We're growing up! Acceptable eating rules for a 4 year old.

It's been some time since I last put pen to paper, but don't be fooled into thinking that's because everything has been plain sailing.

No, 'tis quite the opposite!
We have now reached the age of needing to teach table manners and it is COMPLETELY IMPOSSIBLE.

Now that I've got the overuse of capitals out of my system I shall try to elucidate.

We have, over the last few years, established some rules:

1) Whenever we are all at home, we eat together at the table, unless we are having a movie night in which case we can watch TV together.

2) A decent stab has to be made at eating a meal before any puddings are permitted.

3) The phrase "sitting at the table" does not include or permit spinning like a top on the chair; repeated getting down to check what's happening at the window, or the need to sit so close to Mummy that it is impossible for her to eat.

Now I say we've established these rules.
What I mean, of course, is that we have discussed, agreed and even sometimes written down these rules, but that they are completely open to interpretation and can be disregarded entirely at the whim of the 4 year old, as long as Mummy and Daddy have previously been worn out too much to give a flying fig about consistency and decent manners.

All clear?

The baby's gone on Highchair Strike...

In our household we've always believed in the principle of sitting down to eat - preferably together. On the one hand it's safer; there's less risk of a little person choking if she's not wandering around the room while she eats. And on the other it's a teeny, tiny bit less messy if she's sat in one place! My least favourite meals have been the ones where Bean has been free to roam, tomato-stained fingers and all (especially as there's usually a cream sofa within grasping distance).

But in addition to this there's the social etiquette thing. A lot of our meals are family social occasions and it's soooo much nicer when she's there, part of it, and usually being the most entertaining thing at the table (because she's cute, not because we're boring, btw!!!! :-) ). It's just not the same if she keeps wandering off to play somewhere and you can almost hear the tuts at how ill-disciplined our child is if she doesn't sit nicely. After all, it's perfectly reasonable to expect a young toddler to have a two hour attention span as we all take our time on a leisurely lunch. NOT!

Up until a couple of weeks ago, however, Bean was always excellent at going into her chair, eating however much/little she wanted, and then asking for "up". Now is a different time.... Now, if she doesn't want to eat she WILL NOT go in the chair and sometimes, even if she does want to eat, she WILL NOT go in the chair (but will grab the food from the tray and run off to her Cosy Coupe and eat it in there!). We're talking screams of "noooooo", legs kicking all over the place, arched back, the works.

So we've tried the following:
1) Put her in anyway.
My least favourite solution as it involves holding her tightly and somehow manhandling her into place. She doesn't like it, I don't like feeling like I'm forcing her, and it rarely results in her eating. So after 2 or 3 attempts at this we abandoned this tack as too unpleasant and against our parenting beliefs.

2) Tell her no chair, no food.
And off she runs happily to play, confident that there's always copious streams of breastmilk should she feel hungry later on.....including at midnight, 2am, 3am, 430am........ I'm now too tired to continue with this option! :-/

3) Let her eat picnic style....
....as long as it's not anything runny! Generally this would only apply to tea time anyway, which she has generally remained ok about going into her highchair for. So increasingly her breakfast has been croissant-type things and fruit, while lunch has been slices of ham, chunks of cheese, breadsticks and more fruit. We're ok with this one, as long as she shows she can still "do" proper sitting down meals, which brings us to.....

4) Let her sit at the table on a proper seat
After all, this is the crux of it really. She may only be titchy, but she's decided she's all grown up! In the car, she wants to sit on a proper seat with a proper seat belt (obviously not possible!), and for mealtimes she wants to sit on a proper chair like Mummy and Daddy. Out and about this works fine. Lots of places have comfy bucket-style armchairs that she can safely sit on, but at home we have standard open-sided dining chairs. But we have found a few ways of making her Big Girl dreams come true...

Firstly, we got her a child's table and chair for the kitchen where she can eat her breakfast (for 5min before she gets up and finishes it off picnic style)

Secondly, we put one dining chair against the wall and sat her on it, and then put my chair right against the other side. She stayed there for about 7min :-)

And then finally we got our Amazing Travelling Highchair (see earlier posts) and put that on one of the seats. I was far from convinced it would work - after all it's still a highchair of sorts - but so far so good! No kicking and screaming sitting on it and no getting down to wander around all the time. She's not using the tray so she eats from the table like the rest of us and for now, that seems to be good enough for Bean.

Winner!

The Land of Milk and....................More Milk!

Today Bean turned 18months. :-)

That means she has been eating solid food for just over one WHOLE year.

And a few weeks ago (right before the horrendous week 75 development leap) I distinctly remember having a conversation with my own mother about how Bean seemed to have finally cut down on her breastmilk feeds. We'd even had a few days where she'd gone 7 or 8 hours with me physically in the room with her during that time!

When oh when will I learn to NEVER say things like this in Bean's hearing?!

When she was a newborn it happened if we praised how few night wakings we'd had recently - she immediately subjected us to a 7-feeds-a-night marathon. Then if we mentioned that the last few dirty nappies had somehow not escaped out of the nappy, the next one would be right-up-to-the-neck-and-requiring-a-bath jobbie. To this day, if I tell Bean she's eating really well, it's like she suddenly notices and decides she's all full up!

So I suppose I shouldn't be surprised that, after commenting on how little milk Bean had had recently, she's suddenly gone into Boobie-Overdrive and is asking (no, strike that, DEMANDING) for "MAAAAAAA" every time I enter the room/sit on the couch/try to do something else. We're easily back up to 8+ times a day and she's no longer sleeping through either, but waking once, sometimes twice, for milk then too. (FYI, she only slept through for a couple of weeks around turning 15months).

To begin with it impacted on her food intake. She always wanted milk right before a mealtime - just the way it panned out I think - so wasn't that hungry. And then would finish eating early in order to fit in another milk feed afterwards too. We had maybe a week of Milk Days and boy did it show in her nappies! ;-)

It's really disconcerting though. You imagine your baby will just progress forwards, gradually eating more and more until the milk part of her diet dwindles away to nothing. So when your 16month old eats well, but your 17month old eats nothing, you get (well, I get) a bit worried. Should I refuse to breastfeed? Should I give more snacks? WTF is going on?????

Fortunately for Bean, I spend so long wondering what to do I never actually get round to "doing" anything! :-) She has therefore had her milk whenever she's wanted it and had her food whenever she's felt like that too. And now, at 18months, she's eating two pretty good sized meals and one that's little more than a snack, plus her 8+ breastfeeds!

Oh, I've written this once she's in bed though. I don't *think* she can read yet but I'm not taking any chances on her finding out what I'm telling people now......

I can hear you Mummy.............

Fork it!

So we've mastered cutlery! At 16months old.

We'd had a few prior "cutlery-moments":

This one, at 6.5months, was a pre-loaded spoon that somehow (perhaps by accident) managed to make its way accurately into Bean's mouth. And then this one, at nearly 9months old, was some early success with dipping.

But it was a skill quickly forgotten as she got more interested in learning to crawl, walk and talk.

To be honest, it's not something I've pushed much - didn't even regularly give Bean cutlery til she was over a year old - but then she hadn't seemed fussed about it until the last two or three weeks. Since then it has been THE thing to do :-)

And just like when she was first learning to use her hands, Bean chose peas and sweetcorn as her food to practice on...... I mean, seriously!? Could she possibly have chosen anything more tricky to try and pick up with either a fork or a spoon?!? Even I, a fully grown adult (allegedly), frequently squish the peas when trying to spear them, or have to hold them with my other hand, or have them roll away at the slightest touch. Watching my little determined Bean try desperately to aim her prongs as this TEENY TINY pea has been heartbreaking (and a little amusing). And this week she finally let her frustrations show when, after attempting and failing to spear one several times, she finally went "arghhhhh", grabbed her fork with both hands and pushed it hard onto the pea, sending it skidding across her tray.

Made me giggle to be honest! So it became a game which she still does now, even when she's successfully spearing! :-)

So anyway, one meal Bean unsuccessfully aimed at a few peas and then decided to try a piece of cubed potato instead. Got it in one!

Cue lots of cheering, clapping, and a very happy Bean. In fact, every time we stopped clapping she'd cheer again and make us clap all over again. :-)

But it's a game that worked, because in just a few short days we've gone from little or no cutlery to almost entire meals eaten with a fork and/or spoon. Breakfast - fruit eaten by hand, cereal eaten by spoon and yoghurt eaten by spoon. Lunch - scrambled egg eaten by fork. Dinner - pasta with peas and sweetcorn, all eaten by fork or spoon.

Oh, and a pear for dessert. Also eaten by fork :-D

Back to Basics: Portion Sizes

The other day I learnt an interesting fact:

A baby's portion size should be no more than they can hold in their hand.

Oh

My

Goodness!!

No wonder Baby Bean doesn't eat half of what we give her! A serving of meat stir-fry, for example, should be as much rice as she could hold in a cupped hand, a piece of meat the size of her palm, and then a generous hand-sized serving of veg.

Now perhaps this is a fact I should have known; after all, it apparently is true for adults too (oops, I appear to overeat on a thrice-daily basis!!), but it's come as something of a revelation. Bean eats about 4-5 pieces of pasta, for example, which is apparently the correct portion size. I give her 8-10 pieces. One tablespoon of mashed potato she can probably manage - I give her about three, just in case she was in the mood for it and so ate loads! The outcome? She's completely over-faced by the amount of food in front of her, eats very little, starts chucking the excess onto the floor and the whole meal becomes a battle.

The fact of the matter is that I have forgotten the first, most important, rule of Baby Led Weaning - babies can self-regulate their intake.

Look, at 14 months old this was what I put in her bowl (not a healthy meal, but a desperate what-have-we-got-in-the-fridge meal)

And this was what was left:

Sensible girl ate probably the most healthy part of it too! :-)

In my defence, there are the occasional days when she will eat almost everything in the first bowl, but I HAVE to stop serving a portion that size just on the off-chance! So what do I do? I buy new crockery (any excuse). We now have these, Tesco Loves Baby segmented plates.





It's working really well - I put a serving of veg in each triangle and then the carbs/meat/dairy share the larger section. As long as I don't stuff the sections full, the amount of food seems manageable. And hey presto, Bean tucks in!

So it's back to the beginning for us. I'm re-reading my Baby Led Weaning principles and trying to get to grips with those we've let slide. Turns out Rule Number One isn't the only one, but that's another post...

What do you fancy for dinner, darling?

A commonly asked question in households up and down the country, and yet one that was never as tricky to answer as it is now!

Life pre-Bean, I must admit, was mainly fuelled by frozen meals and jarred pasta/Chinese/indian sauces. It wasn't that we couldn't cook; more that after a full day at work we just didn't have the inclination. All we wanted was something quick, easy, and which could cook itself while we relaxed with a cup of tea in front of something relevant like Come Dine With Me (!).

Now, however, there's salt and sugar content to think of, and proper nutrition. In other words, there's a reason to cook. So cook I do, despite the fact that each day I've probably done more work whilst at home than I ever did in my paid job!

 A family favourite from my childhood - chicken, mushroom & pineapple with rice.

Of course cooking in itself is only one part of the equation. There's the shopping that goes with it. Suddenly I need to understand how to cook different vegetables; I need herbs, spices and a host of other "ingredients" in the house, and I need to remember to use things within  a few days (we currently have some very soft, green-ish used-to-be-potatoes lurking in our vegetable hopper). And yet despite the culinary world that has now opened up to us, the answer to this age-old question of what to eat is still:

"Don't know really. We've not got much in."

It's rarely true; there's usually plenty in! But it's usually things to make pasta with as that is Bean's (and mine, to be honest) preferred meal. But Bean's Daddy insists that we need more variety than tomato & beef pasta one day and creamy chicken pasta the next. Shame really.

No, our big problem now is that Bean doesn't eat most of the things that make up our diet! She's not a fan of cereal (even the infamous Rice Krispies are being eschewed at present), nor bread; rice she struggles with, she eats very little meat and has to be in the mood for cheese. And this is what she does to sandwiches:

So...... Our meal options are generally as follows:

• Breakfast - fruit & yoghurt, scrambled egg and ham, onion or cinnamon & raisin bagel with cream cheese (1 small piece), and sometimes a few spoons of unsuitable sugared cereal.

 

• Lunch - wraps (nibbles a bit and then UNwraps), any of the above breakfast options or below dinner options, sometimes a sandwich (usually if we're out), plus snack things.

 

• Dinner - pasta, mild curry, peas, sweetcorn, broccoli, fish/fish fingers/fish cakes, chips, pizza-type things, salads, prawn crackers, garlic & naan breads. Then yoghurt, fruit, rice pudding etc for dessert.

Doesn't look too bad written down, but it's not even enough for a different option a day and, as she gets bored of having something all the time and so starts rejecting it, our options narrow. As of today, however, Bean discovered dipping (by stealing Mummy's ketchup :-0 ):

...so humus and crudities will be going on the to-be-tried list :-)

So your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to give me ideas! (Please!!!) Write them as comments below and between us we should get some great menus going.

IT'S A MIRACLE!!!

I think Baby Bean must have taken pity on me after my last few posts bewailing the mess. Because tonight something amazing happened...

THERE WAS NO MESS! :-)

And I don't mean she just dropped a little bit; or the splashes only reached her eyebrows instead of the hairline; or she only flung her spoon onto the table instead of the adjoining room.

No. I. Mean. There. Was. No. Mess.

Zero.

Zilch.

Nada.

16months old today and look!

This is at the end of the meal!! Don't believe me? She's eating an ice cream cone, so that would be dessert, yes? (Actually, it's Daddy's dessert, but she nicked it, so now it's Bean's dessert! I believe that's how it works with children?)

But look! See that shiny clean floor, and that shiny clean tray, and that shiny clean baby? Maybe you think dinnertime consisted of air? Nope - wedges, cauliflower, sweetcorn, pizza and yoghurt. She ate almost all and what she didn't want she calmly handed over to us.

It's unbelievable! I'd say I'm speechless, but I'm clearly not. Instead I am rambling. :-)

So, the moral of my amazing story? Have faith. One day your baby too will eat all their tea in a polite and clean way. It might only happen that one time (I'll let you know on that score) and it may come after eating next to nothing for breakfast and lunch (yep, she's a one-meal baby this week), but it WILL happen.

YAY!