As your baby makes the transition to solid foods and her chewing and swallowing skills improve, she'll be able to handle foods with increasingly sophisticated textures.

Here's a quick overview of what's on the baby food texture menu -- and how to adjust the texture of your baby's (and young toddler's) foods as her eating skills continue to evolve.

Thin purées
How to create foods with this texture: Dilute infant cereals or purées foods to create baby food with a very watery texture.

Thicker purées
How to create foods with this texture: Thicken the purées by adding less water to infant cereals or homemade baby food. If you serve your baby commercial baby foods, continue to buy pure foods (e.g., blends without any fillers). You can thicken them up yourself by adding infant cereal or other cereals and grains that your baby has demonstrated she can tolerate.

Ground, grated foods, and mashed foods
How to create foods with this texture: Use a food mill, small food chopper, hand masher and/or hand grater to grate, chop, or mash some of her foods (e.g., mashed potatoes or other fruits and vegetables, grated cheese, small-curd cottage cheese).

Chopped foods ("finger foods")
How to create foods with this texture: Chop your baby's food into small, fine pieces that are easy to chew. Depending on her age and the extent of her finger dexterity, she will either scoop these pieces up using all the fingers of one hand (creating a balled fist which she will then direct towards her mouth) or she use a pincher grip (thumb and index finger-a much more complex move).

Table foods
How to create foods with this texture: Begin to introduce other tastes and textures, including crunchy and chewy foods. Monitor your child closely and ensure that you offer appropriately sized morsels of these foods. Other than watching out for the foods that are known hazards to young children (see Mealtime Solutions for Your Baby, Toddler, and Preschooler for age-specific lists), you can offer your child most of the foods that you dine on, while adjusting for the fact your baby or toddler's taste buds are much more sensitive than your own.

Imagine how boring life would be if all of your food had to pass through a blender before it showed up in your bowl. We're talking purées for breakfast, purées for lunch, and purées for dinner. That's about as good as life gets for most six-month-old diners. Is it any wonder that so many of them take culinary matters into their own hands the moment they can get within grabbing distance of someone else's dinner plate?

As a parent, you may wonder when and how to introduce new baby food textures to your baby. You may worry that if you introduce complex textures too soon, your baby may gag or choke; and if you wait too long, your baby may become hooked on purées and less willing to experiment with solids that require more effort to eat.

Most babies and parents manage to navigate the path from purées to table foods without too much difficulty, despite all the anxiety that tends to accompany the transition to solid foods.

You can gauge which textures of baby food your baby is capable of handling by judging

your baby's ability to move food from the front of her mouth further back (where it can be chewed)

your baby's chewing abilities (baby saliva is extremely acidic-designed to break down food-so your baby doesn't need teeth to excel at chewing)

your baby's ability to swallow foods of increasingly complex textures

Here's are some more tips that will help you to know what to look for as your baby moves from food texture stage to food texture stage.

When you first start your baby on baby food, you'll start her on very watery baby food: thin purées. Initially, she'll initially try to suck the food off the spoon. This is because she's trying to transfer her breast- or bottle-feeding skills over to the land of solid foods.

As your baby moves on to thicker purées, she will use a combination of sucking and chewing motions in order to remove the food from her spoon. She will also practice her chewing skills by chewing on toast crusts and other soft foods. By this point, she will be starting to figure out how to use an up and down chewing motion.

By the time your baby moves on to ground, grated, and mashed foods, she will be able to move food from side to side using her tongue. She will find it difficult to handle mixed-textures (e.g., lumpy foods mixed with smooth foods), so keep this in mind when you're planning her menus). If she comes across a lump unexpectedly, she may gag and turn red as she tries to deal with this unwelcome surprise. Note: It's important to take an infant and toddler first-aid course so that you'll know how to handle choking and other emergencies involving your child. If you haven't already taken such a course, make it a priority to sign up for such a course today.

As your baby starts eating chopped foods/finger foods, her chewing abilities will be improving by the day and she may insist on feeding herself. (You may want to try to supplement her efforts if she'll let you feed her while she's feeding herself.)

Your baby or young toddler's chewing abilities will be well developed by the time she starts eating table foods. Other than watching out for the foods that are known hazards to young children ((see Mealtime Solutions for Your Baby, Toddler, and Preschooler for age-specific lists), you can offer your child most of the foods that you dine on, while adjusting for the fact your baby or toddler's taste buds are much more sensitive than your own.