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!).

Fruity!

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!

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!).

No nap = no tea

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.

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...

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!

Eating together - what BLW's all about

We've eaten quite well this weekend, with lots of whole-family meals.



Breakfast on both days was shredded wheat bitesize, and she ate plenty of them. This morning, she finished off her bowl, then signed "more" - it's turning up more and more often, yay! So Neil (who was in charge of breakfast today) gave her a bit of his slice of toast, which she ate. Then she was bashing away at the tray (her normal way of telling us she wants more), so got basically a whole slice of toast as well as her shredded wheat. Some of the toast had marmite on, too.

For lunch on Saturday Hannah ate pizza and garlic bread, along with Neil and me. Shocking I know, and probably far too much salt in for a little girl, too. We let her try a slice of cheese pizza and one piece of garlic bread, and she really liked it:

She preferred the garlic bread though - probably no bad thing! If we share garlic bread with her again I'll make my own with unsalted butter, as I was very conscious that it probably wasn't all that suitable for her...

Today, she had some organix cheese and herb corn crisps and a cream cheese sandwich, plus some tinned peach halves. She didn't go a bundle on the sandwich and kept throwing it on the floor, but ate the crisps and the peach half.

Yesterday's dinner was quartered boiled egg, followed by a fruit salad mixed with fromage frais. The fruit salad included grapes, cherries, melon, peach and banana and once I'd chopped it all up I stirred a raspberry flavour fromage frais into it all. Hannah found it a bit slippy to handle, but she certainly enjoyed sucking the fromage frais off, and ate a fair amount of the fruit too.

For dinner today she had two breadsticks followed by a baked potato with grated emmental cheese, then she ate grapes and hazelnuts too. I didn't intend for her to have those, but Neil took them through for him to eat while she ate the potato. Hannah created until he shared them with her, and got on amazingly well with both - the grapes were rather tart and I didn't think she'd like them, and she'd never tried hazelnuts before. But apart from a minor surprised face at the taste of the grapes, there was no real reaction.

Gnawing a (g)nectarine

Right, I'm finally getting round to updating things after the last few action-packed days. This post covers Wednesday and Thursday, yesterday's food will follow shortly...

So breakfast on both days was shreddies. And on Wednesday we experienced a major milestone! I've been using baby signing with Hannah for the past few months - since we started weaning really - and at the end of breakfast when I signed "finished", she responded with "more". I decided to make the most of it, and gave her a second (much smaller!) bowl of shreddies to reinforce the communication. And was so excited by what she'd done that I immediately phoned Neil to tell him! :o) She did the same thing on Thursday morning at breakfast too, so it doesn't seem to have been a one off. Now I'm keeping a close eye out for any other signs that show up.

On Wednesday, at lunchtime we were out and about, so it was a snack-y meal of what I'd chucked in the changing bag before we left the house. It included a gingernut biscuit (from the plate at the venue rather than one from home), then some organix cheese and herb corn crisps, a couple of breadsticks, some grapes and a gingerbread man. On Thursday she ate a cream cheese sandwich, some cherry tomatoes, some dried fruit and a whole nectarine. It was the first time she's had a piece of fruit whole, and I was amazed how well she did with it. It looked quite comical, as if an adult had been given an entire cantaloupe melon to eat like an apple, but was very effective.

On Wednesday, dinner was a courgette cooked in butter, some baked stuffed mushrooms, and followed by a banana and a fromage frais, but Hannah didn't really eat much of it at all (except the fromage frais, of course, and the filling from the mushrooms). And it looked so nice, too:

The courgette mostly got thrown on the floor, the banana got ignored. I really don't know why, as she hadn't eaten an enormous amount earlier in the day, and she should have been ready for something to eat! Perhaps the double breakfast was still filling her up.

For dinner on Thursday, Hannah ate some organix carrot crisps, a raspberry and apple flavour cereal bar, a gingerbread man, and a slice of cream cheese on toast. There was nothing spectacular to report at all really, so I'll end it there!

Keep smiling,

Cate.