Feeding the kids

Had a good day today.  Went to Morrisons, which is not exciting in itself, but as we had literally no food in the house, I had to take Evie there for her lunch.  She had children’s macaroni cheese with garlic bread, and apple slices, and also polished off half of my mum’s chips with mayonnaise!  Eating out with veggie children is generally not much fun.  There’s often little choice as an adult, but for the kids it’s even worse.  It’s always macaroni cheese, pizza or spaghetti and tomato sauce.  I just wish they’d make a bit more of an effort and maybe do something with a few more veggies, or some lentils or something.  Some places will do small portions of adult meals, but often these aren’t much more inspiring.

Henry had a spinach and something or other pouch from Plum Baby – personally I thought it tasted weird because it also had apple in it, but he seemed to like it.

But the really exciting news is that he ate cauliflower!  A new taste, and also a bit of texture, because when you puree cauliflower, you don’t get a wonderfully smooth puree like you do with butternut squash, or sweet potato and the like.  You get sort of miniscule bits of cauliflower in a sort of watery base.  Sounds disgusting, and doesn’t look a lot better.  But I mixed in a bit of baby rice to sort of bind it all together, and then added some cream cheese to make it into a kind of cauliflower cheese.  At first he really wasn’t keen – I think because of the new texture, but after a bit of protesting, he ate the lot.  And then had some fromage frais.  I can’t believe how much he loves solids – totally different to Evie, who I’m sure didn’t swallow anything vaguely approaching real food until she was 10 months old!

I did quite a bit of baby cooking yesterday, so now he has some cubes of lentils in the freezer, along with some mini yogurt pots full of cauliflower, and red pepper and courgette.  The red pepper and courgette was actually quite nice pureed, and Evie had some yesterday as a pasta sauce.

More potty training

Another wee on the big toilet today!!!  So more chocolate – she was so pleased with herself.  But I don’t think she likes the little potty.  Now, this is a problem because we doing have a downstairs loo (well, actually we do, but technically it’s in the garage).  And I don’t think we can go upstairs 5 times an hour to go on the big toilet.  So somehow she’s going to have to like the little potty.

I’ve also changed the theme for the blog, for no real reason other than that I wanted the entry field to be a bit wider so that it fits pictures on properly.  Which this one does.  I’m not totally happy with the title bar, but it’ll do.

And look how big she got

Potty training

I know, it’s been ages.  I’m rubbish!

But we’ve just started potty training Evie.  So far, not the greatest success, but I feel that today we may have turned a corner!  Yippee!

She loves sitting on the ‘big girl toilet’ – she gets ever so excited, and so today she sat on it to show my mum.  As soon as she sat down, she said “Wipe” (which means she wants a piece of toilet paper so she can wipe like mummy.  I told her to do a wee wee, then she could wipe.  So she did!!!!!  She weed on the big girl toilet!  Then of course she got a chocolate button (well, three because that’s how many she managed to grab!).  After that, she wanted more “choc”, so I told her that when she did a wee on the potty, she could have some chocolate.  Well, she immediately went and sat on the potty, then demanded “choc” again.  So I think she’s starting to get the idea that if she uses the potty, she gets a reward.  Before today, whenever we’ve managed to get anything in the potty she’s always looked rather confused when she gets a chocolate.  But today I think she got it.

So let’s see what the afternoon brings.

Fridge Freezer success!

The Comet engineer came out as planned.  I’d defrosted the fridge-freezer a couple of days before, and it had started working again.  But when he looked at it, he said it was already starting to frost up again, so he couldn’t fix it, and I’d have to defrost it again, and he’d come back to it.  I mentioned that I was concerned about it going out of guarantee, and that I’d prefer a new one.  So he spoke to his boss, and that’s what I’m getting – yay!!  So they’re going to send me a letter, then I just choose a new one.

Even though I’ve had this problem, I think I’m going to go for another Bosch.  Some of the reviews I’ve read have suggested that Miele or AEG are better, but they’re also twice the price.  And Bosch have the two year guarantee as standard, so I think I’ll be OK.  And I love my Bosch washing machine.  So just waiting for the letter to come through now…

Grrrr – stupid fridge freezer

We have a Bosch fridge freezer that we bought almost two years ago.  In July, it developed a fault.  The freezer was working, but the fridge was warm.  We did a bit of digging about on the internet, and discovered that this was a known fault with a certain range of models.  But there’s a kit that the engineer can fit to make it all better.  Great.  So we found the receipt, and were very grateful that Bosch do a two year guarantee as standard.  The man from Comet came out and fitted the new part and it was fine.  For 18 days.  Then it didn’t work again.  So we booked the engineer to come out again, but in the meantime we defrosted it, and that seemed to solve the problem.  So we cancelled the engineer.

While we were sorting this all out the first time, we bought a fridge and freezer thermometer, that I’ve since been checking regularly.  Today, I noticed that the fridge was warm again – about 12C (should be about 4C).  But the freezer is fine at about -18C (exactly what it should be).  I double checked all the doors were closed and left it for a few hours, but nope, fridge still too warm.  So, I’ve turned it off again to defrost, and booked the engineer again.  It’s a frost free freezer, and so I should never need to defrost it, but I have noticed that recently it’s been getting icy in places, which it shouldn’t do.

I just really don’t want them to do a quick fix on it, and then have the guarantee run out, and then have to pay another three hundred quid for a new one. Grrr.

Oh my goodness

I’m appalled at how long it’s been since I last posted.

Evie has turned one, started walking and all sorts since I last updated.  She took her first step when she was about 13 months old, and I thought it would be a few days before she did more than that.  But no.  She didn’t really start walking properly until last week when she was about 15.5 months old!  Now it’s very cute to see her toddling around, although sometimes she just gets too excited and falls over (which is also cute as long as it’s in a carpeted area!).

Food wise, she’s still doing really well.  She’ll eat pretty much anything you put in front of her, and she absolutely LOVES eating out.  She likes to watch everyone else, and she’s so smiley that she’s always the centre of attention – which she also loves.  Our current favourite place to eat is a local pub that’s part of the Table Table chain.  I’m not a big fan of children’s menus in general – I don’t see why they should just get burgers and chips all the time – so Evie just eats some of my food, or gets her own starter or something like that.  Well, last time we went, I ordered pasta for me, and a beetroot and feta tart for Evie.  Yeah, I know that you’re all laughing at me, because beetroot isn’t really a great choice for a toddler.  I knew there was a reason she’d never had it, and as soon as she started mushing it into her hair, I remembered.  Beetroot stains.  A LOT.  Well, everyone had fun laughing at us, and she did seem to enjoy the bits she managed to eat.

Chocolate

Here’s Evie having her first ever taste of chocolate!  Do you think she liked it?!!!

I gave her half a finger of my KitKat.  But then trying to wipe her hands while yelling “Don’t touch ANYTHING” was not so much fun.

I’ve finished expressing as well.  I had a stomach bug last week and just didn’t feel well enough to express, and as I didn’t feel too uncomfortable the next day, I just haven’t bothered since.  I still have some mummy milk in the freezer, so that should see her through to her first birthday.  But to be honest, she drinks very, very little milk anyway.  Maybe 100-150ml a day.  She does eat yogurts, and cheese and milk in sauces, so I’m not worried about that.  In fact, I think I’m happier about it than her drinking vast amounts of cow’s milk.  I do wish she’d drink a little more water though, but everyone promises me that she will in time.

She’s not walking yet, I thought she might be, but she seems quite happy to crawl to wherever she wants to be, and then just stand up when she gets there.  She can stand on her own now though, without support.

Food wise, she’s got a very good appetite now she’s stopped the breast feeding.  She ate one and half Weetabix with apple for breakfast this morning, plus two prunes!  She’s quite happy with all kinds of textures, most things we don’t even mash any more.  She also loves her finger foods, although sandwiches are a very messy business.  She’s also very interested in spoons.  She now won’t eat unless I give her a spoon to play with.  And sometimes she even puts it in her mouth!!

It’s her birthday on Friday, so I promise a big update with lots of piccies.

No more breastfeeding

It’s been a while since I updated, but it’s been a bit hectic here because two and a half weeks ago, the Veggie Baby decided she wasn’t going to breast feed any more.  She was having 4 feeds a day, and then just suddenly started refusing.  I think it was initially because of teething – she’s got 7 teeth and we’re just waiting for the 8th one on the bottom to even things out.  But although I think it was the teething that started it, I think it’s just carried on because she’s realised that there’s so much other stuff going on, and that she’s just far too busy!  So I’ve been trying to coax her back, and also trying to express four times a day as well.

I’ve now decided that’s not realistic, and so I’m now just expressing twice a day, and not offering to feed her very often because it just ends up with us both getting upset.  So it looks like this is the end of the road for us.  This makes me really sad because I never planned on stopping so early.  I always said that I’d feed her for as long as she wanted it  – but I was expecting a gradual weaning at about 2-3 years, rather than an abrupt refusal.  But I think we’re now at the point where the benefits of breast milk don’t outweigh the disadvantages of having a permanently upset and depressed mummy.

So I’m going to gradually wind down the expressing, I might carry on until she’s 12 months, because it’s only 4 weeks away, but we’ll see.  I’m going to concentrate on enjoying the last few weeks of my baby’s first year, and I think that’s the most important thing.

Carrot cake

I made a carrot cake today for Evie.  The recipe is from Vegetarian Baby and Child by Petra Jackson.  It’s a fairly standard carrot cake recipe, but uses wholemeal flour, and obviously the addition of vegetables to any kind of confectionery changes it from something sinful, to something positively healthy.  I didn’t add the cream cheese topping because to be honest, it’s moist enough without.

I had to try it out before inflicting it on the Veggie Baby, and decided that it was very nice.  Veggie Baby is now just having some for her tea, and it’s a big hit with her as well.  Partly I think because it’s yummy, and partly because she can feed herself with it.

I don’t want to start giving her lots of cakes and sweet treats, but I think that the odd piece of homemade cake with good quality ingredients and wholemeal flour isn’t going to do too much harm.