Hannah Led Weaning

Media Starlet!

2008-11-28T23:02:00.004Z

I haven't updated this for ages, mainly because Hannah is essentially weaned now - she's tucking into our meals quite happily, and I'm not doing anything special for her. She's also not coming across new foods in the same numbers as she was towards the beginning, so it's tough to find something interesting to say!

BUT - Gill Rapley's book Baby Led Weaning was launched early in November, and I'm pleased to report that not only is Hannah included in the book (there's a picture of her and Neil eating falafel in there) but she also makes a mucky appearance on the related website, http://www.baby-led.com/, in the gallery - she's the one covered in spaghetti hoops! We went to the book launch at the Museum of Childhood in Bethnal Green a couple of weekends ago, Hannah had fun showing off her BLW skills to all the other BLWers who were there:

Hannah has fairly recently got the hang of dunking, and ever since has taken to eaten fromage frais by scooping it out of the pot with fingers of toast, breadsticks, vegetable fingers, whatever else she's got to hand of an appropriate shape. She's ever-improving with her fork and spoon, and likes having both so that she can copy me and Neil at the dinner table. Oh, and Neil showed her how to do "cheers" with her sippy cup the other week, and ever since we've had to do cheers at every single meal. Yep, with mugs of coffee at breakfast, with a bottle of water at lunchtime, you name it! She just sits in her highchair saying "cheese" (well that's what it sounds like) and holding out her cup to be clonked.

I haven't got any weaning specific pics of late, so here's a couple of random ones to keep you going :o) First there's Hannah and Neil, engrossed in something on the telly, then there's Hannah modelling this seasons toddler fashions: Motherease Airflow Savannah nappy wrap, pink top from H&M, beautifully set off by flowery, sparkly wellies.

I'm liking the whole plate thing

2008-09-30T22:20:00.003+01:00

Plates are marvellous, aren't they? They're certainly making the cleaning up operation after meals a lot easier, and Hannah's also got lots tidier at eating too - I'm not sure if that's just coincidence though.

Today for breakfast she had raspberry and pomegranate wheats, followed by a lunch of vegetable fingers and a cream cheese sandwich - lunch was preceded by a dried apricot, since she was shouting for food before it was ready.

For dinner there was pasta with a homemade sauce, and I couldn't believe how much of it Hannah ate. I thought I'd cooked far too much, and only put about 2/3 of it on her plate to start with, but she demolished that lot so I went back for the rest, and most of that got eaten too! She also ate over half of a cox's orange pippin - which I think is the first "natural state" apple I've given her. We don't have them in the house very often (I don't really like them, and I do the shopping!) and in the past I've steamed them for her slightly. But she got on really well with it, so I may have to add them to the shopping list from now on!

We were out for lunch after playgroup yesterday, here's a pic of Hannah and Jack looking for seconds from the bits they'd thrown on the floor:

Back in the game!

2008-09-28T22:07:00.004+01:00

Hurrah! We finally have a new camera charger, so I've got lots of new pics of Hannah to show off :o) It's been ages since I updated this, I think it's boring without pics to go with it so haven't really been motivated to do anything. Anyway, ebay came to the rescue and now the camera is full of juice again.

Hannah has been doing all sorts of things in the past couple of weeks. Lots of painting at playgroup, including of my jeans and hand, and her hands. She fell off a climbing frame at the park, but was none the worse for wear, has been swimming three or four times and is far too confident in the water for her own good - she's of the opinion that she can swim just fine, thanks very much, and doesn't need anyone holding her up... Here's a couple of pics of her at the park the last week:

We went to a wedding yesterday (congrats to Diane and Rob!) and Hannah managed to be the only person who piped up at the "are there any reasons...?" bit, which made people chuckle. Here's a pic of her in her brand new party outfit:

Eating wise, she's started using cutlery much more frequently, and has even managed to get food into her mouth using a fork (not very often, and only when she's taken the edge of her hunger by shovelling it in with her hands first!). She's also started having a proper plate of food on her high chair tray, which she hasn't (yet) thrown on the floor - famous last words, of course, so expect a report back that we've no more plates left in the house!

For food she's carried on eating much of the same. We've moved Sunday dinner to an earlier time (about 5.30pm) so we can all eat together. This came as a bit of a shock to me and Neil the first time we did it, since we normally eat at around 8pm - we were starving by bedtime! It's lovely to have a relaxed family meal regularly though and we're carrying on with it when we can.

At yesterday's wedding reception Hannah's starter was melon, with margherita pizza for a main course then she had TWO sundae dishes full of fresh raspberries - she'd polished off the first lot before the waitress had left the table so got another, along with a big smile and "ooh she does like them, doesn't she" :oD She then scoffed an after eight mint and part of a huge slice of chocolate wedding cake. And then had some milk when we got home, too! I think the milk was just filling in the tiny spaces between all the food in her stomach though, she only had about half her normal amount...

Today she's eaten bruschetta for lunch, and roast dinner with quorn slices, roast spuds, two yorkshire puddings, roast butternut squash (she didn't eat this really though), white cabbage, carrots, and green beans.

It's no wonder she seems to be growing so fast! She's nealy grown into all her 12-18 month clothes, and she's only 17 months old yet, lol.

Puddlesuit success!

2008-09-11T11:08:00.004+01:00

It's raining here (again). Good job we went out last weekend and bought Hannah a "puddlesuit" from Mothercare. It's like a waterproof bright pink hooded romper suit with long legs and sleeves. Obviously at the first sign of rain this week I put her in it and let her out to play on the patio! She didn't like having the hood up though - will post a picture as soon as I've got it off my phone. When it wasn't raining I gave her a couple of sticks of chalk to draw on the patio with, unfortunately she thought they would make a lovely snack and promptly ate them, or at least tried to. She wandered back in the kitchen looking very pleased with herself and with a distinct blue-green tinge about the chops.

Today before bed Hannah put her toys away herself, too. She brought them over to her toybox when I asked her, and we put them inside and said goodnight to them. It took ages, especially since all her wooden blocks were out on the floor and she would only pick them up one at a time to put them in their bag. But it saves me a job after she's in bed, so we'll persevere and I'm sure she'll get quicker eventually. Mum/Jo: no JCBs were involved!

Eating wise she's been having lots of blueberry wheats, then for lunch yesterday we ate hastily prepared toast - Hannah had peanut butter on hers before we dashed out to playgroup. Dinner wasn't much better, she had toast again but this time it was covered in spaghetti hoops. And needless to say, so was Hannah by the end of the meal!

Today it was blueberry wheats for breakfast again, and this time there was a nut cutlet and some pasta with creme fraiche and pepper for lunch. I wasn't sure whether Hannah would like the pasta or not, since I put a fair amount of pepper with it, but she pounced on it and ate loads - in fact only one lonely twist was dropped. I offered her a fromage frais for pudding, but she wasn't that fussed and only ate about 2/3 of it.

For dinner I gave her a peach and two halves of pear to start with, then two slices of eggy bread for afters - one spread with raspberry jam. Yes, I know that's the wrong way round, but I figured Hannah doesn't know that yet, and she was agitating for food but the eggy bread wasn't done. Needs must and all that!

It was only last week I was looking forward to all the playgroups starting back so that we could get back into a routine, but now I might regret it - both Hannah and I have got our first colds of the (school) year. Pass the lemsip, somebody, and a cuddle for Hannah while you're about it!

Baby Led Cleaning

2008-09-07T22:57:00.002+01:00

Well today Hannah finallly got her hands on one of the cloths Neil was using to wipe her up with after lunch, and promptly used it to wipe her tray! Very impressive - although not so good that it saved us a job yet!

Breakfast was shredded wheat bitesize, plus most of a banana today as well. Clearly a hungry girl first thing. For lunch I gave her some tomato and boursin tart, followed by a homemade danish pastry thing (a square of pastry with a bit of marzipan and some dried fruit on, cooked). She picked the fruit off the top, ate that and pretty much ignored the rest of it other than a small nibble at the edges.

Today's dinner was quorn nuggets with peas, sweetcorn and saute potatoes. We'd all have had roast together, but we were out at Mothercare buying one of these puddlesuits for Hannah so that she can splash about in the rain (and even sit down in a puddle should the fancy take her). So it was a quick "argh, what have we got in that's fast?" when we got home. Still, Hannah ate most of what she was given, and followed it up with strawberries and a fromage frais for pudding as well. Then downed half a pint of milk before bed.

Playgroup starts back tomorrow, so even if the weather is nasty Hannah can burn off some energy in the church hall.

Hannah has also learnt how to strip wallpaper in the last day or two. There was a small bit of wallpaper in the living room that had lifted slightly as we had a mains water leak a while back and the wall got damp. Hannah quietly sat and picked at it on Friday while I was in the kitchen making tea, and now we have bits of wallpaper hanging off the wall. Fortunately she hasn't (yet) pulled any off, other than the lining paper from underneath. It jigsaws back together fairly well...just hope she doesn't do the same thing again anywhere else!

Ooh and finally, Auntie Jo is making us a fancy header thingy for the homepage of our blog, so watch this space... :o)

Each Peach and a plum

2008-09-04T23:12:00.002+01:00

Hannah's not her normal cheery self at the mo, not sure what's up but we have a doc's appointment tomorrow morning so hopefully that will narrow things down. She's quite clingy and while not sleeping any longer than normal, is acting tired a lot during the day. Still, every cloud and all that, I'm getting lots of cuddles from her unlike the normal 5 second version!

She's still eating well, and has tried all sorts of things in the last few days. She's had shredded wheat or raspberry and pomegranate wheats for breakfast every day, and otherwise has eaten crumpets, saute potatoes, raisins, fruit salad (of peach, plum and kiwi), peaches and plums on their own, tomato, pb&j (that's peanut butter and jam, folks) on toast, scrambled egg, eggy bread, halloumi salad, beans on toast, jacket potato and beans, a marmite sandwich, cheddar cheese cubes, breadsticks, fromage frais, angel delight, and some organix crisps. Oh, and biscotti too.

She's now having strops when we tell her no, or move her away from something she's not meant to have (remote controls, phones, coffee cups... you name it!) and seems to have entered the "terrible twos" rather early. She's still trying to climb anything and everything, and wants to be outside playing even when it's tipping down with rain. Hannah can also get her arm into the greenhouse, and has helped herself to a number of cherry tomatoes off the plants in there. The first one she picked was green, and she didn't like that at all. Subsequent pickings have all been ripe, so I guess our talk about red tomatoes v green tomatoes may even have worked (or she's just figured out they're nasty if they're not ripe!).

I'm also wondering if she's getting ready for potty training - I think 16 months is a bit early though isn't it? Today she had a clean nappy put on after dinner, and within 10 minutes came over to me and took it off (it dropped onto the floor). When I checked, she'd filled it. It seems she knew, didn't like it, and was telling me "oi, where are the clean ones?" ;o) Fortunately all was well contained! So anyway, looks like we might be off looking at potty training accessories in the next few weeks. Suggestions on what might work are welcome, just leave a comment!

AWOL

2008-08-27T10:40:00.004+01:00

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

2008-08-19T22:33:00.004+01:00

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

2008-08-15T20:52:00.002+01:00

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!

2008-08-14T23:20:00.002+01:00

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

2008-08-12T23:23:00.003+01:00

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

2008-08-11T23:11:00.003+01:00

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

2008-08-10T22:26:00.004+01:00

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

2008-08-08T23:04:00.002+01:00

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

2008-08-07T22:56:00.003+01:00

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

2008-08-06T22:57:00.003+01:00

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.

2008-08-05T21:38:00.004+01:00

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!)

2008-08-04T23:13:00.003+01:00

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.

How much can I remember?

2008-07-31T21:45:00.002+01:00

Gosh, a whole week since the last update. Many apologies for general slackness! We're back from our holidays now (boooo), but you can't tell from the temperature which is roasty toasty :o)

Anyway, Hannah been eating shreddies again for breakfast this week, she was quite a fan of their return. She's also eaten croissants a couple of times, but they'll be few and far between now we're back home.

Otherwise, there's been a fair amount of fruit (melon, nectarines, greengages, raspberries), babybel and some organix gingerbread men for snacks, pasta and pesto, omelette with potato and pesto in, potato wedges, burger with roasties and veg, cheese on toast, cauliflower cheese, falafel in pitta pockets with salad and I'm sure a bunch of other stuff for lunches and dinners since we got back. For puddings she's eaten raspberry flavour angel delight, fresh raspberries, pom'potes that we brought back from France, and some ice cream yesterday when it was baking hot. I tried giving her an organix fruity rice pudding, but she didn't want it and it ended up all over the floor. Messy!

During the hot weather Hannah's drinking lots more fluids than she was previously. She's up to about 3 sippy cups full of water at the moment - about half of it goes during the meal, and she drinks the rest of it in the living room after her meal and before her nap/bedtime. She's also back on normal fresh milk rather than monkey milk and I think it's having a good effect on her nappies - there have been far too many stinky ones for comfort in the past two weeks, but hopefully things are settling back down to normal...famous last words!

Hannah seems to be turning into a stroppy teenager, by the way - she's taken to shouting for things, and when she doesn't get what she wants (or it's removed from her grip when we find her with it) she screams and cries. I'm hardening my heart and ignoring her though, nobody tells you how hard that is when you sign up for this parenthood thing!

I've lost the charger for the camera, so we're a bit short of photos at the moment - I'll have a proper look for it asap!

The sun has got his hat on (but Hannah hasn't)

2008-07-22T20:58:00.003+01:00

Right, can anyone recommend ways to keep hats on a toddler's head? I'm thinking gaffer tape, string, superglue, the staple gun...suggestions? Hannah is so not fond of wearing hats, she's even tried to remove George's hat from him when she noticed him wearing it. Ever helpful, I suppose. Here's a rare picture of the hat in position:

She's eaten Golden Grahams for breakfast, and in fact has finished the box, so we're onto something new tomorrow. She's also had a slice of bread most mornings to go with them, and has a full on strop if you take the soggy crust away from her before she's finished with it. The girl is addicted!

Lunches have been bread and cheese mostly, today she had mini baked potatoes and rice squares (cooked rice mixed with pesto, egg and flour, then fried in the wok) as well, and some strawberries and an apricot sorbet for pudding. Yesterday she also had some tomato wedges to go with the bread and cheese.

For dinner, yesterday she ate quorn coq au vin with mini baked potatoes (and bread, of course). She ate loads of it, and I wasn't sure whether she'd like it to start with, but she proved me wrong again. Today's dinner was shepherd's pie, plus a slice of bread and a banana fromage frais and, as you can see, half a pain au chocolat:

Hannah didn't have her afternoon nap today (she went for a swim instead), so we gave her a couple of gingerbread men to snack on. She seems to get hungrier on days when her sleep is disrupted, I suppose she needs to get energy from somewhere. She's still keen on diving right into the pool given half a chance, but played nicely in her paddling pool for quite some time this afternoon. Then got out and played in the inflatable tyre that was on the side, mainly sitting in the middle of it and grinning at all and sundry.

Using an open cup

2008-07-20T21:13:00.004+01:00

We're all still having fun in France. Hannah went for her first ever bike ride today, we bought a child bike seat from Decathlon (loads cheaper than in the UK, too!) and fixed it onto one of the bikes here for a trial. Riding around made her giggle, so I think we can say it's a success.

It's a good job we've got decent locks on the gate to the pool, as well, as Hannah went in the paddling pool earlier (next to the big pool). After a few minutes she climbed out of it, wandered over to the side of the big pool, and stepped straight in. Good job I had a firm grip on her hands by that point...she did the same thing again later with Grandma when they'd gone to inspect the pool cleaner thingy too, she's too confident for her own good sometimes.

She's eaten lots of Golden Grahams, and eggy bread for breakfast, with water to drink. Dad refilled her sippy cup with perrier this morning after she finished her own water, which made her giggle and pull faces - we decided that the bubbles were tickling her tongue.

Lunch today was tomato and avocado bruschetta, a slice of bread and boursin, and some strawberries for pudding. She ate a square of chocolate, some chipsters (salty crisps, bad mummy!) and tried a bit of panach (non alcoholic shandy) today too, she grabbed the bottle of panach off me and tried to drink the lot! Will be keeping her further away from the bottle in future.

For dinner Hannah ate some 3-cheese tart, a couple of roast potatoes, some cauliflower cheese, peas and carrots and a yorkshire pudding. She enjoyed all of it, especially the roasties and cauliflower cheese. I gave her a rusk for pudding, which she tucked into with gusto.

She's also tried drinking out of an open plastic beaker a couple of times in the last two days. She did lots better than I expected with it, too. Well, she emptied the contents (water) onto the high chair tray twice, but drank a decent amount of it too.

Yesterday for lunch we were out so ate at a supermarket cafeteria, where Hannah had a boiled egg, a bread roll, and two slices of melon. She didn't eat much, but she was very tired as she didn't get a morning nap. Dinner was a cheese and vegetable burger, along with more bread. We thought Hannah had eaten all of her burger, but found she was sitting on half of it when she got down from the table. Oh well...

Given up on the time difference

2008-07-18T21:51:00.003+01:00

It's taken a few days but we've finally given up on the time difference thing and are letting Hannah stay up later till between 8-8.30 French time, which is her normal bed time in the UK. Trying to get her up early and off for naps and bed at the "proper" times was hard work! She seems much happier now we've just adjusted all the times forward by an hour.

She's also still enjoying swimming most days, although has a worrying tendancy towards just diving at any person nearby that she wants to - good job we're all family! :o) Her favourite toy of the moment is a beach ball, which is nearly the same size as she is, but this doesn't stop her carrying it around for hours on end.

So on to the food. I've not done an update for the past few days, so this is testing my memory! She's eaten lots and lots of pain, with assorted toppings. She's had Golden Grahams for breakfast every day (which are honey flavoured shreddies, it appears, and the least chocolate or sugar laden cereal available in the local supermarket) along with bits of croissant and/or eggy bread, and also a nectarine or two.

Hannah has been really active while we've been away, and this is showing through as she's wanting more snacks during the day - most mornings, and I think every afternoon so far as well. And drinking lots out of her sippy cup. I gave her a tiny bit of peach and apricot flavoured sirop stuff in her water yesterday, however judging by today's nappies this may have been a mistake - she's not getting any more, anyway!

She's eaten pasta with pesto, creme fraiche and grated cheese for dinner on Wednesday, today she had leek tart along with bread and two fromage frais for lunch. Dinner today was some bread and cheese with a fruity rice pudding (organix) for pudding. Yesterday she had veggie meatballs for dinner, in a tomato sauce, followed by two slices of charentais melon. She made quite a mess with the tomato sauce, too!

Snacks have included biscotte (the hard biscuity French things that look like slices of bread), sweetcorn rings, biscotti (the Heinz baby ones), an apricot canoé soft biscuit thingy, some humzingers, a few chips that Grandad snuck off his plate for her during dinner last night, and probably a bunch of other things I don't know about!

Hannah's also getting a bit of a tan, despite the gallons of suncream that are ladled on to her daily. The good news is that she's much more tolerant of her sun hat, and has almost stopped trying to remove it - this morning I caught her trying to put it on, even, wonders will never cease :o)

Tooth #15 has arrived

2008-07-15T21:27:00.003+01:00

Hannah likes pain (pain as in bread, not pain as in hurts, she definitely doesn't like that...). She seems to have eaten loaves of the stuff since we arrived, and there's no sign of it stopping! Just as well really, she's not eating all that much of anything else, and last night perhaps the reason why appeared - her fifteenth tooth! It's the canine tooth on the bottom right, at least I assume that's what they're called.

Anyway, Hannah has eaten cheerios for breakfast over the past two days, along with a bit of eggy bread and this morning she also had part of Neil's croissant (I wasn't sharing my pain au chocolat!). Lunch yesterday was margherita pizza along with bread - she chewed the crusts of the bread for ages, ate the topping off the pizza but ignored most of the base. She also had a fruity custard thingy and a humzinger, which disappeared super quickly.

Today, for lunch Hannah ate three bits of bread, half a tomato, a nectarine, threw some veggie burger and bits of cheese on the floor, and then had a sorbet (a homemade red berries flavour). The sorbet was made in an ice cube tray, and had a teaspoon stuck into it to give her something to grab hold of. She wasn't sure about it to start with, and pulled some funny faces, but decided it was nice enough to persevere. The whole lot got eaten in fairly short order, although when she bit off large chunks it did make her judder down to her toes.

After lunch Hannah went swimming:

For dinner last night we had quorn and mushroom pie, Hannah had sweetcorn and mash to go with hers, and concentrated mostly on the mash. For pudding she ate 2 humzingers and devoured them as quickly as normal.

Neil and I were out when Hannah had her dinner this evening, she tried another bit of quorn and mushroom pie but again didn't eat much of it - a bit of the pastry and nothing much of the filling. She pulled a funny face before scoffing two laughing cow triangles along with another couple of pieces of bread - apparently given because Grandma thought she hadn't eaten enough (according to Auntie Jo anyway), and gagged on an organix biscuit. The first time she's gagged on anything for simply ages, and it's when someone else is in charge! Good job Auntie Jo is another BLW mummy and knew not to panic (too much...) :o)

She's been filling up on eating bath toys in between meals, too:

Walking, swimming, eating, and other things

2008-07-13T19:51:00.004+01:00

I can't remember if I mentioned this already, but Hannah got her 14th tooth through a week or so ago - finally! I'd go back and check to avoid repeating myself but...nah...I'm on holiday! So now that's through and she's getting over her cough and runny nose that came with it, things are getting back to normal and she's much better at going to bed at night.

Hannah has settled in nicely to eating different foods while we're in France. She hasn't blinked an eye at being offered UHT milk (known in our house as monkey milk, ever since my sister asked why it tasted different when she was little, and was told because it comes from monkeys and not from cows...). If anything, Hannah is drinking more of this milk than the normal supermarket full fat milk that we get at home - upwards of 9oz a night so far.

Breakfast yesterday was fruity wheats, I think it was pomegranate and rasberry flavour this time, that Jo brought with her for George. She also had some pain with a bit of butter on it, and a banana that mostly got mashed into the floor. This was followed by a lunch of spaghetti bolognase, which she liked but didn't eat much of, and more bread. It takes her ages to chew her way through the crust of a bit of pain, but she does persevere and gets there in the end.

Dinner yesterday was curry and rice, which Hannah quite enjoyed and ate a decent amount of. Her favourite bit was the poppadom, followed by the onion bhaji. The consequences of this meal today mean that it won't be getting served again for quite some time...I'll leave the details of that to your imagination, suffice to say they weren't that pleasant! She also ate a couple of humzingers - dried fruit formed into chewy bars for the uninitiated. These got inhaled, within seconds.

Today Hannah had honey flavoured cheerios for breakfast, along with a banana that once again mostly got turned into mash and swept onto the floor. Lunch was a special Sunday fried breakfast (yes, at lunchtime, quiet at the back there!) and included a fried slice, which Hannah loved and spent ages eating, a quorn sausage and two bits of quorn bacon, a fried egg and a tinned tomato. She didn't eat the fried egg, although she did poke at the yolk a bit before chucking it in the floor. Pretty much all of the rest of it got scoffed in short order though.

Dinner this evening was gnocchi with ratatouille (hmm, don't know if that's spelled correctly! Never mind). Hannah also had a couple of slices of bread again, which we dunked into the tomato juice from the ratattoille for her. Pudding was strawberries, but bizarrely she didn't want to eat all of them and George ended up scoffing her leftovers, Hannah had a rusk instead, which did get eaten.

She's getting keener on carbs, I think it has to do with the miles that she does tracking about the house in between naps - she's never still unless she's asleep, it seems, or in need of a cuddle due to falling down the stairs (only off the bottom step, fortunately) or on the patio (tripped on a paving slab) or over a foot (not looking where she's going...again).

We took Hannah swimming in Grandma and Grandad's shiny new swimming pool yesterday, but it was a bit parky so we only stayed in for about 10 minutes before she started shivering so we had to take her out. It did mean that her swim seat (from toys r us, suitable for up to 1 year or 24 lbs - good job Hannah is a tiddler!) got its first ever use after having bought it more than a year ago.

Bonjour a tous!

2008-07-12T09:51:00.002+01:00

Just a quick update on what we've been upto over the past few days :o) We're now on holiday for a couple of weeks, in France. Hannah is still teething and didn't endear us to the neighbours in the cabins either side of us on the overnight boat - although the Brittany Ferries travel cot we paid an extra fiver for was really good with a proper mattress and little duvet and everything.

Hannah didn't eat much yesterday - she went to sleep very late on Thursday night (like, 10.30 or something) and we had to get her up early as we docked and had to get in the car. So she had about 1/4 of a pain au chocolat and a few bits of plain croissant for breakfast, along with some water.

Lunch was when we arrived - Hannah spent nearly all the time in the car asleep, catching up on what she missed the night before I think. She had some bread, a babybel, a nectarine and a banana. Again, not a huge amount, and I was kind of expecting her to eat more to make up for her missed breakfast.

For dinner she had a burger thing made from mashed up veggies wrapped round a babybel, dipped in egg and breadcrumbs and cooked. Grandma made them for her, and she ate two, along with some mange tout and a fruity rice pudding from organix.

She was better at going to bed last night, thank goodness, although still dosed up with ibuprofen. Her fourth molar is at least partially through now though, so I'm hoping that we're on the downward slope after this last bout. And I'm hoping that we get more of a break before any more teeth show up - I mean, how many teeth does 1 14-month-old need?!

200th post :o)

2008-07-08T23:04:00.004+01:00

Wow, we've been weaning Hannah for so long I've managed to witter on about it a whole 200 times! And, I don't think I mentioned it the other day, but I signed and sent back the consent form for one of Hannah's photos to be used in Gill Rapley's Baby Led Weaning book - we don't know whether it'll make the final cut yet, that's up to the editor, but the photo has been submitted! The book is due to be published later this year.

So for breakfast today Hannah ate shreddies, and she polished off a decent sized bowlful. I offered her a banana to follow, she took about one bite then squished it between her fingers and threw it on the floor. Lovely. Her appetite is definitely returning though, which is good news.

Lunch was on the move (well, on the bus actually!) and I gave her some raisins, a couple of rice cakes, some cubes of cheddar cheese, a drink of water and a gingerbread biscotti. She ate loads, or so it seemed to me, and was very tidy about it too.

When we got home Hannah had a slice of veggie sausage plait for tea along with peas and sweetcorn and a bit of lo salt gravy. She really went for the sos plait, and polished off the slice in short order. She had four enormous strawberries for pudding, although again she was enjoying squishing them through her fingers as much as eating them.

Hannah has also worked out how to close the spout on her sippy cup (the Tommee Tippee free flow type). Unfortunately she's not quite able to reopen it when she wants a drink, so I seem to have spent most of the last couple of days reopening the spout up for her, only for it to be thrown at me a few minutes later closed.

We're off on holiday on Thursday for a couple of weeks, and I don't know how often I'll be able to update things while we're away - if you don't hear from us for a little while, don't worry! We'll be back...

Away for the weekend

2008-07-07T23:09:00.003+01:00

We were away for the weekend, met up with some friends which was very nice indeed! Shame the weather couldn't have been more cooperative! So the whole weekend Hannah ate rather snack-based meals, but seemed to enjoy herself anyway.

Breakfasts were a combination - a couple of days it was shreddies, and the rest was shredded wheat bitesize. She's still been eating smaller than normal portions, and I was beginning to think this was the new normal, but this morning she was pretty much back on form, putting away certainly a medium bowl of shreddies, if not quite a large bowlful.

Lunches were pasta with cream cheese and tomato sauce (today), and over the weekend were sandwiches, organix things - gingerbread men, crisps, cereal bars, fruit chewy things - and bits stolen off my plate. She had a couple of bananas, too at some point.

Dinner on Saturday was round at cousin George's house, Hannah ate a veggie bake and a vegetable sausage, plus lots of peas and a half-size corn on the cob. It was the first time she'd tried sweetcorn in its cob form, and to start with she wasn't quite sure what to make of it, but soon settled down to give it a good gnawing. She then had a load of peas off my plate - the peas and sweetcorn were the only things she ate much off, most of the rest got mashed up a bit and thrown on the floor - Sophie the spotty dog was in heaven!

On Sunday, we were stuck in traffic so Hannah's dinner was a mish mash of what I had with us in the car - about four honey flavour rice cakes, a carrot cake cereal bar, a raspberry and apple cereal bar, a gingerbread man, a tiny bit of babybel cheese, a date and banana fruit chew, some cheesy poofs and sweetcorn rings, and nearly a sippy cup full of water. It was easily her biggest meal of the weekend, at least I'm pretty sure it was.

Today, Hannah had a slice of cheese on toast with a few grapes and strawberries. She mauled the toast, squished the grapes and even squished a strawberry or two before eating them. Not like her at all! I think she's been practising posing for the camera though:

Her teeth have been hurting for the past few days (AGAIN, bah) and I think that's mostly why her appetite has been so much smaller than normal. All three of the molars that were part through are now completely through (both sides of them), and if the other molar isn't through yet, then it will be in a day or two I think - when I felt her gums earlier it was either just peeking through or about to be. Oh, and I got bitten for my trouble too.

Also, Hannah has a cold at the mo. No idea where it came from, but she's been spreading it round her baby friends for several days now. So we're dosing her on both ibuprofen (for the teeth) and medised (for the cold) at night, but she seems to be managing fine during the day so long as there's something for her to look at/destroy/play with/pester (mainly the cats, that last one!).

Hopefully she'll be over the teething and the cold in a few days, because we're off on holiday for a couple of weeks on Thursday! Don't fancy taking a poorly baby on a 12 hour ferry crossing...

Nice nectarine (and videos not photos today)

2008-07-03T22:49:00.003+01:00

Hannah ate shreddies for breakfast again, and for lunch she had some quorn nuggets, a slice of bread and a tomato cut into wedges. She was offered four nuggets, and ate about three of them, pre-dunked in a tiny bit of ketchup. She liked and ate a decent amount of everything she was served this time - feels like the first time in days that's happened!

She didn't have any snacks today, but did have a fair amount of water again.

For dinner I gave her two slices of cream cheese on toast, a whole nectarine, and an organix fruit bar - date and apple flavoured I think. The fruit bars are pretty chewy, but Hannah gnawed away at it for a while and seemed to get on with it very well. The nectarine started out well, but ended up being a slipperly customer once she'd covered it in cream cheese:

Food, meet floor. Floor, food.

2008-07-02T22:58:00.004+01:00

Hannah is developing a fine throwing arm, I have to say. She can get a decent heft on her food and get it to the other side of the dining room in the blink of an eye. Fortunately not all of it goes that way, but enough does that it's getting rather annoying.

Shreddies for breakfast again today, and again a smaller bowl eaten. Lunch was scrambled egg on toast, some raisins, and an organix carrot cake bar, oh and the tag end of a pack of carrot crisp things. She ate a decent amount of scrambled egg - good job too, else I'd have started to get offended and think it was my cooking she is objecting to! She's drunk loads of water again today as well - we've refilled her cup at least three or four times.

For dinner Hannah had sausage and mash, with a bit of gravy. When she's had this in the past she tends to concentrate on the sausage and ignore the mash to some extent. Today, just to be contrary, she did the exact opposite. The sausage got thrown on the floor, the mash got more or less hoovered up. Well, apart from one largeish blob which splatted nicely under the high chair.

Ooh and we shared some raspberries picked fresh from the garden just before bed time (well, before we brushed her teeth anyway!).

The one benefit of the new rule about not replacing food that's thrown away and taking the systematic emptying of the stuff on her tray onto the floor as a sign that she's finished eating is that mealtimes are getting a fair bit shorter. I normally allow 30 minutes per meal - ie, that's how long Hannah spends in her high chair, roughly. That's been her tolerance for meals ever since we started BLW, but tonight's dinner was down to 15 minutes at most, breakfast was similar too. Obviously she's getting better and more efficient at eating, but I don't think that's the only reason.

No appetite?

2008-07-01T21:43:00.003+01:00

Hannah really hasn't eaten much again today (at least by her normal standards). She had shreddies for breakfast and only ate about half as many as normal. I don't know whether it's because of the heat or what.

Lunch was pasta with tomato sauce and grated cheese, the first dozen or so got hoovered up and most of the rest of them ended up on the floor. Pudding, which was fruit salad mixed with fromage frais, didn't even get tasted. It did get put back in the fridge for dinner though.

This afternoon Hannah mostly stayed awake. She did go for a nap (briefly) but sang and chattered to herself for an hour and eventually got bored and yelled so she got up again.

Dinner was a cream cheese sandwich and a few carrot wotsits, all the carrot things were eaten and over half of the sandwich. The fruit salad was ignored yet again, although she did suck the fromage frais off about half a dozen pieces of the fruit.

Hannah's had gallons of water to drink today, again I assume because of the heat, and generally has been quite grumpy and unsettled. She did flake out after her milk before I took her up to bed though:

She didn't even really wake up during the nappy change and while I inserted her into her sleeping bag - good job I bought a couple of new 1-tog ones a couple of weeks ago, they're getting lots of use at the moment!

Painting at playgroup

2008-06-30T21:59:00.002+01:00

Hannah did a painting at playgroup today - how brave of me! She didn't even paint herself - although that was mainly because she was wearing a bloke's shirt to protect her clothes, it was so big even her feet were wrapped in it. And she used a ride-on toy as a walker, pushing it backwards, which would have been fine if not for the small boy sat on it at the time... He was very confused by the whole thing, poor lad.

She had shreddies for breakfast, and lunch was a mishmash of things on the way back from playgroup. She ate a cereal bar, a pink wafer biscuit (that was at playgroup actually), some rice cakes, some cheesy poofs, and after her nap she also ate a slice of bread and butter. And drank loads of water, I guess because of the heat.

For dinner I gave her some potato wedges and cubes of cheddar and red leicester cheese, followed by a jelly and a fromage frais. She only ate about half of the fromage frais before starting to throw it around the room, and as I mentioned before this means the food gets taken away and Hannah leaves the table. Not that she seems to care one way or the other, to be honest.

On the whole she hasn't seemed to eat all that much today - I was expecting her to eat a lot at dinner, but she really didn't. Probably because she fell head first off the sofa this afternoon and has a lump the size of a (smallish!) egg on her forehead. The other thing I found out today is that Hannah's not a fan of icepacks! Still, hopefully the bruise won't last too long...

Her feet were made for walking...

2008-06-29T21:13:00.004+01:00

Hannah has spent most of this weekend walking. Not necessarily going anywhere, but definitely walking. We took her to the park yesterday, and apart from trying to go for a swim at one point while we were feeding the ducks, she played on the swings and in the sandpit. First time she'd tried the sandpit and she really liked it, but took quite a lot of cleaning up after she got out!

The new reins I got for her (from Boots for less than £7, fact fans) were fab, she walked about half way along the high street in them but then decided her legs were too tired to work anymore, and just sat down on the pavement - in front of the offy :o) and refused to move. Good job we'd taken the pushchair with us as well!

Anyway, onto the edibles: breakfast was shreddies both yesterday and today, while lunch was a BLT (only without any L as Hannah just tears it up and chucks it on the floor) followed by some sweetcorn rings and pasta in creme fraiche and pesto. She seemed to eat loads, but I'm sure that long walk burned it all off...

Today's lunch was a platter featuring sweetcorn rings, cubes of cheddar cheese, a tomato cut into segments, a rice cake spread with cream cheese, some dried apricots, and a fromage frais. She didn't actually eat the rice cake, but did piggle the cream cheese off its surface and eat that (or smear it around her face). She only had about half of the fromage frais, as she took to smacking the spoon down on her tray so it flicked off - we took that as a sign that she was finished, so didn't give her any more.

In fact generally, now she's definitely started dropping and throwing food deliberately, we've stopped giving it back to her. If she throws her sippy cup then it gets put back on the table, out of reach, for a few minutes - or until she leans forward and tries to get it, when we give it back. If she shakes or throws it again, it gets removed again. This all sounds good, and I think the food thing is having a bit of an effect, but it seems to make no different whatsoever most of the time, sadly. Any other ideas for instilling some kind of table manners gratefully received!

Yesterday's dinner was Hannah's first ever taste of runny egg. She had a fried egg with a slice of bread cut into soldiers, and liked both the soldiers and the egg. She wasn't convinced about mixing the two together though, preferring to eat the runny yolk with her fingers, and follow it up with a soldier or two. She had a banana for her pudding, and ate the majority of that as well - all that exercise clearly worked up an appetite!

Dinner this evening was roast potatoes, a quorn fillet cooked in garlic oil, and some peas and sweetcorn. The peas and sweetcorn seemed to be the most hilarious food in the world, as every time she put some in her mouth it made her laugh. We have no idea why! She had a pot of jelly for afters, and liked that too.

Big Cook Little Cook

2008-06-27T20:55:00.004+01:00

Little Cook did her first ever cooking today, helping to make some rock cakes. She celebrated by having one of them at lunch time, very nice they were too. It wasn't even as messy as I'd feared, which was nice! She quite enjoyed getting her hands mucky, and only ate a bit of the raw mixture...

Breakfast today was shreddies again, while as well as rock cake Hannah had two slices of quiche and some salad bits for lunch. Mid morning she had a few raisins and dried apricots, too.

Mid afternoon she tried to steal more raisins off Sam who'd come round to play, but I distracted her with a gingerbread biscotti, otherwise I thought the nappy consequences might be unpleasant. Then for dinner there was beans on toast. And beans on Hannah too, it turned out. She managed to spread them all over her face:

And when I got her out of the high chair I also had to wash her legs down (good job I'd taken her trousers off before the meal even started!) and Neil when he got home gave her face another wash - apparently I'd only managed to get the top, thickest layer of bean juice off.

Remembered to take pics today!

2008-06-26T22:28:00.004+01:00

Breakfast today was shreddies and again Hannah dived straight in. I think her appetite is getting smaller now though - which I'm told it should do once she turned one, as she isn't growing quite so fast any more. Don't think anyone told Hannah that, mind... So she ate about 3/4 of a bowl of shreddies and threw the rest on the floor.

Hannah had a snack mid-morning, as we were out and about so I was expecting a late nap and knockon late lunch, but as it turned out lunch was only about 45 minutes later than normal. The cheesy poofs and rice cake were gratefully received anyway.

For lunch I made some pasta (well, OK, I cooked some pasta) with creme fraiche and pesto with cherry tomatoes mixed through. It seemed to go down quite well, so that was good, and she also ate half a pack of cheesy poofs and some raisins and dried apricots for pudding too. Oh, and a fruit jelly (or Organix fruit wobbler). Raspberry flavour.

Midafternoon Hannah and her friend William both had a gingerbread biscotti, and shared sippy cups. Hannah had great fun throwing both sippy cups over the stairgate at the living room door, she seemed to be aiming for the cats water bowl. And got far too close for comfort, we might have to relocate the cat bowl *again*.

Dinner was a peanut butter and jam sandwich with a few organix tomato wheels, and a fresh tomato to go with them. She had about 2/3 of a fromage frais for pudding, which surprised me as she normally goes mad for them. Definitely not so much appetite as normal.

Here's Hannah demonstrating that she can fit an entire tomato slice thingy in - sideways! I think she's just showing of...:

A chaotic day...

2008-06-25T21:56:00.002+01:00

Today was a bit mad, as Hannah and I were out of the house for most of it, so eating on the run. Breakfast was en famille since it's Neil's working from home day, Hannah made a start on the new box of shreddies that Mr Tesco delivered yesterday.

Lunch was started in a waiting room, and finished on the bus. In the waiting room Hannah ate two gingerbread biscotti (new discovery, very popular), a breadstick, and nicked a bit of bread and butter out of another little girl's lunchbox. We gave her a breadstick and dried apricot in return - and don't worry, we don't have a complete hoodlum who accosts strangers on our hands, I'd met the girl's mum before at an antenatal clinic and we were having a natter!

On the bus, Hannah then ate half a dozen dried apricots, a bit more breadstick, and a cream cheese sandwich. Since I didn't fancy hosing the pushchair down when we got home, I broke the sandwich into tiny pieces and gave them to Hannah one at a time, which worked very well - she even ate all of the bread, wonders will never cease!

After her very delayed nap (only one nap today, too) Hannah drank loads of water, and kept nicking the strawberries I was eating - I'd bite half the strawberry off, and before I got a chance to finish it Hannah leant forward with her mouth open and scoffed the lot! Cheeky effort. Two things it taught me: 1, don't eat anything while I'm carrying Hannah around and 2, she's grown again - no way she could have stretched that far a couple of weeks ago!

Dinner today was two slices of cheese on toast, and Hannah carefully peeled the cheese away from the toast before bothering to eat any of it. I'm considering giving her a small pile of melted cheese and two seperate slices of toast next time, it'll save me a job ;o) She accompanied this with some halved cherry tomatoes, and followed it up with a small portion of homemade rhubarb crumble. I think it was the first time we've given her rhubarb, she wasn't entirely sure what to make of it and it did make her judder a couple of times.

Cheerios back on the menu

2008-06-23T22:27:00.002+01:00

For some reason Hannah really went for the cheerios at breakfast this morning. They were mixed with the last few blueberry wheats (good job Tescos is delivering tomorrow!) but she seemed to prefer them over the wheats, which is strange because she's not really gone for them for the last little while - I think they were too frustrating, she couldn't pick up enough in one go to get a decent mouthful.

Lunch was pasta mixed with tomato and grated cheese. Hannah surprised me with how quickly she was putting away the pasta, at least until she got bored/full/fed up/or something and started chucking it all around. She's started removing her own bib by the way, when she's had enough to eat. She can wriggle her arms out of the sleeves then just pulls at it until the velcro gives way and she's free. Which is fine apart from when it happens part way through a meal, as it did today... Pudding was some tinned rice pudding, we shared a tin of it and it was very nice! Mine was mixed with strawberry jam, and I let Hannah have a tiny bit of that, too, but she seemed to prefer the plain flavour and ate loads of it. She was a bit put out that we were sharing a single bowl of it, to be honest - I think she's have happily eaten the entire bowl herself but she never got the chance!

For dinner she had two slices of toast, one spread with peanut butter and one with peanut butter and jam. Not much of the toast got eaten, but she picked all the topping off it and ate that, at least. It was followed by a very ripe nectarine, which Hannah liked squishing her fingers into rather than actually eating. Then she threw it on the floor, so that was the end of dinner.

Geek Hannah

2008-06-21T22:55:00.003+01:00

Blueberry wheats all round for breakfast this morning, we've run out of all other cereal - well apart from cheerios anyway! We all ate lunch together as well, and had eggy bread this time. Hannah had about 1 1/2 slices of it, cut into fingers, and followed it up with loads of strawberries out of the garden.

Her dinner was cherry tomatoes, grapes, and a couple of rice cakes spread with pesto and cream cheese. She seemed to like all of it, and in her new "I can tidy up myself" frame of mind, carefully put the sucked dry husks of tomato and grape back onto the plate they were served from once she'd finished with them :o)

No pics today, so here's one of Geek Hannah working hard from yesterday:

Mmm, chalk!

2008-06-20T21:55:00.002+01:00

Well Hannah today mainly ate blue chalk. We met up with some friends and Hannah discovered that in the playhouse at the bottom of Helen's garden was a pack of chalk. She opened it, removed the blue chalk, and ate the lot:
But don't worry, that's not all she had (and there's no evidence of blue in her nappies so far...). For breakfast she ate blueberry wheats, but only half a bowlful and she didn't want the banana I offered her either.

Lunch was while we were out at Helen's and Hannah ate two slices of toast with peanut butter on, and one had hummus on as well. She had some bits of salad - cucumber and such - a few of Natasha's blueberries and strawberries, and a squished peach that looked more like a doughnut (it wasn't, I promise!). She also had some water out of her sippy cup, Natasha's sippy cup and William's sippy cup, and I think she had some juice out of the other Hannah's cup as well. She's not fussy ;o)

Dinner when we got home was put together very quickly and was a few quorn nuggets with peas, plus a few strawberries out of the garden.

I don't want nectarine today thank you.

2008-06-18T22:25:00.004+01:00

Lots of cranberry wheats for breakfast again today, and a mixed bag of lunch, which was rice cakes with mushed avocado spread on them, a breadstick, a banana, and a rusk. Hannah completely ignored the rice cakes, but ate the rusk and most of the banana and breadstick, so not too bad I suppose.

Dinner was fast fries (from Nigella Express) with quorn in honey and mustard sauce. I was quite surprised, Hannah's had the honey and mustard sauce before and didn't like it, but this time she ate most of it, which was great to see. And she liked the fries too - they're just potatoes bashed with a rolling pin and cooked in the frying pan, and they only take about 15 minutes to cook which is a blessing :o)

Pudding was fruit salad of grapes, strawberries and nectarine mixed with fromage frais and a bit of double cream. Hannah liked most of it, but found the nectarine a bit underripe for her liking. She did suck the fromage frais mix off it all though. Once she'd gathered all of the nectarine into one heap on her tray, she started ferrying it back onto the table in front of her - I think she only did this because she couldn't reach the bowl I served it from! It was very funny to watch, and she was very careful about placing it on the table rather than on the front of her tray. I've noticed her doing it a couple of times in the past, but not with so much concentration:

Woof woof!

2008-06-17T21:49:00.003+01:00

Well today's big news is that Hannah has canines! A tad early, since according to this chart she's not meant to get them for another 5 months. Harrumph. Still, she's gone to bed without calpol for the first time in a week tonight, and so far so good...

Breakfast today was cranberry wheats, and Hannah ate lots of them although not quite all of the bowlful. It was a spectacularly full bowl though, so I'm not too surprised. Lunch was pasta spirals with a bit of pesto and some grated cheese stirred through, and I've not seen Hannah eat so much at lunch for ages.

For dinner I made some scrambled egg on toast, the egg promptly got thrown on the floor and the toast got a vague munching. Some egg did eventually go down, but only after I'd chased it around the room a time or two (I hear germs are good for their immune systems... ;o) ). She followed that with a bowlful of strawberries, and made short work of the whole lot.

Ooh look, a strawberry!:

Hmm, this strawberry is a strange green colour:

I think they've all gone, mum:

Yep, there's none in here:

Hannah has started bouncing again while in her high chair, which is funny to watch, especially when her legs are going back and forth frantically trying to get some momentum up. It doesn't seem to have occurred to her that the table means she can't actually get the high chair any closer!

Teeth, teeth and more teeth

2008-06-16T22:08:00.004+01:00

Hannah is still teething (or teething again, take your pick) and consequently has been rather grumpy and picking at her food for the past few days rather than attacking it with her normal enthusiasm. She also got a few spots in the 7-10 days post-MMR period, as we were warned, which I don't think has helped! She has 11 teeth that have cut through the gum now, and at least 2 more that are nearly through - or maybe that's just wishful thinking? There are bumps there at any rate.

She's still managing a decent breakfast, mainly shredded wheat bitesize although she had cranberry wheats this morning. She's had a few snacks, things like chocolate biscotti, gingerbread men, raisins and grapes in the past few days.

Actual meals, in no particular order, have included eggy bread, a veggie burger with ciabatta bread roll, pasta, some Quorn picnic eggs (veggie scotch eggs really), a sausage, fromage frais, strawberries by the gazillion, a couple of bananas, a nectarine, potato wedges, boursin, and I'm sure there are things I've missed out as well. It doesn't look too bad written out like that, actually, maybe she's been eating more than I've given her credit for!

Fingers crossed that this tooth or teeth will actually put in an appearance sharpish and that we'll get a break before the next onslaught hits.

Lots of new foods to try...

2008-06-12T21:21:00.003+01:00

Hannah seems to have eaten lots of new things in the past few days, although not at breakfast time which has been shredded wheat bitesize without fail. Although this morning it was accompanied by half a crumpet with butter on, which was mangled and mostly eaten with relish.

She's tried polenta in a tomato sauce with mozzerella cheese with a breadcrumb and cheddar cheese topping (quite nice), she's had some blue cheese - St Agur - of which she ate the first piece, then wrinkled her nose and pulled a face at the second pass. She had peas with her shepherd's pie last night which were mixed with a bit of chopped mint (she didn't seem to notice the mint), and she ate a carr's water biscuit with butter on too.

She's also eaten some bog standard stuff, like cheese on toast, shepherd's pie (twice), fromage frais, chocolate biscotti, strawberries by the bucket load, a couple of bananas, and cheese slices.

Here are some of the pictures I've taken in the past couple of days:

It's been quite warm so Hannah was only wearing her pants!

She didn't like the parsley tree that came with the shepherd's pie:

And she's been playing out in the garden a lot (although for some reason prefers patio underfoot than grass, which seems to tickle her feet cos she keeps trying to stand on one foot or no feet!):

More strawberry shortstuff

2008-06-09T21:40:00.004+01:00

Hannah's had shredded wheat bitesize for breakfast for the past two days, and some strawberries the size of planets to follow. In fact she's had rather a lot of strawberries in the past two days, which she's consistently refused to share with me ;o)

Lunch yesterday was some pretend pizzas, which were crumpets spread with tomato puree and grated cheese then grilled till the cheese was melted. A new addition to Hannah's diet, although she's eaten all the component parts before. She liked them, and especially liked the way she could pick the cheese off the top of them. She had a fromage frais and some strawberries for pudding.

Today Hannah didn't seem that hungry at lunchtime. She was given a courgette cake and some salad bits, a slice of cheese and more strawberries. The courgette cake was grated courgette mixed with an egg and some mashed potato and griddled till they were cooked. Hannah flung them mostly on the floor. She did eat a slice of cheese, tried a bit of beetroot for the first time (not the vinegary kind), some radish and cucumber, and found room for the strawberries:

For dinner yesterday Hannah had a cheese and eggy bread sandwich - let me explain: make a cheese sandwich as normal. Make the eggy bread mix as normal, dunk each side of the cheese sandwich in it and shallow fry until it's golden brown and the cheese is a bit melty. Cut into fingers or squares according to preference. It tastes fantastic, and Hannah liked it too!

Today's dinner was spag bol, which got munched in short order, followed by a fromage frais and two chocolate biscotti. All of it got eaten, although she was least keen on the fromage frais, and ended up with it running down the side of her face from her hair by the end. Good job there was a bath waiting upstairs...

Dinner a deux

2008-06-07T21:38:00.003+01:00

Couple of days to update you on - there was no blog yesterday as it was the dreaded MMR jab day, so Hannah was rather unsettled in the evening and took hours to fall asleep. We gave her calpol, and she felt rather hot which I am putting down to her two war wounds. Fortunately she was placated easily enough with milky bar buttons off the nurse after the second injection.

Yesterday Hannah ate cheerios and pear (a whole one) for breakfast, and had cauliflower cheese for lunch before William and Sam came round to play with their mums. She also had half a pack of organix carrot sticks and a fair bit of water too. During the play date (well, it was with two boys...) she also ate one or two Nice biscuits, and would like to apologise to William for stealing his crisps out of Diane's changing bag. She found the packet, and stood there helping herself for a while before we clocked her and stopped it. Still, she shared biscuits and things with William and Sam in return so I suppose it's fair enough. She and William were confused over sippy cups as well - they each had their own, but used them interchangably throughout the afternoon. It was especially funny when they were passing it back and forth between each other.

Dinner after a short nap was a couple of slices of cream cheese on toast. Short and sweet, I guess she was still full of snacks from the afternoon goings on.

Today started with cheerios again, this time served with a banana that she didn't eat much of. Lunch was at the grandparents, and was ciabatta bread with tomato, pesto and mozzerella. Oh, and she ate a gingerbread man in the car on the way, as she woke up early from her nap (perhaps not surprisingly really).

She ate some cheesy poofs in the afternoon after her nap, as dinner was going to be later than normal to fit in with Aunty Jo, Uncle Matt and George coming round to join us. Hannah and George sat together and caused havoc:

Hannah didn't eat much, at least to start with, but was offered roasted vegetables, a bit of quorn lamb and mint cutlet (I thought it was nice!), and some couscous, which she did eat a fair bit of. Obviously she likes the challenge and sticks her nose up at stuff that's easy to handle :o) She also had pudding, which was part of a fat free sponge cake served with cherry pie filling. It was lovely!

There was rhubarb crumble too, but Hannah didn't get any of that - there's always tomorrow...unless I get there first ;o)

I took Hannah to the baby clinic for a weigh in after her injections yesterday, and I'm pleased to report that she's finally passed the 20lbs mark - 20lbs 3oz, or 9.02kg I think it was. So she's officially heavy enough to graduate into her stage 1 car seat, which was used earlier today for the first time as we travelled up to my parents for the week while Neil's off in the US (again) with work. Hannah liked facing forwards, and seemed to find it easier to sleep in the new seat, goodness knows why!

A new tooth at last :o)

2008-06-05T22:34:00.003+01:00

Yay, we finally have evidence of tooth number 11. Not that 9 and 10 are through properly yet, Hannah's a girl, she's bound to be good at multi-tasking ;o) It's the bottom left premolar I think and is only just coming through the gum so there's a way to go yet.

Breakfast today was a bowl of cheerios and a banana. Hannah ate most of both of them, not too bad at all. For lunch we had quiche and salad, and Hannah had a fromage frais for pudding. She didn't eat much (or any) of the salad bits, which was only a tomato and some cucumber slices on the basis that she likes to rip up lettuce and throw it around.

There was a cream cheese sandwich, some carrot crisps, a pear, two slices of melon and a cereal bar for tea, but Hannah hardly ate any of it. She managed some of the cream cheese from the middle of the sandwich, nibbled one bit of the pear, ate about one slice of melon and half or two thirds of the cereal bar. And all of the carrot crisps, of course.

I think Hannah didn't feel very well though, judging by the three revolting nappies and clearing up of sick that took place in between eating dinner and going to bed. She went to bed an hour later than normal, just to check whether she was going to carry on being sick and so on, but I'm hoping that it's cleared her system already. This may be famous last words, I'll have to let you know.

In other news, Hannah's having her first MMR tomorrow morning, so we'll have to see how she copes with that and how it affects her. I'm hoping she'll take it in her stride like she did her 12 month injections...

Whatamess in Carshalton

2008-06-04T22:31:00.006+01:00

Hurrah! We seem (fingers crossed and all that) to be back to normal on the teething/sleeping front. In fact Hannah has remembered what sleep is, and today spent 5 (!) hours napping, yay! She did sing to herself for about an hour after Neil put her to bed, but we left her to it and now all is quiet...shhhh :o)

Anyway, foodstuffs. Breakfast today was cheerios, followed by a slice of melon and a whole banana. She lost interest in the melon towards the end of the slice, but there was so little left on the rind I'd still class it as eaten.

Lunch today was more roast veggies - potato, sweet potato and butternut squash again. Hannah still paid no real attention to the squash, but did eat some sweet potato today, and most of the standard potato she was given. For pudding we all had fresh cherries. I think it's the first time Hannah's eaten them, she went at them as if they were strawberries, which is to say rather enthusiastically! I stoned them before giving them to her of course, which was a bit of a faff so I'm not sure they'll be making a regular appearance on the menu - they're expensive too, which is a shame cos we love them.

I made the mistake of giving Hannah spaghetti hoops on toast for her dinner, she first picked most of the hoops off the toast in giant fistfuls, then sucked at the toast before eating most of that, too. The girl was definitely hungry...for pudding she had a banana muffin. It's a good job she's so little still, as half of pudding came before the main course today, which was too hot for her to eat straight off. She did have some of the muffin after the hoops though, so I figure it still counts.

She got so messy with the spaghetti hoops that she ended up having an emergency bath - straight from the high chair to the bath! Good job I thought to remove her trousers before starting the meal though, they'd have been covered:

Lunch overboard!

2008-06-03T21:51:00.004+01:00

Breakfast today was a mixture of shreddies and cheerios - I meant to give her shreddies, only apparently we only had about half a dozen left in the box. It was interesting watching Hannah eat though, she deliberately went for the shreddies over the cheerios and was campaigning for more shreddies when she'd got them all despite there being cheerios left on her tray.

Lunch was a mixture of roast veggies - potato wedges, sweet potato wedges, and butternut squash. Hannah ignored the butternut squash completely, poked the sweet potato for a while then tried a bit of it before throwing it on the floor, and actually ate the potato wedges. She had a nectarine and a banana muffin for pudding, and ate all of the muffin but only about half of the fruit - I wonder whether she found it a bit hard going with all these troublesome teeth on their way through?

For dinner she had an omelette with peas, sweetcorn and grated cheese in. Some of it got eaten, but a fair amount ended up on the floor (again). There were a few strawberries for pudding, and an organix carrot cake cereal bar. She liked the cereal bar, although it didn't taste much like carrot cake when I tried it - shame really! You can see it here clutched in her hand:

And here she is flinging omelette on the floor:

Damn teeth

2008-06-02T22:04:00.003+01:00

Grr well I'm tired of teething, I expect Hannah is too. I can't remember the last time she had a full, uninterrupted nights sleep (or me either :o( ). Fortunately it doesn't seem to have affected her eating and she's been putting away as much as normal.

Yesterday she started with the last shredded wheat bitesize, and then we all went to Kidspace in Croydon where she ran riot for nearly 2 hours. She went straight to bed when we got home, so lunch was somewhat delayed, and nobody can remember what we ate! Sorry :o) But here's some pics of Kidspace to make up for it:

For dinner Hannah had two crumpets with butter plus a slice of melon and some strawberries. And part of a fromage frais - maybe half of it.

Today, breakfast was a bowl of cheerios, followed by three (!) slices of melon and half a fromage frais. I couldn't believe how much melon she kept eating - for the first time she ate absolutely all the flesh off the rind, all that was left was the thinnest bit of green rind you can imagine!

We went to playgroup this morning, so lunch was taken at a local cafe with a friend afterwards. Hannah ate part of my mozzerella basil and tomato panini, a load of organix sweetcorn rings, some raisins, a gingerbread man, a chocolate biscotti, and she also stole some of Millie's sausage and scotch egg too (so much for bringing up a vegetarian baby...). Mille nicked Hannah's raisins and sweetcorn rings in return, so no harm done!

Dinner today was baked tomatoes with pesto and emmental, followed by the rest of this morning's fromage frais and a bunch of strawberries. All very popular, she ate all four of the tomatoes that I cooked for her, I was expecting there to be leftovers but no such luck.

It's late it's late it's late!

2008-05-31T22:26:00.003+01:00

Hannah's eaten all sorts of things since the last update. She's had shredded wheat bitesize for breakfast every day, and for lunch she's seen the welcome return of lentil pate, spread on rice cakes, along with some organix carrot sticks, melon, and fromage frais. Yesterday she had pasta with tomato sauce and grated cheese, and today there was a cheese and tomato sandwich. All fairly popular, especially the pasta option.

For dinner, she's had eggy bread as a quick option after we got home from playing at William's house (where she also tried a bit of William's birthday cake, and definitely approved!).

Tonight she ate a slice of pizza, two bits of garlic bread, a sugar free muffin (here's the recipe), plus about half a fromage frais. She loved the muffin, once she had it in her hand she basically didn't let go until it had all gone. We thought they were quite nice, too!

I'm sure there was lots of other stuff too - organix gingerbread men, raisins, lots of slices of melon, a couple of pears, but I'm afraid my memory fails me.

I do have pics to add, but can't find the cable so will get back to you on that one...and Hannah's just woken up crying, gtg!

Hurrah! Pics of pizza, and the banana muffin are below now I've figured out how to work the camera...

Grrr American food labelling

2008-05-28T22:06:00.004+01:00

It was shredded wheats for breakfast again this morning, Hannah definitely prefers them once they've had a chance to soak up a fair bit of milk though. So that they're more mushy than crunchy, IYKWIM? And who can blame her, to be honest!

Lunch today was sausage in red wine and onion sauce (not too much sauce for Hannah though), along with boiled potatoes, peas and sweetcorn. Lots of peas and sweetcorn spread over the floor by the simple means of smacking two hands down onto the high chair tray with some gusto (grrr). The potatoes and sausage both got hoovered up though, as did two slices of melon for pudding.

For dinner Hannah had a rice cake with a cheese triangle on, a breadstick (mostly on the floor at the end of the meal), some carrot sticks, a banana, two chocolate biscotti, and an organix fruit compote. She ate all of the banana, although it was interspersed with the biscotti and apparently they go very nicely together.

During the day she also ate a gingerbread man, some raisins, and what I thought was a strawberry chewy snack thing but which turned out to be a strawberry flavoured jelly sweet. Good job I only gave her one before I tried them myself! And grrr at the americans for calling them Fruit Snacks on the packet! Actual quantity of fruit = pretty close to zero from what I could tell. They tasted nice though, me and Neil ate the rest! :o)

And finally, here's a pic of Hannah and Daddy reading a library book together. I think you'll find that's (still) not her bear:

All together now...aaaaaaaaahhhhhh!

A swingingly good time

2008-05-27T22:23:00.006+01:00

Breakfast today was more shredded wheat, once again Hannah ate absolutely tons of them - although she wasn't so keen on the ones that hadn't soaked up a fair amount of milk. Tomorrow I think she can have more milk on the cereal, to moisten them a bit more.

For lunch she ate beans on toast, along with part of a whole pear. The pear was a bit crunchy, rather than juicy, so she didn't make all that much progress with it despite managing to eat chunks out of the side and top. Beans were a popular choice, and she even managed quite a bit of the toast, too. Pre lunch she finished an open bag of cheesy poofs - well there were only four of them left!

Apparently beans on toast can be quite tiring though:

Dinner was a cheese triangle sandwich, two slices of melon, and a raspberry fromage frais. Hannah seemed really hungry though so as well as all that she also managed three or four apple rice cakes and a fistful of raisins. Didn't have time to cook anything for dinner, as we were late back from the park where we'd been playing on the swings, slide and dog onna spring (well only Hannah went on the first two, and I only went on the latter with her because she was refusing to hold on!).

Nothing exciting to report

2008-05-26T21:27:00.002+01:00

Shredded wheats for breakfast again this morning, followed by a lunch of cheese and onion omelette with a tomato cut into segments, and some strawberries. Hannah didn't like sharing "her" strawberries with me and Neil though, at least to start with.

For dinner we had a quorn fillet cut in half and spread with pesto and a slice of mozzerella baked in a tomato sauce with more mozzerella slices on top. Hannah had potato wedges with hers, which I sprinkled with a bit of cumin and they seemed to go down very well indeed.

However I forgot to take photos again, so here's a random one instead:

Travelling, teething (again) and a sniffle

2008-05-25T21:08:00.003+01:00

Well it's been a busy day, but lots of it was sat in a car - three hours or so in fact. We set off after breakfast, when Hannah ate shredded wheats again (the usual tons of). She also ate a gingerbread man in the car, plus some organix animal biscuits.

Lunch was shortly after we got home, and was a cheese and tomato sandwich - Hannah didn't eat very much of it, she was tired as she didn't nap well in the car.

For dinner she ate some shepherd's pie (leftovers from Grandma's house), and part of a fromage frais. Pre-dinner she snacked on some cheesy poofs and a couple of gingerbread men.

No pics today though, sorry!

Beside the seaside, beside the sea

2008-05-24T20:08:00.003+01:00

Hannah had her first trip to the seaside on Thursday, we went to Llandudno to visit her great grandma who provided a lunch of dairylea sandwich, tomato segments, and two enormous bowls of strawberries that Hannah polished off without batting an eyelid. She also ate some organix crisps that I'd brought along. After lunch we went for a walk, Hannah played on the swings near the west shore then we took her on the beach for a little paddle. She was surprised by the waves to start with, and they must have tickled her feet because she giggled nearly the whole time we were there...

Breakfast on Thursday was bitesize shredded wheat again, and dinner when we got back from Wales was pasta filled with goats cheese and red pepper. Hannah liked the filling, but we think the pasta might have been too slippery to pick up, as she ignored it. She ate a few more strawberries, three slices of melon and a few more organix crisps instead.

Yesterday started with mini shredded wheats for breakfast again, she didn't eat much for lunch as the pizza on offer had pizza oil on the top and Hannah thought it was a bit spicy. She had some other odds and ends instead, including some strawberries, two biscotti and an organix compote. Dinner was eggy bread and she made up for not having eaten much at lunch, following it up with two chocolate digestives, the last few strawberries, and more than a cup full of water.

Today, she's eaten even more mini shredded wheats, followed by a cheese and pate sandwich, some cherry tomatoes, and half a tin of rice pudding. Dinner was sausage and mash, followed by more rice pudding, this time with a bit of raspberry jam mixed through. She ate an enormous pile of mash, some of it via a spoon, and drank lots of water along with it.

More news about teeth...

2008-05-21T21:52:00.003+01:00

Grandparents have taken over early morning Hannah duty - which is fab, I've had more lie-ins this week than I have since she was born! And I'm told she's eaten quantities of cheerios and mainly shredded wheat bitesize with a few grapes and suchlike thrown in for good measure.

Lunch yesterday was round at Aunty Jo's house, she kindly provided some roasted veggies - sweet potato, standard potato, and butternut squash. She also had a Heinz chocolate biscotti and a few halved grapes for good measure. Oh, and as George was eating first (we were doing shifts with the high chair) she was also placated with a few organix sweetcorn rings before the meal itself. And in other news she may have had a first taste of mince. Possibly. George was eating chilli, and Hannah was mooching round the kitchen when she discovered that there was food on George's lap. So obviously she helped herself to some, and even seemed to like it. I knew her learning to walk would come back to haunt us sooner or later... ;o)

Today's lunch was tomatoes with pesto and mozzerella, plus some ciabatta bread. She ate lots of it, and was offered a peach for pudding, which she threw on the floor. Eventually she swapped her peach for George's (Aunty Jo and George were visiting again!) banana bread and both babies were happy. You can find the recipe for the banana bread here on Aitch's blog.

Dinner yesterday was a sandwich I think - my memory is faulty, sorry! Today, Hannah ate a pile of falafel, half a pitta bread (originally served with falafel in, but treated as a seperate item by madam), a rapsberry fromage frais, a few strawberries, and a slice of melon.

And more news on the teeth front too. We now have two halves of molars. Sadly, not belonging to the same tooth, so there's clearly more work to do...she has been lots better over the past couple of days though, for example actually going to bed of an evening at a reasonable time and not getting up again (well I've jinxed it now...).

There will be photos added here, once Aunty Jo bothers emailing me copies as they're all on her camera.

Babies who lunch

2008-05-19T21:49:00.006+01:00

Hannah and George had lunch together today, which was nice - the grandparents steered well clear though, and left Jo and me to manage the carnage of pasta and sauce. Which was not that bad really, all things considered.

And it was all going so well:

Hannah had bitesize shredded wheat for breakfast yesterday, and a mixture of those and cheerios for breakfast today. I'm told that she was much keener on the shredded wheat - I'd report it myself, but I was having a lie in and the grandparents were in charge, hurrah!

Dinner today was a hummus and tomato sandwich, a packet of cheesy poofs, a slice of melon and a strawberry fromage frais. Her arms were too tired to work the spoon again for the fromage frais, and she only managed about a third of the melon slice before giving up and chucking it on the floor.

Yesterday for dinner she ate a pitta bread filled with hummus and falafel. She really liked the falafel, and having only started with a couple of them she ended up eating everything that was available. She also had an organix apple and blueberry compote (which was very nice, I tried a bit!).

In other news, Hannah has been a nightmare going to bed for the past three nights, and this evening I found half of one of the four molars she's trying to grow has cut through the gum. I'm hoping that this means we're over a teething hump and there'll be some respite over the next few evenings, but somehow I doubt it... She's also taken to drinking the best part of a sippy cup full of water in her bedroom before going into her cot of an evening, I think that the cool water helps soothe her gums.

Sorry Daddy, I like celery!

2008-05-17T21:00:00.006+01:00

Yep, Neil has gone to the States with work for a week and before he'd even landed Hannah had been fed celery by her grandma. And liked it, too! It made a very loud crunch as she bit down on it, which was marvellously entertaining.

As well as celery, today Hannah ate cheerios and cranberry wheats for breakfast in combination - caused by the fact that we've now run out of both. Good job we're now at Grandma's and she's been shopping. Then we travelled up to mum and dad's, Hannah ate three organix gingerbread men in the car as we hit a bit of traffic that delayed lunch a tad.

Lunch was potato wedges, I put some creme fraiche and chives dip on one of them but Hannah didn't seem all that impressed so I ate the dip with my wedges instead :o) She had a banana for pudding, and ate about half of it - the rest ended up on the floor.

For dinner she had two slices of vegetable quiche, plus some salad bits (including the celery!). The quiche was more or less completely demolished, and for pudding she had two slices of melon, plus a raspberry fromage frais. Swiftly followed by a strawberry fromage frais - she seemed to be starving, poor girl apparently never gets fed! Bizarrely she couldn't be bothered to operate her own spoon today and when I presented the loaded spoon to her as normal, just leant forward with an open mouth to receive the fromage frais. It was very odd, and I'm not very practised at feeding her, I normally delegate the task! It did turn out to be quite a lot tidier than child-operated cutlery though so I can see the benefits.

And in a late update (10pm ish) Hannah woke up shortly after going to bed and ended up having a second bottle of milk as well as teething gel, calpol, ibuprofen, and anything else I could think of. I don't know whether this is a continuation of her 12 months growth spurt, whether travelling for 3 hours in the car worked up her appetite, or whether moving from formula onto cow's milk before bed is what's done it, but hopefully she's now settled for the night...fingers crossed! :o)

Will add some pictures once I've talked dad into showing me how to get them off his camera, as that's where they are currently! Bear with me...

Hurrah, here are the pics! 1: Hannah eating celery with a big grin 2: Dinner was yummy 3: My arms are too tired to work the spoon mummy...

Yup, she can definitely walk

2008-05-15T22:27:00.003+01:00

How exciting! Just before bedtime Hannah excelled herself by walking from where I was sitting, over to the sofa where the cat was sitting on the arm. About 6-8 ft or so, and she didn't fall over once! I lost count of how many steps she actually took at about 15!

Hannah had cheerios for breakfast today, lots of them again, and then we went to playgroup where she had some water and half a malted milk biscuit. I then discovered that these biscuits are easy to mush, and can be smeared into mummy's jeans very effectively by small yet determined fingers. And I thought I'd done all the washing, ho ho ho.

Lunch was scrambled egg on toast after a very delayed morning nap, Hannah did pretty well with it. She ate a fair amount of the egg, and about half the toast too.

For dinner she had a butternut squash and pecan nut roast, along with some peas and part of a strawberry yogurt (we're out of fromage frais for the moment). She wasn't all that keen on dinner, and threw a lot of it on the floor although a respectable amount of the squash roast did disappear.

She's drunk loads of water today, too - I've tried to make sure that water is always available for her during the day, and she is now starting to make more use of it. Not sure if it's a fluke or not but we'll have to wait and see I suppose.

She's also climbed herself onto her small rocking horse this afternoon, and sat on its back jiggling back and forth without holding on while I was cooking her dinner. And more to the point, climbed back off it again without ending up in a big heap on the floor :o)

Millions of peaches, peaches for tea

2008-05-14T22:27:00.008+01:00

Yesterday was a pretty good day, Hannah started off with a big bowl of cheerios again, eating loads. For lunch she had a marmite sandwich (love it or hate it, right?) and a banana, and followed this up with potato wedges for tea. Pudding was a nice fresh peach, which Hannah sat and munched her way through (after chucking her potato wedges on the floor mainly). There was nothing left of the peach except for the stone in the end, so I gave her a second peach and the same thing happened! Personally I didn't think that much of those peaches, they weren't the nice sweet ones but were a bit sour/tart tasting. Didn't seem to bother Hannah though and she happily ate her way through the pair of them.

The poor girl is still being fobbed off with rubbish meals though, I think she's looking forward to staying with Grandma next week as she stands more chance of being well fed!

Today was cheerios for breakfast again, same old same old. Lunch was a cheese and cucumber sandwich and a peach again - this time the peach ended up on the floor mostly. She also had a few raisins on her tray while I was making the sandwich, but these also ended up mostly on the floor - very unusual since Hannah normally goes for raisins in a big way. For dinner she had beans on toast, the first time she's had them for absolutely ages, and boy were they popular! She sat and carefully picked all the beans off the toast and ate them, then came back for the toast and sucked all the bean juice out of the bread. She was funny to watch, especially since she's figured out that sucking her fingers and hand after she's been handling beans also tastes good.

She's recently started opening her hand right up to get to the last bit of food inside it, so I quite often see her with a hand plastered across her face. It's got more frequent over the past two weeks, and now is pretty much a daily thing.

Feeling hot hot hot!

2008-05-12T22:19:00.004+01:00

Well it's still baking hot down here (and I've still got poorly tonsils, boooooo). Hannah's drinking loads so she's obviously feeling it too. Breakfast today was the usual bowl of cheerios, and she had a nutella sandwich and a banana to eat at lunchtime. I gave her some raspberry flavour milkshake to drink, and she really went for it - which surprised me a bit, as it was an experiment to see if she would drink milk straight from the fridge. Turns out she will, at least if it's raspberry flavoured!

Dinner was an omelette with peas, cherry tomatoes and grated cheese in it. To my surprise Hannah ate the lot - I turned away to refill her sippy cup and when I looked back, I thought she'd just dropped it. No, it had disappeared. She followed this with a cereal bar and two fromage frais.

She's also eaten two handfuls of raisins over the course of the day. I think raisins are my new best friend, Hannah loves them and they're clean, portable, handy snack items! She doesn't even need a bib on to eat them, which has to be a good thing...

Weekend Update

2008-05-11T22:00:00.002+01:00

Poor Hannah's been fobbed off with easy food for the past few days, as I've come down with tonsilitis (ouch!). According to my family health book, this means I am most likely under 10 years old and my mum should be feeding me food that's easy to swallow. Mum, are you listening? ;o)

Anyway, with that all going on Hannah had sandwiches to eat on Friday and Saturday, plus some cherry tomatoes, cucumber sticks, raisins, breadsticks, grapes, pear quarters, more raisins, and water. And, of course, shreddies or cheerios for breakfast.

Today she's eaten rather better, and had a sausage (chewed a bit then chucked on the floor) with mash (eaten) and two yorkshire puddings (devoured) along with some gravy for her lunch. Dinner was two slices of cheese on toast, about 1 1/2 slices got eaten. And breakfast was cheerios and some halved grapes.

I've forgotton to take photos too, so here's a random one of Hannah playing in her camper van ball pool that Aunty Jo bought for her birthday - as you can see, she's quite keen on it:

Sunny days

2008-05-08T22:19:00.004+01:00

Today has been fairly unremarkable, except for the vast quantities of food Hannah has eaten. Breakfast was a huge bowl of cheerios, and ever fewer of them get dropped or otherwise wasted these days.

Lunch was a quorn fillet, and I don't know what I managed to do to it during cooking but it was revolting, so Hannah ended up with a sausage instead. She had two yorkshire puddings and lots of peas to go with it, followed by 6 pear quarters.

When she got up from her afternoon nap she was really hungry, so I gave her 3 roast potatoes that were meant to go with lunch but weren't ready in time. These swiftly got demolished, along with a handful of raisins. Shortly afterwards she had dinner, a slice of bread and butter, three more roasties, some cucumber chunks and halved cherry tomatoes. Pudding was another pear - it's a toss up whether she'll look more like a raisin or a pear in the morning! 20 minutes after finishing dinner Hannah drained a full bottle of milk too - I think we can definitely call it a growth spurt.

That's not to say that Hannah's attention is always on her dinner though:

She's a climber!

2008-05-07T23:14:00.004+01:00

It was a day of firsts today, although not on the food front. Breakfast was shreddies, lunch was pasta with cherry tomatoes, a couple of black olives, and a sauce made from tomato puree and cream cheese. Pudding was some pear quarters. Hannah threw all of it except for the pear onto the floor - she might have eaten a couple of bits of pasta, but I'd be surprised if it was more than that.

Her dinner was a peanut butter and jam sandwich, and she happily sat and ate through the whole lot. It was accompanied by some raisins and a cereal bar, again these all got eaten.

Hannah also decided she needed an afternoon snack, unexpectedly! She ate a big handful of raisins and three apple rice cakes, and drank a fair bit of water too.

So what is this first she's managed? She climbed the stairs all by herself (under supervision once we realised what she was up to), and was discovered in the backroom playing with her stacking cups that she'd got off the end of the bath. Now we just have to teach her how to get back downstairs...

Soggy Hannah

2008-05-06T22:32:00.004+01:00

Hannah ate loads today! She had a huge bowl of cheerios for breakfast, and only left about half a dozen or so. She also drank a fair amount of water from her sippy cup. Since the weather warmed up a couple of days ago she's drinking a lot more water than normal. I thought it was partly related to her teething (still no further on with that project by the way) but that's eased off and she's carrying on.

We ate lunch out on the patio, and Hannah had three slices of quiche, half a dozen cherry tomatoes, a cream cheese sandwich (one slice of bread) and three slices of melon. Again she drank quite a bit of water too.

Hannah wasn't very interested in her tea (served on the patio again). I offered her two rice cakes with hummus, some potato salad, an organix date and banana chewy fruit thing, and some banana milkshake. I made the milkshake with a banana, a fromage frais, and some full fat milk to thin it out a bit. I gave it to her in an open cup, but she wasn't all that interested. We also tried it with a straw, but mostly she wanted to take that out and chew it. In fact she spent far more time munching on the straw than she did with the entire rest of the meal!

After tea once I'd wiped up Hannah and the high chair, I poured some water into the tray and let her play with that. It took mere milliseconds for her to realise that if she slapped her hands down into it I'd get soaked...

Happy 1st Birthday Hannah!

2008-05-05T18:04:00.002+01:00

Wow, Hannah is now a whole year old (well a year and a day, technically!). Yesterday she had her first ever birthday party, and celebrated by mostly eating chocolate...

We've not managed to update for a while as she's also started teething AGAIN. It looks like she has three or four either premolars or molars on the way through all at once, and she's been running a temperature since Friday between 38 and 40 deg C. Industrial quantities of calpol and ibuprofen have helped, but it's meant we (all of us) haven't had all that much sleep since Friday (yawn...). It also means Hannah's not eaten an awful lot of food, either.

She's managed her breakfast as normal every day, lots of shreddies or this morning bowl of cheerios on the patio. Lunch has been more hit and miss - her birthday lunch was five (yes, 5!) jaffa cakes. She also managed a nibble of aunty Jo's special ladybird birthday cake during the afternoon. For tea she ate a boiled egg, some halves of grape, a banana and a couple of rice cakes with caramilised onion hummus spread on them.

Today's lunch was some fruit jelly (left over from the party), plus an egg mayo sandwich and two slices of quiche. She also had a small bit of my neopolitan icecream, and a bit of Neil's too. She seemed to really like it, and I guess it helped with her sore gums. For tea she's just eaten two slices of melon, a banana, and two rice cakes with caramelised onion hummus on. She also had a snack this afternoon, a largeish handful of sultanas plus two apple flavoured rice cakes.

We've been trying to get lots of (nice and cool) water into Hannah while she's been running this temperature too, and she's co-operated pretty well, drinking lots of sippy cups full.

A furry peach

2008-05-01T22:31:00.006+01:00

Yesterday Hannah ate shreddies for breakfast, then she had gnocchi with a passata based sauce for lunch followed by a slice of carrot cake that Neil brought home. She was quite keen on that (no surprises there!).

Dinner was two slices of cheese on toast, which again she made short work of. I didn't give her any pudding as she was too tired really.

Today, shreddies for breakfast again. Lunch was pasta with tomato sauce and grated cheese stirred through. Hannah ate lots of it this time, or at least she seemed to although there was a fair amount in her lap that I discovered during Operation Cleanup. For pudding she had a peach, and seemed entertained by the furry skin - up until now she's not come across peach skin. It didn't stop her eating it though, or attempting to eat the stone out of the middle either. I think that means she liked it... :o)

For dinner there was a sandwich filled with mashed banana and cream cheese. She also had the banana and cheese mix that didn't fit in the sandwich served off a spoon, along with a couple of little organix animal biscuits and some halved grapes. She ate the lot, too!

Strawberry shortstuff

2008-04-29T22:28:00.004+01:00

Today Hannah ate shreddies for breakfast, and for lunch had two slices of toast, once with cream cheese on and the other a mixture of cream cheese and guacamole. She seemed to really like both of them, and definitely sucked the topping off both slices quite thoroughly. Pudding was a cereal bar and a banana, gratefully received.

For dinner Hannah had scrambled egg, and strawberries for pudding. She was so keen on the strawberries that she even managed to eat them from her bowl without chucking it on the floor, emptying it onto her head, or anything else that's messy. Wonders will never cease!

Sausage and mush, sorry mash

2008-04-28T22:32:00.005+01:00

Shreddies for breakfast again this morning, and for lunch there was half a BLT sandwich, and a fajita with sour cream, guacamole, tomato, salsa, um I think that might be it! Hannah attacked the BLT first and ate most of it before moving on to the fajita. She liked that too, although it was the first time she'd tasted anything remotely mexican (not that an Old El Paso fajita kit really counts...). She had fromage frais for pudding, but didn't believe me when I told her that the pot was empty and she'd eaten it all:

Dinner was sausage and mash with gravy, and my goodness but that child knows how to make a mess! She enjoyed the sausage, and the mash too, and ate loads of it. But towards the end of the meal she mostly took to bashing her hand down on the mash to create a thin layer of it across the high chair tray. Or using it as edible playdough and randomly squishing it then biting chunks off her carefully arranged sculptures. Oh, and she mushed some into her hair, and rubbed her eyes with fists full of the stuff. If we'd been outside they'd have called it performance art :o)

Another triple update

2008-04-27T22:39:00.004+01:00

Hannah's been suffering from a cold for the past few days, but apart from her cough sounding like she's on 40 a day at least, she's basically fine. No medicines necessary, which is a nice change!

Breakfast has been shreddies, except this morning when it was cranberry wheats as she's eaten all the shreddies (we bought a new box earlier though, don't worry!). She followed her shreddies with a banana on Friday, as she still seemed really hungry despite the hundred weight she's already eaten.

Lunches have been two slices of eggy bread today, a sandwich, and a sliced banana with raspberry fromage frais mixed through. Yesterday she had a slice of cheese and onion quiche, with some potato salad, some cherry tomatoes and a few bits of sweetcorn.

For dinner, she's eaten veggie carbonara, and today she had baked tomatoes this time with a bit of sour cream on top rather than mozzerella as I didn't have any of that in the fridge. She got on pretty well with it all, ate a surprising amount of the pasta, and generally had fun. On Friday night she had egg mayo served in two yorkshire puddings - a strange combination, but Hannah really liked it and steadily worked her way through the lot. Along with the peas and sweetcorn it came with.

Nothing spectacular has happened in the past few days, so there's not really much more to say than that. Although Hannah did go out to play in the garden for about the first time this year, the weather was (briefly) so nice on Saturday, hurrah!

Friday:

Saturday:

Sunday:

Late late late!

2008-04-23T23:03:00.006+01:00

Hmm, we have been missing in action for a few days! So what's been happening since Monday...Obviously Hannah has eaten shreddies for breakfast every day, and tons of them too, I still have no idea where she's putting them but the European shreddie mountain is getting smaller by the day.

Lunch on Monday was out and about, but Hannah didn't want any of the tomato and mozzerella panini I bought for us to share. She did manage a banana and date fruit chew, a couple of rice cakes and an apple and orange cereal bar. She wasn't especially enthusiastic about any of it though.

Hannah mega-napped on Monday afternoon and I had to go and wake her at 5pm. She was very clingy and miserable and not remotely interested in food, so didn't have any tea at all. Her temperature was very high (39.6 C) so I just dosed her with Calpol and gave her milk, which fortunately she did take.

Tuesday was slightly better, her temp had gone and she ate lots of shreddies for breakfast again. For lunch she had toast, and for tea I gave her some pasta with a bit of tomato puree and cream cheese sauce with mushrooms and cherry tomatoes in it. She still wasn't all that interested, but at least she sucked the insides out of some of the bits of ravioli.

Today, Hannah woke up with tooth number 8 clearly visible. So that might explain the temp and how miserable she's been this week, at least I hope that's the reason! She's not needed any calpol today, but has put away about a ton of shreddies (well two bowls full anyway).

Lunch today was a cream cheese sandwich, some carrot sticks, a cereal bar, a banana and some cottage cheese. She peeled the top off the sandwich and flung that on the floor, although she did eat the bit of bread with the cream cheese on at least. The carrot sticks went down well, as did most of the banana. The cottage cheese was a bonus extra as it was from my plate but she seemed to enjoy it.

For tea, well who decided that giving babies soup was a good idea?! The dining room is currently sporting an interesting spatter pattern of tomato soup. It was a tin of tomatoes, some herbs, a few mashed chick peas to thicken it, and a tablespoon of creme fraiche stirred through. Hannah seemed to really like it so it might make further appearances on the menu but only after I've cleared up properly from the first! She had chunks of bread that I dunked in the soup, and while I did give her the spoon and bowl (holding the bowl down to prevent disasters!) she mainly held the spoon in one hand while using her other hand to get at the soup. With mixed success. Note one hand holding the spoon here:

More shreddies please, I'm Hannah!

2008-04-20T23:26:00.005+01:00

Quiet day today, Hannah started it off with two huge bowls of shreddies. Goodness knows what she's refuelling for, it's got to be something big!

For lunch she had a sausage, served with some peas and cauliflower. She liked the peas again, and seemed to enjoy chasing them round her tray, but not as much as she liked the sausage. Once that was in her grasp she didn't really let go of it until she'd eaten it. Please excuse the Christmas bib in the pic, all the rest were in the wash!

Dinner was a bit mixed, and she had a couple of rice cakes with cream cheese, a fromage frais, some veggie crackers, halved grapes, bits of mango, a dried apricot and a prune. She did much better with the dried fruit this time than last, we're putting it down to the increased number of teeth for her to bite through the skin with. Halved grapes caused her no problems, which was good as I still haven't forgotton the issue of the whole grape!

Update: Photos now added!

Party Girl

2008-04-19T23:21:00.006+01:00

Hannah had shreddies for breakfast today, a pretty big bowlful of them too. She seemed to enjoy them as much as ever, which is always nice to see.

For lunch Hannah was meant to have jacket potato and grated cheese. She picked a bit of the grated cheese off and ate it, then nicked a slice of eggy bread off Neil and ate that instead. It apparently was much preferred over the potato, some of which Neil ate in lieu of his eggy bread. So perhaps we should call this a mix and match meal?

This afternoon Hannah attended her first first birthday party. While we were there she ate some poppadum, some onion bhajee along with cucumber and tomato, and obviously some birthday cake too. She also had a bit of water straight from a 500ml bottle, as silly mummy forgot to take the sippy cup out with us.

When we got home, she also had a sandwich. Half of it was cream cheese and marmite, the other half was cream cheese and jam. All went well, although we were a bit short on fruit and veg today, must do better.

Fruity!

2008-04-18T22:22:00.004+01:00

Hannah was stuck with own brand shreddies for breakfast this morning, as that's what Neil managed to get hold of at the shops yesterday. She got on with them just as well as the normal branded shreddies, so no complaints there. However when it came to the clean up operation I found them slightly more difficult to peel off the muslins and floor. I'm not sure yet whether that was because I put more milk on them so they were soggier than normal, or whether they somehow are inherently stickier. Will observe and report back!

For lunch she had three oatcakes, two spread with cream cheese and one with butter and marmite. The marmite one made her judder again - she seems to be doing that more and more these days on a wider variety of foods, even stuff she's tasted before. She also had some raisins, a pack of cheesy poofs and a pear. Then she had her special dotted lines staring at my fab ice lolly, so I let her try some (just the strawberry flavour bit from the middle). That made her judder, a lot. She seemed fascinated by the whole thing though, and even though it made her pull some very funny faces she kept coming back for more. Of course I let her have more, since it was proving quality entertainment at the time...does that mean I'm a Bad Mother??? I did call a halt to the experiment after she bit a largish chunk of lolly off, and sat there pulling faces trying to melt it as quickly as she could, lol.

Tea was a much more sensible affair, she just had a large fruit salad with pear, peach, apricot and a huge number of strawberries in. She ate all the strawberries too, 150g of them! She was deliberately picking them out in preference to anything else offered. Oh and I nearly forgot, she also had a chocolate biscotti at Diane's house earlier this afternoon. She loved it, and managed to make very little mess even though she was cruising/crawling round with it in her hand and/or mouth. Not one to waste food, especially when it's chocolate flavoured!

Here's some video I took of her eating her fruit salad...she's quite chatty in it, as you will hear!

Fast food

2008-04-17T21:44:00.003+01:00

Shreddies for breakfast today, and that was the end of the packet. She'd have quite liked another bowl so had to put up with a few of my cranberry wheats.

For lunch Hannah ate a sausage, some cauliflower and about a ton of peas. I cooked her some carrot to go with it, but so far as I could tell she didn't actually eat any. Perhaps it was just too orange for her? She also had a pear and a fromage frais for pudding. Not quite as good with handing the spoon back for reloading today as she was yesterday, but it only ended up on the mats twice rather than after every single mouthful, so I definitely think she's realised that it takes longer to get more when she flings it across the room.

We were out visiting friends this afternoon, and while we were there Hannah ate about two breadsticks - although they came in small pieces so it was hard to tell. Tea happened very quickly when we got home, and she just had two slices of toast with cream cheese spread on top.

Hannah Gets the Giggles

2008-04-16T21:20:00.008+01:00

This will be a quick update of the last two days. Breakfast yesterday was cheerios and a few shreddies, and today it was shreddies as we're out of cheerios. Hannah also had a few of my cranberry wheats - out of my bowl too, cheeky minx.

Lunch today was pretend carbonara, pasta spirals with creme fraiche and some baco bits stirred through. She followed this up with some grapes and a quartered pear as well as a fromage frais. We had a breakthrough with the fromage frais, too. For the first time ever, Hannah held the spoon out for me to take off her after each mouthful. Normally it's hit and miss whether it ends up on the floor, on the cat, on the highchair somewhere...you get the idea! So a definite step forward, hopefully it'll happen next time too.

Yesterday Hannah had some potato wedges, plus some butterscotch flavour angel delight for pudding - she ate loads, which was rather disappointing as we were sharing it and I didn't get as much as I expected to!

Dinner yesterday was baked tomatoes and pesto, again Hannah ate loads - 4 tomatoes to be exact, followed by half a dozen grapes, 1 1/2 pears and precisely no segments of orange.

The orange was too tart for her, she pulled a face and did a whole-body judder when she tasted it. She scared me a bit with the grapes, she put them in her mouth whole and while she did bite into them the chewing was...well frankly she couldn't be bothered with the whole idea of chewing. She tried to swallow two grapes whole, and we had a moment before she managed to spit them out. However all was fine, and my heart rate slowed down eventually!

Today for dinner, Hannah ate two slices of cheese on toast. She ate all of it, including the toast all except a couple of crusts. And for some reason she got the giggles, so obviously I had to get a video of it - nothing to do with the fact I was pulling faces at her, I'm sure!

Happy Hannah

2008-04-13T22:07:00.005+01:00

Hannah has spent most of today giggling. No idea why, but it was very nice to hear :o) She's also eaten a fair amount, starting with a big bowl of cheerios and a banana for breakfast.

We all had BLTs for lunch, well a veggie vesion and without any lettuce since I ate it all in the week. Hannah started by dismantling her sandwich, and to start with she concentrated on the bread and tomato. Eventually she picked up a piece of quorn bacon and gingerly tasted it, then decided that actually it wasn't too bad at all, then didn't let go of it until she'd eaten the lot. She also had a plum for pudding, although only about a third of it got eaten. Here's her reaction to her BLT:

Dinner was a pack of cheesy poofs, some rice cakes, a plum and some apple slices cooked by that nice Mr Tesco and put in a tin for us. Hannah nearly ate the entire tin of apple slices, although they were a bit mushy and rather too like puree and points for her to manage very well. In the end we resorted to me holding some of the mush on the end of my fingers, then Hannah leaned forward and helped herself if she wanted it. Turns out that idea is quite dangerous, as she hasn't realised that biting is bad. I was a bit more careful after she bit, as well as giving her a bit of a telling off (don't know how successful they are just yet, but never mind!).

Schwings!

2008-04-12T20:40:00.005+01:00

Day two of the new "no morning breastfeed" regime today, and it worked just as well as yesterday. Hannah was perfectly happy to wait for her breakfast until we were dressed and downstairs. She had two (well, one and a half perhaps) bowls of cheerios today. I haven't managed to take any eating pics today, so instead have a pic of Hannah at the park during our post-breakfast walk, playing on the swings:

We ate lunch together, and all had a nut cutlet, roasted butternut squash, sweet potato and normal potato wedges, and gravy. Pudding was a few fresh strawberries. Hannah went mad for the nut cutlet, which she's not tried before, and also ate a lot of the normal potato wedges. The sweet potato and squash didn't get pounced on quite so eagerly but still went down pretty well. She didn't have so much of the funny reaction to the strawberries this time, either, and ate about four of them.

Dinner was pasta, with some cream cheese and pesto mixed through, along with some sweetcorn and peas. Hannah ate most of the peas and sweetcorn, and sucked all the cream cheese and pesto mix off the pasta. She ate a fair amount of pasta too, or at least a fair amount made it into her mouth even if some of it came straight out again and down her front or onto the floor.

Must do better on the photo front though, consider my wrists duly slapped!

Ewww, strawberries

2008-04-11T22:09:00.008+01:00

Hannah had two enormous bowls of cheerios today, probably because I didn't give her a breastfeed first thing. Since her before-bed feed has been formula for a fair while now, it might well be that yesterday was the final feed that Hannah had from me :o( It's a strange thought but we'll see what happens.

Lunch was a chaotic affair, as I'd forgotton that I had to be somewhere until 5 minutes before we had to leave (oops!). So I grabbed some organix carrot sticks and rice cakes, bunged them in the bag and off we went. Hannah ate the carrot sticks on the bus, and when we got back home had some breadsticks, rice cakes and an apple and orange flavoured cereal bar. She drank lots of water too, but it didn't seem like she ate much food - probably because it was so disjointed.

For dinner Hannah had two slices of toast, one spread with cream cheese and the other with peanut butter. She seemed to like the peanut butter (it was the crunchy sort) and ate lots of the toast, too. She also ate a tomato (whole), a very ripe pear (whole), about a dozen raspberries, and three or four strawberries. There's a funny video of Hannah eating the strawberries, they made her judder! They weren't even tart - obviously I had to taste a few to make sure!

Here's Hannah's method of eating tomatoes:

And here she is using the same method on the juicy pear:

No nap = no tea

2008-04-10T22:55:00.005+01:00

Today has been a bit weird, all things considered. Hannah had her bowls of cheerios for breakfast, but we were out and about for most of the rest of the day, which took it's toll on things.

Lunch was a whole pair, half a pack of cheesy poofs, some raisins, some sweetcorn, and a pack of heinz veggie crackers. The ladies sat near us in the cafe were very impressed with Hannah eating a whole pear, and she kept grinning back at them as if to say "I know, aren't I great?".

Tea didn't actually happen, as we didn't get home until after the normal tea time and having had no afternoon nap AT ALL. Hannah was far too tired to eat (and she kept rubbing her eyes, so goodness knows what sort of mess she'd have made with food!) so I gave her extra milk instead. It did the job, and she seemed satisfied with it Not normal practice though.

P-p-p-pick up a pancake

2008-04-09T22:29:00.007+01:00

Hannah had cheerios for breakfast today - two enormous bowls of them! She ate absolutely loads, perhaps because she left lots of room by not really bothering much with her morning feed which was about half the length it normally is.

For lunch we all had pancakes, Hannah's two were filled with chopped fresh tomato, mushrooms, sweetcorn, and grated cheese. Then she had a special one for pudding, with a little bit of nutella and creme fraiche in. She seemed to like this one best - I can't imagine why ;o) - and smeared it all over her face.

Dinner was some of the chopped up veg left over from lunch - red pepper, sweetcorn and tomato - along with two rice cakes with cream cheese, some raisins and a banana. I nearly had to go and fetch her some seconds again, as she merrily ploughed her way through the plateful she had, but she did start to lose a bit of interest towards the end of the banana so the run for seconds was called off at the last minute.

She's still suffering from this cold, it's nearly a week now although she hasnt had a temp since the weekend. It's mainly affecting her at nap times and bedtime now, and her appetite definitely seems to be back to normal. In fact it seems bigger than normal, I guess because she's making up for the days when she didn't eat much at all.

Ooh I could eat an elephant!

2008-04-08T23:10:00.004+01:00

Shreddies for breakfast today, and quite a lot of them too. Hannah fed really well first thing and followed that up with a big bowl of cereal. I thought that would be it for the day and she'd just pick at her food at lunch and tea, but how wrong can you be?!

Lunch was some potato cakes made from last night's leftover mash. I mixed chopped spring onion in with some of them, and while Hannah wasn't especially keen it didn't stop her tucking in. Again she ate loads - easily a normal (ie not baby) sized portion. She followed that up with the rest of the tin of fruit salad that I opened yesterday and again there was none left when she was finished.

For dinner I gave her two slices of toast with cream cheese on, an apple and orange cereal bar, a plum (ignored rather than eaten), and some organix animal biscuits - 2 elephant shaped and one cat shaped. I found the cat curled up on the floor at the end of the meal (typical!), but the elephants both got eaten.

Lean, mean, eating machine

2008-04-07T22:36:00.005+01:00

Hannah ate cheerios for breakfast today, and loads of them too. They're not as tidy as shreddies or mini shredded wheats as she does tend to drop a fair few down her front, but they are much easier to tidy up so on balance probably make my job slightly easier - so I'm all in favour!

Lunch was a pitta bread filled with grated cheese, and a banana. She basically ate all of both items. A bit of banana was squished around and didn't get eaten, but no more than one or two mouthfuls. So very impressive :o) I'm amazed she ate so much of the pitta bread though, I thought it would be too difficult for her to manage. She also ate a few mini veggie crackers, I think they're Heinz ones, they're made from leek carrot and cabbage - sounds horrible doesn't it?!

For dinner she had a babybel cheese, which was completely ignored, and a huge fruit salad. The fruit salad consisted of two slices of melon, plus about 1/3 of a tin of fruit salad in juice. Hannah ate every single piece - I couldn't believe it, and even hunted for where she'd hidden the pieces, but there were none to be found! So she must have had at least 3 of her 5 a day fruit and veg, not bad going for a mini person.

Cheerios are back!

2008-04-06T22:53:00.005+01:00

Yes. cheerios are officially back on the menu. We stopped giving them to Hannah because she was so hungry in the mornings, and frustrated because cheerios were too small for her to get a decent mouthful of them with rudimentary dexterity (blimey two long words in a row, I'll calm down now...). She's much better with her pincer grip now, and she really seemed to appreciate the change this morning, so that was good.

Hannah had a quorn fillet, a baked sweet potato, plus some peas and sweetcorn for lunch. The latter were the only things she was really interested in, the quorn fillet ended up straight on the floor, many times over. The sweet potato joined it initially, but she did get more interested in it towards the end of the meal, when we introduced a spoon to gather up the final few peas and bits of sweetcorn. The sweet potato stuck to the spoon much better than the other vegetables did, too!

Tea was a couple of rice cakes spread with cream cheese, a plum, and a banana. Hannah scraped the cream cheese off the rice cakes with her fingernails, ate that then returned to chewing the rice cakes. Obviously - how else would you eat rice cakes and cream cheese??? Since she smeared cream cheese all over the two halves of plum, too, it proved a bit slippery for picking up. I ended up spearing it with a fork and letting Hannah eat it from that. She spent about half the time chewing on the plum, the other half she chewed on the fork handle instead. No, fork handles not four candles... ;o)

Haven't managed to take any pics of eating today as the battery ran out in the camera - but not until after we'd got this piccy of me and Hannah this morning in the snow:

She can walk!!!

2008-04-05T22:12:00.003+01:00

Never mind the food today, our exciting news is that Hannah took some steps all by herself today for the first time! Only a couple, but three or four times during the day. Each time she was holding the edge of the sofa, and let go to walk to me when I was sat in the middle of the living room floor.

Give her a week, I won't be able to keep up... :oD

So food. Shreddies for breakfast, although definitely not as many as normal. For lunch I did quiche and salad for all of us, Hannah didn't really eat anything though. She had a couple of bits of cherry tomato, bit the cucumber but spat it out, and seemed fascinated by the lettuce. Not, however, to chew. More to rip apart and throw on the floor.

Dinner was a couple of crumpets, some apple and orange flavour flapjack, a fromage frais, some sweetcorn, a mushroom, and a pear cut into quarters. She wasn't very interested in any of it though, and most ended up on the floor.

To top all of that off, she didn't even drink as much milk as I'd have expected given that she only really had one decent meal all day. Hopefully her appetite will be back to normal in the next few days. At least there was no sign of a temperature today.

Poorly Poppet

2008-04-04T22:07:00.004+01:00

Well Hannah's got a stinker of a cold, it's official. And the fab medised is now not recommended for under 2s, apparently it's new advice and doctors have said there's no evidence to show that it, or anything similar, actually helps treat the cold symptoms. But since we've got half a bottle of it left, she's been dosed up with it regardless, and at least it's brought her temp down. She's been very limp and cuddly all afternoon (extra cuddles for mummy, hurrah!).

Anyway, onto the food she's eaten today. Shreddies for breakfast, and quite a few of them too, although not quite the huge amount she normally manages. It was probably the best meal of the day.

For lunch Hannah had two slices of beans on toast. She ate probably half of the beans and a quarter of the toast I gave her, but drank a huge amount of water - I had to refill her sippy cup part way through the meal. I think that must be down to her cold, probably because she's breathing through her mouth and it and her throat are getting dryer than normal. It's not affecting her smiling muscles though:

Tea was two slices of melon, a banana and four cherry tomatoes. She ate the cherry tomatoes pretty well, managed just less than one slice of melon and half the banana at most. I gave her the cherry tomatoes whole this time, she seemed to like biting into them and squirting the juice and seeds into her mouth, even if the tartness did make her judder more than once! It was very funny to watch, her reaction was so extended :oD

Hopefully she'll be feeling a bit better tomorrow though.

Baby it's cold outside

2008-04-03T22:30:00.003+01:00

Hannah's coming down with a cold again I think. She's been sneezing quite a lot and coughing a bit, and is developing a runny nose...doesn't look good, does it?

Anyway, on the food front today she ate shreddies for breakfast, the same amount as normal so was clearly feeling OK at this point. For lunch I gave her some cheese on toast, and she ate about 1 1/2 slices of it, most impressive. In fact, even the toast mostly disappeared.

Tea was a slightly different story, I made her a cheese omelette and cut a pear into quarters. She ate one of the pear quarters, or at least a fair amount of it, and nothing else at all.

She drank more milk before bed than normal, so she's clearly making up for not eating that way, and I gave her some medised before she went to bed which seemed to help. Hope this cold doesnt last long...

Wonderful Wedges

2008-04-02T21:55:00.004+01:00

Hannah had lots of shreddies for breakfast - in fact she had seconds of them! Neil was in charge of this meal, so I don't know exactly how they went down, but they definitely did go down!

For lunch she had a couple of breadsticks to stave off the hunger pangs. Her actual meal was potato and sweet potato wedges and a fromage frais. The standard potato wedges were better received than the sweet variety, which I thought odd as in the past she's clearly shown a preference for sweet potato.

Dinner was two slices of cream cheese on toast, followed by a plum. There was very little toast or cream cheese left after Hannah had had her way with it, although she did leave half of the plum.

She's also got a bit of a sniffle which I suspect is turning into a full blown cold...will have to wait and see on that one, but the medised is primed and ready to go!

Not hungry really

2008-04-01T22:46:00.002+01:00

Hannah ate shreddies for breakfast today and seemed to welcome their return, scoffing a large bowlful. Lunch was a two part affair, part of it on the bus on the way back from Tooting, and the rest after her (very delayed) morning nap. It was two babybel cheeses, some cheesy poofs, a couple of apple rice cakes, two breadsticks, a banana and date fruit bar, some chickpeas and some raisins. The babybel was a hit, Hannah took really big bites of them and kept holding on to them until they were finished. The banana and date bar was also popular, although rather messy, it seemed to leave dark brown smears all over everything that Hannah touched after eating it.

Tea was a quorn fillet with some left over chasseur sauce, which Hannah didn't like much. At least I assume that was the reason she threw it all on the floor, anyway. She also had a plum and a fromage frais, which went down much better.

Accident with the sippy cup today though - it was in the living room and Hannah picked it up to have a drink but I think forgot that she wasn't in her highchair. She leant back and toppled over, cracking her head on the floor. It didn't seem to deter her though, and after a quick cuddle she tried the cup again this time with no injury!

Wibble wobble wibble wobble

2008-03-31T22:37:00.003+01:00

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)

2008-03-30T22:54:00.003+01:00

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

2008-03-28T22:41:00.007Z

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

2008-03-26T22:48:00.005Z

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

2008-03-25T22:13:00.004Z

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!

2008-03-24T21:39:00.005Z

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

2008-03-16T22:39:00.006Z

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

2008-03-14T23:05:00.003Z

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???

2008-03-13T22:45:00.003Z

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!

2008-03-12T22:11:00.003Z

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

2008-03-11T22:20:00.004Z

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

2008-03-10T22:35:00.002Z

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.