more firsts!

The last week has been a bit odd as Naomi ran a very high temperature all day Thursday with no other symptoms. The GP refused to see her after a discussion over the telephone but fortunately I'd had a long chat with NHS Direct. And then, at teatime it suddenly disappeared never to return!

And we were out and about at the weekend with friends. So once again I have a big posting gap that I didn't intend. Apologies to our regular readers ;-)

The last couple of days Naomi has got very good at dipping the spoon into things and then getting it straight into her mouth without waving it about. OK so not much food gets on there but if its fruit puree or something similar it does coat the back of the spoon. So the idea is catching on!

Tonight it was in the tomato sauce from our pasta. She had her own sausages, veg & gnocchi and we thought we'd try her on the sauce coz you have to keep plugging away at these things. And, whoopie doo, it went in. Both on the spoon and by hand. In fact she cleared her bowl. So here is my very tomatoey daughter - something I thought I wouldn't be seeing for quite some time to come yet!

She does after all use a fork with great skill. Interestingly, although not in these photos(!), she does seem to be favouring the left hand. Her Daddy is sinister while I am right-handed. But her brother did this also and he is firmly right handed, though handy with his left nonetheless, so we'll have to see.

legoland

We have collected Tesco vouchers to give us Annual Passes to Legoland so I persuaded my husband we should go today while he was around. Then I would know how easy it will be to take the 2 kids by myself. Sadly not very as hardly any of the rides allow you to hold a baby and Naomi is too small for many of them. But she's free so it won't do any harm to go for a couple of hours here and there and then try and rope in visitors when we have them.

So it was just an ordinary snacky picnic for lunch but in the afternoon Naomi found something much better to eat ;-) For some reason, keys are just SO the thing of the moment!

hungrier?

Another good eating day today AND a full night's sleep last night so spirits are high here despite the rain. Naomi polished off a good bowl of porridge into which I'd mashed half a banana and she then demanded strawberries. There were only a couple left and they were from my birthday breakfast so I'd put them in my bowl. And there she was pointing and 'saying' give me or mine! So I gave in and she had a whale of a time with them. Phewee. Must get some raspberries and see if she'll take to those too. If I can get her to eat soft fruit she'll be 16-17 months by the autumn/ winter and I might have more success with hard fruit at that age.

The rest of the day was quite boring in that she had no new things. Pate & tomato sandwich for lunch and bacon & egg loaf for tea. She insisted on eating the asparagus woody end first. Maybe it was just a great teether!

So we'll keep plugging away at the lesser amount of milk and see. Once I know its going OK we'll switch to cow's milk and see how that goes. Gosh its tough this feeding lark. Wish I could wave a magic wand and have her be 4! Only joking!

more new tastes

I'm always a bit concerned that Naomi's finicky eating means we've missed the best 'taste window' for getting her to eat new things easily. There is thinking that this is between 6 and 9 months or so. And yet there are things that you technically shouldn't feed to a baby before certain ages - shellfish and eggs before the age of 1 for instance. So it must be possible, I try and reassure myself, for new tastes to be accepted all the time.

Breakfast was a repeat of yesterday's fruit fest except with Weetabix this time. And when she'd cleared the bowl she then ate 3 whole strawberries by hand. Better make sure we have them in the house at all times over the summer then, shame ha ha.

For lunch then I decided to try her on an egg sandwich. She has had a lot of omelettes which she really likes and she will eat scrambled. So I hardboiled it for 7 minutes and mashed it with the tiniest scrape of salad cream. Spread onto the bread I pressed tiny bits of chopped up cucumber into it and hoped for the best. The first tastes were obviously 'interesting' as little bits of white came out again. But then she got the hang of it or couldn't be bothered to resist and ate the whole piece I had prepared for her. As we've now got her to eat ordinary flavoured yogurt - we have Yeo Valley Organic - I bought apricot this week and she devoured it plus 2nds and 3rds.

Mexican chicken was on the dinner menu. She's had it once before and really went for the kidney beans. No such luck this time, we had to get them in with the broccoli on the fork. Bit naughty I know as it means she's not totally in control but she was very accepting. She also loved the savoury rice we served it with, which was fantastic. We've had a big struggle getting her to accept rice at all but she was just asking and asking and asking for more. I'd cooked some gnocchi just in case she didn't want the rice, so we gave her some of those as well or else Daddy would have lost half his dinner to the little gannet.

She DIDN'T sleep through last night. A great time was NOT had by all between 3 and 4.45am, especially me who was up with her because I can't bear leaving her to cry. So lets hope tonight is better. We have cut her milk to 7oz and 8oz instead of 6,6, and 8 because I felt she might be having too much and thereby not eating enough solids. She gets plenty of cheese and yogurt so I'm not worried about her calcium. So we'll see. I won't switch her to cows milk until the reduction is accepted as its thinner. And I might leave the bedtime bottle as formula anyway given that her sleep is so prone to being knocked off balance.

But all in all, today has been good! She's eaten very well. Maybe no new grey hairs for me.

birthday day

Hi, this is Naomi herself here (ha ha!) Today is Mummy's birthday so I thought I would post myself.

Its been quite a quiet day food wise. I had porridge, which is normal, but Daddy had bought Mummy some of her favourite blueberries and strawberries and because he chopped them up very very small I agreed to eat them. Normally I won't touch a blueberry at 20 paces and strawberries are better for teething on than actually eating. So there were lots of smiles and I got some toast afterwards too. I'll do anything for bread.

Mummy said I must be teething as I was very hot and very grumpy and so I went straight to bed after church and slept for 2 hours. This means I missed lunch and got a very large bottle of milk instead. This doesn't happen often but I think Mummy was worried I would get dehydrated. It was yummy. I do so love milk! And then I got offered something called 'cake'. I don't normally get this, whatever it is, and so I spat it out. It was carrot cake and Daddy & Luke had made it. But I still didn't want it. Apparently it is my turn for this birthday lark in 2 weeks time so what Mummy is going to do about cake then she says she doesn't know. Lots of people are coming to see me so I think they will have to eat it for themselves!

We went out to Pizza Express for tea as it is Luke's favourite - funny, I thought it was Mummy's birthday? - and Daddy had brought along a couple of my mini pies/quiches. I got a bit of garlic bread too but I know Mummy & Daddy worry about my fruit and veg intake (aren't I a minx!) and so they don't like me having just the pizza. The quiches are VERY yummy anyway so I ate them with great relish and looked around for more. So a whole Summer Pudding fruit pot came my way too! And a big bottle of milk when I got home. So maybe I will be very nice to Mummy & Daddy and carry on sleeping through after my little blip when I wasn't so well last week.

I like this posting for myself lark, might have to do it more often ;-)

day out at Woburn

One of the forums I post on, Babycentre UK, has long been a lifeline to me. I discovered it when pregnant with my son and we went to Woburn Safari Park yesterday to celebrate the birthdays of our 4 year olds (eek!). Its about 90 minutes from us and so it did mean that Naomi's food routine was all out of the window. But she coped incredibly well.

We took our own picnic and so she had a cheese sandwich (as per usual!) which they fortunately turned a blind eye to us eating in the restaurant. It was pouring with rain or else we would have eaten outside and we did buy a bowl of chips for us. She also enjoyed her rice cakes whilst going round to see the animals for a second time!

We stayed for tea which was a disgustingly overpriced breaded chicken, roast potatoes & veg. Fortunately we could peel off the coating and the chicken itself was fine. And she adores that kind of meal. But they bill it as being so healthy which it isn't really given that its captive market cafe food. *sigh* Still once very very occasionally won't hurt.

But she refused my friend's attempts to get her to eat melon. Fruit very much still an issue. Although, my ds has only just started to enjoy salad so maybe Naomi will be the same and I just have to wait. She still only has the one tooth and maybe I am just mis-remembering Luke's eating through the sands of time since 2003/2004!

softly softly ducky monkey....

Yes yes I know its supposed to be 'softly softly catchee monkey' but Naomi has decided that instead of speaking words she will do animal sounds instead! And does both a great monkey and a fantastic duck. She can also say something that sounds very like 'duck' but I might just be imagining that. She will do the sounds to order which is just hilarious.

As for food? Well because she was throwing up we've had to go gently. The hospital told us to keep offering the food because as her age she needs the nutrition. But a lot has gone rejected at various times over the last couple of days. And she's back to night waking although she did give us a full night through last night so hopefully it was just a blip. She'd had mini quiches for tea which she absolutely loves. We've also managed to very successfully make the switch to ordinary organic yogurt instead of Petit Filous. Strawberry flavour only at the moment but she's like a gannet with it and today even managed to feed herself a little off the spoon. I've not been well or else there would be a photo of it!

bank holiday poorly and so not very interested

Although Naomi has been fine since her tumble she has a viral infection and is back to throwing up her solid food. She hasn't done this for a couple of months so its been a bit of a shock and we thought it might be related to the head bump. fortunately not but it means the weekend has been a bit of a washout regarding food.

We went to our favourite pub on Saturday night and she didn't want any of Dan's beef pie or my chicken. shame, as it was served with a gorgeous cheesy potato gratin which would have gone down a treat.

Sunday was a wash out but today, Monday, has been better. She ate and kept down her lunch (cheese sandwich) and seems to have been OK with the bacon & egg loaf. It's certainly the thing to have gone down with most gusto in the last few days. Fingers crossed that the vomiting has passed. Her milk has been staying down which is the best thing although it has meant a return to night feeding when she doesn't keep her dinner down.

tumble tumble

We were doing really well until tonight when Naomi fell backwards from standing and bumped her head. She yelled straight away and was absolutely against all the worry criteria but she threw up the dinner she had just eaten and was then very reluctant to eat much more.

So the mini quiches that she devoured with such gusto went to waste.

mixed success with fruit

We are still really struggling to get Naomi to eat proper fruit. Bananas and strawberries are all she will countenance. I tried a piece of apple again tonight as Luke was eating one and she was pointing at it and vocalising strongly (!) But *sigh* no go as usual. Even when I started eating the remainder of the one I had cut up for her and she was pointing at it also.

But I did manage to get her to eat pureed pear (admittedly out of a jar) mixed in with some natural yogurt. We are trying, as we did with her brother, to wean her off Petit Filous and onto 'proper' yogurt with fruit in it. He's a real addict of frozen berries warmed up and served with natural yogurt & sprinkled cinnamon, yum yum. But she's been wise to our plan up till now.... So I was really pleased when not only did it go down, quickly and in quantity, but she was going 'yum yum' at it too! I wish I could capture that sound in a photo.

sweetcorn

I was making another bacon & egg loaf today since its so easy and it seemed silly to use up the freezer stock when Naomi was napping and Luke & I could have fun in the kitchen together. And so I decided to put some sweetcorn in it. Peas & sweetcorn on their own are really quite difficult for children as there's nothing really to bite down on and a lot of kids don't like the texture of the skin. But being held together in the context of the loaf seemed to make sense.

Went down alright! She didn't notice, as was expected. Although she didn't eat as much as I would have liked because I served hers with gnocchi so that Luke could have the rarity of proper oven chips (we eat a lot of home-made wedges) and I made the mistake of putting the gnocchi where she could see them. She is gnocchi mad and I usually hide them until she has made good progress on whatever else I've given her for dinner.

asparagus

In at attempt to widen Naomi's intake of fruit & veg we decided to take advantage of it being asparagus season. I know it can be bought all year round from somewhere but we do try and shop seasonally and English asparagus is around for about the next 8 weeks.

Shame that what DH bought was actually Spanish but he bought if from the little greengrocer near work and I guess it didn't occur to him that it might not be from the UK.

Here is Naomi making short work of it. It does seem to give her terrible wind :-)