Weetabix: an instrument for good or for evil?

This is a genuine question I asked myself this morning.

 

FOR: Little Girl loves Weetabix. She’s capable of eating a whole one for breakfast, which I didn’t think was possible at her age. Whilst I prefer to eat mine with a couple of spoons of sugar on top, she is clearly happy with the raw taste and why not? It’s full of goodness apparently and I am not going to argue, when my own breakfast is often nothing more than a bowl of corn flakes (with sugar on top – for taste). All this fiber and slow energy-release stodge-tastic cereal is like the food equivalent of a Duracell battery, it helps her go for longer without needing a top-up.

AGAINST: It’s an absolute nightmare to clean up. First it disintegrate into a disgusting-looking mush, which she happily uses to paint abstract shapes on her high chair tray, then within seconds it dries up, turns to plaster and sticks to everything. Much scrubbing ensues but I always miss a bit and can then be sure to find some stuck behind an ear or up her nose halfway through the day.

 

How can one food item be so good and so evil at the same time? It’s right up there with curry in the nasty food category. Curry is there because of the nappies. I will say no more.

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A month of weaning

It’s been a little over a month since we started Little Girl on solids and it has been a lot of fun.

The best thing from my point of view is that she is finally swallowing food. For a long time it looked like nothing stayed in her mouth ever. She started by just tasting the food and pushing it back out. But in the last couple of weeks she really has turned a corner. One day I gave her chicken and mash and was astounded when I couldn’t find any bits left over anywhere. Nothing on the floor or in the bib or ears, and nothing stuck to her legs or elbows! I was not fooled by the lack of mess however and just as well, it is still a bit hit and miss and there are things that will end up on the floor come what may.

She has started to practice the fabled pincer grip. Rice and peas are still going to be a challenge for a little while but she is desperately trying. In the meantime the little things are getting smashed and loaded onto spoons. I cannot emphasize enough how much the loaded spoon approach has helped us. I really was not looking forward to just putting a pile of mash on her tray, and it solves the problem nicely. She mostly picks up the spoon the right way and hits her mouth.

Food Glorious Food

Favourite foods this month have been:

–          Butternut squash soup on fresh bread

–          Tuna mayo sandwich

–          Banana (no surprise here, don’t most babies love banana?)

–          Chicken

–          Cheesy mash

–          Cucumber

–          Nutella pancake

–          She LOVED the bavette we had on my birthday (bavette is a French cut of beef taken from the skirt area, basically a steak)

Foods she is not so keen on:

–          Yoghurt unfortunately, it’s a bit too tart for her and I haven’t got round to stewing apples to sweeten it.

 

Unfortunate habit

Thank you Badgerman for teaching her to drum with her spoon over the weekend. I’ll be leaving the cleaning up to you from now on.

Weaning starts here

Yesterday we started the process of weaning Little Girl. For some reason before we had her I had this picture of breastfeeding her for months and months and months and it didn’t occur to me that she would start on solids quite this soon! She’s going to be 6 months on Monday, when did that happen?

I am starting weaning her in earnest from Monday but yesterday I thought I would see what would happen if I put food in front of her, out of curiosity really. Wonderfully, she reached, picked up and stuffed her mouth with cucumber and cheese and happily sucked on the lot.

She sucked, she made faces, she gagged a bit because she’d put the cucumber too far back and she dropped the lot all over the place. And then she tried again. Today, she also had tomato and really liked it!

For those who are surprised that these should be her first foods, we decided a couple of months ago not to bother with purées and go straight with normal food so she will be eating the same as us. All I need to do is to adjust my recipes by cutting out the salt and to stop using shop-bought sauces and stock. This means I am going to have to learn how to make Puttanesca pasta sauce from scratch! I’ll let you know how that goes…

This approach is called Baby-Led Weaning (or self-feeding) and I will be posting more on this subject as we go on our feeding journey, but for now I leave you with this encouraging image.

The first day