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.

Shepherds Pie and Rice Pudding

Ooh, today has been a day of New Things again, Hannah seemed to think it was fun.

Breakfast was cheerios again, the box is so big and Hannah's so little it's going to take weeks to get through them all, very good value for money! I'll have to give her some variety sometimes though, maybe she can have toast or fruit tomorrow.

Lunch was a breadstick and some steamed carrot, parsnip and cauliflower, with rice pudding for pudding. She picked up and had a good chew of the cauliflower for the first time today. The stalks definitely help and give her something to pick it up with. The rice pudding went down well too, she'd not tried it before and she managed it very well, especially considering it's served on a spoon that's given to her to use.

Today's dinner was a veggie shepherd's pie made with soya mince followed by melon and a bit more rice pudding. Again, she did surprisingly well with the shepherd's pie, although again we used a spoon to serve it as the mince was too small for her to pick up just yet. Pretty much an entire slice of melon got eaten again, and the rice pudding all disappeared too - she takes after her Auntie Jo in that respect. Especially since she had seconds of it, too.

It was interesting trying to give her the rice pudding on a spoon though, she was so keen on it she went for the spoon with her hands and leant towards it with her mouth wide open at the same time - so in some respects she was fed food for the first time, rather than feeding it to herself, but I'm not sure this really counts!

We're considering starting to drop the "dream" feed (the one she's only ever slept through once!), as she never finishes the full bottle now anyway, so I think she's ready for it anyway. And two of the four daytime feeds are only ever about 6 or 7 minutes long, so she's clearly only having a drink rather than anything more.

Cauliflower and mandarin segments

Hannah had lots of new things to try today - but not at breakfast, which was the last of the Raisin Wheats with a dash of whole milk.

Lunch was the first of the new tastes, as well as some old favourites. She had a rice cake with lentil pate on - a thin rice cake, which it turns out are much easier to cut up than the normal thicker ones. This was followed by a steamed carrot and a couple of cauliflower florets, and finally there were some mandarin segments for pudding.

I don't know if you've noticed, but Hannah usually has a combination of hot and cold food at meals. This is because I'm usually in a rush to get something served and in front of her, and she doesn't have much patience with sitting in the high chair waiting for stuff to cool down. So a cunning trick is to offer something cold to keep her occupied while the hot food gets to the right temperature. I have in the past just run things under the cold tap, but I don't find it works quite as well.

Anyway, the cauliflower was dumped straight on the floor after the first taste, and generally greeted with suspicion. After another few attempts she changed her mind and decided to give it the benefit of the doubt - still not the most popular item ever served though. She also didn't pay that much attention to the carrot, in the past this has been a favourite so I'm not sure what was going on there.

Mandarin segments, it turns out, are a lot more sour than I remembered. Oops. To her credit, once Hannah had got over the first taste (see picture), she warmed to them and went back for more. She ate most of them in the end and seemed to enjoy it.

Tea today was tomato, basil and mozzarella tortellini, which I was expecting her to really go for. She did sort of go for it, but I spent the first five minutes of the meal picking pasta up off the floor. Normally stuff is thrown mainly to one side of the high chair or the other, but in a new attack of being perverse, Hannah developed a decent shot put action to alternate sides, so I think I ran the 1500m over the course of the meal. To be fair she didn't throw the apricot halves around quite so much, which was a relief.

To drink today, Hannah had her first taste of juice. We diluted a small amount of fresh fruit juice with a rather larger amount of cooled boiled water. For the first time I had to refill the sippy cup before the last meal of the day, as she'd managed to drink more of it than I was expecting.

In summary then, an interesting day!