I Can Eat A Rainbow

Breakfast was back to raisin wheats with full fat milk. As before she tended to crush them by gripping them too tightly, but made considerably less mess than last time. I'm not sure why - it's possible that she ate more, but it's hard to tell.

Lunch was a colourful affair of red, yellow and green: red baby plum tomatoes sliced in half lengthways, yellow pepper cut into slices, steamed in the microwave then skinned, green courgette fried in butter. She seemed to like tomato the best, sucking out the innards of each one which is exactly what she did last time. She also enjoyed the courgette, as you can see in the photo. Pepper was a bit slippy but when it made it into her mouth she liked that as well. She did mostly go for the tomato, though.

For pudding she had a slice of melon, always a big hit! It's fair to say that she's perfected the art of stripping all the flesh off, leaving just the rind to be cleared away.

Dinner was pasta again, with tomato and mascarpone sauce spiced up a little with some more fresh baby plum tomatoes. As per, she sucked all the sauce off the pasta, sucked the innards out of the tomatoes and left the tomato husks with the bare pasta.

For pudding she had a raspberry fromage frais which she was a bit too enthusiastic about - she ate about half as usual then managed to fling the rest on the floor, table legs, chair legs, herself... The problems started when she grabbed the pot and tried to drink from it like a cup, but got her mouth on the 'top' side side instead of the bottom, as if trying to get rid of hiccups. It all went downhill from there...

In other news, she's consistently taking less milk on her pre-dinner breastfeed, suggesting that she's regularly eating quite a bit of food at lunchtime, as well as continuing to take less than the full 7oz (200ml) dream feed. We also took her to be weighed today, she came in at 16lb 4oz (7.4Kg for our international viewers), which is a healthy gain of 1lb 2 oz (510g) in 3 weeks, so she seems to be thriving on BLW!

She's also developed a new trick: she drops things off the side of the tray, then leans over and peers down at them. Special fairy magic means they usually reappear back on the tray, where she once again pounces on them.

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.

Breakfast today was toast, half served with raspberry jam the other hand served with blackcurrant jam. She didn't eat a great deal of toast but the jam all disappeared - definitely a fan of jam!

Lunch was a home made veggie sausage plait and avocado. This was her first taste of sausage plait and she seemed to prefer the avocado, which is an old favourite, but the sausage did get some attention towards the end so we'll give that another go in the future. Pudding was 4 halves of apricot and two dried apple rings. The apple rings seemed to be the preferred choice today.

Dinner was pasta tubes with tomato and mascarpone sauce, the same as yesterday. And like yesterday she cheerfully sucked off all the sauce and left most of the bare pasta.

We're seeing signs that she's eating more solid food as half the breastfeeds she's had today have been significantly shorter than normal with no signs that she's still hungry - she's been quite cheerful and playful today. She's also taken less of the dream feed (11pm) the last few days, at least on the days when she's had 3 solid meals - we offer 200ml but she's only taking between 100 and 140ml. Previously she's always finished the lot.

Threeee is the magic number

Back to three meals today, starting with raisin wheats with full fat milk for breakfast. She's getting better at manipulating them, but still has a way to go: she tends to grip them a bit too forcefully so they get crushed and turn into raisin wheat mush. Today's raisin wheat mush spread from eyebrows to chin, from fingers to elbow and all across the tray. Still, Hannah seemed to enjoy it and might even have eaten some.

Lunch was the remainder of the tomato and Boursin tart, which she seemed a little less ethusiastic about than the first time at least to start with. But she did get into her stride after a while and seemed to get through a reasonable amount, photo below shows the tart before it had sustained the full-on Hannah Attack. By the end I was practically scraping it off with a trowel...

Pudding was 4 halves of apricot with an apricot fromage frais. It was the first time she's tasted apricot so it was greeted in the usual way: she froze as she got the first taste, then raised her eyebrows, then frowned, then dropped it. Then went straight back at it. Second taste she's a little hesitant, then usually by the third taste she's tucking in happily. As usual we gave her the fromage frais on a spoon which she operates herself, and as usual she tended to grab the spoon end with one hand so half of it ends up between her fingers. But from there it mostly winds up in her mouth, so all's well that ends well.

For tea she had pasta tubes with tomato and mascarpone sauce. She did very well at manipulating the pasta tubes, but I don't think she really ate any. However, she did remove all traces of the sauce from every tube so that's a partial success! By the end she had a pile of plain pasta and a slight pinkish orange tint to the tray, so we moved that away and brought in pudding, which was 4 more halves of apricot. She dived straight in without hesitation this time and seems to quite like apricot, all four pieces getting a bit of a mauling.

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.

Three meals a day!

Today is the day...Hannah has eaten three meals today for the first time.

Firstly at breakfast she ate some melon, some mango, and a medjool date. The mango and date were new, she hadn't tried them previously, and the mango was a little underripe so put up a fight. She did manage to make some headway though, and seemed to like it too. The date was sticky, and even when she opened her hand to grab something else, it stayed where it was, which confused her a bit.

Lunch was pasta with tomato puree and grated cheese again, followed by melon (again!), a couple of dried apple rings, some sultanas, and a strawberry flavoured fromage frais. I wasn't sure how she'd get on with the sultanas, since she's only just got the hang of her pincer grip. She surprised both of us by managing to pick one of them up at her first attempt, but didn't manage to transfer it to her mouth. So it didn't actually get eaten, we'll try them again in a few days I think.



I'm still impressed with how much of each piece of melon she manages to eat now, we're basically just left with the rind at the end.

Dinner confused Hannah today - it's the first time she's had any though. It was a slice of eggy bread cut into fingers, and she ate a fair amount of it too. I'll have to start thinking up new meals to give her though, now she's on three a day!

Teeth, pincer grips and other things

Yes, Hannah appears to have two shiny new teeth to show off! Well, little points of teeth really, but still they do seem to have broken through her gums at the bottom centre. She's well and truly growing up (*sob*).

As if that wasn't enough, at breakfast there was a definite pincer grip too - see the pic for evidence:

Anyway, on to the food. For breakfast Hannah ate a banana, a slice of melon, and a rusk. The fruit was better received than the rusk, but that had its day once she'd seen off the banana and melon.

For lunch there was pasta mixed with a squirt of tomato puree and some grated cheddar. It's the first time I've tried her with cheddar, and it was the really strong stuff, since that's the sort I like so it was in the fridge. She did pull a funny face at the first taste, but carried on regardless and pretty much demolished the lot of it. Her fancy new pincer grip meant that the pasta tubes didn't offer much resistance - it was quite difficult to pick up last time she tried - which is just as well as I forgot that I bought pasta twists specially to make it easier, they're still sat in the cupboard, oh well!

I gave her another slice of melon for pudding, and she drank from her sippy cup again too. All in all a very good day!

Update: that'll teach me for posting this while she's still eating - I've just been and got her a second slice of melon and another rusk, as she'd eaten everything I'd given her! No idea where she's putting it all... Oh and she's having a bath this afternoon, I've just discovered dried-in banana in her hair and behind her ear. Lovely.

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!

A good day

Neil was in charge of today's breakfast, and it was a repeat of yesterdays - Raisin wheats with full fat milk and a banana. As you can see from the picture below, we don't usually give Hannah a bowl to eat from, she's not quite got the hang of them yet!

I was back on duty for lunch, and offered carrot, parsnip and sweet potato along with a breadstick and some lentil pate (which is now stored in the freezer), and a rusk and tinned pear for pudding. For once Hannah wasn't that impressed with the sweet potato, she preferred going at the breadstick. She really liked the pear, and since there's half a tin of them left in the fridge she's in luck! The rusk went down well again too, in fact more of it got eaten today than last time.

Hannah's been very tired for the past two days, sleeping a fair bit more than she has been of late, but if anything this has made her feed better than normal - both with solid food and with breastfeeding. We've moved to mixed feeding this week as well, so she's having one bottle of formula in the evening before bed and the rest of the time is breastfed. It means that I don't have to express first thing in the morning and makes it much quicker to get up and about with Hannah. So far so good, but if anything changes I'll keep you posted.

Omelette and using a cup

Breakfast broke with tradition today, Hannah had Raisin Wheats (like mini shredded wheat with raisins on the inside) and seemed to quite like them. I only used a little bit of milk with them, so they didn't disintegrate too badly, and she managed better than I'd feared at getting them to her mouth. A couple of times she managed to suck the end off one to get the raisin out of the middle, and this made her splutter a bit as the strands of wheat detached and went to the back of her mouth. She followed the raisin wheats with half a banana (I ate the other half!) and even managed to use her cup by herself for the first time - I caught it on camera:

For lunch she had more new things - this time a one egg cheese omelette. She pulled a very strange face at her first taste, but did go back and try it again after a bit of thought. Then she decided she liked it, and ate quite a bit of it, so all in all it was a success.

As well as the omelette she had some sweet potato, carrot and parsnip sticks that were left over from yesterday, and a strawberry flavoured fromage frais for her afters. Again she drank a bit out of her cup, so she's definitely starting to get the hang of that - it's only taken about three weeks!

Exploding nappies :o(

Over the weekend we experienced a couple of nappies that exploded out of the wrap and onto Hannah's clothes, so I've decided to keep her diet rather bland for the next couple of days. So breakfast today was toast and jam and her first ever Farley's rusk. She really liked the rusk, although it looked quite funny - imagine an adult trying to eat a biscuit the size of a football. Not necessarily a bad thing...

Lunch was steamed veggies and a banana, the sweet potato went down best, the carrot and parsnip were tolerated but Hannah didn't pay them much attention until she'd eaten the sweet potato. The banana seems to get more popular each time Hannah tries it, she made short work of today's. In the end I had to hold the small mushed bits up for her to eat as she was getting very frustrated with not being able to pick them up. She'd get them half way to her mouth and they'd shoot out and land back on the tray. There was hardly any of it left at the end of the meal.

She did much better today at drinking from her Tommee Tippee cup too, although she still pours most of the water down herself rather than into her mouth. I think she might have done better because I put more water in it, so she didn't have to tip it up quite so far to get anything out.

In other news, I've found our camera again (I'd put it away somewhere safe...) so there should be more pics appearing in the next day or two.

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!

Pasta and sauce

Neil was in charge of this morning's breakfast, and offered Hannah toast with cream cheese, toast with jam, and a slice of melon. She didn't go a bundle on the cream cheese today, but did suck all the jam off the toast. And the melon was pretty much eaten too.

Lunch was the first proper meal of pasta, with some cheese sauce stirred in. I used pasta tubes, since that's what we had in, and the sauce was basically a white (bechamel) sauce with grated cheese stirred into it. The pasta was a little difficult to pick up, but not too bad and didn't seem to cause any problems once she'd got used to it a bit. On a few occasions she picked up a tube and it shot out of her fist, but mostly she managed to get it into her mouth. At first Hannah didn't really show any interest in the pasta at all, it took a good few minutes for her to get started. Once she had started, though, she was happy enough, so I'm not sure what the problem was.

There was another slice of melon for afters, but that'll be the last one for a while as we've run out - I'll have to pick another one up when I go shopping next.

Finally, why is it that nobody warns you of the horrible consequences of weaning? Nappies nowadays are much less pleasant than when she was exclusively breastfed, and yesterday's four dirty nappies in one day is some kind of record, she's normally a once a day kind of girl. Hey ho, another reason not to give her porridge again for quite some time...

Banana on toast a hit!

Fairly standard day today really, nothing much exciting to report. Two slices of toast for breakfast, one with cream cheese on, the other with half a mashed banana spread on it.

The banana on toast was a hit, most of it was sucked off in fairly short order. Hannah's also now properly chewing her food, albeit with gums not teeth, not sure exactly when this started, but we've been noticing it more over the past few days.

For lunch she had a rice cake with pate (again - she'll be eating that pate for weeks, there's loads of it!), an avocado cut into BLW-friendly pieces, the other half of the breakfast banana, and a slice of melon. There's some pasta sauce sat in the fridge for her to eat at some point, will try and introduce pasta tomorrow I think...

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.

Porridge = mistake

Well you live and learn I suppose. Today I learnt that giving a 6-and-a-bit month old baby porridge for breakfast isn't the brightest idea. Hannah seemed to like it, but it was hard to tell on account of her not really being able to get it into her mouth terribly well. I cooked it so it was quite solid, just oats with full fat milk and a teaspoon of raspberry jam stirred through, but it didn't hold together in the way I was hoping, so ended up spattered all over the dining room. We won't be offering it to her again for some considerable time!

Lunch was more successful, there was carrot and parsnip chips, plus a rice cake with homemade lentil pate, followed by gently cooked apple pieces and a slice of melon. The carrot and parsnip went down well, and after pulling a funny face at the first taste of the pate (I'm not offended, honest...) Hannah did seem to like it, at least she sucked it off the pieces of rice cake. Once again the melon completely disappeared, the apple wasn't so popular and caused her to screw her face up a bit.

I remembered to give her a drink with lunch today, although it seems Hannah prefers drinking from a cup with no lid on, so that was interesting! She managed it fairly well with some help from me in holding and tipping the cup. She's still feeding strangely though, and I don't know whether to put it down to the fact she's had a cold for the past few days, or whether she's genuinely changing how she breastfeeds. I don't think we've had a feed longer than 10 minutes in the past three days, today's pre-lunch feed was a magnificent six minutes long.

Launchable lunch

Today's brekkie was the fast-becoming-standard-issue toast, with cream cheese and jam spread on it. Lunch was rather more interesting, Hannah had a rice cake with hummus and half a fresh tomato for her main course, and a fig, a slice of melon, and some natural yogurt with half a banana mashed up in it (to sweeten it a bit).

She's definitely making progress in being able to eat melon, there were two pieces fully munched, plus two other pieces half eaten. There wasn't that much fig left either, but by the time we got to the yogurt Hannah was losing interest. She's recently discovered a new trick, of throwing things on the floor and then peering over the edge of her tray to look for them, and quite a lot of lunch ended up victim of this. Yogurt, it turns out, spreads quite well when the spoon lands, and tomatoes explode on impact. Maybe I should revise my opinion on splash mats, I only said we didn't need one yesterday!

There was a brief moment during lunch when she managed a pincer grip, the first time I've seen it, so I'll be looking out for that in the coming days and I'll see if I can catch it on camera.

Now she's eating more food I must remember to offer her a quick feed before she has her lunchtime nap - today's was postponed briefly as she started yelling as if she was hungry when I took her up to her room, so I fed her but she only wanted three or four minutes, so she must have been thirsty. Bad mummy forgot to give her a cup of water, will try that tomorrow and BF after the meal as well.

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.

Hummus and breadsticks

Breakfast today was shredded wheat bitesize and a fig. The shredded wheat seemed like a good idea on paper, but when I'd added some full fat milk they became rather soggy and Hannah mainly mushed them between her fingers. She did eat pieces of them, but wasn't really that fussed. Also, it turns out that the suction bit on the bottom of our Ikea frog bowl is useless. I carefully stuck it down so she could help herself to the cereal, and within seconds she'd wheedled it off the tray and was merrily waving the bowl at me, tipping it up to get to the milk in the bottom.

The fig, by contrast, she was much more enthusiastic about - enough that we gave her another half a fig to have a go with. I think cereal is going to stay as an occasional thing until she can handle a spoon and bowl more neatly!

For lunch Hannah had her first try of hummus and breadsticks. I dipped one end of the breadstick in the hummus and gave it to Hannah, who immediately tried to stick it up her nose. Then she turned it round so was holding the hummus covered end in her hand and eating the end with nothing on. Eventually she managed to line up the hummus and her mouth, and did enjoy it. She also managed to crunch on and chew the breadsticks, which to be honest I wasn't really expecting to happen.

Pudding was melon chunks and a plum. She clearly preferred the melon, and in fact managed to completely eat one piece of it leaving just a thin covering of flesh on the rind. Once she'd tried all the melon she eventually moved on to the plum, but I think it was a bit too firm as she was having problems making much of a dent on it today.

No pics today, but I've added one to yesterday's post instead.

Lots of new things

Hannah tried lots of new foods today. For breakfast she had a slice of eggy bread - her first egg - and seemed to like it. She dived straight in, probably because she'd been made to wait for her breakfast while I did eggy bread for everyone else too.

Lunch was a sweet potato that Grandma cooked yesterday but didn't give her, plus two chunks of polenta left over from our evening meal a couple of nights ago. I spread the polenta with tomato puree to make it a bit more interesting, and at the first taste of it she wasn't sure, but a bit more investigation indicated it wasn't poisonous so she carried on trying it.

Polenta isn't a great food to give her though, as when she dropped it it exploded into tiny little grains that are going to be hell to clean up. I think we'll be finding it for weeks!

Oh, and she had a banana for pudding, this time I just cut it in half but previously I've cut it into smaller chunks. She got on OK with the halves, but I think the smaller pieces do work better so I'll probably do those again next time.

Grandma's in charge today!

As Neil and I had to go out all day today, Grandma was babysitting for the first time. For breakfast she gave Hannah some toast with a bit of jam on. At first she wasn't impressed, but a bit of additional jam soon solved that problem.

Lunch was rice cake, cream cheese, and a carrot. Since Hannah smeared the cream cheese all over the high chair tray, Grandma used the carrot bits of scrape it up, and apparently this was a popular move.

Hopefully normal service will be resumed tomorrow, and I went to the supermarket yesterday so there are some new things that will be appearing on the menu over the next few days.

Cream cheese again!

Hannah had toast for breakfast this morning again, as I still haven't been shopping - that should be sorted out this afternoon though, so perhaps the menu will get more exciting soon. Half of her toast was spread with cream cheese, the other half was cream cheese and raspberry jam. If you've never tried that combo before, it's gorgeous, in fact so much so that I nicked a quarter of a slice of toast from her, poor baby.

For lunch she had the last bits of courgette, along with a rice cake cut into fingers and spread with cream cheese and avocado. It all went down quite well, the discarded mush wasn't very plentiful so I can only assume that a fair amount actually went down.

Which reminds me. Yesterday for the first time Hannah didn't breastfeed very well. She fed as normal first thing, then had less than 10 minutes at each feed until her before bed feed at about 6.30pm and her dream feed at about 11pm which again were normal. One feed was a whole three minutes long. I'm putting it down to having eaten more than normal, so filled herself up on solids but I'm keeping an eye on things - so far today is much more normal, so perhaps the strike has been called off.

Cream cheese face pack

Apparently avocado and jam make a good combination of flavours - at least Hannah thought so judging by the way she was shoving multiple pieces of toast into her mouth at breakfast today.

Lunch was courgette cooked in butter (in the microwave), a rice cake spread with cream cheese, and a tomato that I skinned and cut into quarters. She liked the tomato, although was suspicious of it to start with. Once she got over that though, she took each piece in turn, sucked all the seeds out of the middle and nochalently dropped the flesh over the side of the high chair tray onto the floor. The cream cheese off the rice cake ended up mostly as a face pack (again), and the courgette was gummed to death and the stringy bits discarded. Sadly I wasn't quick enough with the camera to get a picture of her wearing the cream cheese, she wiped most of it off again with some courgette.

I think we'll be getting the bath out again later today...

Update: Hannah woke up just before we had lunch, so ended up joining us and ate two bits of mushroom and emmental ravioli with creme fraiche and red pesto topping. Not quite what I had in mind as her intro to pasta, but never mind!

An apple a day...

Not a very eventful weaning day today really. Hannah had her first taste of apple for breakfast, both dried and cooked fresh. The first taste of the fresh stuff made her screw her face up, but after 15 minutes of sucking on the dried stuff she gave it another go and seemed to like it better. I think she might even have swallowed some.

Lunch was chips of courgette and carrot cooked with a little butter in the microwave, with the last of our fromage frais for pudding. She was really tired though and didn't dive into the pudding with her normal gusto.

Poor man's guacamole

I made Hannah some poor man's guacamole for lunch today - just blended an avocado into a paste and spread it on tw0 rice cakes, accompanied by some cucumber chips. It turns out that you can cut rice cakes into fingers really easily with a sharp knife, so that made things much easier.


Lunch was fairly messy, Hannah sucked the avocado off each piece of rice cake. Well apart from the bits that she smeared on her face and the high chair, that is. I reapplied avocado to the rice cake pieces several times, and there's still plenty of it left for tomorrow.


Breakfast was toast with butter, jam and marmite again - not all on the same slice though! And for Rog, giving her marmite does not consistute child abuse I'm sure :oD I do need to find some alternative breakfast items though, not least because we've run out of wholemeal bread.

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.

Best laid plans...

Today was the day we were starting Hannah on two meals a day instead of just one. Note the use of "was" in that last sentence. A combination of teething (again, still nothing to report though) and silly parents going to Ikea at nap time mean that she only had the one meal today, breakfast.

It was nice though - Hannah had two slices of wholemeal toast, cut into fingers, while Neil and I had our cereal and coffee. The toast worked better cut into four fingers rather than three, as those were a bit big for Hannah to manage.

On the toast was a selection of spreads. A couple of bits just had unsalted butter on, some had seedless raspberry jam, and the rest had a tiny scraping of marmite. I only used a really small bit of marmite because of the salt content.

Hannah's reaction to toast was quite funny. She liked the bits with butter on, but she liked the different toppings too - mostly with each piece she sucked the topping off before attacking the toast itself. Her first taste of marmite made her raise her eyebrows, but there wasn't really any other reaction. Later on, she pulled a funny face at another bit of marmite. I think it's a bit early to decide whether she loves it or hates it, at this stage the raspberry jam was definitely more popular!

Hopefully tomorrow we'll actually get both meals served - and she'll be exactly 6 months old, too, so we'll officially be allowed to wean her :o)

Fruit medley

Hannah is 26 weeks old today! Blimey, time flies. So tomorrow we'll be starting her on two meals a day rather than the one she's been having so far.

Today's meal was a rice cake spread with butter (unsalted of course), a banana, and some slices of melon. It's the first time she's tried melon, and it seemed as popular as everything else has been. I cut a normal slice of melon, removed the seeds, gave the rind a good wash, then cut the slice into smaller chunks. I left the rind on so that she had something to grab onto.

Rice cake wasn't that popular last time, but went down better this time round. It did get a bit soggy in the mushed banana and melon juice that covered the high chair tray before the end of the meal. Watching Hannah eat melon proved good entertainment. Even with the rind on, it seemed it was hard to pick up. But that didn't stop her: she lined it up in front of her on the tray, bent double and sucked at it where it was! Very ingenious :o)

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.