Our First Month of Solids: The 10 Things That Survived the High Chair
Our son's first month of real food, from the first spoon of sweet potato to lunch at his grandmother's, and the small things that kept the kitchen manageable.
10 products9 min read
The Saturday we gave him a spoon
Our son was a little over six months old, sitting up, staring at our plates with naked greed, and his grandmother had been asking for a fortnight when we were going to “let the poor child eat”. So on a Saturday morning we steamed a sweet potato, mashed it with a fork, strapped him into the high chair and gave him a spoon.
He took the spoon, looked at it, and put it in his hair. Then he put his hand in the bowl, looked at the hand, and put that in his hair too. Twenty minutes later there was sweet potato on the chair, the floor, the dog and both of us, and about a teaspoon of it in him.
Here is the month that followed, in the order the problems arrived.
Saturday, 11 a.m. — the high chair, first spoonful
The first week was mostly about the chair and the ten minutes either side of it. The food itself was simple. What we had not thought about was that a bowl on a tray is a bowl on the floor, or what to do with our hands, his hands and the small cup of water that everyone said to offer.
The plate that stayed on the tray
The 7-piece silicone baby tableware set, about $15, is a divided suction plate, a suction bowl, a bib with a pocket along the bottom, two soft-tipped spoons and a small two-handled cup with a straw lid. We had been given spoons. We had not been given anything that would stay put, and the suction plate was the difference between the second Saturday and the first: he pulled at it, it stayed, and he went back to the food. The bib pocket caught about a third of what left the plate, which is a third less on the floor. The suction only holds on a smooth tray; on his grandmother’s wooden one, later in the month, the plate flew like everything else.
7-Piece Silicone Baby Tableware Set (Suction Plate, Bowl, Bib)
$15.05
The bottle he could not break
The kids stainless steel straw bottle, about $10, is a 400-millilitre steel bottle with a flip-up soft straw and a carry loop, and it was the first thing we bought that week. Water with meals is part of starting solids, and a baby with an open cup is a baby pouring water on his own lap. With the straw bottle he could gum the spout, eventually pull a mouthful through it and, crucially, throw it on the floor without it opening. It took him about ten days to work out the valve; before that he mostly chewed it.
Kids Stainless Steel Straw Bottle (400 ml)
$10.25
The cloths for hands, face, tray and us
The honeycomb cotton dish cloths, about $8 for the pack, are soft waffle-weave squares that we had bought for the kitchen and immediately repurposed. One goes on the high-chair tray for his hands, one is for his face at the end, one is for whichever of us has sweet potato on a sleeve. They rinse clean under the tap and go in with the towels at night, and they have shrunk a little in the dryer, which does not matter because nobody is measuring them.
Honeycomb Cotton Dish Cloths (Multi-Pack)
$8.09
By Wednesday he had worked out that food on the tray could be swept onto the floor with one arm, and the second problem had arrived in full.
Wednesday, 6 p.m. — the floor
Nobody tells you that a baby eating three meals a day means a kitchen floor that needs resetting three times a day. We tried kitchen paper, which tore and smeared. We tried the big vacuum, which woke him up. By the end of the second week we had a two-minute routine and two tools for it.
The roll that lifted the wet stuff
The tear-off microfibre cleaning cloth roll, about $11, is a roll of fifty perforated microfibre squares that tear off like kitchen paper but go in the wash and back onto the roll. One sheet, damp, takes a whole tray of mashed banana in a single wipe where kitchen paper took four, and it does the floor under the chair straight after. They are grey and look like garage rags, and they live on a hook by the high chair, which is not pretty and is exactly right.
Tear-Off Microfibre Cleaning Cloth Roll (50 Sheets)
$11.33
The vacuum for the dry stuff
The cordless handheld vacuum, about $17, is a small rechargeable vacuum with a long crevice nozzle and a brush head, and it is the thing we would buy first if we did it again. Rice, toast crumbs, peas and the grated cheese he learned to scatter in week three all went up it in about a minute, including the crumbs in the chair’s seat crease that nothing else reaches. It charges over USB-C, hangs on the same hook as the cloth roll and is quiet enough to use while he naps in the next room. The dust cup is small and wet food still wants the cloth first; it is a crumb vacuum, not a floor vacuum.
Cordless Handheld Vacuum with Crevice Nozzle
$17.25
The floor was under control. The problem by the third weekend was time: steaming and mashing a single portion three times a day had started to eat our evenings, and so we moved the cooking to Sundays.
Sunday, 3 p.m. — batch prep
Batch cooking for a baby is not complicated. Steam a lot of vegetables, mash or purée them, freeze them in portions, and spend the week defrosting. The three things that made it an hour instead of an afternoon were a chopper, a tray and some boxes.
The chopper that did the carrots
The 12-in-1 vegetable chopper with catch container, about $14, is a hand-press dicer with a set of interchangeable blades and a clear container underneath. A kilo of carrot, sweet potato and courgette goes from whole to even cubes in a few minutes, straight into the container, straight into the steamer. Even cubes cook evenly, which matters when you are about to mash them. The blades are properly sharp and the small plastic parts are the swallowable size, so it lives in the top cupboard with the guard on and gets washed before he is awake.
12-in-1 Vegetable Chopper with Catch Container
$14.19
The tray that made the portions
The 48-cube silicone ice tray with lid and storage drawer, about $11, is the batch-cooking item we tell other parents about. Spoon the purée into the tray, lid on, freeze overnight. In the morning you press the lid and the cubes drop into the drawer underneath, which slides out, so the tray is free for the next batch and a week of portions lives in one box on one freezer shelf. Each cube is about a tablespoon, so a meal is two to four of them; by the end of the month, when he was eating more, the cubes started to feel small and we began freezing whole portions in the boxes below.
48-Cube Silicone Ice Tray with Lid and Storage Drawer
$10.69
The boxes in the fridge
The stainless steel food storage containers with lids, about $8 for three, are shallow steel trays with clear snap-on lids, for the half of the Sunday batch that was going in the fridge rather than the freezer: steamed veg sticks, soft pasta, stewed apple. Steel does not take on the orange of carrot the way plastic does, and the trays go straight into the oven to reheat with the lids off. The lids are plastic and are not for the oven or the microwave, which we learned by melting one corner.
Stainless Steel Food Storage Containers with Lids, 3-Pack
$8.19
Four Sundays in, the freezer was full, the floor routine was two minutes, and we were asked to lunch at his grandmother’s, forty minutes away across town. Which is how we learned about the last problem.
The following Sunday — lunch across town
Feeding a baby away from home is a logistics problem with a moving deadline. He eats at half past twelve, it is an hour door to door, and his grandmother’s kitchen has a microwave from a different century. We packed warm food, cold food, the suction plate and the cleaning kit, and put all of it in the pram basket.
The containers that kept the porridge warm
The stackable insulated lunch containers with thermal bag, about $17, are three nesting steel-lined tubs in a zipped insulated bag with a handle. Warm porridge went in the bottom tub at eleven and was still properly warm at twelve-thirty; stewed pear went in the small tub on top and stayed cold and separate. The handle hooks over a pram and the bag wipes clean. Three tubs is more than one baby’s lunch, and most days we used two and left the third at home.
Stackable Insulated Lunch Containers with Thermal Bag (3-Tier)
$17.09
The box that went in her fridge
The leak-proof stainless steel bento box, about $12, has three steel compartments and a lid that clips down with four latches. The cooled dinner for later — pasta, veg, a few cubes of cheese — travelled in it, went into his grandmother’s fridge on arrival and came out at five. It has not leaked in a month of being carried on its side in a bag. The four latches want two hands, so we open it before he is in the chair, not after, because after is when he grabs.
Leak-Proof Stainless Steel Bento Box (3 Compartments)
$11.55
He ate most of the porridge, half the pear and all of the cheese, and threw the straw bottle under his grandmother’s table four times, where she retrieved it each time and declared him a genius. We went home with an empty bag and a sleeping baby and called the month a success.
What we’d leave at home
Everything in this story
7-Piece Silicone Baby Tableware Set (Suction Plate, Bowl, Bib)
$15.05
Kids Stainless Steel Straw Bottle (400 ml)
$10.25
Honeycomb Cotton Dish Cloths (Multi-Pack)
$8.09
Tear-Off Microfibre Cleaning Cloth Roll (50 Sheets)
$11.33
Cordless Handheld Vacuum with Crevice Nozzle
$17.25
12-in-1 Vegetable Chopper with Catch Container
$14.19
48-Cube Silicone Ice Tray with Lid and Storage Drawer
$10.69
Stainless Steel Food Storage Containers with Lids, 3-Pack
$8.19
Stackable Insulated Lunch Containers with Thermal Bag (3-Tier)
$17.09
Leak-Proof Stainless Steel Bento Box (3 Compartments)
$11.55
Everything here comes to about $124. Prices in USD; they move a little from week to week.
Frequently asked questions
What do I actually need to start a baby on solids?
Less than the shops suggest. A high chair, a suction plate, a bib with a pocket and a couple of soft spoons are the eating part; one silicone set covered all of that for about $15. What nobody gives you is the cleaning and the batch-cooking kit: cloths, a small vacuum, a way to freeze portions and a way to carry food out of the house. That is what this story is about, and it came to about $124.
Is it worth buying cheap kitchen gear for baby food?
Yes, for the parts that never touch the baby's mouth. A vegetable chopper, a freezer tray and steel storage boxes are the same products whether you are feeding a baby or a flat-share. The things we were careful about were the straw bottle and the lunch boxes, where we chose steel over plastic.
How do you freeze baby food portions?
Purée or mash it, spoon it into a lidded ice-cube tray, freeze overnight, then pop the cubes out into a bag or drawer. Each cube is about a tablespoon, so a meal is two to four cubes defrosted in the fridge or warmed through in a pan. One tray from a Sunday afternoon fed us for the week.
How do you keep the floor under a high chair clean?
Accept that it will not be clean, and make the reset fast. We used a tear-off microfibre cloth for the wet food and a small cordless vacuum for the dry crumbs, and the whole reset after a meal took about two minutes. A mat under the chair helps too; we used a folded old sheet.
How do you take baby food out of the house?
Warm food goes in an insulated container, cold food in a box that seals, and both ride in the pram basket rather than in your bag. The insulated set we used kept porridge warm for an hour across town; the steel bento box went in a fridge at the other end.