preparing to start on solids

I had always thought that you don't start feeding babies solids till they were 6 months old. But during the 4 month checkup, I was told that we can start between 4-6 months. Since k. has been so cute licking the food we've been stuffing in her mouth I thought I'd look into introducing solid food, or at least do some research.

All I heard before I started was what j. blogged; something about rice cereal mixed w/ milk/formula. I looked through my two Chinese books, then did some more reading on Internet. The eastern and western methods are mostly the same, but my Chinese books had a lot of details and some stuff were different.

You can apparently start babies, when they're 3-4 months, getting acclimated w/ the idea of food. You're not weaning at this time. But you can let them have some vegetable or diluted fruit juice. I called my mom up and she said to just boil vegetable in some water instead of chopping it up, boiling it and then filtering like the book says. So I'll start her about 1 teaspoon a day. Need to go find a rubber-tipped teaspoon though, and a filter thingie for when we I start pureeing stuff.

There is, of course, a list of stuff you can make into vegetable/fruit juice and what not. What's interesting is that babycenter.com says don't feed them citrus, but the Chinese book says it's okay. The Chinese books also said, no pineapple, grapefruit, or kiwi.

Anyways, what is this rice cereal thing anyway? My mom says to go buy those powdered flour thingie from Ranch 99. The books give me instructions for cooking rice (1 cup in 10 cups of water). Of course, since baby won't eat much I guess that's why you buy pre-packaged food, so it's not wasteful.

But I figure, I have another month to start thinking about the other 3 stages of solid food feeding. That's how my books have it broken down into, w/ which months you do which stage. Basically it's about the consistency of food. You start with REALLY watered down and bland food. About 1/5 as seasoned as your own food. There are also different philosophies on which food to introduce first. If you feed them sweeter food first (bananas) they might not like the blander food.

But my two books are great cuz they have recipes and suggested food preparation for each stage. In the meantime, I have a whole month to watch lil' thumper try to swallow broth.