A swingingly good time

Breakfast today was more shredded wheat, once again Hannah ate absolutely tons of them - although she wasn't so keen on the ones that hadn't soaked up a fair amount of milk. Tomorrow I think she can have more milk on the cereal, to moisten them a bit more.

For lunch she ate beans on toast, along with part of a whole pear. The pear was a bit crunchy, rather than juicy, so she didn't make all that much progress with it despite managing to eat chunks out of the side and top. Beans were a popular choice, and she even managed quite a bit of the toast, too. Pre lunch she finished an open bag of cheesy poofs - well there were only four of them left!

Apparently beans on toast can be quite tiring though:

Dinner was a cheese triangle sandwich, two slices of melon, and a raspberry fromage frais. Hannah seemed really hungry though so as well as all that she also managed three or four apple rice cakes and a fistful of raisins. Didn't have time to cook anything for dinner, as we were late back from the park where we'd been playing on the swings, slide and dog onna spring (well only Hannah went on the first two, and I only went on the latter with her because she was refusing to hold on!).

More news about teeth...

Grandparents have taken over early morning Hannah duty - which is fab, I've had more lie-ins this week than I have since she was born! And I'm told she's eaten quantities of cheerios and mainly shredded wheat bitesize with a few grapes and suchlike thrown in for good measure.

Lunch yesterday was round at Aunty Jo's house, she kindly provided some roasted veggies - sweet potato, standard potato, and butternut squash. She also had a Heinz chocolate biscotti and a few halved grapes for good measure. Oh, and as George was eating first (we were doing shifts with the high chair) she was also placated with a few organix sweetcorn rings before the meal itself. And in other news she may have had a first taste of mince. Possibly. George was eating chilli, and Hannah was mooching round the kitchen when she discovered that there was food on George's lap. So obviously she helped herself to some, and even seemed to like it. I knew her learning to walk would come back to haunt us sooner or later... ;o)

Today's lunch was tomatoes with pesto and mozzerella, plus some ciabatta bread. She ate lots of it, and was offered a peach for pudding, which she threw on the floor. Eventually she swapped her peach for George's (Aunty Jo and George were visiting again!) banana bread and both babies were happy. You can find the recipe for the banana bread here on Aitch's blog.

Dinner yesterday was a sandwich I think - my memory is faulty, sorry! Today, Hannah ate a pile of falafel, half a pitta bread (originally served with falafel in, but treated as a seperate item by madam), a rapsberry fromage frais, a few strawberries, and a slice of melon.

And more news on the teeth front too. We now have two halves of molars. Sadly, not belonging to the same tooth, so there's clearly more work to do...she has been lots better over the past couple of days though, for example actually going to bed of an evening at a reasonable time and not getting up again (well I've jinxed it now...).

There will be photos added here, once Aunty Jo bothers emailing me copies as they're all on her camera.

Babies who lunch

Hannah and George had lunch together today, which was nice - the grandparents steered well clear though, and left Jo and me to manage the carnage of pasta and sauce. Which was not that bad really, all things considered.

And it was all going so well:

Hannah had bitesize shredded wheat for breakfast yesterday, and a mixture of those and cheerios for breakfast today. I'm told that she was much keener on the shredded wheat - I'd report it myself, but I was having a lie in and the grandparents were in charge, hurrah!

Dinner today was a hummus and tomato sandwich, a packet of cheesy poofs, a slice of melon and a strawberry fromage frais. Her arms were too tired to work the spoon again for the fromage frais, and she only managed about a third of the melon slice before giving up and chucking it on the floor.

Yesterday for dinner she ate a pitta bread filled with hummus and falafel. She really liked the falafel, and having only started with a couple of them she ended up eating everything that was available. She also had an organix apple and blueberry compote (which was very nice, I tried a bit!).

In other news, Hannah has been a nightmare going to bed for the past three nights, and this evening I found half of one of the four molars she's trying to grow has cut through the gum. I'm hoping that this means we're over a teething hump and there'll be some respite over the next few evenings, but somehow I doubt it... She's also taken to drinking the best part of a sippy cup full of water in her bedroom before going into her cot of an evening, I think that the cool water helps soothe her gums.

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)

Superbaby!

Hannah ate shredded wheat bitesize for breakfast yesterday and today, and made good progress with them. I gave her a couple of my cranberry wheats (a Tesco version of them only filled with cranberry puree) and she liked those too - probably better than her own version to be honest!

Yesterday she had avocado slices and cream cheese in a sandwich for lunch - although she mainly tossed the avocado on the floor, licked the cream cheese off the bread then threw that away too (grrr!). She did devour the apricot fromage frais I gave her for pudding though, so I suppose it's a case of being thankful for small mercies.

Lunch today was preceded by a couple of apple flavoured rice cakes, which Hannah seems to really like. After that, she had a cream cheese and raspberry jam sandwich and a strawberry fromage frais. She did eat a bit of the sandwich, so better than yesterday. While eating her fromage frais though, she did develop the need to pretend to be Superbaby:

She spotted me eating a slice of cheese on toast mid-afternoon (a VERY late lunch!), and immediately made a beeline for me, clambered up my legs and shouted until I handed over half a slice of it, And being contrary, this time she ate all the bread as well as the cheese topping, and followed it up with a yogurt and fruit digestive biscuit.

For dinner yesterday Hannah ate some corn thins - one covered in cream cheese, and two with homemade hummus spread on them. Personally I wasn't all that taken with the hummus, but Hannah really liked it and ate loads of the stuff - just as well, I made plenty! The recipe was really easy, I'll try and post it up tomorrow. She also ate a banana for pudding - the first time she's managed to eat a banana for a week or two, she's been mostly ignoring them when offered.

Today, Hannah had a baked sweet potato, some more of that homemade hummus, and a strawberry fromage frais for afters. Oh, and a whole nectarine. She spent a lot of time chucking the potato and nectarine on the floor, but objected when she didn't get them back quickly enough, so I'm not quite sure what was going on. I assume she's starting to test my reactions to things - will have to work at ignoring her playing up, I think!

Finally, in other news, Hannah's cousin George had his first ever taste of solid food yesterday - he chomped away at a cucumber stick (also Hannah's first food), as you can see:

George isn't planning to make a regular appearance in the blog, but he might turn up as a special guest on occasion now he's started eating... :o)

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.

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:

Water Baby

Today's meals were at funny times, since we took Hannah swimming for the first time when she'd normally have been eating her lunch. She loved swimming, and wasn't bothered about lunch (I breastfed her instead).

So breakfast was shredded wheat bitesize, while lunch when it eventually turned up was a corn thin with humus, another with cream cheese, and two slices of melon. There were also some organix corn crisp rings. She really liked those, and every time she picked them up with her thumb in the middle of the ring, and nibbled away at the edges until she broke through.

Dinner was vegeballs in tomato and basil sauce, followed by a rusk and a banana. Hannah seemed to get a bit bored of the meatballs after a little while, but briefly went back to them after eating some of the banana and rusk.

Return of the cheerio

No photos for a while, sorry - Neil's accidentally taken our memory card into work in his laptop, d'oh!

Hannah's breakfast yesterday was shredded wheat bitesize, and today she finished off our packet of cheerios. Must be about time to get in touch with nice Mr Tesco again to deliver us some more food! She did pretty well with the cheerios, but we did notice that they're a fair bit messier than the shredded wheat. She managed to sprinkle them all over the floor, her lap...quite a messy job fielding them.

Yesterday's lunch was a packet of organix carrot crisp things, a banana and a slice of melon, and she started her lunch at the busstop on the way home, and finished it off once we got in. Today Hannah ate two corn thins - one with cream cheese and one with hummus - a breadstick, a banana, and an organix apple and orange flavour flapjack. It's been a while since Neil has seen her eat a corn thin, and he was surprised with how much her teeth are helping these days - she really does take proper bites of things now, rather than just sucking lumps off.

Dinner yesterday was an organix apple and orange flavour flapjack, a banana, and a corn thin with cream cheese. It was a very quick meal, as we were running late thanks to a doctor's appointment and Hannah was getting really tired. Today, she ate mozzerella and tomato ravioli with a bit of tomato and basil sauce.

Daily schedules

A couple of people have been asking me what kind of schedule we follow during the day with Hannah's feeds and things, so I'll try and explain it below.

First though, a run through of today's food. Breakfast was shredded wheat bitesize, another huge portion of them that almost all got eaten. For lunch Hannah had an omelette with mushrooms and cheese, followed by some tinned fruit cocktail. The fruit cocktail went down much better than last time we tried it, and she was easily able to deal with the pieces although they're actually quite small. For dinner she just had a cream cheese sandwich and some more fruit cocktail.

The daily routine works like this:
7.30am - Hannah gets up and has a breastfeed before getting dressed
8.30am - solid breakfast, usually takes about 20 minutes
9.00am - naptime! Length anything from 30mins to 2 hours
11.00am - Hannah gets up from her first nap and comes downstairs to play
12.00 - solid lunch, usually takes about 30 minutes
1.00pm - naptime again, normally about 90 minutes
3pm - milk feed, if expressed then about 200ml
4.30pm - naptime again, usually only 30 minutes at this one unless she's had a short nap earlier in the day
5.30pm - solid dinner, usually takes 20-30 minutes as she's getting tired by now
6.15pm - bedtime routine starts - milk feed, brush teeth, nappy, sleeping bag etc and settle down to quiet play - we cuddle and sometimes watch In the Night Garden or read a bedtime story.
7.00pm - Upstairs and in to bed, she normally settles very well and that's it until morning.

We don't always stick strictly to nap times - for example if we're off out then I'll get her up early and she seems to make up for it later in the day. At the moment I try to make sure she goes for a nap every 2 to 2 1/2 hours so she doesn't get grumpy and overtired. If that does happen it has a huge knock-on effect on her eating - she mostly wants milk not solids, which puts her to sleep.

Gnocchi not bad!

Another nappy free day today, but I've figured out that folding a towel and putting it in the high chair works well enough to soak up any accidents during meals - although thankfully we haven't had any.

Breakfast was half cranberry wheats, half shredded wheat again, and Hannah ate lots of them yet again. She's figured out that there's food in her hand as well as the bit that's poking out of the top of her fist, and she's now pushing that bit into her mouth rather than just dropping it when she reaches for the next bit of food. Not every time, but mostly.

For lunch we picniced in the living room again, and Hannah ate a bit of sandwich. Half of it had lentil pate in, a quarter had cream cheese and cucumber, and the other quarter had hummus and cucumber. To my surprise she did actually go for the cucumber today, and ate 3 or 4 slices of it. The bread mostly got mauled, she left all of the crust and a fair amount of the rest of it too. For pudding she ate a whole pear, and still acted hungry so I cut her up another pear, and she ate 3/4 of it! Can't believe how much she put away! She's still carefully spitting out the skin of the pear, but all the flesh had gone.

Dinner was her first taste of gnocchi with tomato and basil sauce with a bit of grated cheese sprinkled on top. She really liked the gnocchi, which was good to see, and ate all of what I gave her. However she got far more excited about the prospect of fromage frais and rusk for pudding - and here's a video of her with the fromage frais:

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.

Milk strike?

For breakfast today Hannah ate another tonne of shredded wheat bitesize, it's amazing how many of them she manages to put away.

Lunch was toad in the hole with mash and gravy, served en famille. She did really well with the mash, having figured out how to hold it firmly enough to pick up, but not so firm that it squished out through her fingers. Well, after the first attempt anyway. It's really the first time I've seen her manage that kind of fine motor control. She's growing up!

For dinner she had a lot of different things. There were some sticks of red leicester, a raspberry fromage frais, a bit more chocolate angel delight, some halved tinned apricots, and a rusk. Plus water to go with it. I tried letting Hannah control the spoon completely by herself, which didn't quite work. Once I'd put it into the pot for her it worked much better. I also tried breaking the rusk and letting her dunk that in the fromage frais, and that worked rather better than the spoon. Well, sort of. She definitely needs more practice at the whole "not covering everything in fromage frais" thing.

As you can see, she's making a move for the pot of fromage frais...

...and wins!

Today Hannah really hasn't had all that much milk. She's been having expressed feeds from bottles for the past couple of days - on account of having bitten me and drawn blood, evil child. Which means I've been able to see exactly how much milk she's getting. Anyway, she had 150ml at her midafternoon feed, and only 100ml before she went to bed. Her morning feed (the only one she's still getting breastfed at for the moment) was shorter than normal, too, at only 6 minutes start to finish.

At this point I'm putting it down to the increasingly huge portions of solid food she's tucking away, but I'll be keeping an eye on things for the next few days to see what happens. Perhaps it's time to drop that midafternoon feed afterall?

Pasta bake v cauliflower cheese

Hannah has got more teeth, the two top middle ones have now turned up, a week or two after the ones immediately outside them. So with six teeth to use on her food, we've definitely noticed she's getting better at biting - us as well as the food!

Breakfast has been cranberry wheats (Friday) and shredded wheat bitesize (Saturday). She ate an absolutely HUGE amount yesterday - about the same as I'd eat, if not even more. I couldn't believe she'd finished the bowlful, but there was very little left behind to find in the clean up.

Her lunches have been cauliflower cheese and pasta bake. The cauliflower cheese was fairly successul - much more so that last time I tried her with it. It was very messy, but I'll definitely make it for her again. She even ate quite a bit of the cauliflower, which in the past she hasn't really seemed very interested in. The pasta bake wasn't so successful, probably on account of the millions of shredded wheat she'd filled up on at breakfast. The fromage frais that followed it though was well received - enthusiastic shrieks in between sucking the spoon clean is always a sign.

As you can see, she's keen on the cauli (this time):

But what's going on outside is much more interesting (high wind making a for sale sign flip to and fro):


...but even that gets boring after a while!:

For dinner, on Friday Hannah ate a cream cheese and avocado sandwich followed by a fromage frais. She did pretty well with the sandwich - although she pulled the bread apart to get at the filling better - but didn't eat all of the avocado, prefering to pull it out and cast it aside. I'd slightly mashed half an avocado so that I could spread it, I think in future I'd slice it instead so that she can pick it up better if she deconstructs the sandwich.

Yesterday she had half a baked potato, with the inside scooped out and mixed with a little cream cheese, plus a corn thin also with cream cheese. For pudding she ate a portion of chocolate flavoured angel delight. I have never seen her so excited about food, I don't think! The squeals and flailing legs and arms were some indication of what she thought of it :o) Neil was feeding her, and he noticed that she seemed to be drinking a lot of water during the process too, she'd have a mouthful or two of the angel delight and then have a bit of water in between, and she carried on doing this the whole time.

Eating is hard work!

I'm sure I've mentioned before that Hannah seems to get overwhelmed if I put more than about four pieces of food on her tray at any one time - well, unless they're cheerios. I tested this yesterday to see if it was still the case, and it is. I was fishing quite a lot of food off the floor, as she reduces her food choices by the simple method of sweeping her arm across the tray so it ends up going overboard.


Breakfast yesterday was a brief return to cheerios, and today she had shredded wheat bitesize. We briefly tried using a spoon with the cheerios, but Hannah didn't seem to have made the mental connections that let her use the spoon. Never mind, something to try again in a month or two.


Lunch yesterday was pasta, mixed with double cream, grated cheese and baco bits to turn it into a homemade carbonara. Hannah didn't eat much of the pasta, but she did manage a few bits, and sucked the sauce off the rest. For afters she ate one and a half slices of melon.

As you can see, pasta can be a bit slippy and needs a lot of concentration:

Sometimes eating is too much like hard work and you need a rest:

But there's always room for pudding!:

For dinner yesterday she ate a slice of eggy bread. Egg generally is a bit hit and miss, sometimes she'll really go for it, others she'll ignore it completely. Yesterday was a hit day, so she ate nearly all of the eggy bread.


Today's lunch was a couple of oatcakes with lentil pate on, a couple of breadsticks, some halved cherry tomatoes, with tinned apricot halves and a rusk for pudding. Hannah ignored the breadsticks completely, ate the oatcakes, ate some of the tomato and sucked the insides out of the bits that she didn't eat. She didn't do so well with the pudding - half the rusk was left, and one of the two apricot halves as well.


Dinner was a slice of cheese on toast, with a raspberry fromage frais and another tinned apricot half. Although Hannah ate a bit of the toast, mostly she removed the cheese from the toast and just ate that. The fromage frais was as popular as ever, she wiggles her arms and legs and squeaks loudly when she sees the spoon coming towards her. And opens her mouth and grabs at the spoon with both hands - impatient little madam! She's got much better in the last week or so at actually getting all the fromage frais off the spoon, she's worked out that she needs to tip the spoon slightly to get to the stuff in its bowl. But hasn't worked out that she needs to give the spoon back to me in order to get any more - throwing it on the floor and banging her fists on the tray for more definitely slows things down.

Update on bibs, milk feeds, and meals

It was shredded wheat bitesize for breakfast again today, and I've remembered why I was such a fan of cheerios to begin with. They're much, much tidier than anything else we've tried! Shredded wheat has the unfortunate ability to set like concrete once discarded, so if I miss a bit during the post-meal clean up, I regret it later. And yes, Hannah did manage to discard a fair amount of the cereal during the meal although she did eat a fair amount too.

Post-playgroup lunch was a vegetable casserole, with carrot, parsnip, sweet potato, potato, onion and leek in. And it came with a dumpling, too, which Hannah took one bite of then threw on the floor. Oh well, I liked them anyway! She didn't eat very much at all, as our timetable was a bit out and she should really have been napping, not eating.

Dinner was a cream cheese and raspberry jam sandwich, and a banana. Apparently Hannah doesn't want curly hair, she consistently refuses to eat the crusts on her bread. She did diligently lick all the cream cheese and jam off before discarding them, though.

Over the past few days she's dropped one of her four milk feeds, too. I still feed her first thing in the morning, but I decided to wait until she actually "asked" for the mid-morning feed (by screaming, naturally!). Except she never asked for it. So I served her lunch as normal at around noon, she happily ate that and went for her post-prandial snooze. That's been the case for the past three days, so I can't really see that feed being reinstated. To be honest she probably could do without the mid-afternoon feed, too, as she never asks for that one until she notices me getting ready for it - but I'm not quite ready to test that just yet... :o)

Oh, and before I forget (again), an update on our BLW equipment. Hannah, it turns out, is hard on bibs, and she's worn out the first two "painting apron" bibs we got from the ELC. Over time, the plastic they were made of hardened and became brittle, and eventually split. So she's now sporting a variety of long sleeved bibs from Matalan and Mothercare. Two of them are Christmas themed, but we figure she's too young yet to realise that it's not Christmas any more! These bibs are fabric rather than plastic, and while they won't go brittle and crack, they also need washing VERY regularly. At most they last for two meals before going in the washer. So not as convenient from my point of view in terms of keeping them clean, but they still do a good job, although the branches on the one shaped like a Christmas tree can be a bit impractical!

Nutty about Fruit

Breakfast today was en famille, and Hannah ate bitesize shredded wheat. I also gave her one of my asda cranberry wheats, and after tasting it she tried to find the cranberry in all of her (cranberry free) shredded wheats. Is that mean???

For lunch she had about half a ton of fruit. There were two slices of galia melon, a (tinned) pear, and a banana. As well as this fruit extravaganza there were two or three yogurt covered pecan nuts. It was the first time we've given her nuts, and we weren't sure how she'd get on, but she managed just fine. Mind you, mostly she just sucked all the yogurt covering off the nuts and discarded them. It was just like toast all over again :oD

Dinner was a slice of beans on toast, another pear, and a rusk. She ate the lot, and drank a lot of the water in her sippy cup too. All in all it's been a very good day indeed - we'll have to see what tomorrow brings.

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.

A funny old day

Hannah only managed two meals today, we've been so busy chasing around that we didn't have time to fit a third in. She also had all of half an hour's nap all day, so was in danger of falling asleep in her roast dinner this evening.

Breakfast today was a reappearance of shredded wheat fruitful. I gave her quite a bit, about 20 or so of the little shredded wheats, and she ate the lot in short order! Even when I took her out of the high chair and cleaned it up there were no leftovers in evidence.

Lunch just wasn't, although she had an extra feed instead. And dinner was a roast, which Neil and I ate last night and Hannah had today. She loved the roasties (sensible girl), and also ate the carrot fairly eagerly. Parsnip she wasn't so fussed about though. It's not the first time she's ignored or virtually ignored parsnip, it definitely seems like she's showing a preference for not bothering eating it. She also ate a banana for pudding, the first time I've given her a whole peeled banana without cutting it in half or anything. She managed fine with it, and scoffed the lot with no leftovers again.

She's still sniffling too, although not so badly as at the weekend - although that could just be wishful thinking. It does make her quite unsettled though, and I'm not sure whether her napping variations and so on are down to that or the fact that she's rapidly getting bigger and doesn't need so much daytime sleep. I suppose time will tell...

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.