Almost every day Rhino is enjoying “real food”. We’re still keeping it to fruits and veggies and we’ve introduced a few new ones since we tried carrots.

We went out and bought an avocado at the Universe, but I’ve never been avocado shopping and when we brought it home it was crunchy, so Rhino didn’t have that. The only other thing in the house I felt good about giving to Rhino was some apples, so I diced part of an apple and steamed it until it was squishy then mashed it coarsely with a fork. I’m not sure if he just really wasn’t in the mood for eating, but he really did not enjoy eating cooked apples!

We went out to brunch at the club the next day and they had raw apple slices available. I cut them into french fry-size pieces and sat with him to see what he’d do. He definitely would pick them up and ravenously shove a slice into his mouth. He’s pretty good at chewing things up, but I was a little worried about how small he’d chew raw apple. It turned out he didn’t really want to swallow any of it anyway. He’d chew a piece up and make a lot of squishy noises, sucking the juice out of each bite, then spit it out. At least he got some yummy apple juice!

A couple days later we went back to the Universe and found these beautiful, gigantic, delicious peaches! They’re really the best peaches I’ve ever had. I diced up a few for Rhino to practice grabbing, but they were way to slippery and he had such a hard time holding on to them. I put a couple slices in the food processor to make some mush, but they were so juicy it turned out extremely liquid. That was perfect for the little dippers we have, though.

He got a couple chunks in his mouth …

… but had more fun playing with and chewing on the dippers. Peaches were quite a success!

Rhino Eats Peaches from Melissa on Vimeo.

We eventually did get a good avocado on base. I gave a couple slices to Rhino, but he mostly just liked playing with them and mashing them up. I did give him some mash on a dipper, and that seemed to go better.

For the last couple days we’ve been using the avocado mash with a some applesauce and he seems to like that a lot better than the plain avocado. He likes to use the spoon, and sometimes he actually does get the food in his mouth with it! The dippers are still fun, but half the time he starts chewing on the wrong end. It’s always a huge mess, of course, but he’s so cute with food all over his face!

I have a sweet potato that we’re going to try out in a few days as well as some bananas. We’re having a good time watching Rhino’s crazy faces as he explores all these new tastes and textures!

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