More shreddies please, I'm Hannah!

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!

Hannah Gets the Giggles

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!

Easy Peas-y

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

Back on the veggies

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!

Mum, I've dropped it...

Hannah ate shreddies for lunch today and yesterday - I'm rationing her slightly as the consequences were so unpleasant after Sunday's massive portion, so she only gets one large-ish bowlful. Yesterday she did want more, so I gave her a banana. She looked a bit disgruntled by that, and didn't bother eating much of the banana either.

For her lunches, yesterday she had some sprouts (a first), some green beans (another first), a veggie lincolnshire sausage, and half a boiled egg. She prodded the sprouts for a while before trying them, but once she'd decided they were definitely food she actually got on quite well.

The beans went down pretty well, too, although I'm not sure how much she actually ate of them. She did OK with both the sausage and the boiled egg though, and ate a fair amount.

Hannah also seemed to have a meal where everything ended up thrown on the floor at least a dozen times! It's not normally as bad as that, but as you can see here, she knew where she'd left it - she just expects it to be back on her tray when she's ready for another helping.

Today she had two slices of toast spread with lentil pate, followed by a strawberry fromage frais and a few grapes. She ate most of the toast, as well as sucking all the pate off, which always comes as a surprise to me after months of treating toast and bread as disposable serving dishes.

In fact here she is after finishing the fromage frais:

For dinner today I gave her a breadstick while I was sorting it out, as she stood at the stairgate blocking the kitchen door and shouted at me. You'd think the poor girl never gets fed! Anyway, once we moved through and got her settled in the high chair she had a baked potato, with the flesh scooped out and mixed with cream cheese before being replaced. There was also a fruit puree strip (from health food shops) which she liked but couldn't really eat very well on account of it being too tough for her to chew, half a dozen corn crisps, and finally some raisins. For the first time she had absolutely no problem picking up the raisins and getting them to her mouth, and she was actively searching for them off the tray, her lap, the bib, everywhere she thought she might have dropped some!

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)

Hoops a daisy!

Hannah woke up as normal today, but within an hour of getting up was yawning her head off, so after I fed her and got her dressed she went straight back to bed with no breakfast.

We went out to playgroup, and she had a breakfast of sorts while we were out and about, as well as her lunch. Between the two meals she ate a nectarine, some apple flavoured rice cakes, a few grapes, a breadstick, and a pack of saucy tomato organix crisps. Oh, and a gingerbread man too. She also drank most of her sippy cup full of water.

For dinner, we were back at home and I thought Hannah might be particularly hungry after the mixed meals earlier. So she had two slices of toast, covered with spaghetti hoops served up, and ate the lot! Yes, the entire half-size tin (at least all of it that didn't get splattered round the dining room...).

We have a photo of her just starting out on her meal:



And one part way through, she's decided that she definitely likes them:



And here she is trying to reach the plate to help herself to some more:

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.

Introducing snacks

Right, time for another update. We've been rather busy this week so they seem to be coming in pairs rather than daily - sorry about that!


For breakfast on both Monday and Tuesday, Hannah had Shreddies. She definitely likes them, goodness knows why, I think they're nasty! Clearly she has her own preferences. She gets through a significant amount of them, too - I weighed them on one day and there were 45g of them in the bowl, and not many left at the end of the meal. I'm sure that the recommended portion size is 30g, she's definitely got hollow legs!


Lunch on Monday was pasta with cream cheese and tomato sauce, cherry tomatoes cut into quarters, and a quorn "chicken" slice cut into pieces and all stirred together. I gave her a fromage frais for pudding, which was as popular as ever. Part way through the meal Hannah nicked the spoon I was using to get the pasta from the bowl to her tray, and as you can see she quite liked it!



Her lunch yesterday consisted of two spinach and rictotta sausages, half a pack of organix carrot crisp things, followed by half a nectarine. She did really well with the nectarine, and ate the majority of flesh while leaving the skin (yes, that's still happening!).

Dinner on Monday was a couple of oatcakes with boursin spread on them, 3 tinned peach halves, and a gingerbread man. She seemed to really like the oatcake and boursin combo, although it did make her smell rather garlicky afterwards! That improved after I found and removed the boursin she'd stashed behind one ear, though. Kids, eh?

Yesterday's dinner started with a couple of breadsticks that I gave Hannah while I was preparing the rest of her meal, to stop her shouting to tell me she would starving to death if I didn't get a move on. At least I assume that's what all the noise was about, it stopped once she had the breadsticks... I think it's going to be worth having something small to give her as a snack to munch on while I'm sorting out her dinner, if you've got any suggestions other than breadsticks then leave me a comment! Ideally not messy food, as she's generally stood holding on to the gate we've put across the door between the living room and kitchen so only has one hand to hold the food with.


To follow, she ate about half a courgette that I cooked in a little butter, the rest of the organix carrot crisps from earlier, a gingerbread man, and half a dozen grapes that I halved for her.

Quick note on breastfeeding too, while I remember. We're definitely winding down I think, Hannah consistently feeds three times a day, morning, mid-afternoon and before bed. The before bed feed is the one I express, and I've been noticing that the amount I can express is getting less and less. I've sometimes topped it up with some formula (aptamil first, fwiw) but the amount I top it up by always seems to get left - Hannah doesn't want it. So she's taking a significant amount less milk than even just a few weeks ago. I'll keep an eye on things and report back...

No, I'm not starving her...

To all concerned aunties and suchlike, just because I didn't get round to updating this yesterday doesn't mean that Hannah's had nothing to eat since Monday. Yes, Jo, I mean you.

So now that that's sorted, we can get down to business. Hannah had a bowl of shredded wheat fruitful for breakfast, with not much fruit in it (I think we've already eaten it all), and got on very well with them again. She seems to find them less frustrating that cheerios, presumably because she gets a bigger mouthful of food for the same effort. It must be annoying only being able to eat cheerios one at a time, they're so small you'd burn off about as many calories getting them to your mouth as you'd get from eating them!

Lunch was roast potatoes, carrot and parsnip again, and the conclusion on parsnip is definitely a "not fussed", whereas roast potatoes almost all got eaten, crunchy bits and all. She had a banana for pudding and again ate all of it, managing very well with the whole fruit all at once. So I think our days of cutting up banana are definitely over.

Tea was more of a snack-y meal, being a slice of toast with cream cheese spread on it, half an apple flavoured mullerrice, half a fresh apricot, and some seedless grapes. I should have known better than to buy fresh apricots at this time of year, Hannah pulled a face when she tried it, so I ate half of it and it was horrible! Really sour and nasty. So unsurprisingly she didn't really eat much of that at all. The grapes were hit and miss, Hannah was getting quite tired by the time we got round to those, and while she ate some of them, others were basically ignored. The toast, like always, she sucked the topping off and left most of - although we are making progress, a little of the bread did go down.

Crumpet and omelette and other things

Hannah had cheerios for breakfast again today, and we ate all together as a family, which was lovely.

At lunchtime I made her a couple of buttered crumpets, some cherry tomatoes cut in half, some grapes also cut in half, half a banana, a rusk, and a fromage frais (a strawberry flavoured one). The crumpets were just as popular this time as the first time she tried them a few weeks ago. She also drank some well diluted juice out of her new sippy cup - we finally bought a replacement after leaving the original one at someone's house earlier this week.



For tea she ate some of a cheese and onion omelette and a cream cheese sandwich. She definitely seems to eat more bread when it's not been toasted though, strange child!

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas everybody! A bit of a catch up today, on account of having been away for a few days and not posting. Hannah's enjoying her first Christmas, although she's had so many presents she hasn't actually finished opening them yet. Her favourite so far seems to be the small rocking horse she got from her Granny Sue. Keep an eye out for Christmas-themed bibs in our pictures in the next few days, she has one that looks like a Christmas tree from Aunty Jo and Uncle Matt, and one saying "My 1st Christmas", also from Granny Sue.

On Sunday, Hannah ate cooked breakfast, with veggie cumberland sausage, veggie bacon strips, and some fried mushrooms. She liked all of it, even the peppery cumberland sausage. Her lunch was tomato wedges, cucumber, some emmental cheese, followed by some halved grapes and a clementine. Ooh, and she ate a buttered crumpet, too - I nearly forgot that! In fact here's a picture of her enjoying it:


Dinner was eaten at her first ever cocktail party (she's ever so posh, you know!), and was basically cheese and biscuits with yet more grapes for pudding. Oh, and she also ate a strawberry cream flavour Quality Street chocolate during the day that her grandad and I fed her in tiny pieces. She definitely quite liked that, but won't be having any more as a) I don't think they're good for her and b) we've eaten them all!

Yesterday saw a return to cheerios for breakfast, then she ate some lunch at mum's, which was a vegetable omelette followed by halves of grapes, and no dinner at all as we were in the car travelling home - in fact we had to stop in a layby on the A34 so I could feed her. She had a dream feed yesterday too, on account of not having all three of her normal meals,. and took a full 200ml/7oz.

Today, Hannah's eaten cheerios again for breakfast, then she had tomato wedges, cucumber sticks, a couple of oatcakes with hummus on, and a breadstick, with rice pudding for afters. Her dinner today was of course Christmas dinner, including some Quorn roast, roast potato, roast parsnips, carrot, some stuffing and a bit of low salt gravy. She hadn't tasted stuffing before, but certainly seemed to like it. But not as much as she liked the bit of Christmas pudding that we gave her for pudding.



She's also drunk a lot of water out of her sippy cup today, and sucked the end of our champagne cork too (I don't think she got much champagne off it though!). Sadly she wasn't very impressed with her party hat, so it only lasted a few seconds before she had it off and in her mouth for a good chew.

Hannah sniffles

Oh dear, Hannah's got a sniffle. Not sure it's quite a cold yet, but she had me up four times last night, after doing so well with no dream feed too. So she's back on the dream feed for the moment, as it's a good way to get Calpol down her (mix it with the milk).

She's still managed well with her food today despite the sniffle, and had more cheerios than ever for breakfast. Lunch was rice cakes with hummus, a steamed carrot, about 10 grapes cut in half, and a rusk. The hummus all got sucked off the rice cakes (as plates go, they're expensive as you can't reuse them!), the carrot was largely ignored, and the innards were sucked out of the grapes. The rusk was the only item that all got eaten, but I think that's because it mostly dissolves while she gums at it.

For tea I did her a mushroom omelette, three sliced mushrooms, one egg, and a bit of milk. I cooked the mushrooms a bit before adding the egg, and it worked very well. Hannah seemed to really like it, and at least half got eaten - the rest was shredded into very small bits and scattered all over the place. I gave her a pear for afters, but it was less ripe than I thought so she didn't make all that much headway with it. She still seemed to enjoy it though, and there were lots of little teeth marks left on the flesh.

Here's Hannah eating her omelette:

Vegeballs and other things

Breakfast: cheerios
Lunch: vegeballs in tomato sauce and half a rusk

Tea: lincolnshire sausage, avocado, rice cake with boursin, half a rusk and some grapes

Verdict:

Breakfast went down fairly well as usual. Lunch was a success too, which was good as it was the first time Hannah had tried vegeballs (and the first time I'd tried making them, I've put the recipe here). They didn't hold up too well to pressure as she picked them up, and disintegrated more than I thought they would, but most still got eaten. The tomato sauce wasn't too messy either, probably because we didn't actually give her most of it, just the bit that the vegeballs were coated with.

Her tea went down well too, she seemed to prefer the sausage but happily munched away at everything she had. She also managed the grapes really well too, and seemed much more confident picking them up than even yesterday. Some pieces she managed to suck the innards out of (I had cut them in half for her), leaving the skin.

We've noticed in the past few days that she doesn't really chuck food over the side of her high chair any more. Not sure when this started, but we're definitely not having to pick so much up. There's still the food that goes down onto her lap, along her legs, and onto the floor, but not nearly so much.

And no dream feed again last night, but she woke up at 6.10am today wanting a feed. I fed her one side, then put her back to bed. She slept until 8am when she woke wanting her breakfast, but when I fed her she only wanted one side, so her early feed was spread out over two hours! Hopefully we've managed to get enough down her today that she'll sleep longer tonight, but at least I got a bit of a Sunday lie in... :oD

Sleepyhead Hannah

Yay! Hannah slept for a whole 13 or so hours last night! We (OK, I) have been dithering about dream feeds, whether we were just going to drop it or gradually phase it out, how to do it, and so on. Last night we were distracted (ie watching QI on the telly) and completely forgot to go upstairs to get Hannah and feed her. When we realised, it had gone 11pm, so we decided that we'd not make her feed up and instead just suffer the consequences if she woke us at silly o'clock. But she didn't! We'll see whether she carries on in the same vein, but I think/hope that's the end of the dream feed. Now to find something to do with the tag end of a box of formula...any ideas?

No exciting outings this morning (well, apart from a trip to Asda, does that count?) meant that Hannah had time to sit and enjoy her breakfast. Obviously we gave her Cheerios again so she could fully appreciate them. She mainly did this by hiding them in her bib, and I found hundreds of them when I was cleaning it in preparation for lunch. I'm sure she did eat some though.

Speaking of lunch, today she tried some new foods. There was some cottage cheese - served on a small spoon - which after flinging around a bit, Hannah decided that she liked. There were two rice cakes with hummus on, too. Hummus hasn't made an appearance for a while, and she really seemed to like it. No hesitation as there usually is with new foods, so I presume she remembered the flavour. Then there was a breadstick, followed by a clementine and some grapes that I cut in half. Since she hadn't tried either of these before, I wasn't sure how she'd get on, but she was fine. She ate the grape halves, and sucked the innards out of all the clementine segments, without pulling any strange faces!

Here she is showing how she eats clementines:

For tea Hannah tried a slice of quiche that I saved from our lunch, plus a banana and a (local) apple, I can't remember what kind but possibly a russet. She enjoyed the quiche but found that it disintegrated rather quickly, went for the banana more than the apple, but when eating the apple actually sounded like she was eating it - we could hear her crunching away at it with her two little teeth.