After dinner tonight, I found ricotta cheese in Sean’s ear. It was also in his nose, but at least that’s in the general region of his mouth, right?

I sort of knew that introducing solid food would be fraught with difficulty: refusals, messes, surprise likes and dislikes. (I also knew I’d get a lot of good pictures, though.)

We recently implemented Family Dinner at the Litchford house, and it’s done wonders for Sean’s eating habits. At 9 months old, anything we can do to encourage solid foods is, as Martha Stewart would say, a good thing. He went from being super finicky about what we offered up for dinner to being a champion eater. It’s also good for Danielle and me because it keeps us from Hoovering in our dinners in front of the TV.

We discovered that Sean likes eating with Mom and Dad when Danielle made a lamb stew that had very simple ingredients that he could eat. We shouldn’t have been surprised, though. At 6 months, I noticed how interested he was in what we were eating. Over the next couple months, we began giving him little samples of what we were eating: a little croissant here, some whitefish there.

Since our discovery, we’ve started eating together whenever possible. If we’re eating something that’s free of nuts, egg whites, honey, and other potentially dangerous foods, we share with Sean. If we’re eating a little more adventurously, Danielle has sometimes made a simplified portion for Sean. At other times, we feed him his own food while we eat our dinner.

The other day, my friend David sent me a New York Times article about this exact idea. For those of you who might be interested in trying this with your little ones, the article has some tips and recipe ideas, too. (This being a Times article, the recipes mentioned are a little fancy-pants.) The article recommends using a food mill to puree your wee one’s dinner, but we don’t bother with that. Just be mindful of choking hazards. You might also want to check with your pediatrician before trying this.

Sean still has a lot to learn about eating—a lot of food ends up on the floor—but at least he’s getting more of it into his stomach.