A fruitful day

Not bad today. Despite her cold, Hannah tucked into her cheerios this morning, and got on fairly well with her lunch which was sweet potato, carrot, parsnip and peas followed by a clementine.

It was the first time she'd tried peas, and she was quite nonplussed to start with. Turns out peas are quite wily, and they kept running around the tray while Hannah chased them down. She did eventually manage to pick them up, and seemed to like them once they made it into her mouth. Everything else on the menu was an old favourite, and she tucked in, although not with quite as much gusto as normal, I guess because of her cold.

For tea (after our Christmas shopping expedition) she had a quick slice of beans on toast, and a rice cake with unsalted butter and marmite on. She really went for the marmite this time, and the beans too. Still not much progress with the toast, it's basically a disposable plate as far as Hannah's concerned. Having said that, she did actually bite a small piece off the toast today, but spat it out after a couple of chews. The beans were a different variety today, too. We bought Branston 50% bigger beans, which I thought might be easier for her to pick up. To be honest they didn't seem much bigger, so if they weren't the same price anyway it wouldn't be worth it I don't think.

Here's a pic of Hannah chasing her peas at lunchtime:

Malt loaf and cheerios

Hannah tried cheerios for breakfast today. They turned out to be smaller than I expected, but she did better than I thouht she would considering the size. Lots of pincer grip practice! She seemed to eat most of the serving I gave her too, which is always nice to see.

Lunch was two rice cakes spread with sweet potato mash, some swede mash, a slice of melon, and two sticks of malt loaf with a bit of butter spread on them. The rice cakes were brought into play because the sweet potato mash was too soft and difficult for Hannah to handle. It worked quite well, and I can see various mashed thins being served on rice cakes in future. She didn't pay much attention to the swede mash other than to smear it over the high chair tray, but the malt loaf and the melon were both well received. The malt loaf in particular was given a severe beating, she went at it relentlessly for a good ten minutes or so.

For tea I cooked her some pasta and served it in a veggie carbonara type sauce. The sauce was double cream, parmesan cheese, and some baco bits out of the cupboard. Mostly she sucked the sauce off the pasta (again) but I think some did go down this time too. The sauce tasted lovely, so it might make an appearance on the adult menu soon, yum (I'm sure Hannah didn't mind me pinching some of her tea to taste it...).

Still no pics, but the house should get put back to normal tonight or tomorrow so hopefully normal service will be resumed shortly!

She had seconds!

Hannah ate loads today, I can't believe it!

Breakfast was two slices of toast, one with raspberry jam and one with blackcurrant jam. Once again Hannah ate none of the toast but the butter and jam was entirely sucked off. I'm not sure that it's good for anyone to survive on butter and jam but Hannah seems to be doing OK so far.

For lunch she had a couple of rice cakes with lentil pate, plus half an avocado cut into fingers, and some emmental cheese. She did really well with the rice cakes today, and the cheese, but the avocado wasn't as ripe as I thought it was so she didn't eat as much of that. Pudding was a rusk and some mandarin segments. Perhaps unsurprisingly after her first try of them, Hannah ignored the mandarin completely other than throwing one or two bits onto the floor. The rusk, however, was completely eaten, for the first time ever! I felt so proud of her it was ridiculous :o) And I gave her another half a rusk, and that all got eaten too!

I was expecting her breastfeed before tea to be on the short side, but it wasn't noticeably different from normal, which surprised me. Tea itself was a breadstick, some swede mash, and some sweet potato mashed up. She liked all of it but had some difficulties with the mash, I think it wasn't solid enough for her really.

There are no photos today, as we've had workmen in fixing a leaky pipe so it's all been a bit chaotic. The good news is that the pipe is fixed and the water is back on though, hurrah!

I was wondering, by the way, about this whole baby led weaning thing. It seems that people doing BLW are more likely than other people to be using cloth nappies. I don't know how true that is, it's just an impression from talking to other people doing something similar - do let me know if it's true or not, leave a comment below.

For the record, we currently favour Tots Bots Bamboozles and Original cotton, with Motherease Airflow wraps in the day and Tots fleece wraps overnight. I can tell that this weaning lark is working, we've had to move Hannah up into the size 2s in the past few weeks, so her cousin George will be borrowing the size 1 nappies and wraps.

Cream cheese face pack

Apparently avocado and jam make a good combination of flavours - at least Hannah thought so judging by the way she was shoving multiple pieces of toast into her mouth at breakfast today.

Lunch was courgette cooked in butter (in the microwave), a rice cake spread with cream cheese, and a tomato that I skinned and cut into quarters. She liked the tomato, although was suspicious of it to start with. Once she got over that though, she took each piece in turn, sucked all the seeds out of the middle and nochalently dropped the flesh over the side of the high chair tray onto the floor. The cream cheese off the rice cake ended up mostly as a face pack (again), and the courgette was gummed to death and the stringy bits discarded. Sadly I wasn't quick enough with the camera to get a picture of her wearing the cream cheese, she wiped most of it off again with some courgette.

I think we'll be getting the bath out again later today...

Update: Hannah woke up just before we had lunch, so ended up joining us and ate two bits of mushroom and emmental ravioli with creme fraiche and red pesto topping. Not quite what I had in mind as her intro to pasta, but never mind!

Lunch AND Breakfast

Happy half birthday to Hannah, she's 6 months old today. We celebrated by letting her have two meals today, instead of the one she's been used to.

Breakfast was done en famille again, Hannah had wholemeal toast, one slice with unsalted butter, one with seedless raspberry jam - didn't offer marmite today. It definitely works better when it's cut into four fingers per slice, so that's what we did today. Received well again today, but I put too much jam on one bit of the toast, so Hannah was rather sticky by the end of the meal.

Lunch was a rice cake with cream cheese spread on it, a steamed potato cut into fingers, some emmental and red leicester fingers, and finally some melon chunks for pudding. Hannah wasn't very impressed with the potato, and I don't think she spent much time trying to eat it, it mostly got thrown on the floor. The rice cake was popular, and a surprising amount of it disappeared, I assume she swallowed it. The cheese was gummed at but not much actually went down, and the melon was just as popular as it was the other day. Mind you, she seemed to spend most of the meal blowing raspberrys, I thought we were past that stage but it's back with a vengeance.

In other news, I saw the apron/bibs that Ikea do yesterday, and I'm glad we got ours from the Early Learning Centre, as they're definitely better than the Ikea ones. The problem (in my opinion!) with the Ikea ones is that the plastic bib bit doesn't wrap roundthe body, it's just a sheet of plastic that hangs down. Also they had a pocket at the bottom, which might make a good food catcher, but would be annoying to clean out, Also they only had them in green and blue, one of each colour in the pack.