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.

Introducing snacks

Right, time for another update. We've been rather busy this week so they seem to be coming in pairs rather than daily - sorry about that!


For breakfast on both Monday and Tuesday, Hannah had Shreddies. She definitely likes them, goodness knows why, I think they're nasty! Clearly she has her own preferences. She gets through a significant amount of them, too - I weighed them on one day and there were 45g of them in the bowl, and not many left at the end of the meal. I'm sure that the recommended portion size is 30g, she's definitely got hollow legs!


Lunch on Monday was pasta with cream cheese and tomato sauce, cherry tomatoes cut into quarters, and a quorn "chicken" slice cut into pieces and all stirred together. I gave her a fromage frais for pudding, which was as popular as ever. Part way through the meal Hannah nicked the spoon I was using to get the pasta from the bowl to her tray, and as you can see she quite liked it!



Her lunch yesterday consisted of two spinach and rictotta sausages, half a pack of organix carrot crisp things, followed by half a nectarine. She did really well with the nectarine, and ate the majority of flesh while leaving the skin (yes, that's still happening!).

Dinner on Monday was a couple of oatcakes with boursin spread on them, 3 tinned peach halves, and a gingerbread man. She seemed to really like the oatcake and boursin combo, although it did make her smell rather garlicky afterwards! That improved after I found and removed the boursin she'd stashed behind one ear, though. Kids, eh?

Yesterday's dinner started with a couple of breadsticks that I gave Hannah while I was preparing the rest of her meal, to stop her shouting to tell me she would starving to death if I didn't get a move on. At least I assume that's what all the noise was about, it stopped once she had the breadsticks... I think it's going to be worth having something small to give her as a snack to munch on while I'm sorting out her dinner, if you've got any suggestions other than breadsticks then leave me a comment! Ideally not messy food, as she's generally stood holding on to the gate we've put across the door between the living room and kitchen so only has one hand to hold the food with.


To follow, she ate about half a courgette that I cooked in a little butter, the rest of the organix carrot crisps from earlier, a gingerbread man, and half a dozen grapes that I halved for her.

Quick note on breastfeeding too, while I remember. We're definitely winding down I think, Hannah consistently feeds three times a day, morning, mid-afternoon and before bed. The before bed feed is the one I express, and I've been noticing that the amount I can express is getting less and less. I've sometimes topped it up with some formula (aptamil first, fwiw) but the amount I top it up by always seems to get left - Hannah doesn't want it. So she's taking a significant amount less milk than even just a few weeks ago. I'll keep an eye on things and report back...

Stretchy food fascination

Family breakfast was cheerios for Hannah again, plus a tiny bit of my innocent strawberry and banana smoothie. I gave it to her out of my glass, the first time I've tried cup-feeding her. The cup-feeding itself worked pretty well, but she pulled a bit of a face at the taste, although then went back for more. She didn't even dribble *all* of it straight down her chin, either. So yay!

For lunch we all had mediterranean quorn. Well, that's what I call it anyway. It's a couple of courgettes, sliced into an oven proof dish, then quorn fillets sliced and filled with slices of mozzerella, put on top of the courgettes, then covered with a mixture of chopped tomatoes, garlic, tomato puree, and tomato & mascarpone pasta sauce, then bunged in the oven for about 40 minutes. It was Hannah's first experience of stretchy food (the mozzerella) and she was fascinated.

She stretched out the cheese a few times, and always seemed surprised when it broke. For pudding she ate an apricot fromage frais.

Dinner was a couple of oatcakes with boursin, two halves of tinned pear, and a banana. She ate all of it with gusto, although I didn't see it as Neil was in charge.

Pancakes

Raisin wheats again for breakfast, today with slightly less milk to see if it helped the wheats stay together - it did. They didn't break apart as quickly which meant that she seemed to eat more of them.



Lunch was batons of courgette fried in butter, oatcakes with lentil pate and finally baby plum tomatoes cut in half. She enjoyed the tomatoes, as well as sucking out the innards she also gave the flesh a good chomping and seemed to make some headway eating it. The oatcakes, or at least the lentil pate, were as popular as usual, but she rejected the courgette - several times she picked it up but threw it down as soon as she tasted it, so we took it away and left her with the tomato and oatcakes.



For pudding she had rusk and apricot halves, both of which were a hit. She ate most of the rusk and a fair bit of the apricot.



Dinner saw a new food on the menu: pancakes! Hannah had one half filled with cream cheese, the other half filled with a mix of cream cheese and blackcurrant jam. The pancake was rolled up then sliced into lengths of about 1 1/2 inches. Hannah really enjoyed them both but the cream cheese on its own actually worked a lot better: it tended to glue the rolled up pieces together quite well, so it stayed more intact. The jam made the pieces slide apart so had the opposite effect.


She really enjoyed the pancakes and polished off a large amount, so that's definitely a success and will be appearing again, which is no bad thing because we all enjoyed tucking into pancakes together! We had lemon and sugar on ours, maybe Hannah can have a little of that next time.


Here she is with a roll of pancake:

I Can Eat A Rainbow

Breakfast was back to raisin wheats with full fat milk. As before she tended to crush them by gripping them too tightly, but made considerably less mess than last time. I'm not sure why - it's possible that she ate more, but it's hard to tell.

Lunch was a colourful affair of red, yellow and green: red baby plum tomatoes sliced in half lengthways, yellow pepper cut into slices, steamed in the microwave then skinned, green courgette fried in butter. She seemed to like tomato the best, sucking out the innards of each one which is exactly what she did last time. She also enjoyed the courgette, as you can see in the photo. Pepper was a bit slippy but when it made it into her mouth she liked that as well. She did mostly go for the tomato, though.

For pudding she had a slice of melon, always a big hit! It's fair to say that she's perfected the art of stripping all the flesh off, leaving just the rind to be cleared away.

Dinner was pasta again, with tomato and mascarpone sauce spiced up a little with some more fresh baby plum tomatoes. As per, she sucked all the sauce off the pasta, sucked the innards out of the tomatoes and left the tomato husks with the bare pasta.

For pudding she had a raspberry fromage frais which she was a bit too enthusiastic about - she ate about half as usual then managed to fling the rest on the floor, table legs, chair legs, herself... The problems started when she grabbed the pot and tried to drink from it like a cup, but got her mouth on the 'top' side side instead of the bottom, as if trying to get rid of hiccups. It all went downhill from there...

In other news, she's consistently taking less milk on her pre-dinner breastfeed, suggesting that she's regularly eating quite a bit of food at lunchtime, as well as continuing to take less than the full 7oz (200ml) dream feed. We also took her to be weighed today, she came in at 16lb 4oz (7.4Kg for our international viewers), which is a healthy gain of 1lb 2 oz (510g) in 3 weeks, so she seems to be thriving on BLW!

She's also developed a new trick: she drops things off the side of the tray, then leans over and peers down at them. Special fairy magic means they usually reappear back on the tray, where she once again pounces on them.

Cream cheese again!

Hannah had toast for breakfast this morning again, as I still haven't been shopping - that should be sorted out this afternoon though, so perhaps the menu will get more exciting soon. Half of her toast was spread with cream cheese, the other half was cream cheese and raspberry jam. If you've never tried that combo before, it's gorgeous, in fact so much so that I nicked a quarter of a slice of toast from her, poor baby.

For lunch she had the last bits of courgette, along with a rice cake cut into fingers and spread with cream cheese and avocado. It all went down quite well, the discarded mush wasn't very plentiful so I can only assume that a fair amount actually went down.

Which reminds me. Yesterday for the first time Hannah didn't breastfeed very well. She fed as normal first thing, then had less than 10 minutes at each feed until her before bed feed at about 6.30pm and her dream feed at about 11pm which again were normal. One feed was a whole three minutes long. I'm putting it down to having eaten more than normal, so filled herself up on solids but I'm keeping an eye on things - so far today is much more normal, so perhaps the strike has been called off.

Cream cheese face pack

Apparently avocado and jam make a good combination of flavours - at least Hannah thought so judging by the way she was shoving multiple pieces of toast into her mouth at breakfast today.

Lunch was courgette cooked in butter (in the microwave), a rice cake spread with cream cheese, and a tomato that I skinned and cut into quarters. She liked the tomato, although was suspicious of it to start with. Once she got over that though, she took each piece in turn, sucked all the seeds out of the middle and nochalently dropped the flesh over the side of the high chair tray onto the floor. The cream cheese off the rice cake ended up mostly as a face pack (again), and the courgette was gummed to death and the stringy bits discarded. Sadly I wasn't quick enough with the camera to get a picture of her wearing the cream cheese, she wiped most of it off again with some courgette.

I think we'll be getting the bath out again later today...

Update: Hannah woke up just before we had lunch, so ended up joining us and ate two bits of mushroom and emmental ravioli with creme fraiche and red pesto topping. Not quite what I had in mind as her intro to pasta, but never mind!

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.