AWOL

Blimey, it's been a while - I promise we haven't been starving Hannah in the meantime! She decided 15 and a bit months was a good age to start growing her back molars, then followed that up with a cold, so we haven't had much evening time to ourselves recently. Fortunately things seem to be calming down now (hurrah!).

Yesterday, Hannah had pomegranate and raspberry wheats for breakfast, followed by corn on the cob and a fromage frais for lunch, and pasta with tomato sauce and grated cheese for dinner.

She's starting to get to grips with cutlery, as you can see from this photo:

However she hasn't actually managed to stab anything with her fork and get it to her mouth yet - still, practice makes perfect!

Over the bank holiday weekend we were away, and Hannah behaved beautifully. She had wheats for breakfast on both days, and also ate roasted mediterranean veggies, lots of cherry tomatoes, some vol au vents, a pain au chocolat, some banana and honey tea cake, some quorn ham and cheese escalope (which was lovely, must find out where to buy them from!), and lots more things that I'm probably better off not knowing about - I'm fairly sure she was snuck pringles, sweets, chocolate and all sorts of other things...


While we were away, Hannah learned how to play quoits - she put everyone else to shame, as every time someone missed the target, she ran over, picked it up and carefully placed it on the stick thingy. So she scored more points than everyone else put together, lol.

She's also started saying more words in the last week or so. We gave her some medicine the other night, and normally say "good girl" after each spoon she has. After the second spoon she looked up at us, grinned and said "good girl" herself! Well, it was more of "goo guh" but we knew what she meant. She's also started pointed at everything and saying what, and sometimes says up when pointing upwards or being picked up. Coming along nicely, I think! Cat remains the most popular word though - even when the cats are both avoiding her in order to protect their tails :o)

Dining room out of action

Hannah's been on fine form this week, although we haven't been anywhere exciting yet. She's enjoyed "helping" hang out washing, run round the garden (with the washing...), chase the cats, climb the furniture, pick up tiny weeny bits of dust off the floor that an adult eye can't see, and spy out on the decorator who's painting the dining room this week.

Having the decorator in means that Hannah's high chair is currently in the living room, along with a bunch of bookshelves, so it's all a bit crowded and complicated. For example after finishing her meal, Hannah is trapped in the chair until I've cleaned the floor underneath her as well as wiping her and her tray down. She's taking it all quite well so far though - let's hope it continues for another few days...

In terms of food, she's eaten cheerios, shredded wheat bitesize, a couple of pain au chocolats, a peach, half a banana, some strawberries, a plum, pasta with pesto tomato puree cherry tomatoes and grated cheese, potato wedges, pitta pockets filled with hummus mixed with cottage cheese and grated cheese and a few raisins, eggy bread, sausage and boiled potatoes, and all sorts of other things that have slipped my mind.

She's still playing with rather than using her cutlery, although I need to get better at letting her use it with every meal rather than just when I remember! Once I did see her pick up her fork, and carefully put some food on the end of it. She then looked at the food for a bit, picked it off with her other hand, and ate it. Not quite there yet, then... I'm not giving her the open beaker at the mo either, as she's a bit hemmed in by sofas and bookcases while eating at the mo, and I don't fancy drying out loads of books or sitting on a big wet patch after she's created a tidal wave with its contents. We should be back to normal next week, after the painting is finished, so it should be back in the game then.

Full of beans

Hannah has been full of beans today, in both senses of the word. Literally, because she had two slices of beans on toast for dinner, along with some raisins. She ate all of the beans, and sucked all of the bean juice out of the toast before discarding it. I think she nibbled on one of the slices, but didn't eat any significant quantity of it.

We had a busy day today, so after a breakfast of cranberry wheats we dashed off to Tumble Time at the local leisure centre. Hannah ran riot for 90 minutes or so, then we came home and she flaked out. When she woke up she had her lunch, which was some tomato tart, a plum, some blueberries and a couple of chocolate biscotti.

After lunch we went swimming with a friend - during the madhouse inflatables session at the local pool, which we didn't know about before we turned up! Fortunately there weren't any inflatables in the baby pool, just lots and lots of small children and their parents. Hannah enjoyed being dunked, going on the water slide (but getting caught at the bottom), and playing with a foam surfboard - which she promptly stood up on when I sat her on it. Is she going to be a surfer girl? After swimming she and Sam had a biscuit each, then the aforementioned beans on toast made an appearance.

I don't quite know why, after swimming, I am absolutely shattered but Hannah was full of beans, at least until just before bedtime. Somehow it doesn't seem fair!

Making a mockery!

Hannah had mock pizzas for dinner tonight, made with two crumpets (toasted) spread with tomato puree, pesto, a bit of sweetcorn and some grated cheese then grilled. She really liked them, although she's still using the top down approach to food consumption. She peeled the cheese off, then ate the sweetcorn, then licked the tomato and pesto sauce off, then ate the crumpets.

Lunch was saute potatoes and a couple of sausages, plus a nectarine, some raisins and a few apricots. Hannah didn't eat much of the nectarine this time, probably about half of it which is well below par.

For breakfast there were cranberry wheats again, which were demolished as usual. In fact we're about out of those as well, so it may well be back to the emergency box of cheerios in the cupboard tomorrow, I've just remembered I forgot to buy any new cereal earlier, oops!

Stirring things up

Hannah had cranberry wheats again for breakfast today, and ate lots of them. Lunch was a jacket potato with margarine, plus some vegetable fingers - the first meal using her new cutlery. Of course what she mostly did was play with the cutlery, holding all of it (knife, fork and spoon) in one hand, while using the other hand to pick up her food and transfer it to her mouth. Still, practice makes perfect and all that, she can't be expected to get it right on day 1!

We went to the park this afternoon, but the fixture was rained off after about 45 minutes, so we went to a cafe instead. Hannah and Millie shared a packet of vanilla wafer biscuits, and ate the lot - and then a second pack too! Hannah was quite covered in crumbs by the time we got back home.

Perhaps as a consequence of all those biscuits, she wasn't really that interested in tea, which would have been stir fry. She did eat about half a slice of bread, plus some strawberries and blueberries that I picked up while we were out. The blueberries in particular she seemed to really go for, so they might make another appearance on the menu. I've never actually bought any for Hannah before, other than in fruit salads and stuff, so she hasn't eaten that many of them but they were given preferential treatment even to strawberries today!

I took a pic on my camera today, but have to find the SD card that goes into my computer before I can upload it, so bear with me - it will hopefully appear tomorrow!

Well better late than never, here's that pic finally!:

Cutlery, cups and other things

Hannah had cranberry wheats for breakfast today, a big bowl of them, and she only left two squidged into the table. For lunch she ate a huge bowl of pasta with tomato sauce and grated cheese mixed through. I was amazed that she ate pretty much the entire bowl, it was as much as I ate! She ate it really fast as well, using both hands to shovel in the spirals as quick as she could.

For dinner Hannah had two rice cakes, one with hummus and one with cottage cheese. When she picked up the rice cake with hummus on, she licked it very daintily, pulled a face and put it back on the table. She also had some cubes of red leicester, a nectarine, and a tomato cut into wedges.

While we were out this afternoon I bought Hannah her first proper metal cutlery - not the stuff with plastic handles which is all I'd seen until now - and an open plastic beaker. She tried using the beaker this evening before bed, and knew exactly what to do, carefully tipping it towards her, but was taken by surprise anyway when a small tidal wave of water hit her face and surfed all down her tshirt, jeans, and the sofa. Still, I'm sure she'll get better with a bit of practise... The cutlery will get its first outing tomorrow so we'll have to wait and see how she does with that (and whether she bothers using it at all).

Picnic in the rain

Hannah and I went out yesterday to meet up with some friends in St James's Park in London. Apart from accidentally arriving just as the changing of the guard happened, and the fact it rained rather more than we were hoping, nothing untoward happened (phew!).

Hannah had cranberry wheats for breakfast both yesterday and today, and for lunch yesterday in the park I frankly have no idea what she ate. If we meet up like that again, we're going to supply a trough to put all the food in for the children, and just let them help themselves - that was mostly what was happening anyway, perhaps it was an early version of school lunch swapsies? Anyway the food Hannah ate included (but wasn't necessarily limited to) a bit of a cream cheese sandwich, half a nectarine, some cheesy poofs (shared with all the other babies too), a tiny bit of cereal bar, and water from any cup she could lay her hands on. She also had a nibble on the lid of our lunchbox:

For dinner yesterday when we got home Hannah ate some potato wedges with cubes of cheddar and red leicester cheese, fruit compote and a rusk. She was very tired, so didn't make all that good a meal, and topped up on milk before bed.

Today's lunch was a boiled egg (left over from the picnic yesterday) and some boursin and tomato tart, which Hannah really liked - I'm always surprised by how much she likes strong flavours like garlic. She also had a couple of dried greengages (chewy and tasty was the verdict) to finish things off.

Since it's Sunday, dinner was of course Sunday roast. There was a quorn fillet, roast potatoes, white cabbage, carrots, peas and sweetcorn topped off with some lo salt gravy. Hannah ate a fair amount of the quorn and roasties, squished a few carrots into her tray, peered suspiciously at the cabbage before giving it a bit of a lick, and pounced on all the peas and sweetcorn as fast as she possibly could.

Camera out of electricity

No pics today, sorry folks - the camera finally ran out of charge, and I still can't find the charger so am ordering a new one.

Hannah ate a bowl of shreddies for breakfast this morning, and followed this up with a small bowl of cranberry wheats for afters - all of which disappeared too. Obviously she was a touch peckish!

Lunch was a quick affair after we got back from Tumble Time (where she did, indeed, tumble multiple times and also try to dive headfirst off a 5ft high castle thingy). She just had a couple of slices of cream cheese on toast and a sachet of apple puree.

For dinner Hannah had scrambled egg on toast (hmm, lots of toast on today's menu!) along with a rusk and a nectarine. She ate loads of it, far more than I was expecting, and in fact put away two bits of the scrambled egg on toast that I was convinced she'd hidden it somewhere around the high chair, but apparently not!

Hannah and I are off out for a picnic in St James's Park tomorrow, so goodness only knows what will happen! Keep your fingers crossed that it doesn't rain, please...

Finger Lickin' Good

Hannah has been fairly whingy today, and I don't know why. She's acting as though she's still teething, but has her first 16 teeth already, and she's not meant to get any more until she's about 2 1/2 or 3. Still, she's managed her food OK, tucking into a bowl of shreddies for breakfast first thing. Before breakfast she climbed up onto the sofa and sat down, picked up my half full bottle of water, took the lid off and oh-so-carefully tipped it up and helped herself to a drink. She looked mega cute doing it, it was just a shame that I was in the kitchen and had no access to a camera!

Lunch today was a couple of vegetable fingers, a slice of nice bread from the bakers, some cherry tomatoes, and two slices of melon. She also had a bit of my nectarine, I wasn't going to give her any to start with as it was a bit hard, but she was fairly insistent on sharing.

For dinner there was quorn korma and rice. By the end of the meal it looked as though a rice bomb had gone off in the dining room, oh well. And as you can see, she thought it was finger-lickin' good:

For pudding she had her very own nectarine, depsite their brick-like consistency, and appeared to enjoy it very much indeed.

Clunk click with every trip

It's clearly important that Hannah wears her high chair seat belt for every meal now. I forgot to do it up at lunchtime today, and this is what happened at the end of the meal after she'd finished her meal but I hadn't cleaned her up yet:

Breakfast today was shreddies again, and for lunch Hannah ate cheese on toast, a banana, some cherry tomatoes and some raspberries. She ate the raspberries so quickly I thought she's thrown them somewhere while I wasn't looking, but judging by the squished bits all over her face and lack of any leftovers during clean up, I think she must have eaten them!

Dinner was pasta with tomato and mascarpone sauce, and as you can see it was wiped all over Hannah's face and shovelled into her mouth as quickly as possible:

This was ollowed by a doughnut man (a special treat) which Hannah spent ages carefully disecting - licking most of the icing off the front first, then pulling apart the torso to get to the jam innards, then licking out the jam before setting about the flesh (as it were...):

I thought the smartie eyes might have been a choking hazard, so I selflessly ate those myself ;o) much to Hannah's disgust!

Take two spoons to the table? Hannah does.

Today, Hannah has mostly been impersonating a monkey, clambering onto the coffee table and standing up on it (I like to call it table surfing...) - did I mention she can reach the light switch from there? It's really annoying...:

climbing into her toybox to get that difficult-to-reach-yet-absolutely-essential toy from right at the back: and climbing up my legs, the stair gates, and her high chair.

She's eaten quite well today, having shreddies for breakfast - although only about half of the bowl that I gave her - followed by eggy bread (1 and a bit slices) and a slice of pineapple for lunch. The pineapple I just sliced, cut the slice in half and gave her. She took some time to decide it was edible, but then concentrated almost entirely on that rather than the leftover eggy bread. It did make her giggle a few times, I think because it tingled on her tongue.

Dinner was a buffet of a veggie burger, some sweetcorn ring crisps, a breadstick, some hummus, a rice cake, a couple of sticks of cheese, an apricot flavour barquette (french biscuit), some raisins and a couple of dried apricots. She also ate part of an organix fruity custard pot, but didn't seemed that fussed by it and was more entertained by battling with spoons (one for the hummus, one for the custard thing):



I'm not going to bother getting any more of the custard pots, Hannah's not been that keen on them at all really so I don't think they're worth it. I'll just have to get my bum in gear and make homemade custard for her, she definitely likes that!

She's growing up (literally!)

I took Hannah to get weighed and measured today, and at exactly 15 months old she's 21lbs 8oz, and 76cms tall. So she's put on 5cms and over a lb in the last few weeks. We thought she'd grown, since at the start of our holiday a few weeks back she could walk underneath the table, and by the end of it she was bashing her forehead on the edge, but 5cms does seem a lot - her trousers need less rolling up now, too, which is nice!

Food-wise she's been stocking up on carbs recently, concentrating on potatoes and pasta it seems. Over the weekend she ate halloumi salad, quiche and salad, roast dinner (with about a thousand roast potatoes to go with it), and something on Saturday night that escapes me!

Today she's had shreddies for breakfast, and two rice cakes with cream cheese, a packet of carrot sticks, a cereal bar, some slices of tomato, and a rusk for lunch. All of that got eaten except for the rice cakes - they were chewed a bit unenthusiastically then left on one side, although the cream cheese was carefully picked off the top before they were discarded.

Dinner was pasta with tomato and mascarpone sauce, and a bit of grated cheese on top. Hannah definitely enjoyed the pasta, the vast majority of it went straight down and didn't get close to the floor (always a good sign!). In fact you can tell how much she enjoyed it from this picture:

Pudding was a banana, but I think she'd filled up on pasta by that point as most of that did end up on the floor.

Also, we're on the look out for some nice small-person sized cutlery, as Hannah is trying more and more often to use a spoon or fork when we give them to her. I want some nice metal ones rather than the tacky plastic looking tombelyboo things we've got already - stuff that will last! Suggestions on where we might find these mythical items most welcome...

And finally (you'll be glad to hear) I saw the picture proofs of Gill Rapley's BLW book that featured Hannah yesterday, they looked fab (there were lots of pics of other BLW babies too) and we're still hoping that Hannah makes the cut. The book will be out later this year, in November I think, Amazon have it here.