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.

Superbaby!

Hannah ate shredded wheat bitesize for breakfast yesterday and today, and made good progress with them. I gave her a couple of my cranberry wheats (a Tesco version of them only filled with cranberry puree) and she liked those too - probably better than her own version to be honest!

Yesterday she had avocado slices and cream cheese in a sandwich for lunch - although she mainly tossed the avocado on the floor, licked the cream cheese off the bread then threw that away too (grrr!). She did devour the apricot fromage frais I gave her for pudding though, so I suppose it's a case of being thankful for small mercies.

Lunch today was preceded by a couple of apple flavoured rice cakes, which Hannah seems to really like. After that, she had a cream cheese and raspberry jam sandwich and a strawberry fromage frais. She did eat a bit of the sandwich, so better than yesterday. While eating her fromage frais though, she did develop the need to pretend to be Superbaby:

She spotted me eating a slice of cheese on toast mid-afternoon (a VERY late lunch!), and immediately made a beeline for me, clambered up my legs and shouted until I handed over half a slice of it, And being contrary, this time she ate all the bread as well as the cheese topping, and followed it up with a yogurt and fruit digestive biscuit.

For dinner yesterday Hannah ate some corn thins - one covered in cream cheese, and two with homemade hummus spread on them. Personally I wasn't all that taken with the hummus, but Hannah really liked it and ate loads of the stuff - just as well, I made plenty! The recipe was really easy, I'll try and post it up tomorrow. She also ate a banana for pudding - the first time she's managed to eat a banana for a week or two, she's been mostly ignoring them when offered.

Today, Hannah had a baked sweet potato, some more of that homemade hummus, and a strawberry fromage frais for afters. Oh, and a whole nectarine. She spent a lot of time chucking the potato and nectarine on the floor, but objected when she didn't get them back quickly enough, so I'm not quite sure what was going on. I assume she's starting to test my reactions to things - will have to work at ignoring her playing up, I think!

Finally, in other news, Hannah's cousin George had his first ever taste of solid food yesterday - he chomped away at a cucumber stick (also Hannah's first food), as you can see:

George isn't planning to make a regular appearance in the blog, but he might turn up as a special guest on occasion now he's started eating... :o)

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.

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!

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas everybody! A bit of a catch up today, on account of having been away for a few days and not posting. Hannah's enjoying her first Christmas, although she's had so many presents she hasn't actually finished opening them yet. Her favourite so far seems to be the small rocking horse she got from her Granny Sue. Keep an eye out for Christmas-themed bibs in our pictures in the next few days, she has one that looks like a Christmas tree from Aunty Jo and Uncle Matt, and one saying "My 1st Christmas", also from Granny Sue.

On Sunday, Hannah ate cooked breakfast, with veggie cumberland sausage, veggie bacon strips, and some fried mushrooms. She liked all of it, even the peppery cumberland sausage. Her lunch was tomato wedges, cucumber, some emmental cheese, followed by some halved grapes and a clementine. Ooh, and she ate a buttered crumpet, too - I nearly forgot that! In fact here's a picture of her enjoying it:


Dinner was eaten at her first ever cocktail party (she's ever so posh, you know!), and was basically cheese and biscuits with yet more grapes for pudding. Oh, and she also ate a strawberry cream flavour Quality Street chocolate during the day that her grandad and I fed her in tiny pieces. She definitely quite liked that, but won't be having any more as a) I don't think they're good for her and b) we've eaten them all!

Yesterday saw a return to cheerios for breakfast, then she ate some lunch at mum's, which was a vegetable omelette followed by halves of grapes, and no dinner at all as we were in the car travelling home - in fact we had to stop in a layby on the A34 so I could feed her. She had a dream feed yesterday too, on account of not having all three of her normal meals,. and took a full 200ml/7oz.

Today, Hannah's eaten cheerios again for breakfast, then she had tomato wedges, cucumber sticks, a couple of oatcakes with hummus on, and a breadstick, with rice pudding for afters. Her dinner today was of course Christmas dinner, including some Quorn roast, roast potato, roast parsnips, carrot, some stuffing and a bit of low salt gravy. She hadn't tasted stuffing before, but certainly seemed to like it. But not as much as she liked the bit of Christmas pudding that we gave her for pudding.



She's also drunk a lot of water out of her sippy cup today, and sucked the end of our champagne cork too (I don't think she got much champagne off it though!). Sadly she wasn't very impressed with her party hat, so it only lasted a few seconds before she had it off and in her mouth for a good chew.

Nice bit of crumpet

Hannah slept really well last night, she's back to going through from 7pm till around 7.30am, hurrah! She's still got a runny nose, but is basically over her cold and back on fine form.

Breakfast today was cheerios again, I had to do them with semi skimmed milk as mum didn't have any full fat in the house. Fortunately I only put a little milk on anyway then drain the excess off so that the cheerios don't go too soggy. Hopefully it won't be bad for her!

For lunch, Hannah ate with us, which was really nice. She had some tomato and boursin tart, a stick of celery, some cucumber and tomato, some tomato and mozzerella ravioli, and a lightly cooked pear. The ravioli was taken apart so that she could eat the middle of it without bothering with the pasta itself. The tomato and boursin tart went down well, she hadn't had any for ages. I wasn't sure how she would receive the celery, her dad absolutely hates it, but it didn't bother her at all. Not that she made much progress with it, mind, not like the tomato where only the skin was discarded.

Tea was more a spectator sport than a family meal, Hannah was the only one eating but there were about half a dozen people in the room. And a spotty dog, which to be honest Hannah was more interested in than the food. For tea she had some more tomato and boursin tart, some sticks of emmental cheese, and some wedges of tomato, with a banana for her afters. Part way through the meal, we remembered that there was a crumpet put aside for her, so toasted it and spread it with butter before handing it over. Once she'd got her hands on the crumpet she ignored everything else on her plate and ate almost all of the crumpet (apart from the bit she dropped on the floor that Sophie the dalmation nicked). She ate virtually all the banana, too, so a really good meal all told.


And by the way, are they crumpets or pikelets? My dad maintains they're pikelets, I know them by both names but usually call them crumpets. What's the difference between them, why do they have two names, are the answers out there?

Oh, and I almost forgot. She ate about half a strawberry cream Quality Street before tea, too. Well, it is Christmas after all...just don't tell anyone!

Today she smells of Shepherd's Pie

Yes, today Hannah has managed to get Shepherd's Pie all over herself, including in her hair. I think I've just about managed to get it all out now (thank goodness!). This was her lunch, and she did seem to enjoy it rather a lot, despite being on the messy side with it. She ate a pear too. Half of it was uncooked, and half was gently cooked just to soften it up a bit. She ate the lot, apart from the skin which she spat out, having eaten all the flesh off it.

It was funny watching her deal with the pear skin, I've always peeled fruit for her in the past. She put it in her mouth as normal, chewed the lump a bit, then without fail out came the skin again. I'm not sure I could do that myself, I was very impressed!

For tea there were rice cakes with lentil pate, some emmental cheese, and a breadstick, with pineapple to follow. She's still pulling the odd face at the pineapple, but it doesn't seem to stop her actually eating most of it when it's offered. The lentil pate was all sucked off the rice cakes, and the cheese and breadstick both had a good going over too.

Breakfast, it almost goes without saying, was cheerios again. She didn't seem very interested in eating at all when I first sat her down for breakfast, it took a good 6 or 7 minutes for her to get going. Once she'd started though, she ate a similar amount to normal, so I don't know what the delay was all about.

I said yesterday that babies need about 700 calories a day, further research suggests that from 6-12 months they actually need about 45 calories per pound of bodyweight. From birth to 4 months, it's about 52 calories per pound (thanks to AQA 63336 for providing the answer to that one!). So Hannah actually needs about 720-750 cals a day at the moment. Aren't they clever things, eating just the right amount to grow and stuff?

She had seconds!

Hannah ate loads today, I can't believe it!

Breakfast was two slices of toast, one with raspberry jam and one with blackcurrant jam. Once again Hannah ate none of the toast but the butter and jam was entirely sucked off. I'm not sure that it's good for anyone to survive on butter and jam but Hannah seems to be doing OK so far.

For lunch she had a couple of rice cakes with lentil pate, plus half an avocado cut into fingers, and some emmental cheese. She did really well with the rice cakes today, and the cheese, but the avocado wasn't as ripe as I thought it was so she didn't eat as much of that. Pudding was a rusk and some mandarin segments. Perhaps unsurprisingly after her first try of them, Hannah ignored the mandarin completely other than throwing one or two bits onto the floor. The rusk, however, was completely eaten, for the first time ever! I felt so proud of her it was ridiculous :o) And I gave her another half a rusk, and that all got eaten too!

I was expecting her breastfeed before tea to be on the short side, but it wasn't noticeably different from normal, which surprised me. Tea itself was a breadstick, some swede mash, and some sweet potato mashed up. She liked all of it but had some difficulties with the mash, I think it wasn't solid enough for her really.

There are no photos today, as we've had workmen in fixing a leaky pipe so it's all been a bit chaotic. The good news is that the pipe is fixed and the water is back on though, hurrah!

I was wondering, by the way, about this whole baby led weaning thing. It seems that people doing BLW are more likely than other people to be using cloth nappies. I don't know how true that is, it's just an impression from talking to other people doing something similar - do let me know if it's true or not, leave a comment below.

For the record, we currently favour Tots Bots Bamboozles and Original cotton, with Motherease Airflow wraps in the day and Tots fleece wraps overnight. I can tell that this weaning lark is working, we've had to move Hannah up into the size 2s in the past few weeks, so her cousin George will be borrowing the size 1 nappies and wraps.

Toast with added toast

Today's meals pretty much all consisted of toast, but the good news is that we went to the supermarket too, so tomorrow should have a bit more variety.

Breakfast was a slice of toast cut into four pieces. Two were spread with marmite, the other two had blackcurrant jam on. I hadn't given her blackcurrant jam, I thought she wouldn't like it because it's quite tart, but Neil was in charge at breakfast and she devoured it! Once the jam had been seen off, the marmite got a look in too, and actually most of the slice was eaten.

Lunch was more toast, this time with emmental cheese on, along with an avocado cut into chunks. Cheese on toast worked fairly well, at least until the toast and the cheese parted company. Hannah certainlyseemed to like it, at any rate. The avocado was rather ripe and disintegrated a bit while she was trying to get it into her mouth, but on the whole she managed fairly well.

I think we'll move up to three meals a day some time this week, so any suggestions on what Hannah might like for her meals would be very welcome!

Better late than never...

Sorry this post is a day late -Virgin broke our interweb and telly yesterday, it only came back about noon today. So, here is yesterday's report, today's will follow shortly!

Breakfast today was back to normal, a slice of toast and jam, which Hannah found much easier to cope with than yesterday's porridge.

Leftover vegetables (carrot and parsnip) were served for lunch along with some fingers of emmental, a rice cake with lentil pate, followed by some Greek style yogurt mixed with a bit of raspberry jam and some raspberries I defrosted for her.

Everything was fine until I offered her the raspberries. First of all, they're exceedingly mushy, and when she picked the first one up it all squished out between her fingers. So instead I placed one on the end of my fingers and left it up to Hannah to guide it into her mouth. This worked really well, she got the idea straight away, but was definitely not impressed with the taste of raspberries. You know the face that you might pull if you sucked on a lemon? Imagine that on a 6 month old baby. It also made her shudder, twice! Mum managed to catch part of the face pulling on camera:

So all in all I don't think raspberries will be back on the menu very soon. Fresh raspberries might work better as they would hold together better than the defrosted ones, so perhaps we'll try them again next summer. Oh yes, and once she'd got the raspberry in her mouth and immediately spat it out all down her bib, it looked like she was dribbling blood, making the clean up operation quite exciting.

Lunch AND Breakfast

Happy half birthday to Hannah, she's 6 months old today. We celebrated by letting her have two meals today, instead of the one she's been used to.

Breakfast was done en famille again, Hannah had wholemeal toast, one slice with unsalted butter, one with seedless raspberry jam - didn't offer marmite today. It definitely works better when it's cut into four fingers per slice, so that's what we did today. Received well again today, but I put too much jam on one bit of the toast, so Hannah was rather sticky by the end of the meal.

Lunch was a rice cake with cream cheese spread on it, a steamed potato cut into fingers, some emmental and red leicester fingers, and finally some melon chunks for pudding. Hannah wasn't very impressed with the potato, and I don't think she spent much time trying to eat it, it mostly got thrown on the floor. The rice cake was popular, and a surprising amount of it disappeared, I assume she swallowed it. The cheese was gummed at but not much actually went down, and the melon was just as popular as it was the other day. Mind you, she seemed to spend most of the meal blowing raspberrys, I thought we were past that stage but it's back with a vengeance.

In other news, I saw the apron/bibs that Ikea do yesterday, and I'm glad we got ours from the Early Learning Centre, as they're definitely better than the Ikea ones. The problem (in my opinion!) with the Ikea ones is that the plastic bib bit doesn't wrap roundthe body, it's just a sheet of plastic that hangs down. Also they had a pocket at the bottom, which might make a good food catcher, but would be annoying to clean out, Also they only had them in green and blue, one of each colour in the pack.

Same as yesterday

Since yesterday's lunch was a bit of a non-starter, today's involved leftovers, plus a fromage frais - peach flavoured this time.

Fromage frais definitely seems to be the favourite item, with cheese a close second today. Carrot and parsnip were tolerated, but since they are the same colour as the two cheeses on offer, they probably got more attention than they would have otherwise! Cunning, eh? :oD

The fromage frais went down so well that Hannah actually grabbed the pot off me and tried to eat it directly:

Managed to get some video again today, sorry for the poor camera work - comes from trying to supervise lunch and use the camera at the same time! As you can see, the aim still needs some work - fromage frais isn't a great eyeshadow.

Cheese and steamed veggies

Hannah's having problems cutting these teeth again, so was a bit upset and not very interested in food this lunchtime. I offered her some red leicester and emmental cheese, along with some steamed parsnip and carrot batons. She did spend a bit of time sucking at the cheese, but it was very lacklustre and after only ten minutes or so the crying started, so I took her out of the highchair.

She wouldn't breastfeed either, so ended up having lunch of expressed milk, as that's easier and less painful for her to eat. The Calpol and Calgel might have helped too.

We did manage to get a pic of the new bib in action though:

Two new tastes

I thought it was about time Hannah had some variety in her lunch, so today to go with her roast veggies she also had a bit of cheese, Emmental in fact as I didn't think that St Agur was very appropriate as a first cheese.

Cheese was a definite hit, she spent the first couple of minutes just sucking on the end of the stick I gave her and grinning. The roast veg went down a treat too, although I have discovered that it's best to break the shapes in half if you can as Hannah was having trouble getting at the soft inside bits Once I'd done that it was a lot easier, although seeing her with an entire roast potato in her mouth all at once is still rather alarming.

The other new taste of the day was plum. I really thought she'd pull a face at this, as it's a fairly tart flavour, but she didn't. I'm really impressed with baby led weaning - I know that it's meant to mean children eat a wide range of foods, but Hannah hasn't rejected anything yet. If you're thinking about trying it, it is a messy process though!

In other news, there are two painting aprons in the post to Hannah today from Grandma and Grandad (hello!) so once they arrive it should be a bit easier to keep Hannah fairly clean.