Cutlery, cups and other things

Hannah had cranberry wheats for breakfast today, a big bowl of them, and she only left two squidged into the table. For lunch she ate a huge bowl of pasta with tomato sauce and grated cheese mixed through. I was amazed that she ate pretty much the entire bowl, it was as much as I ate! She ate it really fast as well, using both hands to shovel in the spirals as quick as she could.

For dinner Hannah had two rice cakes, one with hummus and one with cottage cheese. When she picked up the rice cake with hummus on, she licked it very daintily, pulled a face and put it back on the table. She also had some cubes of red leicester, a nectarine, and a tomato cut into wedges.

While we were out this afternoon I bought Hannah her first proper metal cutlery - not the stuff with plastic handles which is all I'd seen until now - and an open plastic beaker. She tried using the beaker this evening before bed, and knew exactly what to do, carefully tipping it towards her, but was taken by surprise anyway when a small tidal wave of water hit her face and surfed all down her tshirt, jeans, and the sofa. Still, I'm sure she'll get better with a bit of practise... The cutlery will get its first outing tomorrow so we'll have to wait and see how she does with that (and whether she bothers using it at all).

Picnic in the rain

Hannah and I went out yesterday to meet up with some friends in St James's Park in London. Apart from accidentally arriving just as the changing of the guard happened, and the fact it rained rather more than we were hoping, nothing untoward happened (phew!).

Hannah had cranberry wheats for breakfast both yesterday and today, and for lunch yesterday in the park I frankly have no idea what she ate. If we meet up like that again, we're going to supply a trough to put all the food in for the children, and just let them help themselves - that was mostly what was happening anyway, perhaps it was an early version of school lunch swapsies? Anyway the food Hannah ate included (but wasn't necessarily limited to) a bit of a cream cheese sandwich, half a nectarine, some cheesy poofs (shared with all the other babies too), a tiny bit of cereal bar, and water from any cup she could lay her hands on. She also had a nibble on the lid of our lunchbox:

For dinner yesterday when we got home Hannah ate some potato wedges with cubes of cheddar and red leicester cheese, fruit compote and a rusk. She was very tired, so didn't make all that good a meal, and topped up on milk before bed.

Today's lunch was a boiled egg (left over from the picnic yesterday) and some boursin and tomato tart, which Hannah really liked - I'm always surprised by how much she likes strong flavours like garlic. She also had a couple of dried greengages (chewy and tasty was the verdict) to finish things off.

Since it's Sunday, dinner was of course Sunday roast. There was a quorn fillet, roast potatoes, white cabbage, carrots, peas and sweetcorn topped off with some lo salt gravy. Hannah ate a fair amount of the quorn and roasties, squished a few carrots into her tray, peered suspiciously at the cabbage before giving it a bit of a lick, and pounced on all the peas and sweetcorn as fast as she possibly could.

Camera out of electricity

No pics today, sorry folks - the camera finally ran out of charge, and I still can't find the charger so am ordering a new one.

Hannah ate a bowl of shreddies for breakfast this morning, and followed this up with a small bowl of cranberry wheats for afters - all of which disappeared too. Obviously she was a touch peckish!

Lunch was a quick affair after we got back from Tumble Time (where she did, indeed, tumble multiple times and also try to dive headfirst off a 5ft high castle thingy). She just had a couple of slices of cream cheese on toast and a sachet of apple puree.

For dinner Hannah had scrambled egg on toast (hmm, lots of toast on today's menu!) along with a rusk and a nectarine. She ate loads of it, far more than I was expecting, and in fact put away two bits of the scrambled egg on toast that I was convinced she'd hidden it somewhere around the high chair, but apparently not!

Hannah and I are off out for a picnic in St James's Park tomorrow, so goodness only knows what will happen! Keep your fingers crossed that it doesn't rain, please...

Finger Lickin' Good

Hannah has been fairly whingy today, and I don't know why. She's acting as though she's still teething, but has her first 16 teeth already, and she's not meant to get any more until she's about 2 1/2 or 3. Still, she's managed her food OK, tucking into a bowl of shreddies for breakfast first thing. Before breakfast she climbed up onto the sofa and sat down, picked up my half full bottle of water, took the lid off and oh-so-carefully tipped it up and helped herself to a drink. She looked mega cute doing it, it was just a shame that I was in the kitchen and had no access to a camera!

Lunch today was a couple of vegetable fingers, a slice of nice bread from the bakers, some cherry tomatoes, and two slices of melon. She also had a bit of my nectarine, I wasn't going to give her any to start with as it was a bit hard, but she was fairly insistent on sharing.

For dinner there was quorn korma and rice. By the end of the meal it looked as though a rice bomb had gone off in the dining room, oh well. And as you can see, she thought it was finger-lickin' good:

For pudding she had her very own nectarine, depsite their brick-like consistency, and appeared to enjoy it very much indeed.

Clunk click with every trip

It's clearly important that Hannah wears her high chair seat belt for every meal now. I forgot to do it up at lunchtime today, and this is what happened at the end of the meal after she'd finished her meal but I hadn't cleaned her up yet:

Breakfast today was shreddies again, and for lunch Hannah ate cheese on toast, a banana, some cherry tomatoes and some raspberries. She ate the raspberries so quickly I thought she's thrown them somewhere while I wasn't looking, but judging by the squished bits all over her face and lack of any leftovers during clean up, I think she must have eaten them!

Dinner was pasta with tomato and mascarpone sauce, and as you can see it was wiped all over Hannah's face and shovelled into her mouth as quickly as possible:

This was ollowed by a doughnut man (a special treat) which Hannah spent ages carefully disecting - licking most of the icing off the front first, then pulling apart the torso to get to the jam innards, then licking out the jam before setting about the flesh (as it were...):

I thought the smartie eyes might have been a choking hazard, so I selflessly ate those myself ;o) much to Hannah's disgust!

Take two spoons to the table? Hannah does.

Today, Hannah has mostly been impersonating a monkey, clambering onto the coffee table and standing up on it (I like to call it table surfing...) - did I mention she can reach the light switch from there? It's really annoying...:

climbing into her toybox to get that difficult-to-reach-yet-absolutely-essential toy from right at the back: and climbing up my legs, the stair gates, and her high chair.

She's eaten quite well today, having shreddies for breakfast - although only about half of the bowl that I gave her - followed by eggy bread (1 and a bit slices) and a slice of pineapple for lunch. The pineapple I just sliced, cut the slice in half and gave her. She took some time to decide it was edible, but then concentrated almost entirely on that rather than the leftover eggy bread. It did make her giggle a few times, I think because it tingled on her tongue.

Dinner was a buffet of a veggie burger, some sweetcorn ring crisps, a breadstick, some hummus, a rice cake, a couple of sticks of cheese, an apricot flavour barquette (french biscuit), some raisins and a couple of dried apricots. She also ate part of an organix fruity custard pot, but didn't seemed that fussed by it and was more entertained by battling with spoons (one for the hummus, one for the custard thing):



I'm not going to bother getting any more of the custard pots, Hannah's not been that keen on them at all really so I don't think they're worth it. I'll just have to get my bum in gear and make homemade custard for her, she definitely likes that!

She's growing up (literally!)

I took Hannah to get weighed and measured today, and at exactly 15 months old she's 21lbs 8oz, and 76cms tall. So she's put on 5cms and over a lb in the last few weeks. We thought she'd grown, since at the start of our holiday a few weeks back she could walk underneath the table, and by the end of it she was bashing her forehead on the edge, but 5cms does seem a lot - her trousers need less rolling up now, too, which is nice!

Food-wise she's been stocking up on carbs recently, concentrating on potatoes and pasta it seems. Over the weekend she ate halloumi salad, quiche and salad, roast dinner (with about a thousand roast potatoes to go with it), and something on Saturday night that escapes me!

Today she's had shreddies for breakfast, and two rice cakes with cream cheese, a packet of carrot sticks, a cereal bar, some slices of tomato, and a rusk for lunch. All of that got eaten except for the rice cakes - they were chewed a bit unenthusiastically then left on one side, although the cream cheese was carefully picked off the top before they were discarded.

Dinner was pasta with tomato and mascarpone sauce, and a bit of grated cheese on top. Hannah definitely enjoyed the pasta, the vast majority of it went straight down and didn't get close to the floor (always a good sign!). In fact you can tell how much she enjoyed it from this picture:

Pudding was a banana, but I think she'd filled up on pasta by that point as most of that did end up on the floor.

Also, we're on the look out for some nice small-person sized cutlery, as Hannah is trying more and more often to use a spoon or fork when we give them to her. I want some nice metal ones rather than the tacky plastic looking tombelyboo things we've got already - stuff that will last! Suggestions on where we might find these mythical items most welcome...

And finally (you'll be glad to hear) I saw the picture proofs of Gill Rapley's BLW book that featured Hannah yesterday, they looked fab (there were lots of pics of other BLW babies too) and we're still hoping that Hannah makes the cut. The book will be out later this year, in November I think, Amazon have it here.