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!

Food hats

I'm not a great one for mess.

There, I've said it! It's something I didn't know about myself before we started baby led weaning. I thought I was quite relaxed about things getting mucky and was well aware that weaning of any kind would involve the smearing of food in places that it shouldn't be smeared.

But then my darling baby reached out a tomato pasta-covered hand to my bare arm (not even a white sleeve there to justify this) and I flinched!! I was really surprised! But it turns out I really don't like getting messy!

So, after 9months of weaning I'm pretty much ok with the bits that go to the floor, and I'm fine with sweeping out the highchair, and I've even come to terms with a yoghurt covered face, hands and arms (as long as they aren't mine, that is!). But, as if sensing that new levels of mess were required now, Bean has started decorating her hair. :-)

First we had this, carefully balanced pieces of food. I was actually quite impressed and, perhaps mistakenly, clapped and laughed. Because next we had this:

 

Yep, that is indeed tomato sauce matted into her lovely blonde hair! Fortunately she doesn't have much hair (can you imagine if she did?! Aaaaaaarrrrrgggghhhhhhhhh!).

 

So how on earth did this come to be, I hear you ask? Or perhaps this isn't that odd an occurrence in your house either! For us, it came about because my Other Half played hide-the-toy with her, and he hid it by putting it behind his head and dropping it down his t-shirt.

 

A very funny game, yes? And when cranberries and raisins drop out of her vest everytime we undress her it is pretty amusing. As it also is when Bean tries to fit a book down there. :-D But then she did this one mealtime and we realised things were about to get very messy:

 

 

Hmm, think I'll be playing the "I made the meal so OH can do the tidying up" card now!



The Throwing Phase, Take 2000!

Now this was one I thought we'd grown out of. Giving Baby Bean free reign with all sorts of potential-for-creating-havoc foods was always one of my least favourite parts of BLW, but after the first few months I thought we'd cracked Bean's desire to throw.

And then we clearly hadn't!

And then I thought we had.

But no, it would appear not......and so on!

So far we've had the following Throwing Phases:

1) The not-really-able-to-grasp-so-dropping-accidently phase
2) The moving-things-around-the-tray-and-pushing-some-off-in-the-process phase
3) The oops-I-dropped-it-but-I-want-to-eat-it phase
4) The oooo-what-happens-when-I-do-this-phase
5) The hold-it-over-the-edge-while-smiling-at-mummy-and-saying-no phase (one of my personal favourites as it was actually quite funny)
6) The sorting-it phase
7) The I-DON'T-WANT-IT phase
8) The I-DON'T-WANT-IT-oh-I-do-want-it-I-DON'T-WANT-IT-oh-I-do-want-it-I-DON'T-WANT-IT....... phase
9) The clearing-the-tray-by-swiping-it phase
10) The moving-it-out-the-way-to-eat-all-the-peas-first phase

But now we have the GRRRRRRR-why-can't-I-pick-it-up-with-this-fork tantrum phase, combined with a rather random careful-picking-up-one-item-in-each-hand-to-drop-them-over-the-side-of-the-highchair phase.

WTF??????

The first phase I can understand. Baby Bean is clearly frustrated, chasing peas and sweetcorn and pasta around her tray with a misbehaving fork. Her fine motor skills are so good when using her hands she just doesn't understand why she can't get the damn fork to make contact with the thing she's aiming it at!

But the other phase? The one that's just appeared these last few days? What's that all about? If I grab her hands she looks up at me, calm as anything, and goes right back to eating. Sometimes she'll look over the side and go "Oh no!!!!" But usually her picking and dropping gets faster and faster and the only recourse I have is to remove all the food faster than she can.

I do have some theories - it's a new way to announce she's full and/or bored, or maybe it's linked to frustration and she simply "dumps" it all when it doesn't do what she wants, or perhaps it's a return to sorting and trajectory experiments. But given that we'd made some major headway on Bean eating from a bowl or plate, rather than just a tray, and on eating well before simply handing the remainder to me and signing she was full, this feels like a bit of a step backwards. We're once again having to limit how much we give her at a time or it starts flying off into the curtains (usually with a pretty impressive backspin on it), and we're once again having to gently remind her that food doesn't live on the floor.

I wonder if there is ever really an end to the Throwing Phase? I tell myself that it's not like she'll be an adult who's incapable of eating a meal without some of it heading south. And then my pasta falls off my fork on its precarious path to my mouth and hits the floor with a splat.

Ah! Oh well!