Cauliflower and mandarin segments

Hannah had lots of new things to try today - but not at breakfast, which was the last of the Raisin Wheats with a dash of whole milk.

Lunch was the first of the new tastes, as well as some old favourites. She had a rice cake with lentil pate on - a thin rice cake, which it turns out are much easier to cut up than the normal thicker ones. This was followed by a steamed carrot and a couple of cauliflower florets, and finally there were some mandarin segments for pudding.

I don't know if you've noticed, but Hannah usually has a combination of hot and cold food at meals. This is because I'm usually in a rush to get something served and in front of her, and she doesn't have much patience with sitting in the high chair waiting for stuff to cool down. So a cunning trick is to offer something cold to keep her occupied while the hot food gets to the right temperature. I have in the past just run things under the cold tap, but I don't find it works quite as well.

Anyway, the cauliflower was dumped straight on the floor after the first taste, and generally greeted with suspicion. After another few attempts she changed her mind and decided to give it the benefit of the doubt - still not the most popular item ever served though. She also didn't pay that much attention to the carrot, in the past this has been a favourite so I'm not sure what was going on there.

Mandarin segments, it turns out, are a lot more sour than I remembered. Oops. To her credit, once Hannah had got over the first taste (see picture), she warmed to them and went back for more. She ate most of them in the end and seemed to enjoy it.

Tea today was tomato, basil and mozzarella tortellini, which I was expecting her to really go for. She did sort of go for it, but I spent the first five minutes of the meal picking pasta up off the floor. Normally stuff is thrown mainly to one side of the high chair or the other, but in a new attack of being perverse, Hannah developed a decent shot put action to alternate sides, so I think I ran the 1500m over the course of the meal. To be fair she didn't throw the apricot halves around quite so much, which was a relief.

To drink today, Hannah had her first taste of juice. We diluted a small amount of fresh fruit juice with a rather larger amount of cooled boiled water. For the first time I had to refill the sippy cup before the last meal of the day, as she'd managed to drink more of it than I was expecting.

In summary then, an interesting day!