My daughter is 5 months, and by the recommendation of my ped, he wants her on solids. In fact, he wanted her on solids a month ago, but I just didn't think she was ready. My question is this...how do you successfully start introducing solids? This is what I have done so far. I feed her her bottle at the normal 7am. At 8 I make tsp of rice cereal with formula (soupy consistency) and spoon feed. When she loses interest or starts to whin, I stop. Where do I go from here? Do I just wait until she is downing the full teaspoon and move to lunch? She has definately been spitting up more. I think that this is way to much food for her stomach to handle (she will eat about half of the prepared tsp of rice) She didn't seem to like the rice cereal at first, so I did switch to oatmeal. She developed a diaper rash one day after a poopy (she has never had one, and this rash was pretty extensive) so I assumed it was from the oatmeal...back to rice it was. Should I mix the rice with pears to make it more palatable? I picked up gerber pears today. How long does jarred food last once it is opened? Sorry, I know there are a lot of questions.