Wibble wobble wibble wobble

Blueberry wheats for breakfast again but today saw the last of them (which Hannah will probably be glad of as she definitely doesn't like them as much as other varieties). We went to playgroup this morning and that mucked up nap times, so Hannah went straight to bed when we got in and had a late lunch at 2pm. Lunch was a Babybel cheese that she loved, a banana and date fruit bar, a pear, a cream cheese sandwich and a raspberry flavour jelly. Turns out jelly is quite difficult! It made rather a mess both on Hannah and the tray, floor, bib, and me, never mind. She did enjoy squidging it through her fingers though, and she seemed very surprised by it at first encounter.



For dinner she had a couple of slices of eggy bread seasoned with ground cinnamon and a nectarine. I made the mistake of cutting the nectarine into chunks, Hannah has recently started testing her independence by more or less refusing to eat anything that's not presented as a whole. Even if the whole seems rather too big for a small girl to manage. Oh well, I'm sure it's just a phase (in fact I'm told that *everything* is a phase...).

Party Girl :o)

Hannah attended her first ever 21st birthday party on Saturday night, but we kept her away from the cake and beer...

For breakfast Hannah had blueberry wheats, she doesn't seem to like them as much as the cranberry wheats or shreddies though and she flung a few onto the floor rather than down the hatch - most unusual!

For lunch she had some sweet potato wedges and courgette fingers that I roasted, cousin George shared this with Hannah, especially the courgette. I only gave Hannah a couple of bits of the courgette as she mainly wanted to throw it on the floor. Ungrateful madam. She also had a few bits of pasta with tomato sauce on from my plate, and a fromage frais for pudding which Aunty Jo found most amusing to watch. Here's a rare picture of some courgette getting as far as her mouth:

And here's George guest starring with his own lunch (some of Hannah's sweet potato and courgette):

Dinner started in the car on the way to the party as Hannah started yelling. Good job I'd shoved some organix carrot sticks in my bag then... So after eating the entire bag of carroty things Hannah also had some bread and butter, some cherry tomatoes (that made her pull faces as they came straight from the fridge), a couple of Aunty Jo's rice cakes, and a couple of party nibbles that she robbed off the coffee table. Fortunately I managed to keep her away from the salted peanuts and the chilli-stuffed olives, with a significant amount of help from other guests. We had to play "pass the nibbles" fairly consistently as Hannah has been doing sprints training while I wasn't looking.

Breakfast on Sunday was blueberry wheats again, and again a number of them were thrown overboard rather than eaten. Hannah still ate more than I did though! For lunch we gave her some apple rice cakes, a couple of oatcakes with cream cheese on, some cheese and herb organix crisps, a pear and a plum. And a breadstick too. She mostly ate the lot as she was busy showing George how BLW is done.

Dinner on Sunday consisted of avocado pieces, some fingers of cheddar cheese (mature), a breadstick, some chickpeas, raisins, a banana and a fromage frais. The avocado proved rather wily and even though I left the skin on the avocado to make it easier to pick up, it still needed chasing round the tray before she could pick it up. The chickpeas were quite popular, although Hannah quickly discovered that they made a pleasing noise when dropped from a height onto the tray, and rolled a decent distance when thrown on the floor.

I didn't take any pics of Hannah eating on Sunday, so here's one of kiddies and daddies together instead:

Easy Peas-y

Hannah's eaten loads in the last two days! She's started both days with an enormous bowl of cranberry wheats, in fact between us we've finished the box off already :o)

For lunch yesterday she had a quorn fillet, some potato wedges that I sprinkled a bit of cayenne pepper onto, and about a ton of peas (well, ish). She really enjoyed the peas, and seemed fascinated by how small they were and how she could chase them around the tray on her highchair. The wedges and quorn also went down well. Pudding was a few grapes.

Dinner yesterday was a couple of sices of toast with lentil pate spread on it. We've finally nearly eaten all of the lentil pate - one batch has lasted ages in the freezer - so it's nearly time to cook up a new batch. I also gave Hannah some raisins, which went the same way as the peas.


Today for lunch Hannah had a packet of carrot organix wotsits while we were out and about, plus two nectarines and a banana. The banana was a bit underripe and she wasn't all that keen on it, although she still managed about half of it. She's showing off her ability to eat a nectarine one handed while wielding a sippy cup:


Dinner was a dairy-based affair with two rice cakes spread with cream cheese, a serving of cottage cheese, and a peach flavoured fromage frais. As usual, anything arriving via a spoon was very well received and there was lots of excitement on show.

Hannah's also now having mixed feeds, for the past week she's had a breastfeed first thing in the morning (well, before 8am which is early enough for me!) then a bottle of formula before bed. She's consistently only taking those two milk feeds now, and I'll be moving her onto moo juice rather than mummy juice in just over a month, when she turns one :oO

Beany Baby

Hannah had cranberry wheats for breakfast again today - Neil gave her an enormous bowlful of them and she ate the lot again.

For lunch I made cauliflower cheese for all of us. Hannah sucked the cheese sauce off every bit of cauli and did eat some pieces of cauli itself. She had some raisins and a banana for pudding, too.




Dinner tonight was beans on toast - an entire half sized tin of beans spread across two slices of toast. As normal Hannah carefully picked each bean off the toast, ate it and when she'd finished with that she sucked the bean juice out of the toast, then finally got round to eating the toast itself. No pudding, I figured all those beans were enough for anyone!

Back on the veggies

Things got more or less back to normal today after a week of topsy turvy meals. Hannah had cranberry wheats for breakfast - like shredded wheat bitesize but filled with cranberry puree. Yes, we're out of shreddies! She really liked them though, hurrah :o)

Lunch today was baked tomatoes. I did three tomatoes this time and again Hannah ate the lot! She followed this with some grapes that I cut in half, and also ate a slice of bread and butter.

For dinner I made some potato wedges - all Auntie Jo's fault, since she and BabyG had them for lunch. I pleased to report that they were lovely, and Hannah ate loads! She ate nearly 2 entire potatoes worth of wedges, plus a banana and finally two bits of her chocolate buttons easter egg. A very popular choice!

We're back!

Gosh it's been a while since our last report, and quite a lot has been going on. So, as best I can remember here's what Hannah's eaten...

She had breakfast every day, mainly shreddies although she had full sized shredded wheats at her granny's house - not as easy to cope with as the bitesize version - and toast this morning.

Last Monday Hannah had a bit of a bug that involved throwing up and things so I do remember that her food was very bland for the rest of the day, but exactly what I gave her I have no idea! On Tuesday I ended up in hospital for some tests. Hannah was an absolute trooper despite hanging around for hours in various waiting rooms. I did have some fo0d bits in my bag which I gave her, but it wasn't much of a meal just some apple rice cakes and organix crisps. The hospital offered ready made bottles of formula, but no solid foods so Hannah just had milk for most of the day.

We managed rather better on Wednesday with Neil looking after Hannah and she generally had a much better day. But I've no idea what she ate, sorry! Thursday saw us packing the car up for a trip to Wales to stay with Hannah's granny and auntie Helen. Thursday lunch she had at home, it was a mixture of bits and pieces, then we ended up having dinner at a service station on the M4 due to the horrendous traffic. Hannah shared a three cheese and a cheese and marmite toasted sandwich, plus some blueberry muffin with me and Neil. She also ate rice cakes and similar things in the car before we got to the services, as she was busy telling us quite loudly that she was starving! She also had two chocolate digestives in the car too - not intended for Hannah but we ran out of baby type food. She was worried about being left behind on the trip so made sure we didn't forget her:

On Friday Hannah had eggy bread for lunch, and dinner was something else (memory failure again, sorry!). Saturday's lunch was a banana, plus some roast potatoes, carrot, peas, white cabbage, a sausage and some gravy. Dinner included a slice of pizza and a bit of garlic bread, which Hannah enjoyed very much and won't be eating again for some considerable time. She als0 had a fromage frais.

Sunday lunch was pasta and tomato sauce with some grated cheese on top which mostly got ignored. Pudding was a fromage frais - at least until Hannah noticed that the rest of us were getting chocolate Easter cake! She got her own slice (a small one) and we finally having a pudding more popular than fromage frais:

Today she's eaten some organix carrot stix, a rice cake, a banana and a pear for lunch followed by scrambled egg on toast for her dinner.

Wow, what a lot of food :o)

One a penny, two a penny

Saturday's food:
Hannah ate shreddies for breakfast - but don't worry, she must be getting close to the bottom of the box soon, and I'll buy something different next time! :o)

Lunch was a platter of different things and included some cheesy poofs, a breadstick, some cashew nuts, cubes of cheddar cheese, raisins, a plum and a couple of rice cakes. This was a bit rushed as we had to go and watch Neil playing the saxophone in the local town centre. Since I didn't manage to take any pics of Hannah, have a pic of Neil and his music group instead :o) :


Unfortunately neither of us can remember what she ate for tea, but I promise we did feed her!

Sunday's food:
Hannah ate shreddies again as part of our family breakfast all together. Her lunch was tomato and mozzerella ravioli with a tomato, pesto and garlic sauce. Hannah had the last few cheesy poofs from yesterday's packet to go with the pasta, and followed it all up with half a hot cross bun. The pasta she mainly sucked the sauce off and ate the middle from it but didn't eat much actual pasta. The hot cross bun was funny, once she'd tasted it and decided it wasn't going to kill her she very carefully didn't let go of it at all. It was as if she suspected that we'd take it off her if she dropped it or put it down.

Dinner was a couple of oatcakes, one with cream cheese and one with pate. For pudding she had custard with a sliced banana and a few raisins stirred in - this got the same reaction as it did the first time she tried it, there was lots of enthusiasm generally.

A game of two halves

Obviously there was shreddies again for breakfast. We were out for lunch, and although I'd brought some bits and pieces with me I thought we'd get something from the M&S cafe (which is pretty good actually). I bought Hannah an emmental and mushroom toastie, and I got a cheese and marinated tomato foccacia for me, plus a fruit salad to share.

When I found us a table (buggy plus tray makes navigating difficult, and nobody offered to help) I parked Hannah up and then had to find a high chair. Didn't like leaving Hannah at the table while I had to go out of sight, but nothing else for it. And I don't like the M&S high chairs, I think they're only suitable for babies probably 18 months or 2 years old plus - for example there were no straps to hold Hannah in, and far too much space for her to slide around in there and slip down. I ended up wadding up the buggy cover and shoving it behind her to chock her in place. Not ideal, but it worked out OK.

So anyway, onto the food. It turned out that Hannah's toastie included Colman's mustard - or at least a hot english style mustard - which she definitely didn't like. She spat the first bite of toastie out and refused to even try any more. So we swapped meals, I ate her toastie (it was lovely) and she ate the foccacia. She did really well with that, once I'd cut it up into manageable sized pieces, and ate about half of it in total. She followed this up with some breadsticks and rice cakes that I'd brought from home, plus pieces of watermelon, pineapple and kiwi fruit from the fruit salad. She used a big fork for the fruit, and managed remarkably well with it:

We had a picnic tea in the living room that included a cream cheese sandwich, some breadsticks, rice cakes, and a bit of a peanut butter sandwich that was stolen off me.

Her milk before bed turned out to be a game of two halves. She started out as normal and had 8oz, draining the lot and proving the growth spurt theory. Then, about 10 minutes after going into her cot she got up again due to some extremely loud shouting to drink an extra 4oz. Fortunately that settled her and all is quiet on the Hannah front.

Growth Spurt???

Hannah's eating us out of house and home! I think she's having a growth spurt, the first one that's been noticeable for quite a while. For breakfast she ate 55g of shreddies - apart from the 10g tops that ended up on the floor rather than in her belly. That's nearly twice what the packet says is a normal portion.

For lunch she had some shepherd's pie - which was much better received than last time, hurrah! We followed that up with bananas and custard for pudding, and Hannah was definitely a fan of that. I made a packet of custard (just add boiling water :o) ) and sliced two bananas, thinking I would share it with her. Not a bad idea, but I was on the receiving end of what I can only call "the evils" every time I had a spoonful (we shared the bowl, clearly a mistake!). I couldn't believe how much of the stuff Hannah put away, I'm positive it was more than half of the whole lot.

We went round to a friend's in the afternoon, and while there Hannah was hungry *again* so I gave her a whole pack of cheese organix crisps, 6 apple rice cakes, an orange rice cake, and she also nicked a chocolate chip cookie off the grown-ups biscuit plate while I wasn't looking. I did manage to get half of the cookie back off her though, so she only had part of that.

Finally for her dinner she had two slices of lentil pate on toast, plus the last portion of rice pudding. This time I stirred in half a teaspoon of nutella, so it was chocolate and hazelnut flavour, yum! Hannah certainly thought it was yum, and made very short work of it.

So if you look at it, she's managed four solid meals today, plus two milk feeds. She's definitely only having milk first thing in the morning and again before bed, although the feed first thing has also got longer - but perhaps this is down to the growth spurt? Time will tell...

And it's lovely rice pudding for dinner again!

Well I don't know what the matter with Mary Jane was, but Hannah doesn't agree! She ate shreddies for breakfast, and for lunch had a slice of melon, a cream cheese sandwich, and a portion of rice pudding. The rice pudding had much the same reaction as fromage frais normally does - lots of bouncing up and down in the highchair and banging her fists on the tray when I took the spoon off her to refill it. In fact here is her "get off my spoon" pose:

For dinner I gave her two baked tomatoes, another slice of melon, and another portion of rice pudding. This time the rice pudding had half a teaspoon of raspberry jam stirred into it and if anything it was even more popular like this than the plain stuff. Hannah went mad for the tomatoes too, which I wasn't absolutely sure she would. She ate all the flesh out of the middle and just left the skin behind (again). She picked the mozzerella off the top and chewed it a bit but didn't really eat that much of it I don't think. Still, on the whole it was all a success.

So anyway, Mary Jane might not have liked her rice pudding, but Hannah certainly does thankyouverymuch and is quite happy to accept leftovers, I'm sure. :o)

I don't know why I bother *sulk*

Hannah ate shreddies for breakfast again today, and lunch was a mixed platter of different stuff. There was a fruit cereal bar, some cubes of cheese (red leicester and cheddar), a breadstick, two oatcakes with moroccan chickpea pate on, some french beans, a slice of cheese on toast (not in the original plan, but nicked off me), and two apple rice cakes. Ooh, and some raisins too. I should have remembered that, I took pictures of her using her fancy pincer grip to pick them up:

For dinner I cooked some garlic and herb tortellini, and mixed it with some tomato puree and pesto, Unfortunately Hannah spent the entire meal throwing it all on the floor, I don't think she actually ate a whole piece of it, although she got half way through a few of them. For afters there was two slices of melon. The first slice was chopped up as normal, into about five pieces. These she nibbled at but didn't seem all that keen on. The other slice I'd just cut into two pieces, and the bigger bits were all eaten.

So my conclusion from today is that Hannah likes either very small pieces of food like raisins, or very large pieces of food, like melon slices. If it falls somewhere in between, then maybe she'll eat it, maybe she won't. I think it depends on what direction the wind is blowing from, and whether she's got purple pants on. Or something.

Hannah's first wedding

Wow, we're very behind updating this! For a change, lol. So it'll be a quick run through of all the food Hannah's eaten starting on Friday - a whole four days worth...

Friday:
Shreddies for breakfast, a buffet lunch of a tomato, apple rice cakes, a plum, a pear, a breadstick, a gingerbread man, some carrot stix crisps, raisins, oatcakes with cream cheese and one with lentil pate. For dinner she had spaghetti hoops on toast - and made just as much mess with them this time as she did last time.

Saturday:
Shreddies again, another buffet lunch this time with apple rice cakes, a plum, breadsticks, a raspberry and apple flapjack, some cucumber sticks, a sandwich, ham spread with cream cheese and rolled up into a sausage, some carrot stix crisps, a banana and some raisins. Dinner was pasta carbonara with added peas in, followed by a fromage frais. We also gave her a few cheesy crisps (well, Neil calls them cheesy poofs, but that's because he watches too much South Park!). She didn't eat that much of the pasta, but really went for the peas - she was pouncing on them and managing really well to get them into her mouth.

Sunday:
Shreddies for breakfast yet again, followed by a wedding function. I took some packed lunch along, as we knew that the food served at the do would be curry and we weren't sure how Hannah would get on with it. As it turned out, she ate a couple of vegetable samosas, plus some rice, a bit of vegetable curry, and some pudding. The pudding was coconut with flaked almonds and raisins in it, with a fair bit of coconut milk around it too. We've no idea what it was called, it just appeared on the table and we ate it!

Since lunch wasn't served until gone 3pm, it messed up the rest of the day and Hannah ended up only having two meals. And since I was wearing a posh frock, I couldn't feed her myself without stripping and locking us in the loo for the duration. Fortunately I had a bottle with boiled water, plus a pot of formula ready measured out. I was amazed to find that she took the milk (all of it too!) without it being heated at all, that made life much easier.

Monday:
Back to normal today, with yet again shreddies for breakfast. This was followed by two slices of toast with a moroccan chickpea pate spread on it and a fromage frais. Dinner was preceded by two gingerbread men and two apple rice cakes, due to Hannah starting yelling for food earlier than expected. The meal itself was shepherd's pie, some carrot stix and cheesy poofs, and some raisins for pudding. Sadly the shepherd's pie was basically ignored (harrumph) while she ate the other bits and pieces, but she did manage a fair amount anyway.

Eat this, mummy!

Hannah had shreddies for breakfast again today, she ate just as many of them as usual and only dropped a three or four of them on the floor.

For lunch she had a selection of things - a pear, a plum, three apple rice cakes, an organix flapjack, and some cheese and herb crisps. She did really well with all of it, seeming to prefer the flapjack over anything else on offer. The plum didn't all get eaten, although some of it did, and the pear got ignored to start with, but once she figured out what it was the rest got devoured in short order. Hannah also tried to feed me today - as I was picking up some bits that had ended up on the floor she was busily stuffing her half eaten rice cake in my mouth. It was rather soggy, I have to say!

Dinner was some quorn casserole. I gave her a slice of bread to go with it since the sauce was a bit runny and I thought she could soak it up - she promptly squashed bits of the casserole into the bread and ate it like a sandwich. There was a fromage frais for afters, apricot flavour today, and she was as attached to the spoon as always, not wanting to give it back.

Hannah dropped a breastfeed today, too - she missed her mid-afternoon feed and didn't seem particularly bothered by not having it. I made dinner a bit earlier to compensate, and this seemed to work out fine. We'll see what happens tomorrow, but if it's anything like the other feeds that have been dropped that'll be it.

Oh, and no photos today, the camera battery died on me earlier and it's now on charge. Normal service should be resumed tomorrow!

Mum, I've dropped it...

Hannah ate shreddies for lunch today and yesterday - I'm rationing her slightly as the consequences were so unpleasant after Sunday's massive portion, so she only gets one large-ish bowlful. Yesterday she did want more, so I gave her a banana. She looked a bit disgruntled by that, and didn't bother eating much of the banana either.

For her lunches, yesterday she had some sprouts (a first), some green beans (another first), a veggie lincolnshire sausage, and half a boiled egg. She prodded the sprouts for a while before trying them, but once she'd decided they were definitely food she actually got on quite well.

The beans went down pretty well, too, although I'm not sure how much she actually ate of them. She did OK with both the sausage and the boiled egg though, and ate a fair amount.

Hannah also seemed to have a meal where everything ended up thrown on the floor at least a dozen times! It's not normally as bad as that, but as you can see here, she knew where she'd left it - she just expects it to be back on her tray when she's ready for another helping.

Today she had two slices of toast spread with lentil pate, followed by a strawberry fromage frais and a few grapes. She ate most of the toast, as well as sucking all the pate off, which always comes as a surprise to me after months of treating toast and bread as disposable serving dishes.

In fact here she is after finishing the fromage frais:

For dinner today I gave her a breadstick while I was sorting it out, as she stood at the stairgate blocking the kitchen door and shouted at me. You'd think the poor girl never gets fed! Anyway, once we moved through and got her settled in the high chair she had a baked potato, with the flesh scooped out and mixed with cream cheese before being replaced. There was also a fruit puree strip (from health food shops) which she liked but couldn't really eat very well on account of it being too tough for her to chew, half a dozen corn crisps, and finally some raisins. For the first time she had absolutely no problem picking up the raisins and getting them to her mouth, and she was actively searching for them off the tray, her lap, the bib, everywhere she thought she might have dropped some!

Poo, cat biscuits and other things...

Well you can probably tell from the title, Hannah has excelled herself recently. Sunday was a relatively normal day, she ate two bowls of shreddies for breakfast, we all had pasta and a tomato and vegetable sauce for lunch, then she had a couple of oatcakes with hummus plus some fruit for her tea. So far so good...

Yesterday, she started out well, eating a bowl and a half of shreddies for her breakfast. Then we went out to playgroup, and shared a tomato and mozzerella panini in Caffe Nero for lunch afterwards. Hannah ate loads of the panini, plus the filling except the slice of tomato, which she discarded. I also gave her a bit of my raspberry and white chocolate muffin and a couple of apple rice cakes that I'd brought with me. On the way home she fell asleep for all of 20 minutes, which turned out to be the only nap she had all day!

I changed her nappy when we got in (frankly it wasn't pretty) and she went ever so quiet when I was clearing up. Then I noticed she'd got her hands on a bit of cotton wool I used and was happily chewing away on it. Let's put it this way...it wasn't a clean bit of cotton wool. So we had a quick brush of her teeth, I tried to rinse her mouth out with cold water then gave her a drink from her sippy cup. Hannah then went back to playing in the living room, and next thing I know she's crawled over to the gate blocking the door into the hall, shoved her arm right through and managed to get hold of a fistful of cat biscuits. She's obviously grown since I placed the cats bowl in the hall, she didn't used to be able to reach it! So it's now further down the hall, hopefully that'll stop Hannah helping herself to their food.

For her actual dinner I gave her a cream cheese and cucumber sandwich, a few organix corn rings, and a banana. She drank a lot of water, ate half the sandwich and a couple of corn rings, then nibbled the banana and threw it on the floor. I think she must have been full from all the cat biscuits she'd eaten ;o)

One of those days, and a better one

Ugh, Friday turned out to be one of those days - it all started out fine, Hannah had her shreddies for breakfast and I grabbed some bits and pieces to eat while we were out and about at lunchtime. That went reasonably well, too. Hannah ate some melon chunks, a couple of breadsticks, a couple of apple rice cakes, plus half a pack of organix carrot crisps. I think that was it, anyway.

Then we got home, and Hannah proceded to have the screaming ab dabs for two hours. Which was nice. So her tea was a bit...different. It was squished in to the time in between her refusing to have a nap (and screaming instead) and when she should have been getting ready for bed, and consisted of three corn thins with homemade hummus on, a banana, and a fromage frais. She didn't eat much of it though, unsurprisingly since she'd been awake for far too long and was overtired. The corn thins mostly got thrown on the floor, the banana swiftly followed, as did the fromage frais spoon (plus attached fromage frais). So the clean up operation was fun!

Today was much better, Hannah ate shreddies for breakfast, and we all had pasta for lunch with tomato, mascarpone, and mushroom sauce. Somehow she didn't even make that much mess with it, although I'm not sure how! Her pudding was a couple of rusks I found (I thought we'd finished the packet ages ago), which she pounced on:

For dinner today she had lentil pate on toast and a slice of melon. She mostly ate the pate off the toast, and got on better with the melon once it had warmed up to nearly room temperature - it'd come out of the fridge only a few minutes before she started eating.

She's still having three feeds a day along with all her solids, generally a long feed in the morning, a shortish one mid-afternoon (as today, in the pic below), and an expressed feed before bed. She's taking less at the feed before bed, about 120ml / 5oz most nights, the other feeds haven't changed length for a while.