Sunny days

Today has been fairly unremarkable, except for the vast quantities of food Hannah has eaten. Breakfast was a huge bowl of cheerios, and ever fewer of them get dropped or otherwise wasted these days.

Lunch was a quorn fillet, and I don't know what I managed to do to it during cooking but it was revolting, so Hannah ended up with a sausage instead. She had two yorkshire puddings and lots of peas to go with it, followed by 6 pear quarters.

When she got up from her afternoon nap she was really hungry, so I gave her 3 roast potatoes that were meant to go with lunch but weren't ready in time. These swiftly got demolished, along with a handful of raisins. Shortly afterwards she had dinner, a slice of bread and butter, three more roasties, some cucumber chunks and halved cherry tomatoes. Pudding was another pear - it's a toss up whether she'll look more like a raisin or a pear in the morning! 20 minutes after finishing dinner Hannah drained a full bottle of milk too - I think we can definitely call it a growth spurt.

That's not to say that Hannah's attention is always on her dinner though:

Sausage and mush, sorry mash

Shreddies for breakfast again this morning, and for lunch there was half a BLT sandwich, and a fajita with sour cream, guacamole, tomato, salsa, um I think that might be it! Hannah attacked the BLT first and ate most of it before moving on to the fajita. She liked that too, although it was the first time she'd tasted anything remotely mexican (not that an Old El Paso fajita kit really counts...). She had fromage frais for pudding, but didn't believe me when I told her that the pot was empty and she'd eaten it all:

Dinner was sausage and mash with gravy, and my goodness but that child knows how to make a mess! She enjoyed the sausage, and the mash too, and ate loads of it. But towards the end of the meal she mostly took to bashing her hand down on the mash to create a thin layer of it across the high chair tray. Or using it as edible playdough and randomly squishing it then biting chunks off her carefully arranged sculptures. Oh, and she mushed some into her hair, and rubbed her eyes with fists full of the stuff. If we'd been outside they'd have called it performance art :o)

More shreddies please, I'm Hannah!

Quiet day today, Hannah started it off with two huge bowls of shreddies. Goodness knows what she's refuelling for, it's got to be something big!

For lunch she had a sausage, served with some peas and cauliflower. She liked the peas again, and seemed to enjoy chasing them round her tray, but not as much as she liked the sausage. Once that was in her grasp she didn't really let go of it until she'd eaten it. Please excuse the Christmas bib in the pic, all the rest were in the wash!



Dinner was a bit mixed, and she had a couple of rice cakes with cream cheese, a fromage frais, some veggie crackers, halved grapes, bits of mango, a dried apricot and a prune. She did much better with the dried fruit this time than last, we're putting it down to the increased number of teeth for her to bite through the skin with. Halved grapes caused her no problems, which was good as I still haven't forgotton the issue of the whole grape!

Update: Photos now added!

Fast food

Shreddies for breakfast today, and that was the end of the packet. She'd have quite liked another bowl so had to put up with a few of my cranberry wheats.

For lunch Hannah ate a sausage, some cauliflower and about a ton of peas. I cooked her some carrot to go with it, but so far as I could tell she didn't actually eat any. Perhaps it was just too orange for her? She also had a pear and a fromage frais for pudding. Not quite as good with handing the spoon back for reloading today as she was yesterday, but it only ended up on the mats twice rather than after every single mouthful, so I definitely think she's realised that it takes longer to get more when she flings it across the room.

We were out visiting friends this afternoon, and while we were there Hannah ate about two breadsticks - although they came in small pieces so it was hard to tell. Tea happened very quickly when we got home, and she just had two slices of toast with cream cheese spread on top.

Mum, I've dropped it...

Hannah ate shreddies for lunch today and yesterday - I'm rationing her slightly as the consequences were so unpleasant after Sunday's massive portion, so she only gets one large-ish bowlful. Yesterday she did want more, so I gave her a banana. She looked a bit disgruntled by that, and didn't bother eating much of the banana either.

For her lunches, yesterday she had some sprouts (a first), some green beans (another first), a veggie lincolnshire sausage, and half a boiled egg. She prodded the sprouts for a while before trying them, but once she'd decided they were definitely food she actually got on quite well.

The beans went down pretty well, too, although I'm not sure how much she actually ate of them. She did OK with both the sausage and the boiled egg though, and ate a fair amount.

Hannah also seemed to have a meal where everything ended up thrown on the floor at least a dozen times! It's not normally as bad as that, but as you can see here, she knew where she'd left it - she just expects it to be back on her tray when she's ready for another helping.

Today she had two slices of toast spread with lentil pate, followed by a strawberry fromage frais and a few grapes. She ate most of the toast, as well as sucking all the pate off, which always comes as a surprise to me after months of treating toast and bread as disposable serving dishes.

In fact here she is after finishing the fromage frais:

For dinner today I gave her a breadstick while I was sorting it out, as she stood at the stairgate blocking the kitchen door and shouted at me. You'd think the poor girl never gets fed! Anyway, once we moved through and got her settled in the high chair she had a baked potato, with the flesh scooped out and mixed with cream cheese before being replaced. There was also a fruit puree strip (from health food shops) which she liked but couldn't really eat very well on account of it being too tough for her to chew, half a dozen corn crisps, and finally some raisins. For the first time she had absolutely no problem picking up the raisins and getting them to her mouth, and she was actively searching for them off the tray, her lap, the bib, everywhere she thought she might have dropped some!

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.

Vegeballs and other things

Breakfast: cheerios
Lunch: vegeballs in tomato sauce and half a rusk

Tea: lincolnshire sausage, avocado, rice cake with boursin, half a rusk and some grapes

Verdict:

Breakfast went down fairly well as usual. Lunch was a success too, which was good as it was the first time Hannah had tried vegeballs (and the first time I'd tried making them, I've put the recipe here). They didn't hold up too well to pressure as she picked them up, and disintegrated more than I thought they would, but most still got eaten. The tomato sauce wasn't too messy either, probably because we didn't actually give her most of it, just the bit that the vegeballs were coated with.

Her tea went down well too, she seemed to prefer the sausage but happily munched away at everything she had. She also managed the grapes really well too, and seemed much more confident picking them up than even yesterday. Some pieces she managed to suck the innards out of (I had cut them in half for her), leaving the skin.

We've noticed in the past few days that she doesn't really chuck food over the side of her high chair any more. Not sure when this started, but we're definitely not having to pick so much up. There's still the food that goes down onto her lap, along her legs, and onto the floor, but not nearly so much.

And no dream feed again last night, but she woke up at 6.10am today wanting a feed. I fed her one side, then put her back to bed. She slept until 8am when she woke wanting her breakfast, but when I fed her she only wanted one side, so her early feed was spread out over two hours! Hopefully we've managed to get enough down her today that she'll sleep longer tonight, but at least I got a bit of a Sunday lie in... :oD

Hannah's first party food

Today Hannah went to her first ever Christmas party, at our local playgroup. She met Santa, who gave her a present, and joined in with the party food on offer. So for lunch she ate (or at least tried) some wotsits, some other crisps - I don't know what they were - a small cheese and onion roll, a bit of veggie sausage, a small sandwich with the crust cut off - again I don't know what was in it - and a chocolate cornflake biscuit. Oh, and a bit of my mince pie too! She got in quite a mess, but did enjoy herself.

I caught her first ever taste of chocolate on camera, too - note that she seems to be leaning forward to fit more of it in her mouth,,,

Breakfast was, of course, cheerios. We were in a rush to get to the party, and they are relatively mess-free, quick and easy to serve, and generally fab. I have noticed the lightest coloured ones (I think they're rice?) go soggy very quickly, so have taken to splashing on a bit of milk then draining it off into the sink so the cereal isn't sat in the milk while Hannah's eating. I think it helps a bit, but they still go soggy.

Tea was some broccoli and parsnip with an oatcake, followed by some melon. I thought we should make some attempt to have healthy food today, despite the earliuer goings on! She basically ignored the broccoli again, but ate some of the parsnip and most of the oatcake. The melon mostly disappeared too - it was chunks of pre-prepared melon today, which I picked up while we were out earlier, as I thought we'd be pushed for time. Not having the rind on made it more difficult to pick up, but she battled on and managed pretty well anyway. It included different melon, too, there was green melon, orange melon, and watermelon, and all was well received.

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.

Yummy in her tummy

We do seem to be back on track after the difficulties of the last few weeks, and Hannah dove right into the veggie sausage and mash I offered her at lunchtime. Well, I say mash, it was boiled potato to start with but that didn't last long! Five minutes in and it definitely looked more like mash than potato to me. The sausage got demolished too, there's hardly any of it left at all.

Sausage and potato makes quite a tidy lunch too, there's only a limited amount of mushing possible, so that's good. It's a shame the sausage is quite salty, so won't be served very often. All I did was cut it in half lengthways, perfect finger food!

Breakfast was Raisin Wheats, served with a tinned pear this time instead of banana. Hannah preferred the pear to the cereal, she only deigned to notice the cereal once most of the pear had been eaten.

Ooh, and there was another pear (the last one) for pudding after lunch. Better get another tin of them next time I go shopping, she's eaten the lot!