Mmm, chalk!

Well Hannah today mainly ate blue chalk. We met up with some friends and Hannah discovered that in the playhouse at the bottom of Helen's garden was a pack of chalk. She opened it, removed the blue chalk, and ate the lot:
But don't worry, that's not all she had (and there's no evidence of blue in her nappies so far...). For breakfast she ate blueberry wheats, but only half a bowlful and she didn't want the banana I offered her either.

Lunch was while we were out at Helen's and Hannah ate two slices of toast with peanut butter on, and one had hummus on as well. She had some bits of salad - cucumber and such - a few of Natasha's blueberries and strawberries, and a squished peach that looked more like a doughnut (it wasn't, I promise!). She also had some water out of her sippy cup, Natasha's sippy cup and William's sippy cup, and I think she had some juice out of the other Hannah's cup as well. She's not fussy ;o)

Dinner when we got home was put together very quickly and was a few quorn nuggets with peas, plus a few strawberries out of the garden.

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!).

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)

Strawberry shortstuff

Today Hannah ate shreddies for breakfast, and for lunch had two slices of toast, once with cream cheese on and the other a mixture of cream cheese and guacamole. She seemed to really like both of them, and definitely sucked the topping off both slices quite thoroughly. Pudding was a cereal bar and a banana, gratefully received.

For dinner Hannah had scrambled egg, and strawberries for pudding. She was so keen on the strawberries that she even managed to eat them from her bowl without chucking it on the floor, emptying it onto her head, or anything else that's messy. Wonders will never cease!

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.

Ewww, strawberries

Hannah had two enormous bowls of cheerios today, probably because I didn't give her a breastfeed first thing. Since her before-bed feed has been formula for a fair while now, it might well be that yesterday was the final feed that Hannah had from me :o( It's a strange thought but we'll see what happens.

Lunch was a chaotic affair, as I'd forgotton that I had to be somewhere until 5 minutes before we had to leave (oops!). So I grabbed some organix carrot sticks and rice cakes, bunged them in the bag and off we went. Hannah ate the carrot sticks on the bus, and when we got back home had some breadsticks, rice cakes and an apple and orange flavoured cereal bar. She drank lots of water too, but it didn't seem like she ate much food - probably because it was so disjointed.

For dinner Hannah had two slices of toast, one spread with cream cheese and the other with peanut butter. She seemed to like the peanut butter (it was the crunchy sort) and ate lots of the toast, too. She also ate a tomato (whole), a very ripe pear (whole), about a dozen raspberries, and three or four strawberries. There's a funny video of Hannah eating the strawberries, they made her judder! They weren't even tart - obviously I had to taste a few to make sure!

Here's Hannah's method of eating tomatoes:

And here she is using the same method on the juicy pear:

Ooh I could eat an elephant!

Shreddies for breakfast today, and quite a lot of them too. Hannah fed really well first thing and followed that up with a big bowl of cereal. I thought that would be it for the day and she'd just pick at her food at lunch and tea, but how wrong can you be?!

Lunch was some potato cakes made from last night's leftover mash. I mixed chopped spring onion in with some of them, and while Hannah wasn't especially keen it didn't stop her tucking in. Again she ate loads - easily a normal (ie not baby) sized portion. She followed that up with the rest of the tin of fruit salad that I opened yesterday and again there was none left when she was finished.

For dinner I gave her two slices of toast with cream cheese on, an apple and orange cereal bar, a plum (ignored rather than eaten), and some organix animal biscuits - 2 elephant shaped and one cat shaped. I found the cat curled up on the floor at the end of the meal (typical!), but the elephants both got eaten.

Poorly Poppet

Well Hannah's got a stinker of a cold, it's official. And the fab medised is now not recommended for under 2s, apparently it's new advice and doctors have said there's no evidence to show that it, or anything similar, actually helps treat the cold symptoms. But since we've got half a bottle of it left, she's been dosed up with it regardless, and at least it's brought her temp down. She's been very limp and cuddly all afternoon (extra cuddles for mummy, hurrah!).

Anyway, onto the food she's eaten today. Shreddies for breakfast, and quite a few of them too, although not quite the huge amount she normally manages. It was probably the best meal of the day.

For lunch Hannah had two slices of beans on toast. She ate probably half of the beans and a quarter of the toast I gave her, but drank a huge amount of water - I had to refill her sippy cup part way through the meal. I think that must be down to her cold, probably because she's breathing through her mouth and it and her throat are getting dryer than normal. It's not affecting her smiling muscles though:

Tea was two slices of melon, a banana and four cherry tomatoes. She ate the cherry tomatoes pretty well, managed just less than one slice of melon and half the banana at most. I gave her the cherry tomatoes whole this time, she seemed to like biting into them and squirting the juice and seeds into her mouth, even if the tartness did make her judder more than once! It was very funny to watch, her reaction was so extended :oD

Hopefully she'll be feeling a bit better tomorrow though.

Wonderful Wedges

Hannah had lots of shreddies for breakfast - in fact she had seconds of them! Neil was in charge of this meal, so I don't know exactly how they went down, but they definitely did go down!

For lunch she had a couple of breadsticks to stave off the hunger pangs. Her actual meal was potato and sweet potato wedges and a fromage frais. The standard potato wedges were better received than the sweet variety, which I thought odd as in the past she's clearly shown a preference for sweet potato.

Dinner was two slices of cream cheese on toast, followed by a plum. There was very little toast or cream cheese left after Hannah had had her way with it, although she did leave half of the plum.

She's also got a bit of a sniffle which I suspect is turning into a full blown cold...will have to wait and see on that one, but the medised is primed and ready to go!

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

Beany Baby

Hannah had cranberry wheats for breakfast again today - Neil gave her an enormous bowlful of them and she ate the lot again.

For lunch I made cauliflower cheese for all of us. Hannah sucked the cheese sauce off every bit of cauli and did eat some pieces of cauli itself. She had some raisins and a banana for pudding, too.




Dinner tonight was beans on toast - an entire half sized tin of beans spread across two slices of toast. As normal Hannah carefully picked each bean off the toast, ate it and when she'd finished with that she sucked the bean juice out of the toast, then finally got round to eating the toast itself. No pudding, I figured all those beans were enough for anyone!

Growth Spurt???

Hannah's eating us out of house and home! I think she's having a growth spurt, the first one that's been noticeable for quite a while. For breakfast she ate 55g of shreddies - apart from the 10g tops that ended up on the floor rather than in her belly. That's nearly twice what the packet says is a normal portion.

For lunch she had some shepherd's pie - which was much better received than last time, hurrah! We followed that up with bananas and custard for pudding, and Hannah was definitely a fan of that. I made a packet of custard (just add boiling water :o) ) and sliced two bananas, thinking I would share it with her. Not a bad idea, but I was on the receiving end of what I can only call "the evils" every time I had a spoonful (we shared the bowl, clearly a mistake!). I couldn't believe how much of the stuff Hannah put away, I'm positive it was more than half of the whole lot.

We went round to a friend's in the afternoon, and while there Hannah was hungry *again* so I gave her a whole pack of cheese organix crisps, 6 apple rice cakes, an orange rice cake, and she also nicked a chocolate chip cookie off the grown-ups biscuit plate while I wasn't looking. I did manage to get half of the cookie back off her though, so she only had part of that.

Finally for her dinner she had two slices of lentil pate on toast, plus the last portion of rice pudding. This time I stirred in half a teaspoon of nutella, so it was chocolate and hazelnut flavour, yum! Hannah certainly thought it was yum, and made very short work of it.

So if you look at it, she's managed four solid meals today, plus two milk feeds. She's definitely only having milk first thing in the morning and again before bed, although the feed first thing has also got longer - but perhaps this is down to the growth spurt? Time will tell...

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!

One of those days, and a better one

Ugh, Friday turned out to be one of those days - it all started out fine, Hannah had her shreddies for breakfast and I grabbed some bits and pieces to eat while we were out and about at lunchtime. That went reasonably well, too. Hannah ate some melon chunks, a couple of breadsticks, a couple of apple rice cakes, plus half a pack of organix carrot crisps. I think that was it, anyway.

Then we got home, and Hannah proceded to have the screaming ab dabs for two hours. Which was nice. So her tea was a bit...different. It was squished in to the time in between her refusing to have a nap (and screaming instead) and when she should have been getting ready for bed, and consisted of three corn thins with homemade hummus on, a banana, and a fromage frais. She didn't eat much of it though, unsurprisingly since she'd been awake for far too long and was overtired. The corn thins mostly got thrown on the floor, the banana swiftly followed, as did the fromage frais spoon (plus attached fromage frais). So the clean up operation was fun!

Today was much better, Hannah ate shreddies for breakfast, and we all had pasta for lunch with tomato, mascarpone, and mushroom sauce. Somehow she didn't even make that much mess with it, although I'm not sure how! Her pudding was a couple of rusks I found (I thought we'd finished the packet ages ago), which she pounced on:

For dinner today she had lentil pate on toast and a slice of melon. She mostly ate the pate off the toast, and got on better with the melon once it had warmed up to nearly room temperature - it'd come out of the fridge only a few minutes before she started eating.

She's still having three feeds a day along with all her solids, generally a long feed in the morning, a shortish one mid-afternoon (as today, in the pic below), and an expressed feed before bed. She's taking less at the feed before bed, about 120ml / 5oz most nights, the other feeds haven't changed length for a while.

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.

Gnawing a (g)nectarine

Right, I'm finally getting round to updating things after the last few action-packed days. This post covers Wednesday and Thursday, yesterday's food will follow shortly...

So breakfast on both days was shreddies. And on Wednesday we experienced a major milestone! I've been using baby signing with Hannah for the past few months - since we started weaning really - and at the end of breakfast when I signed "finished", she responded with "more". I decided to make the most of it, and gave her a second (much smaller!) bowl of shreddies to reinforce the communication. And was so excited by what she'd done that I immediately phoned Neil to tell him! :o) She did the same thing on Thursday morning at breakfast too, so it doesn't seem to have been a one off. Now I'm keeping a close eye out for any other signs that show up.

On Wednesday, at lunchtime we were out and about, so it was a snack-y meal of what I'd chucked in the changing bag before we left the house. It included a gingernut biscuit (from the plate at the venue rather than one from home), then some organix cheese and herb corn crisps, a couple of breadsticks, some grapes and a gingerbread man. On Thursday she ate a cream cheese sandwich, some cherry tomatoes, some dried fruit and a whole nectarine. It was the first time she's had a piece of fruit whole, and I was amazed how well she did with it. It looked quite comical, as if an adult had been given an entire cantaloupe melon to eat like an apple, but was very effective.

On Wednesday, dinner was a courgette cooked in butter, some baked stuffed mushrooms, and followed by a banana and a fromage frais, but Hannah didn't really eat much of it at all (except the fromage frais, of course, and the filling from the mushrooms). And it looked so nice, too:

The courgette mostly got thrown on the floor, the banana got ignored. I really don't know why, as she hadn't eaten an enormous amount earlier in the day, and she should have been ready for something to eat! Perhaps the double breakfast was still filling her up.

For dinner on Thursday, Hannah ate some organix carrot crisps, a raspberry and apple flavour cereal bar, a gingerbread man, and a slice of cream cheese on toast. There was nothing spectacular to report at all really, so I'll end it there!

Keep smiling,

Cate.

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.

Yet another cold, argh

Well Hannah has got *another* stinking cold, and decided it was time to get up for the day at 4.30am today. So excuse me if I'm not that coherent!

Breakfast today was two slices of toast with raspberry jam, as I'll be limiting her dairy intake for a few days while we ride out this cold. She enjoyed the change and ate a fair amount of the toast.

Lunch was a banana, an organix flapjack, a fromage frais and some organix crispy rings. She ate very little of it though - perhaps a quarter of the banana, two of the crispy rings, and only a third of the fromage frais, which is not at all like Hannah. She did manage most of the flapjack though, along with a bit of water out of her sippy cup.

For dinner I gave her the rest of the crispy rings, a corn thin with blitzed avocado spread on it, and the rest of lunchtime's fromage frais - which she did finish this time. She also drank a lot of water, and nearly brained the cat by chucking her sippy cup over the side of the high chair tray. I don't think the cat will choose to sit there waiting for scraps again!

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.