Happy Hannah

Hannah has spent most of today giggling. No idea why, but it was very nice to hear :o) She's also eaten a fair amount, starting with a big bowl of cheerios and a banana for breakfast.

We all had BLTs for lunch, well a veggie vesion and without any lettuce since I ate it all in the week. Hannah started by dismantling her sandwich, and to start with she concentrated on the bread and tomato. Eventually she picked up a piece of quorn bacon and gingerly tasted it, then decided that actually it wasn't too bad at all, then didn't let go of it until she'd eaten the lot. She also had a plum for pudding, although only about a third of it got eaten. Here's her reaction to her BLT:


Dinner was a pack of cheesy poofs, some rice cakes, a plum and some apple slices cooked by that nice Mr Tesco and put in a tin for us. Hannah nearly ate the entire tin of apple slices, although they were a bit mushy and rather too like puree and points for her to manage very well. In the end we resorted to me holding some of the mush on the end of my fingers, then Hannah leaned forward and helped herself if she wanted it. Turns out that idea is quite dangerous, as she hasn't realised that biting is bad. I was a bit more careful after she bit, as well as giving her a bit of a telling off (don't know how successful they are just yet, but never mind!).

Hannah banana

Hannah's eaten loads today, despite still having a cold - nothing seems to be shifting it :o(

For breakfast she had a huge bowl of cheerios, and did really well with them. She's developed a method of eating them where she picks up one or two in her hand, then does a kind of mexican wave with her fingers closed round them that sees them pushed up between her thumb and index finger with her hand still held in a fist. It sounds bizarre, but seems to be very effective, and I noticed her doing the same thing with other smaller pieces of food today too.

For lunch Hannah had two oat cakes and a corn thin, all with lentil pate on. She also had some cherry tomato halves, some emmental cheese, and a slice of melon. She ate pretty much all of the melon, sucked all the lentil pate off the oatcakes and corn thin, and even ate a bit of those too. She sucked the insides out of some of the tomato halves, but left some of them nearly untouched too.

Tea was mainly fruit, I cut up an apple into segments for her but it was mostly ignored - she gummed briefly at one or two pieces and left the rest. She had another go at a kiwi, and this time didn't shudder and throw it onto the floor - a big step forward! She didn't seem to like it very much, but once I'd nicked a segment of it off her plate and eaten it, she got a lot more interested and actually did eat some too. There were segments of clementine, and a banana too. The banana is easier than ever to prepare now, as I just cut it in half across the middle. Hannah seems to prefer it like this, it gives her more to grab and chomp on, rather than the thinner chip shapes I made before. As well as all the fruit there was some scrambled egg, the first time I've made it for her. She got on OK with the egg, but wasn't that keen on it today - I think she only ate it at all because it looked like the banana bits and she got them confused!

Sleepyhead Hannah

Yay! Hannah slept for a whole 13 or so hours last night! We (OK, I) have been dithering about dream feeds, whether we were just going to drop it or gradually phase it out, how to do it, and so on. Last night we were distracted (ie watching QI on the telly) and completely forgot to go upstairs to get Hannah and feed her. When we realised, it had gone 11pm, so we decided that we'd not make her feed up and instead just suffer the consequences if she woke us at silly o'clock. But she didn't! We'll see whether she carries on in the same vein, but I think/hope that's the end of the dream feed. Now to find something to do with the tag end of a box of formula...any ideas?

No exciting outings this morning (well, apart from a trip to Asda, does that count?) meant that Hannah had time to sit and enjoy her breakfast. Obviously we gave her Cheerios again so she could fully appreciate them. She mainly did this by hiding them in her bib, and I found hundreds of them when I was cleaning it in preparation for lunch. I'm sure she did eat some though.

Speaking of lunch, today she tried some new foods. There was some cottage cheese - served on a small spoon - which after flinging around a bit, Hannah decided that she liked. There were two rice cakes with hummus on, too. Hummus hasn't made an appearance for a while, and she really seemed to like it. No hesitation as there usually is with new foods, so I presume she remembered the flavour. Then there was a breadstick, followed by a clementine and some grapes that I cut in half. Since she hadn't tried either of these before, I wasn't sure how she'd get on, but she was fine. She ate the grape halves, and sucked the innards out of all the clementine segments, without pulling any strange faces!

Here she is showing how she eats clementines:

For tea Hannah tried a slice of quiche that I saved from our lunch, plus a banana and a (local) apple, I can't remember what kind but possibly a russet. She enjoyed the quiche but found that it disintegrated rather quickly, went for the banana more than the apple, but when eating the apple actually sounded like she was eating it - we could hear her crunching away at it with her two little teeth.

BLW Picnic Lunch

We're all over the place today, as I had an appointment this morning. Breakfast was a rushed bowl of cheerios, in a race against time to get the bus, and lunch was taken in a waiting room sat on my knee. I used a muslin tied round Hannah's neck as a bib, and gave her two rice cakes with lentil pate, a breadstick and a rusk. She wasn't overly interested in any of it as she was so tired (no morning nap due to us being on the move all morning). For the first time she even left half the rusk, so not a particular success.

Despite not eating much lunch, her breastfeed prior to tea was no longer than usual, a short affair no longer than 10 minutes in total.

Hannah is currently tucking into her tea, of some four cheese tortellini with stir through olive sauce, and an apple - a cox's something or other, not an orange pippin though. Can't remember what I picked up at the greengrocers, sorry, but I do know that they're local, keeping our food miles down. The tortellini are going down very well, I can tell from the num num num noises she's making - not heard those for a while!

She seems to be rather fascinated by the apple, she's scraping it against her teeth. Well, the two that she's got anyway. I left the skin on and the apple uncooked this time, the skin is carefully being spat out much like the pear skin yesterday. The uncooked state doesn't seem to be causing any particular problems so I'll probably not bother cooking it in future, unless there's a particular reason to.

First refusal

Breakfast today was fruit, on account of us having forgotton to buy any cereal at the supermarket, d'oh! So Hannah had some pineapple and a banana for her breakfast, which seemed to go down very well. She's definitely eating more and more of the items she's offered.

For lunch I roasted some veggies, there was sweet potato, normal potato, carrot, and parsnip. Today the carrot went down quite well perhaps she preferred the flavour of the roasted version to the steamed one she was fobbed off with yesterday.

Dinner was more roast veg, this time accompanied by an Asda meat free Southern Fried Chicken style thing. We'd never tried these before, Neil and I had them for lunch and they were spicier than I was expecting so I wasn't sure how Hannah would react. Obviously she loved them.

For pudding I gave Hannah some Bramley apple, which I peeled and cut into pieces and cooked with a bit of water, some butter, cinnamon and a tiny bit of sugar. As a result, we had our first ever refusal - she really wasn't interested at all. At first she looked at the apple, eventually she picked it up and got it to her mouth, but pulled a face and spat it out. When she's done that with other food she's gone back and had another go before deciding to eat it. Not this time. After that the only time she bothered picking it up was to throw it straight over the side of the high chair: definitely not a winner!

I noticed something new today during dinner, for the first time Hannah was trying to fish out bits of food that she'd dropped onto her lap. Normally I get them out for her and give them back for another go, this time she watched what I did - really concentrated on it - then next time she dropped something, wiggled around in the high chair and had a go at getting it out herself. What's more, it even worked, at least some of the time! Now we just have to get her to stop dropping stuff on the floor and we're there!

Porridge = mistake

Well you live and learn I suppose. Today I learnt that giving a 6-and-a-bit month old baby porridge for breakfast isn't the brightest idea. Hannah seemed to like it, but it was hard to tell on account of her not really being able to get it into her mouth terribly well. I cooked it so it was quite solid, just oats with full fat milk and a teaspoon of raspberry jam stirred through, but it didn't hold together in the way I was hoping, so ended up spattered all over the dining room. We won't be offering it to her again for some considerable time!

Lunch was more successful, there was carrot and parsnip chips, plus a rice cake with homemade lentil pate, followed by gently cooked apple pieces and a slice of melon. The carrot and parsnip went down well, and after pulling a funny face at the first taste of the pate (I'm not offended, honest...) Hannah did seem to like it, at least she sucked it off the pieces of rice cake. Once again the melon completely disappeared, the apple wasn't so popular and caused her to screw her face up a bit.

I remembered to give her a drink with lunch today, although it seems Hannah prefers drinking from a cup with no lid on, so that was interesting! She managed it fairly well with some help from me in holding and tipping the cup. She's still feeding strangely though, and I don't know whether to put it down to the fact she's had a cold for the past few days, or whether she's genuinely changing how she breastfeeds. I don't think we've had a feed longer than 10 minutes in the past three days, today's pre-lunch feed was a magnificent six minutes long.

An apple a day...

Not a very eventful weaning day today really. Hannah had her first taste of apple for breakfast, both dried and cooked fresh. The first taste of the fresh stuff made her screw her face up, but after 15 minutes of sucking on the dried stuff she gave it another go and seemed to like it better. I think she might even have swallowed some.

Lunch was chips of courgette and carrot cooked with a little butter in the microwave, with the last of our fromage frais for pudding. She was really tired though and didn't dive into the pudding with her normal gusto.