The end is upon us…

Ach, I think this is the end of our weaning journey.  Amy is coming up for 13 months old now so I don’t think there is much more documenting to be done in terms of food!

A bit of a melancholy time – my little girls are all grown up – but an exciting new chapter in our lives nonetheless!

Thanks for reading and I hope this has been of some use to someone, somewhere.  I know it was all a big ‘unknown’ when I started weaning Clauds so it was a big reassurance to have other people there to say “yes, it’s fine, we do that too”.

All the best and I hope you and your babies enjoy weaning – it’s so much fun!

Corn on the cob

A bit of an unusual one perhaps but hours of entertainment. Quite literally, in Amy’s case; a small chunk of corn lasted her a good hour today and she had so much fun!

Not only is it a nice healthy food for her, it’s great to help her coordination skills.

And for those who worry that you need lots of teeth to bite things: Amy has two little bottom teeth and her top two lateral incisors have just broken through gum. She managed to inflict a lot of damage on that sweetcorn!

 

Liquid Lunch

I bought a butternut squash the other day (every so often I get the urge and just can’t resist). Even though they’re a bit of a pain in the behind to peel, I did, and made some lovely soup. Nothing fancy, just the squash, cooked with onions. Add a pint of chicken stock, simmer until soft then blend. Add a dash of milk, some sour cream and season with pepper, nutmeg and some thyme and it’s done!

Admittedly, soup is not the first meal that springs to mind when discussing weaning but we got around that problem by dunking toast in the soup and presenting it to Amy.

She loved it! She wasn’t too sure at first (and pulled the ‘new flavour’ face, above, that I have come to know and love in both my girls) but she got through a half a piece of toast in one sitting so it definitely proved popular. Even Claudia got in on the action, preferring to have her own little bowl to dunk the toast strips in.

Amy enjoyed sucking the soup out of the toast before chewing away on the toast itself. She’s getting so much more confident with her motor skills now that I rarely have to actually hand her anything any more. Actually, that’s half the reason I haven’t posted on this blog in a while; I haven’t had much to update. She is almost weaned (and by that I mean “onto solids” rather than “off milk” as I realise the word can have different meanings) – she eats a decent amount at every meal, she enjoys her food, she enjoys “meal times” as a whole and it’s quite wonderful to be able to sit down as a family of four and enjoy our dinner together.

Dips

A very lazy lunch today: dips and breadsticks. I was waiting on a grocery order so didn’t want to get too involved.

We had the yummy mackerel pâté (and yes I did eat most of it myself…) and I also made another with some roasted red peppers (from a jar, nothing too fancy), cream cheese and black pepper. It wasn’t my favourite, I must admit, as I’m not a huge fan of vinegar (which the peppers were steeped in) but the girls and the husband all seemed to enjoy it so it wasn’t a total failure.

Amy certainly had fun! She’s not quite at the level of dipping things herself yet but she’s getting fantastically good at grabbing the right area on the breadstick so doesn’t end up with fists full of dip like she used to.

This does, however, mean that her face takes the brunt of the mess. Noone said baby led weaning was a clean way of doing things!

Crusty salmon and a cold roast lunch

So we had a roast one evening. Roast chicken is one of my all-time favourites and my local supermarket had one on offer. £1.60 for a seasoned roast chicken? I think so! Anyway, Amy slept through dinner (that never happens!) so I saved her portion for the next day and she had it for lunch.

Roast chicken, roast potatoes, green beans, courgettes and red peppers. Nom! We were given some gift vouchers from the girls’ grandparents for Christmas so decided to splash out on a new highchair (BabyDan’s ‘Dan Chair’). At first glance it looked tiny, really short, but it actually slots under the table nicely and is no lower than Claudia’s booster chair. Amy loved being next to Mummy: at the table instead of on it!

Munching on chicken with a roastie in her hand

She handled chicken really well today. I have found in the past that my girls, as babies, gag a lot on chicken. I presume it’s because it is quite fibrous and breaks apart easily, but Amy munched on it with gusto and didn’t gag one bit! Her cold roast lunch was an all-round success, it seems; as was the highchair.

Dinner was crusty salmon with mashed potatoes and veggies. There is nothing quite like a bowl full of fresh, chopped vegetables; they look so beautiful with those bright colours. Plus they make you feel quite virtuous for eating so darn healthily!

Green beans, courgettes and red peppers

The crust was a huge hit with Amy; she spent the first 10 minutes of dinner just sucking away on it! I broke up her salmon a bit and held it out for her to direct into her mouth and she had a few mouthfuls of that as well.

The funniest thing was the mash: she hated it! It made me giggle to think that, had I been weaning her in the traditional way (i.e. spoonfeeding and purées, progressing up to fingerfoods etc) then she would be on lumpy foods now anyway. I know some babies have trouble with lumpy foods and gag on them; Amy didn’t gag, she just looked at me as if to say “what on earth is this stuff you’re feeding me?!” and spat it out. Funny child.

She is certainly eating noticeably more these days. I went through a minor wobble a week or so ago, worrying that she was barely eating anything. As ever, I am rubbish at following my own advice; if anyone had come to me with the same worries I would have said “she’s getting everything she needs from your milk anyway, food is just for fun, there is no need to worry” but somehow it’s harder to keep your confidence when it’s just you, isn’t it?

Anyway, her appetite has really racked up a notch in the last week or so and she must have had a good 3 mouthfuls of fish, two slabs of crust (I gave her a piece of mine) and half a courgette stick. Nice going, little Smoosh!

It’s a rice-dream

Wow, I never realised that rice could go down so well! It was a bit of a “use up what’s in the fridge” lunch today but risotto is great for that. I made a basic risotto and added some bacon and courgettes to it with a dollop of cream cheese right at the end. I saved the parmesan for once I’d served the girls’ portions as it’s quite salty (and coupled with the bacon and the stock it would have been a bit of an overload for them) but it was tasty nonetheless.

Claudia wasn’t overly bothered and opted for a yoghurt instead. Amy loved it! I was rather surprised as she’s been ill and off her food recently (hence the lack of blog posts) but she was having a whale of a time grabbing, bashing and munching on the spoon.

Spoons are tricky!

She’s getting better at reaching her mouth with the spoon and we only had a couple of ‘that’s the wrong end, love’ incidents so all in all she’s improving. I was just amazed at her appetite!

I am puzzled as to why on earth she was having so much fun and eating so much when she is feeling so ill at the moment and hardly having much at each milk feed; maybe it was a nice distraction for her. Fingers crossed it means she’s on the mend now.

It’s all about lunch

Smoosh is enjoying lunch these days. I think she’s turned a corner and is going through an “eat things and eat them now!” phase.

Yesterday we had rice cakes again. I decided to be a bit more adventurous (as, let’s face it, the things taste like cardboard) and gave the girls this:

Rice cakes with cream cheese, ham, cottage cheese, lemon zest and black pepper

It went down surprisingly well! Amy had a little trouble with the cream cheese as, every time she gripped the rice cake she sloughed off the cheese and was left with a fistful of gunk. It was tasty gunk but not quite what she was aiming for, I think. Her pincer grip is undeveloped as yet but she still managed to get a hold of smallish chunks of rice cake and manoeuvre them up to her mouth without much drama.

No pincer grip yet but she's thinking laterally!

Get it in there, woman!

She also had a good go at the pear, sucking and chewing away on it. It’s quite a hard pear so she managed a decent grip on it. The soft pears, while great fun for lucking and sucking, are just too squishy to eat effectively for a 6 month old…

Today for lunch we had wraps. I am very much a scavenger when it comes to lunch – I’ll have a look in the fridge/cupboard and see what I can make from what we have. Often it’s cheese and ham toasties but today I hit the mother-load and my foraging paid off:

Cream cheese, ham, avocado, cottage cheese, lemon juice and black pepper in a flour tortilla.

I wondered how Amy would cope with a strip of wrap (as I often have trouble eating it without the contents ending up in my lap). At first she ended up with an empty piece of tortilla…

It's a tricky one...

…but she soon discovered that the best method was just to grab great chunks of it and shove it in there! Dignified? No. Effective? Damn skippy!

Cram it all in, girl!

Today was the first time she had avocado and she really enjoyed it! This was quite a firm one as well so easy to get a grip on. She chewed on a big old chunk of it, gagging a little but recovering well. It’s been a while since she last gagged so it caught me off guard but it lasted maybe 5 seconds. It’s always worrying when she does it but I have to remind myself that she’s fine and my jumping in and ‘helping’ will likely annoy or upset her.

Avocados are fascinating creatures...

All in all, lunches have been a huge success. We had roast chicken tonight for dinner and she definitely proved that she has an appetite! She had a piece of chicken, a piece of roast potato and a whole floret of broccoli. She seemed to absolutely love the broccoli and spent a good 5 minutes just sucking on it, much to our amusement.

Appetite is a funny thing. I think I’m a bit of a feeder as I am always tempted to persuade the girls to have ‘just one more bite’ and really have to sit on my hands some nights. Claudia goes through phases of eating next to nothing. In fact I honestly don’t know how she gets by on so little but she does and will always get her appetite back after a week or two so I try not to worry. Amy, while clearly enjoying the weaning process, doesn’t actually need the food yet, nutritionally speaking, as my milk is far richer in nutrients than any solid food I could give her. I have to keep reminding myself that, especially when she doesn’t even touch her food but I suppose babies have moods too. Some nights I’m not all that hungry or don’t feel like eating a certain thing; why should she be any different?

They both seem to be turning out ok…