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?

Better late than never!

Not much to report apart from the fact that Hannah seems to like slightly spicy food, and only had two naps today for the first time.

Breakfast was cheerios, lunch was rice cakes with lentil pate and sweet potato mash, emmental cheese fingers, half an avocado and a slice of melon. Dinner was mezze lune arrabiata pasta things, with a version of tomato and mascarpone sauce on them.

I was surprised that Hannah went for the pasta, as there was a little kick to it and I thought she might find it too spicy, but she enjoys proving me wrong :oD The tomato and mascarpone sauce was a very quick homemade (improvised) version, which was a couple of teaspoons of mascarpone cheese, a squirt of tomato puree, and a little milk to mix it all with. Worked like a charm, although it wasn't very authentic!

Here's a pic of Hannah enjoying her pasta:

And here's a completely gratuitous pic that I'm uploading just because she looks cute in her fleece with ears (tm):

See you tomorrow...

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.

First refusal

Breakfast today was fruit, on account of us having forgotton to buy any cereal at the supermarket, d'oh! So Hannah had some pineapple and a banana for her breakfast, which seemed to go down very well. She's definitely eating more and more of the items she's offered.

For lunch I roasted some veggies, there was sweet potato, normal potato, carrot, and parsnip. Today the carrot went down quite well perhaps she preferred the flavour of the roasted version to the steamed one she was fobbed off with yesterday.

Dinner was more roast veg, this time accompanied by an Asda meat free Southern Fried Chicken style thing. We'd never tried these before, Neil and I had them for lunch and they were spicier than I was expecting so I wasn't sure how Hannah would react. Obviously she loved them.

For pudding I gave Hannah some Bramley apple, which I peeled and cut into pieces and cooked with a bit of water, some butter, cinnamon and a tiny bit of sugar. As a result, we had our first ever refusal - she really wasn't interested at all. At first she looked at the apple, eventually she picked it up and got it to her mouth, but pulled a face and spat it out. When she's done that with other food she's gone back and had another go before deciding to eat it. Not this time. After that the only time she bothered picking it up was to throw it straight over the side of the high chair: definitely not a winner!

I noticed something new today during dinner, for the first time Hannah was trying to fish out bits of food that she'd dropped onto her lap. Normally I get them out for her and give them back for another go, this time she watched what I did - really concentrated on it - then next time she dropped something, wiggled around in the high chair and had a go at getting it out herself. What's more, it even worked, at least some of the time! Now we just have to get her to stop dropping stuff on the floor and we're there!

Only 2 meals, and bib trimming

For breakfast Hannah had raisin wheats with full fat milk, pineapple batons, melon chunks and mango wedges. She seemed to go for the pineapple most today, giving it a pretty vigorous going over. She also did better today with the raisin wheats than in the past as she's getting better at picking them up pincer-style, rather than grabbing and crushing them in her fist.

The plan was to have lunch while we were out at playgroup, taking a packed lunch with me - roast dinner leftovers from yesterday, along with her cup of water. But she got quite cranky from all the distractions and the disruption to her morning nap, so I decided not to bother with lunch as she wasn't in the mood.

Dinner, you might not be surprised to learn, was roast dinner leftovers! Quorn fillet, two roast potatoes, roast parsnip and roast carrot which she went at with gusto, managing to eat a surprising amount of everything, possibly due to the lack of lunch.

In other news, we've modified one of the ELC painting bibs by cutting part of the arms off. The problem was that the size is age 2-3 years so on a 7 month old it's a bit ... roomy. Previously we've been rolling the sleeves back but that's become a chore plus she's been getting food down in the folded cuffs, which is a pain to clean out. The sleeves are now approximately the correct length unrolled, but without the elasticated cuff they are a bit gaping, so food could get in. Hmm. For tomorrow we'll be experimenting with something along the lines of a hair band around the wrist.

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.