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.

Cherries, cashew nuts and other things

Friday:

In a break with tradition, Hannah had shreddies for breakfast. I naively thought they were just wheat with nothing added, but it turns out they've got sugar and other things in too. So they won't be making a terribly regular appearance on the breakfast table even if they make a nice change from cheerios and shredded wheat. Hannah certainly thought they made a nice change, she ate absolutely tons of them.

For lunch she had an organix gingerbread man, some saucy tomato noughts and crosses (corn crisps), a couple of breadsticks and some halved cherry tomatoes. I gave her the gingerbread man because she was creating as I was being slack and late with her lunch, it kept her going for long enough that I could grab the rest of the offerings.

Dinner was baked beans - served on a spoon, which wasn't as messy as you might have thought - plus some halved cherries and a banana. Hannah wasn't really sure what to make of the cherries, she sucked at them a bit but didn't really eat much of them. Cherry juice dribbled down her chin and all over the bib, it all looked quite gory!

Saturday:

Breakfast today was shreddies again, and again they were very well received. For lunch Hannah ate a corn thin with pureed avocado spread on it, a breadstick, some saucy tomato noughts and crosses, an apple and raspberry cereal bar, a banana and a slice of melon. She went at the avocado covered corn thin with gusto, although most of the topping seemed to end up on her face rather than in her belly. She did attempt to use the banana and cereal bar to wipe it off again, with mixed success :o) the flannel at the end of the meal did a much better job!

For dinner, Neil gave her some halved cherry tomatoes, a few cashew nuts, a fromage frais, some halved cherries, a slice of bread with cream cheese. The tomatoes came out of the fridge, and were a bit cold for Hannah to start with, but she went back to them once she'd eaten the bread and cream cheese and sucked all the insides out plus ate some of the flesh. She got on pretty well with the cashew nuts, too - the first time she's tried them. She seemed to really like biting into them and hearing them crunch - new teeth coming in useful! Naturally she ate the entire fromage frais, and was more enthusiastic about the cherries today than she was yesterday.