Another triple update

Hannah's been suffering from a cold for the past few days, but apart from her cough sounding like she's on 40 a day at least, she's basically fine. No medicines necessary, which is a nice change!

Breakfast has been shreddies, except this morning when it was cranberry wheats as she's eaten all the shreddies (we bought a new box earlier though, don't worry!). She followed her shreddies with a banana on Friday, as she still seemed really hungry despite the hundred weight she's already eaten.

Lunches have been two slices of eggy bread today, a sandwich, and a sliced banana with raspberry fromage frais mixed through. Yesterday she had a slice of cheese and onion quiche, with some potato salad, some cherry tomatoes and a few bits of sweetcorn.

For dinner, she's eaten veggie carbonara, and today she had baked tomatoes this time with a bit of sour cream on top rather than mozzerella as I didn't have any of that in the fridge. She got on pretty well with it all, ate a surprising amount of the pasta, and generally had fun. On Friday night she had egg mayo served in two yorkshire puddings - a strange combination, but Hannah really liked it and steadily worked her way through the lot. Along with the peas and sweetcorn it came with.

Nothing spectacular has happened in the past few days, so there's not really much more to say than that. Although Hannah did go out to play in the garden for about the first time this year, the weather was (briefly) so nice on Saturday, hurrah!

Friday:

Saturday:

Sunday:

Party Girl

Hannah had shreddies for breakfast today, a pretty big bowlful of them too. She seemed to enjoy them as much as ever, which is always nice to see.

For lunch Hannah was meant to have jacket potato and grated cheese. She picked a bit of the grated cheese off and ate it, then nicked a slice of eggy bread off Neil and ate that instead. It apparently was much preferred over the potato, some of which Neil ate in lieu of his eggy bread. So perhaps we should call this a mix and match meal?

This afternoon Hannah attended her first first birthday party. While we were there she ate some poppadum, some onion bhajee along with cucumber and tomato, and obviously some birthday cake too. She also had a bit of water straight from a 500ml bottle, as silly mummy forgot to take the sippy cup out with us.

When we got home, she also had a sandwich. Half of it was cream cheese and marmite, the other half was cream cheese and jam. All went well, although we were a bit short on fruit and veg today, must do better.

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.

A busy couple of days

The last couple of days have been busy busy busy and I'm only just getting round to updating you on what Hannah's been munching on, sorry! You probably already guessed that she had cheerios for breakfast though, on both days. I weighed them again, as I was pretty sure she's now eating a fair amount more of them than when we first started serving them. I was right, too - she's actually getting through double her original portion, it's now up to about 10g. And judging by the way she's looking for leftovers at the end of breakfast, it might even be time to up the quantity again. I need to learn what the makaton sign for "more" is, so I can use that one with her as well as food, drink, and finished/all gone.

Yesterday's lunch was in a cafe during our shopping trip. I'd taken a packed lunch for Hannah consisting of a cream cheese sandwich, a breadstick, a rusk and some raisins. The little ingrate ignored her sandwich and instead ended up eating the breadstick, rusk and raisins, and half of my toasted teacake, which she absolutely loved. She also worked out how to operate the cafe high chair, which was on wheels. She quickly discovered that kicking her legs out in front of her meant that she skated backwards across the floor, and spent most of the meal doing that. Fortunately she didn't have enough power to go very far, so I wasn't chasing her down or anything - I'm sure it's only a matter of time though :o)

Today's lunch was not much at all - we were out again, this time at the health centre, so I picked up some Fruitina fruit puree strips to keep her going until we got home. She did really well with them, and ate half an apple and strawberry one, and a whole apple and apricot flavour one. But by the time we got home, she was far too tired for anything else to eat, so we skipped straight onto her nap instead.

Yesterday's tea was the sandwich she didn't want at lunchtime (gosh but I'm a mean mummy!), she wolfed it down. I gave her a few more raisins too, she seems to really like them and manages to pick them up with no particular problem, something I wasn't sure she'd be able to do yet. Kids love to prove you wrong, don't they?!

For tea today Hannah ate eggy bread, served with a small squirt of tomato ketchup. It was the first time I'd offered her ketchup, and to be honest it's not something I plan on doing regularly. To begin with, the eggy bread was au naturale, and she showed no real interest in it other than to fling it on the floor. With the ketchup she was immediately more interested, perhaps because she hadn't seen it before, and merrily smeared it all over her face, the high chair, and even the eggy bread. In fact here's a piccy of her having fun with ketchup:

I'm still serving water with each meal in her sippy cup, and yesterday for the first time I left it on her high chair tray during the whole meal. And to my amazement she did pick it up, take a drink and put it back down on the tray several times during the meal. Up until now I've been offering it at the end of the meal, but now I'm leaving it available for the duration. Today she mainly flung it onto the floor rather than drank from it, contrary madam :o)

A busy day!

Today has been very busy, with a coffee morning for some other mums from our playgroup, then a visit from family dropping off Christmas presents, but we still managed to get some food down Hannah eventually!

Breakfast (before the first visitors arrived) was cheerios again, she ate loads today. I think she's making up for the past couple of cold-filled days when she hasn't felt much like eating.

Lunch happened during the coffee morning, picnic style on the living room rug. So that it wasn't too messy, I gave her one rice cake with vache qui rit (or laughing cow as it's now known!) cheese on it, and another with lentil pate, plus a clementine. It was the first time she's tried the cheese, and she seemed to really like it - although she smeared quite a lot of it all round her face! And because we didn't use the highchair, I also found a bit of rice cake stuck to her tights with the cheese. Oh well, another item of clothing for the washing heap!

Tea was later than normal, after family had left and Hannah had her afternoon nap, and was a slice of eggy bread and a banana. She didn't seem at all phased by the delay, and tucked in quite happily.

She's also back to sort of sleeping through the night after her cold, which is a relief. She did wake up and want a feed last night just as we were going to bed, but didn't wake after that, which is a first this week I think. So hurrah!

We're off to my parents tomorrow morning, so will be on the move. Hopefully I'll manage to keep posting, but if I miss a day or two you'll know why! Back home on Monday.

Return of The Sausage

Breakfast was again raisin wheats with full fat milk. Similar amount of mess to yesterday, but I think she may have eaten a little more today.

Lunch saw the return of sausage and mashed potato, this time with apple & rosemary veggie sausages. Hannah seemed to like these just as much as her first taste of sausage, as seen in the photo. She did a better job of chewing up the sausage this time, possibly helped by her teeth, and because she was able to chew it into smaller pieces I think she also ate more. Quite a lot of potato also disappeared.

For pudding she had a rusk. She started with it whole, but then we broke it in half which she found a lot easier, she ended up eating quite a lot of rusk actually.

Also in the photo you can see the hairbands around the cut-off wrists of her bib, we've been using those for a few days since we cut off the arms and that's working well - a lot easier than rolling up the sleeves every time.

Dinner was cut short because it started late and she was getting a little tired, but she still had a determined go at half a dozen eggy bread soldiers, including a few games of throw it over the side then peer after it. The late start was due to an emergency post-nappy change bath...least said soonest mended.

Lots of new things

Hannah tried lots of new foods today. For breakfast she had a slice of eggy bread - her first egg - and seemed to like it. She dived straight in, probably because she'd been made to wait for her breakfast while I did eggy bread for everyone else too.

Lunch was a sweet potato that Grandma cooked yesterday but didn't give her, plus two chunks of polenta left over from our evening meal a couple of nights ago. I spread the polenta with tomato puree to make it a bit more interesting, and at the first taste of it she wasn't sure, but a bit more investigation indicated it wasn't poisonous so she carried on trying it.

Polenta isn't a great food to give her though, as when she dropped it it exploded into tiny little grains that are going to be hell to clean up. I think we'll be finding it for weeks!

Oh, and she had a banana for pudding, this time I just cut it in half but previously I've cut it into smaller chunks. She got on OK with the halves, but I think the smaller pieces do work better so I'll probably do those again next time.