A swingingly good time

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!).

Happy Hannah

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!).

Ewww, strawberries

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:

Not hungry really

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!

Growth Spurt???

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

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

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

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

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

I don't know why I bother *sulk*

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

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

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

Eat this, mummy!

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

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

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

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

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

Poo, cat biscuits and other things...

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

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

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

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

One of those days, and a better one

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

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

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

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

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

Out to dinner with nothing to drink

Hannah had shredded wheat for breakfast again today, and finished off the last ones, so it's back to shreddies tomorrow. I'm sure she eats more for breakfast than I do, it's amazing!

She also ate tons at lunchtime. I made the pasta carbonara again, and I thought as I was giving the pasta spirals to her that they were disappearing very quickly. I assumed that a fair number were ending up on her lap or down by her sides in the highchair, so didn't really think anything of it. Only when I cleared up, I only found about a dozen or so pasta spirals that were discarded! She must have eaten the rest - including a couple of spoonfuls out of my serving.

Towards the end of the meal I decided to give her the bowl that the pasta was in. It only had a few pasta spirals in when I handed it over, which as it turned out was just as well. She's not really got the idea that not EVERYTHING that you give her during a meal is edible:


For pudding she ate two entire slices of melon, plus had a quick look at half a dozen grapes. The melon was much riper than the last one I gave her, I think that's why she didn't really go for the last one so much. This one had that lovely ripe (slightly overripe almost) smell to it, so I had a couple of slices too. Yum yum.

At dinnertime we were out (we went to Kidspace this afternoon, which was fab) and I'd only chucked a couple of packs of food in the changing bag as we left the house. An early entry into the bad mummy handbook? Anyway, so Hannah had apple rice cakes (about 4 or them) and an entire pack of organix crispy corn rings. She did like them, so seemed quite happy. I also forgot to pick up her sippy cup, so resorted to letting her drink out of my enormous (1 litre I think) bottle of water. I held it and tilted it for her, she knew exactly what to do with it and managed to get a drink from it far easier than I thought she would. Not perhaps was I'd planned for dinner, but it sufficed :o)

Superbaby!

Hannah ate shredded wheat bitesize for breakfast yesterday and today, and made good progress with them. I gave her a couple of my cranberry wheats (a Tesco version of them only filled with cranberry puree) and she liked those too - probably better than her own version to be honest!

Yesterday she had avocado slices and cream cheese in a sandwich for lunch - although she mainly tossed the avocado on the floor, licked the cream cheese off the bread then threw that away too (grrr!). She did devour the apricot fromage frais I gave her for pudding though, so I suppose it's a case of being thankful for small mercies.

Lunch today was preceded by a couple of apple flavoured rice cakes, which Hannah seems to really like. After that, she had a cream cheese and raspberry jam sandwich and a strawberry fromage frais. She did eat a bit of the sandwich, so better than yesterday. While eating her fromage frais though, she did develop the need to pretend to be Superbaby:

She spotted me eating a slice of cheese on toast mid-afternoon (a VERY late lunch!), and immediately made a beeline for me, clambered up my legs and shouted until I handed over half a slice of it, And being contrary, this time she ate all the bread as well as the cheese topping, and followed it up with a yogurt and fruit digestive biscuit.

For dinner yesterday Hannah ate some corn thins - one covered in cream cheese, and two with homemade hummus spread on them. Personally I wasn't all that taken with the hummus, but Hannah really liked it and ate loads of the stuff - just as well, I made plenty! The recipe was really easy, I'll try and post it up tomorrow. She also ate a banana for pudding - the first time she's managed to eat a banana for a week or two, she's been mostly ignoring them when offered.

Today, Hannah had a baked sweet potato, some more of that homemade hummus, and a strawberry fromage frais for afters. Oh, and a whole nectarine. She spent a lot of time chucking the potato and nectarine on the floor, but objected when she didn't get them back quickly enough, so I'm not quite sure what was going on. I assume she's starting to test my reactions to things - will have to work at ignoring her playing up, I think!

Finally, in other news, Hannah's cousin George had his first ever taste of solid food yesterday - he chomped away at a cucumber stick (also Hannah's first food), as you can see:

George isn't planning to make a regular appearance in the blog, but he might turn up as a special guest on occasion now he's started eating... :o)