solids - hate the cereal, love the veggies

We started rice cereal a few weeks ago and just started with veggies (squash) this week. The boys don't like the cereal but love the veggies. They'll eat the cereal, but they make yicky faces; the squash they'll just take in happily.

I've read all the feeding guides, books, articles, etc. on starting solids, but I don't see whether I'm supposed to keep feeding cereal after they are able to do other solids.

Everything says to start with cereal, then introduce new foods one at a time. So, am I supposed to keep feeding cereal after I've introduced other foods, or can I just do fruits/veggies and stop the cereal?

If I have to keep doing cereal, any tips on ways to make it more tolerable. Mix it with the fruit/veggies maybe?

 

Technically, you don't have to keep feeding the cereal, especially if they do not want it.

 

I never did cereal, it looked gross to me. I started with fruits, then veggies, and all 3 kids seem to eat almost everything so far. It's just because you can mix the cereal with bm/formula, so that the taste is kind of familiar. My kids couldn't care less, and were far more interested in the real stuff!

 

Yeah...I've found instructions on feeding/starting solids to be all over the place! Especially from our pediatrician!
Our boys aren't huge fans of the cereal either and LOVE veggies and fruits. After we introduced them for 5-7 days at a time to check for allergies, I now usually only give cereal in the morning and mix it with a teaspoon of baby food applesauce or bananas. They seem to be ok with it!

 

i would give the cereal along with the veggie or fruit, and we would usually just mix the two together. if you have tasted the cereal yourself, you will know why they are not big fans of it- it really doe taste like cardboard! mine actually do like the oatmeal better than the rice cereal, so hopefully you can try that down the road if you haven't yet. good luck discovering all the things they do- and much more entertainingly DON'T- like! :winking0009:

 

My DS hates rice cereal, so as soon as the box was about halfway done, I moved to oatmeal and he LOVES it. The rice I was mixing with his veggies or fruits that were a bit thin when he started those foods.

At 11 months I give DS cereal still, he gets a bowl of it as breakfast with half or a whole jar of fruit.

With the twins I may just skip rice and go to oatmeal since DS never had any issues with it, less constipated too

 

I quit the cereal once they had started 3 or 4 other foods. They never liked cereal, unless it was mixed with a fruit, and then it was easier to just give them the fruit by itself. Mine were on formula so they got iron from that -- I think nutritionally that's the only benefit they get from cereal. (And if they need the iron, you could try oatmeal instead -- a lot of babies like that better, and it doesn't plug them up.)

ETA: I do keep a box of rice cereal around, solely for when they have an intestinal bug. I figure it qualifies as part of the "BRAT" diet (bananas, rice, applesauce, toast), so I feed it to them mixed with applesauce or mashed bananas, until they quit vomiting or having diarrhea or whatever the problem is.

 

QUOTE(Mommydee @ Aug 1 2007, 08:19 PM) [snapback]353670[/snapback]
if you have tasted the cereal yourself, you will know why they are not big fans of it- it really doe taste like cardboard!


No kidding!! It's terrible. But then, I think the straight formula is terrible also and they can't get enough of it.

After we get a few more days of squash in so I'm not introducing two new foods at a time, I'll switch to oatmeal and see if they like it better. If not, we'll just stick with fruits and veggies for now.

 

Mine LOVE oatmeal...it's the only way I get them to eat green beans (yuck)...I mix them in the oatmeal with b/m and they eat it up. They didn't care much for the rice cereal unless I mixed with b/m...they refused to eat it if I mixed with formula.

 

You can definitely try oatmeal which tastes better and you can add fruit or veggies to it to change the flavor. That worked best for my guys.