Feed Me

Suddenly we think Freya has got it. No longer is this about play. Freya now eats and eats and takes a good long time over it too.

Tony cooked for the first time that we have been weaning Freya on Sunday and we had sausage pasta. We have given up just now with the pasta so Freya gets a slice of toast instead with the sauce, but this was the first time she didn’t seem to want to get out of her Bumbo. She carried on exploring and eating long past us finishing our dinners. It was especially amusing to see her examining the toast towards the end. It looked as if she was considering the quality and vintage – turning it over and over, having a little nibble, feeling it. It was great fun to watch.

I have been a little more adventurous with what I take out with me now. On Wednesday I took melon, chicken and rice cake. I think bringing breakfast into the equation has led to a decline in lunch so she just has a nibble now.

Breakfasts… Well, she has always enjoyed toast and bagels so that stays on the menu but we do get a bit fed up of the crumbs and sharing our breakfast so I bought some fruit and custard pots from Heinz I think they were. I do like the idea of her eating more fruit and since she finds it easier to spoon feed herself rather than pick up slimy fruit I thought we could give it a go even though it may count as goop. They are just fruit and milk, nothing extra, no added sugar or anything. We tried a little for breakfast Wednesday morning and she seemed to like it although we decanted half a pot and she had maybe half of that. However, that was the morning come the evening…

Tuesday evening was very unusual. I was planning cottage pie but in the end did jacket potato with a mince topping. Freya had scooped out potato mixed with the mince and baked bean mix. Since we hadn’t had too much luck with mince so far I didn’t expect her to eat much. We loaded the spoon and wondered what would happen and whether I would be going back to the toaster for our reliable back up. No need. She loved it. Spoon after spoon went in. She still hasn’t grasped the idea of filling the spoon herself but after it’s loaded and handed to her it goes straight in. She ate more that night than I had ever seen her eat.

Wednesday the same thing happened (even though i can’t remember what it was we had). This time she still seemed hungry after having nommed on everything we had given her. I ran to the fridge and cut some melon, but she’s actually not too fussed about melon. Then I remembered the half a pot of fruit custard. She finished it completely. Admittedly there was quite a lot on the bib afterwards but again I was amazed at the quantity that she managed. She was still looking round for more food after so back to the kitchen again for some rice cake. After a brief feed on the rice cake she was finally done and went for a much needed bath.

Last night we had the evil burger and chips. I had bought some veggie burgers as I thought they might be lower in salt as the veggie sausages were. How wrong can you be? The veggie burger had twice the amount of salt that the beef burger had! I cut just a sliver of each off for Freya and gave her some chips which have practically no salt at all unless you cover them in it yourself. Ugh! She loved it all although we didn’t share our burger bun this time. She was again hungry after so I got a whole pot of fruit custard for her and some melon. She had a quick suck on the melon before going back to the discarded chips, but the fruit pot… She ate the whole thing and I suspect could have managed another one if we’d let her.

Damn you Heinz! Making it so easy for me to give my child fruit in the form of mush. Still, since she feeds herself I think it can still count…

Our daughter thinks she is a rabbit. As usual, she had a little of what we had. There was beefburger, there were chips, a bit of the bun. We threw in some sliced chicken for good measure, due to her love of meat. Then we added lettuce.

We did not expect her to eat the lettuce, since it was a fairly large leaf. I suppose we expected her to suck it for a while, soothing her sore gums, then drop it and move onto the real food. We were wrong. She chewed it a little, then a little more. Before we knew it, she had eaten most of the leaf. I cannot say how; we chew lettuce, but she has no teeth. I saw her tear it a little, but not enough to really consider bite-sized. I suppose she must have mashed it until it was soft enough to swallow.

After that, we expected her to eat the bread, but we were wrong again. She wanted meat. She ate the chicken (not ‘wafer thin’ chicken, 1/4″ thick sliced chicken-breast) and then the burger. After that, she had a bit of a nibble on the bread and chips, but she was after meat last night. We checked; there was only a little in the way of dropped food.

So… meat and lettuce seem to be the order of the day…

Well, no, not really. We had burger and chips on Friday night and so Freya had some carefully patted dry burger and some bun. She does like meat and, as long as the burger is quite firm and dry and you cut a slice off the edge, she can handle it quite well. She still seems fairly indifferent to chips. She has a suck if they’re there but otherwise will ignore them. Burger bun was very well received though. I did wonder about the sesame seeds as these can cause allergic reactions in some babies, but I figured since she’s been having hummus quite a lot and hasn’t had any reaction, she should be ok. One of the ingredients of shop-bought hummus is sesame seeds, something I didn’t notice for ages, even though I carefully avoided using sesame oil for stir fries. It just shows that you can never guess what might be in things. Always read the label.