i think way too many people overanalyze this and worry unnecessarily. IMO, ditch the baby food and fill his tray with whatever youre eating (steamed broccoli, steamed carrots, whole wheat crackers, banana, apple chunks) he will eat as much solids as he needs. i really love the baby led approach to eating solids.
this is just my 2 cents.

if youre interested in reading about it, here is a good link:
http://www.borstvoeding.com/voedselintrodu ctie/vast_voedsel/rapley_guidelines.html

Great website, Natalia! I will ditch the baby food with this baby. I feel baby food is way too overpriced as it is anyways. I guess I should start eating even better.

thanks nat!

i think i might just finish off what baby food we have and then just start giving him our food. i've actually been giving him things from our meals at dinner (broccoli and asparagus) but he mostly plays with it and makes funny faces, probably because he's not used to food with texture.

Ava gets:
breakfast:oatmeal (don't know how much, I never measured) and 1/2 container of fruit (I buy the container of gerber, not the jars) and 6 oz bottle

lunch: 1/2 container of veggie and 6 oz bottle

snack: 1/2 container of fruit, 6 oz bottle

dinner: 1/2 container of veggie, bottle to wash it down
right after that she gets a bath and a full 6 oz bottle to go to sleep

she eats every 3 hours, she's not gaining weight any quicker than before, so i'm assuming i'm not overfeeding her

I'm not ready of comfortable with feeding her our food yet. I don't cook very often b/c of the way Jesse works. I rather he stick with the baby food for now, it's easier for me and she loves it. I bought a few of each of the Stage 2 foods. I'm waiting until her 6 month birthday though.

Does anyone know if you have to test the stage 2 foods like we did the stage 1? It might be a silly question.

do they have different varieties than the stage 1? if so, then yes.

honestly, i didn't really test anything. i found out after we'd already started solids that you're supposed to test things for 3-5 days and i'd only been doing 2. also, nobody in either of our families has any food allergies so after i found out i'd been "testing" them for too little time i just gave up and started giving him whatever. he had such a limited diet that if there had been a problem it wouldn't have been hard to figure out the cause.

i cook every night and i think we eat well enough that he can get by on our food. we always have a vegetable on the side, as well as noodles or rice or potatoes (mashed or baked).

We don't ever eat rice or potatoes, but we do eat veggies. I might cook a total of 12 nights out of a month.
There's a few fruits that are different and there's meats. The veggies are the same and some fruits are the same.
We're testing applesauce for a few days and starting stage 2 the weekend that she turns 6 months.

I buy my son organic frozen baby food from "mother hen" i ditched the jars.

He actually enjoys the veggies now . There are no preservatives and its fresh .

I would start giving him veggies from lunch as well.