Millions of peaches, peaches for tea

Yesterday was a pretty good day, Hannah started off with a big bowl of cheerios again, eating loads. For lunch she had a marmite sandwich (love it or hate it, right?) and a banana, and followed this up with potato wedges for tea. Pudding was a nice fresh peach, which Hannah sat and munched her way through (after chucking her potato wedges on the floor mainly). There was nothing left of the peach except for the stone in the end, so I gave her a second peach and the same thing happened! Personally I didn't think that much of those peaches, they weren't the nice sweet ones but were a bit sour/tart tasting. Didn't seem to bother Hannah though and she happily ate her way through the pair of them.

The poor girl is still being fobbed off with rubbish meals though, I think she's looking forward to staying with Grandma next week as she stands more chance of being well fed!

Today was cheerios for breakfast again, same old same old. Lunch was a cheese and cucumber sandwich and a peach again - this time the peach ended up on the floor mostly. She also had a few raisins on her tray while I was making the sandwich, but these also ended up mostly on the floor - very unusual since Hannah normally goes for raisins in a big way. For dinner she had beans on toast, the first time she's had them for absolutely ages, and boy were they popular! She sat and carefully picked all the beans off the toast and ate them, then came back for the toast and sucked all the bean juice out of the bread. She was funny to watch, especially since she's figured out that sucking her fingers and hand after she's been handling beans also tastes good.


She's recently started opening her hand right up to get to the last bit of food inside it, so I quite often see her with a hand plastered across her face. It's got more frequent over the past two weeks, and now is pretty much a daily thing.

Party Girl

Hannah had shreddies for breakfast today, a pretty big bowlful of them too. She seemed to enjoy them as much as ever, which is always nice to see.

For lunch Hannah was meant to have jacket potato and grated cheese. She picked a bit of the grated cheese off and ate it, then nicked a slice of eggy bread off Neil and ate that instead. It apparently was much preferred over the potato, some of which Neil ate in lieu of his eggy bread. So perhaps we should call this a mix and match meal?

This afternoon Hannah attended her first first birthday party. While we were there she ate some poppadum, some onion bhajee along with cucumber and tomato, and obviously some birthday cake too. She also had a bit of water straight from a 500ml bottle, as silly mummy forgot to take the sippy cup out with us.

When we got home, she also had a sandwich. Half of it was cream cheese and marmite, the other half was cream cheese and jam. All went well, although we were a bit short on fruit and veg today, must do better.

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!

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.

Much better today

As you can see from the picture above, Hannah's back on her food pretty much, and tucked into a couple of slices of toast first thing. One had marmite on, the other was raspberry jam.

Lunch took place while we were out and about, and was a cream cheese and avocado sandwich, a breadstick, and an organix flapjack. Hannah ate most of everything, leaving maybe a quarter of the sandwich and not much at all of the flapjack or breadstick.

For dinner there was pesto tortelloni, which I gave her covered in cream cheese and tomato puree sauce with a slice of melon for pudding. All of the melon got eaten, but not much at all of the pasta went down.

Hannah did drink an entire sippy cup full of water with her dinner, and at least half a sippy cup full at lunchtime - I think because she's still full of cold so must be losing a fair amount of water through her runny nose and having to breathe through her mouth.

Post-Christmas Update

Time has been flying by and I haven't managed to update the blog with what Hannah's been up to for the past couple of days, so here goes!


On Thursday she had her first taste of trifle at lunchtime, and about chomped our hands and arms off trying to race us to the spoon. A definite fan, it's just a shame I only make it about once a year. It wasn't only trifle for lunch though, don't worry - she also ate a breadstick, a rice cake with vache qui rit on, some grapes and cherry tomatoes that I cut in half, and some cucumber sticks. I can't remember what she ate for dinner though, sorry!


Here's a photo of Hannah and trifle - the trifle has been fighting back...

...but not as much as the beans fought back yesterday!

On Friday she ate cheerios for breakfast, then had beans on toast and rice pudding for lunch before we set off to her great uncle's for the afternoon. While we were there she ate some grapes, a bit of bread and marmite, some boursin on bread, and a slice of quiche.

The quiche was quite crumbly, so she didn't do all that well with it, but the rest was fine and she managed nicely. Then after she'd finished I was eating trifle and she was trying to nab bits off me, so I shared it with her while she was sat on my knee. That was I think the first time I've actually tried to spoon feed her rather than have her feed herself, as she wasn't wearing a bib and we were sat on someone else's sofa! Hannah wasn't that impressed with being fed, and she kept on trying to take the spoon off me - I usually let her have it once the majority of trifle was safely in her mouth.

Out and about

We've all been out and about today, travelling to see my parents. So breakfast was a swift bowl of cheerios at home before departure. Hannah ate lunch at a motorway service station on the M40, fortunately we took a packed lunch with us so didn't have to search for something suitable. She ate three rice cakes, two with marmite and one with raspberry jam on, and a rusk. I was planning to give her a clementine too, but we left it in the car!

Hannah's dinner was our late lunch when we arrived chez the grandparents. She ate some sticks of cheddar cheese, a vache qui rit triangle (messy but tasty), and some veggie sausage plait. The pastry flaked off quite well, although she did manage to eat some of it. It made her cough a time or two as well. The sausage bit from the middle was received quite enthusiastically, but generally she was flagging over dinner due to not really napping all day. Let's hope she settles down OK this evening...

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:

Toast with added toast

Today's meals pretty much all consisted of toast, but the good news is that we went to the supermarket too, so tomorrow should have a bit more variety.

Breakfast was a slice of toast cut into four pieces. Two were spread with marmite, the other two had blackcurrant jam on. I hadn't given her blackcurrant jam, I thought she wouldn't like it because it's quite tart, but Neil was in charge at breakfast and she devoured it! Once the jam had been seen off, the marmite got a look in too, and actually most of the slice was eaten.

Lunch was more toast, this time with emmental cheese on, along with an avocado cut into chunks. Cheese on toast worked fairly well, at least until the toast and the cheese parted company. Hannah certainlyseemed to like it, at any rate. The avocado was rather ripe and disintegrated a bit while she was trying to get it into her mouth, but on the whole she managed fairly well.

I think we'll move up to three meals a day some time this week, so any suggestions on what Hannah might like for her meals would be very welcome!

Poor man's guacamole

I made Hannah some poor man's guacamole for lunch today - just blended an avocado into a paste and spread it on tw0 rice cakes, accompanied by some cucumber chips. It turns out that you can cut rice cakes into fingers really easily with a sharp knife, so that made things much easier.


Lunch was fairly messy, Hannah sucked the avocado off each piece of rice cake. Well apart from the bits that she smeared on her face and the high chair, that is. I reapplied avocado to the rice cake pieces several times, and there's still plenty of it left for tomorrow.


Breakfast was toast with butter, jam and marmite again - not all on the same slice though! And for Rog, giving her marmite does not consistute child abuse I'm sure :oD I do need to find some alternative breakfast items though, not least because we've run out of wholemeal bread.

Best laid plans...

Today was the day we were starting Hannah on two meals a day instead of just one. Note the use of "was" in that last sentence. A combination of teething (again, still nothing to report though) and silly parents going to Ikea at nap time mean that she only had the one meal today, breakfast.

It was nice though - Hannah had two slices of wholemeal toast, cut into fingers, while Neil and I had our cereal and coffee. The toast worked better cut into four fingers rather than three, as those were a bit big for Hannah to manage.

On the toast was a selection of spreads. A couple of bits just had unsalted butter on, some had seedless raspberry jam, and the rest had a tiny scraping of marmite. I only used a really small bit of marmite because of the salt content.

Hannah's reaction to toast was quite funny. She liked the bits with butter on, but she liked the different toppings too - mostly with each piece she sucked the topping off before attacking the toast itself. Her first taste of marmite made her raise her eyebrows, but there wasn't really any other reaction. Later on, she pulled a funny face at another bit of marmite. I think it's a bit early to decide whether she loves it or hates it, at this stage the raspberry jam was definitely more popular!

Hopefully tomorrow we'll actually get both meals served - and she'll be exactly 6 months old, too, so we'll officially be allowed to wean her :o)