I'm considering trying
Baby Led Weaning. I'm reading the book now, and it advocates skipping the purees and giving them food they can put in their mouths by themselves. The author says that babies don't need food outside of milk until about 9 months, so at about 6 months (or whenever they start reaching for food, like Ariana is now, sob) give them big pieces of food, like carrot sticks or a chicken bone, that they can experiement with trying to get it in their mouths and gumming it.
John & Sherry of Young House Love wrote about their experience with it
here, and I first read about it at [url=http://www.simplebites.net/how-i-discovered-and-embraced-baby-led-weaningfeeding-blw]Simple Bites.