Yup, she can definitely walk

How exciting! Just before bedtime Hannah excelled herself by walking from where I was sitting, over to the sofa where the cat was sitting on the arm. About 6-8 ft or so, and she didn't fall over once! I lost count of how many steps she actually took at about 15!



Hannah had cheerios for breakfast today, lots of them again, and then we went to playgroup where she had some water and half a malted milk biscuit. I then discovered that these biscuits are easy to mush, and can be smeared into mummy's jeans very effectively by small yet determined fingers. And I thought I'd done all the washing, ho ho ho.

Lunch was scrambled egg on toast after a very delayed morning nap, Hannah did pretty well with it. She ate a fair amount of the egg, and about half the toast too.

For dinner she had a butternut squash and pecan nut roast, along with some peas and part of a strawberry yogurt (we're out of fromage frais for the moment). She wasn't all that keen on dinner, and threw a lot of it on the floor although a respectable amount of the squash roast did disappear.


She's drunk loads of water today, too - I've tried to make sure that water is always available for her during the day, and she is now starting to make more use of it. Not sure if it's a fluke or not but we'll have to wait and see I suppose.

She's also climbed herself onto her small rocking horse this afternoon, and sat on its back jiggling back and forth without holding on while I was cooking her dinner. And more to the point, climbed back off it again without ending up in a big heap on the floor :o)

Feeling hot hot hot!

Well it's still baking hot down here (and I've still got poorly tonsils, boooooo). Hannah's drinking loads so she's obviously feeling it too. Breakfast today was the usual bowl of cheerios, and she had a nutella sandwich and a banana to eat at lunchtime. I gave her some raspberry flavour milkshake to drink, and she really went for it - which surprised me a bit, as it was an experiment to see if she would drink milk straight from the fridge. Turns out she will, at least if it's raspberry flavoured!

Dinner was an omelette with peas, cherry tomatoes and grated cheese in it. To my surprise Hannah ate the lot - I turned away to refill her sippy cup and when I looked back, I thought she'd just dropped it. No, it had disappeared. She followed this with a cereal bar and two fromage frais.



She's also eaten two handfuls of raisins over the course of the day. I think raisins are my new best friend, Hannah loves them and they're clean, portable, handy snack items! She doesn't even need a bib on to eat them, which has to be a good thing...

Sunny days

Today has been fairly unremarkable, except for the vast quantities of food Hannah has eaten. Breakfast was a huge bowl of cheerios, and ever fewer of them get dropped or otherwise wasted these days.

Lunch was a quorn fillet, and I don't know what I managed to do to it during cooking but it was revolting, so Hannah ended up with a sausage instead. She had two yorkshire puddings and lots of peas to go with it, followed by 6 pear quarters.

When she got up from her afternoon nap she was really hungry, so I gave her 3 roast potatoes that were meant to go with lunch but weren't ready in time. These swiftly got demolished, along with a handful of raisins. Shortly afterwards she had dinner, a slice of bread and butter, three more roasties, some cucumber chunks and halved cherry tomatoes. Pudding was another pear - it's a toss up whether she'll look more like a raisin or a pear in the morning! 20 minutes after finishing dinner Hannah drained a full bottle of milk too - I think we can definitely call it a growth spurt.

That's not to say that Hannah's attention is always on her dinner though:

Another triple update

Hannah's been suffering from a cold for the past few days, but apart from her cough sounding like she's on 40 a day at least, she's basically fine. No medicines necessary, which is a nice change!

Breakfast has been shreddies, except this morning when it was cranberry wheats as she's eaten all the shreddies (we bought a new box earlier though, don't worry!). She followed her shreddies with a banana on Friday, as she still seemed really hungry despite the hundred weight she's already eaten.

Lunches have been two slices of eggy bread today, a sandwich, and a sliced banana with raspberry fromage frais mixed through. Yesterday she had a slice of cheese and onion quiche, with some potato salad, some cherry tomatoes and a few bits of sweetcorn.

For dinner, she's eaten veggie carbonara, and today she had baked tomatoes this time with a bit of sour cream on top rather than mozzerella as I didn't have any of that in the fridge. She got on pretty well with it all, ate a surprising amount of the pasta, and generally had fun. On Friday night she had egg mayo served in two yorkshire puddings - a strange combination, but Hannah really liked it and steadily worked her way through the lot. Along with the peas and sweetcorn it came with.

Nothing spectacular has happened in the past few days, so there's not really much more to say than that. Although Hannah did go out to play in the garden for about the first time this year, the weather was (briefly) so nice on Saturday, hurrah!

Friday:

Saturday:

Sunday:

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!

Fast food

Shreddies for breakfast today, and that was the end of the packet. She'd have quite liked another bowl so had to put up with a few of my cranberry wheats.

For lunch Hannah ate a sausage, some cauliflower and about a ton of peas. I cooked her some carrot to go with it, but so far as I could tell she didn't actually eat any. Perhaps it was just too orange for her? She also had a pear and a fromage frais for pudding. Not quite as good with handing the spoon back for reloading today as she was yesterday, but it only ended up on the mats twice rather than after every single mouthful, so I definitely think she's realised that it takes longer to get more when she flings it across the room.

We were out visiting friends this afternoon, and while we were there Hannah ate about two breadsticks - although they came in small pieces so it was hard to tell. Tea happened very quickly when we got home, and she just had two slices of toast with cream cheese spread on top.

Schwings!

Day two of the new "no morning breastfeed" regime today, and it worked just as well as yesterday. Hannah was perfectly happy to wait for her breakfast until we were dressed and downstairs. She had two (well, one and a half perhaps) bowls of cheerios today. I haven't managed to take any eating pics today, so instead have a pic of Hannah at the park during our post-breakfast walk, playing on the swings:



We ate lunch together, and all had a nut cutlet, roasted butternut squash, sweet potato and normal potato wedges, and gravy. Pudding was a few fresh strawberries. Hannah went mad for the nut cutlet, which she's not tried before, and also ate a lot of the normal potato wedges. The sweet potato and squash didn't get pounced on quite so eagerly but still went down pretty well. She didn't have so much of the funny reaction to the strawberries this time, either, and ate about four of them.

Dinner was pasta, with some cream cheese and pesto mixed through, along with some sweetcorn and peas. Hannah ate most of the peas and sweetcorn, and sucked all the cream cheese and pesto mix off the pasta. She ate a fair amount of pasta too, or at least a fair amount made it into her mouth even if some of it came straight out again and down her front or onto the floor.

Must do better on the photo front though, consider my wrists duly slapped!

Cheerios are back!

Yes. cheerios are officially back on the menu. We stopped giving them to Hannah because she was so hungry in the mornings, and frustrated because cheerios were too small for her to get a decent mouthful of them with rudimentary dexterity (blimey two long words in a row, I'll calm down now...). She's much better with her pincer grip now, and she really seemed to appreciate the change this morning, so that was good.

Hannah had a quorn fillet, a baked sweet potato, plus some peas and sweetcorn for lunch. The latter were the only things she was really interested in, the quorn fillet ended up straight on the floor, many times over. The sweet potato joined it initially, but she did get more interested in it towards the end of the meal, when we introduced a spoon to gather up the final few peas and bits of sweetcorn. The sweet potato stuck to the spoon much better than the other vegetables did, too!

Tea was a couple of rice cakes spread with cream cheese, a plum, and a banana. Hannah scraped the cream cheese off the rice cakes with her fingernails, ate that then returned to chewing the rice cakes. Obviously - how else would you eat rice cakes and cream cheese??? Since she smeared cream cheese all over the two halves of plum, too, it proved a bit slippery for picking up. I ended up spearing it with a fork and letting Hannah eat it from that. She spent about half the time chewing on the plum, the other half she chewed on the fork handle instead. No, fork handles not four candles... ;o)

Haven't managed to take any pics of eating today as the battery ran out in the camera - but not until after we'd got this piccy of me and Hannah this morning in the snow:

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

Quiet Sunday

Breakfast today was back to shredded wheats, Hannah ate a reasonable amount of them as normal.

For lunch we offered her some potato cakes, noughts and crosses crisps, and peas followed by a banana. The potato cakes were mashed potato mixed with a bit of grated cheese, formed into little cakes and fried gently so the outside is golden brown - which makes the mash not squish quite so much in Hannah's hands. She initially wasn't very interested in the peas, until Neil cunningly took some off her plate and ate them. This made Hannah immediately pounce on her own peas and eat some, but she couldn't really pick many up at once, so she got bored of them fairly quickly. The banana didn't get much attention either, she only managed around a quarter of it before giving up.

Dinner was a slice of cheese on toast cut into triangles, a slice of melon, halved cherry tomatoes, plus two gingernut biscuits. The triangles of cheese on toast were good, she seemed to like the fact that there was only one side with crust on. She devoured the gingernuts, somewhat unexpectedly as Neil wasn't sure she'd like them because of the strong ginger flavour. In fact she liked them better than the melon, which only got half eaten.

I didn't get a photo of her today, because Neil did her meals, so here's a random pic of her in her new dress sent down by Grandma:

Happy Pancake Day!

Happy pancake day everyone! (Or, as the advertisers would have us believe, happy jif lemon day.) It seemed rude not to offer Hannah the chance of pancakes today, so that's what she had for her lunch - two of them, one with cream cheese in and the other with hummus in. I haven't quite gone so far as to sprinkle sugar on her food...

For breakfast she had half shredded wheat bitesize and half cranberry wheats. It was funny watching her eat them, as once she figured out some had cranberry filling in she systematically went through and bit into each one. If it didn't have filling it quickly got discarded, although she did eventually go back to them once she'd eaten all the cranberry ones.

For dinner Hannah had a slice of cheese on toast, plus some tinned fruit cocktail. All in all though she hasn't really eaten much today, and she hasn't drunk extra milk either. She has, however, been suffering with a horrendous bout of nappy rash - all meals eaten picnic style on towels in the living room as I kept her nappy free for most of the day.

It made life a bit interesting, and rather than put her head down for a rest part way through the meal, since she wasn't in the high chair she had a quick lie down instead!

As for yesterday's food, breakfast was shredded wheat, while lunch was scrambled egg on toast. She didn't eat much of the scrambled egg, but got through a surprising amount of the toast, so yay! Her dinner was a few quorn pieces with peas and carrots. She didn't have any of the carrots, ate about half a dozen peas, and most of the quorn pieces. Not sure what was going on there, as previously she's gone for both carrots and peas in preference to other things.

Fingers crossed her nappy rash is better tomorrow.

Cheerios, couscous and corn thins

In a shock move, Hannah didn't have just cheerios for her breakfast today. Yes, it's true! She ate some of the cheerios, but seemed to be hungry still so we gave her a few bits of shredded wheat fruitful. She really liked them, and concentrated on those rather than the cheerios left on her tray. So perhaps we'll be branching out from the relentless diet of cheerios, who knows?!

For lunch she tried something new, couscous. It was mixed with some chopped avocado, peas, and a serving of lentil pate to try and make it more sticky. She liked the taste and texture of it, but had considerable trouble getting it into her mouth. We eventually reverted to loading a spoon for her, which was somewhat more successful but she still didn't eat a huge amount.

Dinner was a couple of corn thins spread with lentil pate, a rusk, and half a banana. She ate the lot, I've never seen her eat so much of it and we were really surprised not to find huge chunks of it in her lap when we cleaned her up. In fact when she'd finished all of that, she was busily bashing her hands on the tray demanding more food, so we topped her up with a raspberry fromage frais as well - which she ate all of again.

The upshot of a huge dinner was that she didn't really want all of her feed before bed, at least not all at once - I split it into two, as it was expressed with medised added so I wanted to get it down her! Hannah's also not asking for feeds during the day so regularly either, and for the moment I'm going with the flow. She's still getting all four feeds, but not at regular times any more.

Veggies and Pears

Argh, double update again, will try to get better about that! Anyway, two days of cheerios for breakfast again, no signs of Hannah getting bored of them, although I'm starting too. She is getting faster at eating her breakfast, she's gone from taking over half an hour to taking between 15-20 minutes.

Lunch yesterday was all of one breadstick, she wasn't interested in the cream cheese sandwich or the rusk which were also on offer. We were round at a friends for coffee and biscuits and I think she was rather distracted by all the other babies. Today, lunch was very late and she had peas, carrot, parsnip and sweet potato. The peas went down well but she wasn't all that fussed by the other veggies on offer, and mainly threw them on the floor.

Tea yesterday was a quorn fillet with carrot, parsnip, and sweet potato. She ate all of the quorn fillet, and not a huge amount of the veggies again. I don't know what's put her off her veg, time was that she'd go for any veg in a big way. To follow her quorn fillet she ate some tinned pear halves - two pears worth, so as you can tell they were pretty popular. I quite like giving her tinned fruit as it's so much softer than raw fruit - at least for things like pear - and she does seem to get on better and eat more of the tinned stuff. Plus things like peaches are out of season anyway, so I prefer getting them tinned.

Tea today was precisely nothing, she slept through it! I was planning on feeding her at 5.30 ish after her short nap, but at 6pm she was still asleep so I had to go and wake her up, then we were straight into the bedtime routine anyway (she didn't want to get up when I fetched her, either!).

So hopefully tomorrow we'll be back to normal service, two days of effectively just two meals must have short changed her in terms of calories, even though she slept through anyway and didn't seem to want extra milk. Oh, apart from today at about 1pm she did have an extra feed of about 150ml/5oz of expressed milk.

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: