Fruity!

Hannah was stuck with own brand shreddies for breakfast this morning, as that's what Neil managed to get hold of at the shops yesterday. She got on with them just as well as the normal branded shreddies, so no complaints there. However when it came to the clean up operation I found them slightly more difficult to peel off the muslins and floor. I'm not sure yet whether that was because I put more milk on them so they were soggier than normal, or whether they somehow are inherently stickier. Will observe and report back!

For lunch she had three oatcakes, two spread with cream cheese and one with butter and marmite. The marmite one made her judder again - she seems to be doing that more and more these days on a wider variety of foods, even stuff she's tasted before. She also had some raisins, a pack of cheesy poofs and a pear. Then she had her special dotted lines staring at my fab ice lolly, so I let her try some (just the strawberry flavour bit from the middle). That made her judder, a lot. She seemed fascinated by the whole thing though, and even though it made her pull some very funny faces she kept coming back for more. Of course I let her have more, since it was proving quality entertainment at the time...does that mean I'm a Bad Mother??? I did call a halt to the experiment after she bit a largish chunk of lolly off, and sat there pulling faces trying to melt it as quickly as she could, lol.

Tea was a much more sensible affair, she just had a large fruit salad with pear, peach, apricot and a huge number of strawberries in. She ate all the strawberries too, 150g of them! She was deliberately picking them out in preference to anything else offered. Oh and I nearly forgot, she also had a chocolate biscotti at Diane's house earlier this afternoon. She loved it, and managed to make very little mess even though she was cruising/crawling round with it in her hand and/or mouth. Not one to waste food, especially when it's chocolate flavoured!

Here's some video I took of her eating her fruit salad...she's quite chatty in it, as you will hear!

I don't know why I bother *sulk*

Hannah ate shreddies for breakfast again today, and lunch was a mixed platter of different stuff. There was a fruit cereal bar, some cubes of cheese (red leicester and cheddar), a breadstick, two oatcakes with moroccan chickpea pate on, some french beans, a slice of cheese on toast (not in the original plan, but nicked off me), and two apple rice cakes. Ooh, and some raisins too. I should have remembered that, I took pictures of her using her fancy pincer grip to pick them up:

For dinner I cooked some garlic and herb tortellini, and mixed it with some tomato puree and pesto, Unfortunately Hannah spent the entire meal throwing it all on the floor, I don't think she actually ate a whole piece of it, although she got half way through a few of them. For afters there was two slices of melon. The first slice was chopped up as normal, into about five pieces. These she nibbled at but didn't seem all that keen on. The other slice I'd just cut into two pieces, and the bigger bits were all eaten.

So my conclusion from today is that Hannah likes either very small pieces of food like raisins, or very large pieces of food, like melon slices. If it falls somewhere in between, then maybe she'll eat it, maybe she won't. I think it depends on what direction the wind is blowing from, and whether she's got purple pants on. Or something.

Poo, cat biscuits and other things...

Well you can probably tell from the title, Hannah has excelled herself recently. Sunday was a relatively normal day, she ate two bowls of shreddies for breakfast, we all had pasta and a tomato and vegetable sauce for lunch, then she had a couple of oatcakes with hummus plus some fruit for her tea. So far so good...

Yesterday, she started out well, eating a bowl and a half of shreddies for her breakfast. Then we went out to playgroup, and shared a tomato and mozzerella panini in Caffe Nero for lunch afterwards. Hannah ate loads of the panini, plus the filling except the slice of tomato, which she discarded. I also gave her a bit of my raspberry and white chocolate muffin and a couple of apple rice cakes that I'd brought with me. On the way home she fell asleep for all of 20 minutes, which turned out to be the only nap she had all day!

I changed her nappy when we got in (frankly it wasn't pretty) and she went ever so quiet when I was clearing up. Then I noticed she'd got her hands on a bit of cotton wool I used and was happily chewing away on it. Let's put it this way...it wasn't a clean bit of cotton wool. So we had a quick brush of her teeth, I tried to rinse her mouth out with cold water then gave her a drink from her sippy cup. Hannah then went back to playing in the living room, and next thing I know she's crawled over to the gate blocking the door into the hall, shoved her arm right through and managed to get hold of a fistful of cat biscuits. She's obviously grown since I placed the cats bowl in the hall, she didn't used to be able to reach it! So it's now further down the hall, hopefully that'll stop Hannah helping herself to their food.

For her actual dinner I gave her a cream cheese and cucumber sandwich, a few organix corn rings, and a banana. She drank a lot of water, ate half the sandwich and a couple of corn rings, then nibbled the banana and threw it on the floor. I think she must have been full from all the cat biscuits she'd eaten ;o)

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...

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.

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.

First raisins

Not much to report today really. Hannah had cheerios for breakfast again today (and so did I, turns out they taste quite nice!).

For lunch I cooked her some mushroom and ricotta tortellini, and she followed it with half a banana. I think she ate more of the pasta today than she managed last night, although she still mainly sucked the filling out and left the pasta itself.

Tea was a couple of oatcakes, one with cream cheese and one with lentil pate on, plus some cherry tomatoes, slices of avocado, and some raisins. It was the first time she's tried raisins, and even though they were pretty small she managed to get them down her really well. I did find a couple that escaped down her bib in the clean up operation, but that was all.

Still not a fan of cauliflower cheese

Today Hannah ate cheerios for breakfast, then had the cauliflower cheese that she didn't want yesterday for lunch, along with some grapes cut in half, a slice of melon in chunks, and half a portion of butterscotch angel delight.

She still isn't a fan of cauliflower cheese and didn't eat very much of it at all. The melon didn't seem to be ripe enough for Hannah to cope with easily, so she didn't pay it very much attention. Fortunately she loved the grape halves, and the angel delight too. The angel delight got a similar reaction as rice pudding did the other week, she dived for the spoon as we were attempting to hand it to her, and she made "num num" noises while she was eating it.

For tea, Hannah ate an oatcake with cream cheese on, another with lentil pate on, a breadstick, a clementine, and the remainder of lunchtime's angel delight. For the first time in ages Hannah gagged on some of the oatcake and hastily spat it out. She didn't seem remotely bothered by this, and carried on with the rest of her meal regardless.

Another first today, she only had half a breastfeed at 11am, and none at all at 3pm, so I gave her a sippy cup full of formula along with her tea to make sure she's getting enough milk. She actually drank most of it, I think the first time she's drunk significant amounts out of the sippy cup.

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!

A repeat of yesterday

Poor Hannah had almost exactly the same food put in front of her today as she had yesterday. I blame the cold that the entire family now has, we all feel a bit manky, boo hiss. Hannah's Medised and our Lemsips do seem to be working though!

So anyway, breakfast was cheerios of course, lunch was sweet potato, carrot and parsnip, oatcakes and hummus, and tea was beans on toast followed by rice pudding. She definitely likes both beans and rice pudding, and I think she'd have eaten the entire (big) tin of rice pudding given half a chance. As you can see from the picture, she was firmly of the opinion that I hadn't given her enough, and she was forced to suck the leftovers off her bib...

She's been extra tired today, because of her cold, so hasn't eaten a huge amount but - to my surprise - has still been interested in her food. The breastfeeds have been much longer than in the past week or two, presumably to make up the calories she's not getting from her solid food at the moment. Feeds today were lasting around 15-20 minutes, rather than the 6 or 7 minutes that's become normal during the day. At least I got a chance to sit down for a bit longer than normal! :o)

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:

Beany Baby

Breakfast today was a slice of toast, half with cream cheese and the other half with blackcurrant jam. As yesterday, she sucked the topping off the bread quite enthusiastically before giving the toast a good gumming. Her two teeth don't seem to be having much impact yet when it comes to chewing or biting, so most of the toast finished soggy but unbowed.

Lunch was oatcakes spread with home made lentil pate, plus breadsticks. As with the toast, she was a lot more interested in the topping than the oatcake itself - I think she had quite a bit of the pate but the oatcakes seem to have been crumbled and gummed but not particularly eaten. She was keen on the breadsticks and seems to be getting the knack of crunching away at one end while holding the other one-handed. That's just showing off!



For dinner she had a one-egg omelette with mature chedder served with a small portion of baked beans - first taste of baked beans!

She went for the omelette first, she's had it before and seemed to like it again this time. We tore the omelette strips. She ignored the beans for a while and just focussed on the omelette. When she noticed the beans she had some difficulty picking them up, but eventually got one into her mouth. She seemed to really like it but got a bit frustrated because she couldn't manipulate them too well, so not many were making it to her mouth. Cate then tried holding the beans up on tip of her finger like a golf tee which worked really well, every time Cate held up a bean Hannah pounced on it like a starving man. So I think beans might be appearing on the menu again!

Personally I'm quite happy about that because currently I'm the only bean-eater in the house, Cate doesn't like them so they rarely get served ... but I'm looking forward to a future in which Hannah and I out vote Cate and get beans back on the menu. Hahaha.

Roast dinner

Today we had another family breakfast, which was really nice. We all sat round eating chopped bits of fruit, and Neil and I also had yogurt and coffee (I don't think Hannah should have coffee yet, although by the way she tries to nick mine, she disagrees!). There was fresh pineapple, melon, and mango all round, and we had grapefruit too but didn't give Hannah any.

Lunch was pitta bread, toasted and filled with grated cheddar which I pinged in the microwave so it had melted, an oatcake with butter and marmite on, some tomato and boursin tart, then there were more pieces of fruit for pudding.

The tomato and boursin tart was a surprise hit, I wasn't actually going to give her any of it but there was some leftovers in the fridge so I thought it'd be worth a try. It's just a block of puff pastry rolled out and covered with boursin mixed with creme fraiche and topped with sliced tomatoes. Cook for about 40 minutes at gas 6 or thereabouts, nice and easy and went down really well. Hannah coped really well with the pastry, I had thought that she might struggle with it as it was fairly flaky. Next time I make it I think I'll try doing individual size tarts, rather than one big one.

Obviously being Sunday what could I serve her for dinner but a roast? Well, sort of. She had her first Quorn fillet, accompanied by some carrot and parsnip batons, and an avocado that was in the cupboard and needed eating. She followed this up with half a rusk - it would have been a whole one, but Neil ate half of it. Again it all went down rather well, not bad for so many new tastes in one day.

Oatcakes and BLW equipment

Today's meals were toast for breakfast with marmite and jam, then oatcakes with cream cheese, hummus, and boursin for lunch followed by a fig. I was amazed that Hannah actually went for the boursin, I thought the taste would probably be too strong but she continues to surprise me with what she's willing to eat.

A bit of oatcake was the cause of the first proper full on gag today, she got a big chunk to the back of her mouth and coughed it forward, it fell out along with a puddle of spit/mucus/something fairly grim. No harm done though and she carried on as if nothing had happened.

Someone was asking me the other day where we got our splash mat from for doing BLW, and I had to confess that we didn't have one - we do have laminate floors though! In fact thinking about it we have very little equipment for weaning with, and I've listed it here:

• A high chair - we have the Antelop chair from Ikea, cost about £20 inc the tray and the only one we could find that was completely hard plastic so it could be cleaned really easily. The benefit of waiting till 6 months or so to wean is that you don't need a highchair that reclines or supports the head or anything like that, and this highchair is as basic as they get.
• Painting aprons - bibs that cover as much of the body as possible! We got ours from the Early Learning Centre, I've also seen them in Ikea and Asda before, and I'm told that Mothercare sell them too.
• A free flow cup, we have a Tommee Tippee one from Asda that cost £1.
• Muslins - I wrap a muslin around Hannah's legs in the highchair as the painting apron doesn't come all the way down her legs, it helps avoid having to change her after each meal! I also keep one handy for wiping my hands on as I'm picking up bits of her food.
• A baby sized spoon - I've just been using the plastic one that came free in the Bounty pack I got when Hannah was about 3 or 4 months old. Only used when I'm giving her fromage frais or similar.

That's it, I can't think of anything else that we've found really helpful - apart from lots of flannels and hot water to clean up with! I'm mulling over whether a splash mat would be helpful or not, but we've done without it so far so I think we won't bother.