Feed Me

As money is tight I’ve been trying new recipes instead of relying on old favourites that may cost more, but one I had wanted to try for a while was risotto. It’s fairly labour intensive or rather it is kitchen intensive so it had to wait for a time when Tony was home and could stop Freya wrecking the place. It turned out really well. We had to use the loaded spoon technique, but she could pick out the chicken bits herself and I cooked some veg to go with it. It wasn’t actually any cheaper to make than some of the other things we have but it was so nice that we may have it again.

On the cooking front I have also been making soups. I haven’t tried the bread soaked in soup for weaning yet and there’s no way Freya is steady enough for loaded spoons of it so she had the chunks of meat and veg with a rice cake which went down very well. It was Thai chicken noodle soup so I dread to think how much salt ended up in it, but I didn’t add any extra salt (even though the recipe said to) and since she didn’t drink the soup itself I think it was ok. Besides, when you look at it over the course of the week, or even the day, I think it all evens out.

We are having a little trouble with our carpets. I have been sitting Freya on the floor for lunch as she has been pretty good at not making much mess, but unfortunately all those little bits of mess have added up and now our carpet is in a terrible state. Blame the lazy woman who can only wash up once a day and so the Bumbo is never clean for the lunch times. The worst culprit by far has been plum. It’s not helped by the fact that Freya often drops it and then skilfully sits in it. Really, her bum shifting accuracy scares me sometimes.

On the teething front we have two bottom front teeth and definitely something going on at the top. At the weekend we were woken up by screaming at 3am on both Friday and Saturday nights and it took much rocking, feeding and finally firmness to get her to go back to sleep. I know we are really lucky in that Freya has always slept through from an early age and so I never feel too bad about it. I know there are many unlucky parents out there with very wakeful babies.

Ladies and Gentlemen, let me introduce The Pincer Grip!

I couldn’t be more proud as Freya picked up peas with her finger and thumb and popped them in last night as part of the vegetable curry I made. Sadly, she has decided that she wants to use this technique to eat rice instead of the spoon. Dinner time seems much longer than normal…

She also had a chocolate chip fairy cake and a tiny bit of chocolate chip cookie. It doesn’t hurt to let them enjoy the same things as you once in a while. It would hardly be fair for us to sit there pigging out on naughties and not let her have a little taste. To be honest she wasn’t that impressed. She preferred her melon slice even if it was covered in curry sauce.

Lunch time saw the usual pita bread with cheese and ham and one with cheese, cumin and carrot. I tend to cut them into strips and give her the ones which look like they will stay together better. She was a very hungry little girl today and nommed on four big strips, demolishing two completely and having a good go at the other two. Of course this meant that mummy only had less than one and a half pita breads for lunch and has had to eat more cakes to make up for it…

I fed Freya a biscuit in public today! Woo! Actually she stole mine, but I kind of expected her to. She ate much more of it than I should probably allowed, but, hey, it’s only one biscuit. I’m not going to feel guilty and she enjoyed it so much. The mess was quite extraordinary and I even had to take her T-shirt off afterwards. She did have a vest on underneath though.

Dinner was a home made Chinese meal and I think this worked much better than the take away that we had over the weekend. It’s amazing to see her actually eating now. There was very little left of the piece of chicken she had a munch on. I used low salt soy sauce, sesame oil (since we’ve already established that she doesn’t have a problem), Chinese five spice, little chili powder, cumin, lemon juice and the veg I used were carrots, onions, bean sprouts and green peppers. She wasn’t that excited by the green pepper, but I’m not sure I expected her to be as I think they are an acquired taste. She really enjoyed the carrot, but I don’t think I made them big enough. I tried the noodle trick again. Making little nests and dumping it in front of her. She got her fingers straight in and started playing with them. She spread them all out as if she was trying to untangle them. So much for me making them into neat little nests! She didn’t even try to eat them this time though and although we put some rice on the spoon she wasn’t particularly interested in that today either. Nope, it was the chicken all the way.

Yes, we decided to go with Thai green curry and rice.

As has always been our way, we decided to give Freya whatever we were eating.  In this case, a green Thai chicken curry.  We tried giving it her with a rice-cake, as we were not sure how she would take to normal basmati rice, but then decided to load some sauce-laden rice onto her spoon and see what she did.

We started by giving her the chicken, just to see what would happen.  We tend to eat it fairly spicy, but we have learnt not to assume anything with our daughter.  Instead of spitting it out or crying, she chewed quite thoroughly and happily on the chicken.  I think this may even be the first time she has had chicken, since we worried about the way chicken can fray and crumble.  We needn’t have worried, since both spice and fraying were received with little more than a naughty smile, the one she usually saves for when she has managed to stick her hands (or face) in someone else’s dinner.

The rice came next, on her baby-sized spoon.  We put it to her mouth, since rice is prone to spilling, and she took some.  I think it tends to be slick enough to slide down your throat, so she did not gag or spit.  She was not very excited by it, I don’t think.  She was content to be fed rice, but not to actively feed herself rice; if we wanted her to eat, the chicken was the answer.

We decided to finish with rice-cake, which she licked the sauce from, but was too tired and thirsty to eat it.  She lolled over the edge of her bumbo instead and waited to be lifted free.  She was drooling quite a bit, perhaps due to the spice, and making little or no effort to stand when I held her up.  I ended up holding her while I brushed down her clothes, then watching her sit down heavily right on the pile of dislodged food.

Like most days, this finished with milk and a bath, then more milk and straight to bed.