t ask me how to use it as anything other than the traditional high chair, because I don’t know, but I’m sure it is just awesome when I need to change it to a booster or youth chair! I’m including it here in case people ask me what kind we have. Every family has different needs and space limitations, so perhaps you’re not looking for such a large high chair! But it does have many functions and was highly recommended in my go-to baby purchases book Baby Bargains that I mentioned in my list on useful items to have during the newborn months.
10. Avent Formula Dispenser and Snack Cup
If at any point you decide to use formula or want to keep some on you in case of emergencies, I like this little dispenser cup that you can pre-measure out powder into. There are three separate compartments that hold up to 9 oz of powder and if you’re done with using formula, it doubles as a great snack cup! I like to fill it with puffs (my daughter lovessss Happy Baby Organic Puffs in all flavors!) and fruits like blueberries when I take my daughter out and need a snack container. For blueberries, just make sure you halve or quarter them before feeding to a baby.
And another big reason I like THIS specific dispenser is because it is sterilizable in our Avent 3-in-1 Electric Steam Sterilizer that we usually use for baby bottles. Since powder formula is not sterile, but it is much cheaper than buying all liquid ready-to-feed formula, we take every precaution we can to make sure everything we store or mix formula in is as clean and sterile as possible. Of course, this was more important when our baby was younger, but this is definitely a nice travel container so you don’t have to buy so much ready-to-feed formula all the time and can save a little money!
11. Stasher Bags
A few years ago, my sister and I came upon Stasher during Christmas time when they were a small start-up company. We thought it was so cool that they used mostly sand (pure platinum silicone) to make their reuseable plastic bags! At the time, you could only buy them from their website, but they slowly started expanding market to sell at places like Target, Amazon, Whole Foods, and I’ve even seen cute custom colors/designs for places like Pottery Barn Kids and Anthropologie! I love that they are plastic and BPA free and extremely durable at high temperatures so you can sous vide it, bake it, microwave it, boil it — up to 400F!
I like to use these Stasher bags for snacks for my daughter or storing items in the fridge, and I love that they are reuseable and reduce plastic waste! They come in a few sizes, but I recently discovered the stand up bag version which is easier to put larger items in for storage and easier to dry out after washing. The sandwich ones can sometimes be hard to take an actual sandwich out of, but it is still useful for storing certain things (e.g. avocado halves).
I also just bought some snack size ones from Anthropologie that were on sale! They often have some cool exclusive colors that you can’t find in other places. And I noticed Pottery Barn Kids also has them in store, which I’m not surprised because I used these for snacks for my daughter all the time. The different colors are also useful as each person in the house can have their own color-coded designated bag!
12. EZPZ Utensils
As my daughter passed her one year mark, I noticed the Olababy spoon was getting a little harder for her to use to scoop things herself since it was so soft on the top that it made it more flimsy. It’s great for starting off a baby with when they first try solids and purees, but once you have food that needs more sturdy utensils to scoop up, I’d recommend graduating to these ezpz utensils. Unfortunately, Amazon only sells the ezpz set with two spoons, which are great! But I also wanted the tiny fork, which was a newer addition in the ezpz family. I thought this would be a great way to introduce my daughter to how to use a fork that was a little safer than an adult fork.
To be honest, at first when I got these utensils, I was not as impressed as with the other ezpz items we have. The utensils are also weighted but it’s not like the spoon or fork were very soft, like one might expect for baby utensils. However, my daughter really surprised me when she was able to scoop up her oatmeal with it! She definitely self feeds better now, though I’m not entirely sure she knows how to stab with a fork yet. But I think I’m okay with that for now. It still functions like a spork too!
If you really want to but theutensil set of fork and spoon, you’ll have to check it out on the ezpz website. And if you want $5 off your first order, you can use my referral link if you’d like! You can also check buybuyBaby or Bed Bath and Beyond for these too. (Use one of those 20% off coupons!)
13. Other Miscellaneous Kitchen Tools
Some people ask me if you need to have a food processor or blender or other kitchen appliances to make baby food and if it’s worth getting one. To be honest, I’d say don’t go out of your way to get a specific baby food maker, but if you always wanted a certain kitchen appliance, now might be a great time to invest in it.
We already had an 8-cup food processor from our wedding registry, but it’s a bit big for making smaller portions of baby food. I’d recommend a smaller size 2 or 4 cup food processor if you want to get one — unless you plan to make larger quantities of food for family. Larger ones are good for blending recipes with a lot of ingredients but the smaller ones would be better for puree-ing food, in my opinion. I recently made these Cauliflower Tots using our food processor and it was actually the first time I made something that seemed to use up the space potential it had!
Because our food processor was so large, my husband decided he wanted an immersion hand blender to blend up smaller portions of food for our daughter when we made purees in the beginning. It was actually pretty convenient for making smaller quantities of items. Plus, I had been wanting an immersion blender for some time as well, so it was the perfect excuse!
We usually make food fresh each day, but I also got a silicone freezer tray to store purees in too. This one I got can also be used in an Instant Pot. We mostly feed our baby fresh foods, but once in awhile we will give her jar food if we’re in a rush or on the go somewhere and didn’t have time to cook or pack something. Plus, it’s good emergency food. I like to save the glass jars to reuse for puree storages as well. It also makes it easy to heat up since it’s not plastic!
Another appliance that we already had was a Ninja blender and that is useful for making smoothies right now, as my daughter transitions to whole milk. She doesn’t like it straight up yet, but I can usually trick her into drinking lots if I mix in some fresh fruits like bananas, strawberries, blueberries or even just a little of her baby yogurt! It’s also a great afternoon snack and easy way to get fruits into her too. If you can get something that is a blender/food processor combo, I think that would totally save more counter space!
And there you have it…some of my favorite items we use for solids every day! If you have any cool must-have items that you like, please share with me! I’m all for anything eco-friendly and reuseable.
You can add some of these items to a baby registry too as a lot of the feeding items are not too expensive and friends could help you buy them! If you need more ideas on what cool items to get during newborn months that you may not have thought of, please check out my other article over here.
Again, I openly disclaim that I do get a small commission (less than half the sales tax in California) if you do choose to buy any of the recommended items above from using my links. I use the commissions solely to fund the blog hosting costs (NOT for profit reasons), and it costs you absolutely nothing to start a registry or buy from those links!
Please also help me pin if you thought this article was useful! 🙂 Pinning really helps people find my articles too. Stay healthy and safe, and enjoy the solids stage with your little one(s). It is definitely life-altering but also so much fun!
xoxo,
Jas
