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.

Cauliflower and mandarin segments

Hannah had lots of new things to try today - but not at breakfast, which was the last of the Raisin Wheats with a dash of whole milk.

Lunch was the first of the new tastes, as well as some old favourites. She had a rice cake with lentil pate on - a thin rice cake, which it turns out are much easier to cut up than the normal thicker ones. This was followed by a steamed carrot and a couple of cauliflower florets, and finally there were some mandarin segments for pudding.

I don't know if you've noticed, but Hannah usually has a combination of hot and cold food at meals. This is because I'm usually in a rush to get something served and in front of her, and she doesn't have much patience with sitting in the high chair waiting for stuff to cool down. So a cunning trick is to offer something cold to keep her occupied while the hot food gets to the right temperature. I have in the past just run things under the cold tap, but I don't find it works quite as well.

Anyway, the cauliflower was dumped straight on the floor after the first taste, and generally greeted with suspicion. After another few attempts she changed her mind and decided to give it the benefit of the doubt - still not the most popular item ever served though. She also didn't pay that much attention to the carrot, in the past this has been a favourite so I'm not sure what was going on there.

Mandarin segments, it turns out, are a lot more sour than I remembered. Oops. To her credit, once Hannah had got over the first taste (see picture), she warmed to them and went back for more. She ate most of them in the end and seemed to enjoy it.

Tea today was tomato, basil and mozzarella tortellini, which I was expecting her to really go for. She did sort of go for it, but I spent the first five minutes of the meal picking pasta up off the floor. Normally stuff is thrown mainly to one side of the high chair or the other, but in a new attack of being perverse, Hannah developed a decent shot put action to alternate sides, so I think I ran the 1500m over the course of the meal. To be fair she didn't throw the apricot halves around quite so much, which was a relief.

To drink today, Hannah had her first taste of juice. We diluted a small amount of fresh fruit juice with a rather larger amount of cooled boiled water. For the first time I had to refill the sippy cup before the last meal of the day, as she'd managed to drink more of it than I was expecting.

In summary then, an interesting day!