Introducing table foods

Anyone have any suggestions for introducing table foods? My little guy will be 8 months next week and is just cutting his first tooth. He is a pretty good eater when it comes to pureed foods, but does not like to eat anything with any kind of texture. He gags if his oatmeal is too thick and, even though he loves pureed sweet potatoes, he gagged when I gave him a tiny bit of my mashed sweet potato.

He seems to know how to chew since he tries to chew his baby food and will make chewing motions when he sees DH and me eating, so I think he just has an aversion to foods with texture. So, does anyone have any suggestions on how I can introduce texture to his meals? Should I hold off introducing table foods till he's a little older?

[Vanquisher]

It took a long time for my daughter to be able to handle the texture of table foods, but I did find something that helped her bite into a lot of things and gave me peace of mind as well.

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg...65714?v=glance

It is the Baby Safe Feeder, and you can find it all over the place. It hadn't even been invented when my son was born.

[Gwendolyn]

I second the safe feeder and cheerios. DS had a similar problem. I just tried at every feeding time. When it was clear that he was no longer interested in trying, then I would swich to baby food. After a while he would eat a little table food and then a little more. After a while, we didn't use baby food any more. It took a few months, but by continuing to introduce it he eventually figured it out. Then he started spitting out baby food because it was too mushy.

He will get there and so will you

Thank you for the advice. I haven't tried Cheerios, but we did try the fruit puffs that Gerber (I think) makes. They dissolve a little faster than Cheerios, but Andrew still spits them out. Oh well, we'll keep trying! I guess the good thing is that even though this boy is picky about texture right now, he's not really picky about taste....he can suck a fresh lemon dry like nobody's business.

[pstone]

I started with cherrios....seemed to work great for us.