Sometimes I'm really glad I'm a psychologist

It's been a rocky 8 weeks or so since we started trying to feed Helen solids. We tried all kinds of purees and baby cereal for weeks and weeks, to no avail. Her responses ranged from horrified revulsion, to indifference, to a kind of playful pfffffft! Little to nothing was swallowed, at least not if she could help it. After some time she finally decided that she was okay with prunes:

But as any seasoned mommy knows, there is an excellent reason that you can't serve prunes day in and day out. I had to find a way to get her to eat something else! She was started to develop a conditioned response to the mere sight of the spoon and would sometimes gag just looking at it. So I decided to try her on finger foods even though I am a fraidy cat when it comes to choking and she is kind of little for them. Sure enough, she loved puffs and rice krispies with very little encouragement. But when I tried giving her little pieces of fruit I didn't get the winning response I had anticipated- she was still associating the smell and flavor with the 'yuck' reaction. Thank goodness I'm a behaviorist because I knew a way around this... I stuck tiny pieces of fruit to her puffs! She ate them up before she even realized what was happening, then I gradually stopped adding puffs, and she found out that she loves eating bits of soft fruit. Today she scarfed two whole apricots in the manner of a a recently escaped POW. Then she licked the tray (seriously!).

So, um, anyone in the Lansing area want several batches of homemade baby food?