Wot … no spoons?

I’ve come down with another bloomin’ cold. I blame my sister for this one, she’s a primary school teacher and is always bringing home horrid nasties! I’ve felt rough for the last 3 days. On Monday I was so bad that I wasn’t up to taking Snufflebum to his Sign & Bond class. Today I am beginning to feel a bit better though, I’m just hoping Snufflebum has escaped this one, the poor wee thing has caught everything I’ve had this winter which is a lot!! He has been sleeping a lot the last two days so I hope he is not coming down with it.

I got him weighed on Tuesday. I say I, I was too ill to go to the drop-in clinic and did not want to give this cold to all the tiny x week old babies you see there so I sent him along with my mum. he weighs 18lbs 3oz, which is less than I thought, the HV said he’d dropped a bit on the percentile chart, but she also said not to worry, especially as he has had a number of colds over Christmas. I’m not too worried and I’m sure he’ll pick up the weight again, he’s always yo-yo’d. Apparenlty he caused chaos at the clinic by wrecking the scales whilst being undressed, ripping the blue tissue that he was supposed to be laying on, into bits, and then wriggling all over the place whilst my Mum tried to get him dressed again. The HV called him a vandal

Oh and today Snufflebum is 7 months old …. Happy Birthday my gorgeous boy, love you to bits xx

No not the scrummy chocolate treat! We’ve had a rocky few days in terms of Snufflebum eating. He’s barely eaten a thing, I was a bit worried about it but he kept up his milk intake so I tried not to worry too much. Today we turned a corner I think and he’s back to eating the same amount as before.

Tomorrow I’m going to get him weighed. I’ve not been since we started full time solids so it will be interesting. I’m pretty confident he’s putting it on steadily but I’m still interested to see how much he has gained.

Grr must do better and write more often!

Snufflebum is doing sooo well with the food it’s kind of become just normal now. The other day he threw a fit when his dad accidently knocked a piece of corn on the cob out of his hand. he screamed and screamed until it was put back

Today he had gnocchi and peas with pesto sauce for the first time. He loved it …. surprise surprise! But the excess of carbs for an evening meal proved a challenge when it came to bedtime. I say challenge … I mean it took him about 30 mins of crawling up and down the sofa to calm him down then I took him upstairs and put him to bed, he then fell asleep within about 10 mins. Not exactly a challenge compared to some people’s bubs!

Right I will write in this tomorrow and try and keep up to date

Multiple apologies but I just got a bit caught up with Snufflebum’s first Christmas and New year and family and stuff. Gosh I’m glad it’s the new year and I can get back to normality and have a bit of a rest!

Well I haven’t a clue what Snufflebum’s been eating since I lasted posted but practically everything! He sat down to Christmas dinner with us and the rest of the family and it was a roaring success!

Gotta run big whinges from upstairs ….

Hmm really must get better at writing this … but there is soo much to do at the moment I only get to do this in the evnings and sometimes i just can’t face it

Snufflebum is enjoying his food, I think some it getting down it is kind of hard to tell as he doesn’t really eat much veg so there’s not uch evidence in his nappy. Although he loves dried apricot and yesterday one disappearred so quickly I spent about 10 mins looking around his chair for it

We had fish goujons and chips yesterday, he munched on both but loved the chip! He has a thing for potatoes! Only problem was he was storing it all in his mouth, it was in there for ages and eventually we had to hoike it out as we needed to lay him down to change his nappy and get him ready for bed.

This week has been a bit of blur what with trying to get stuff done for Xmas … erm will try and remember what he’s eaten and post it up soon.

Gosh, six months ago today I was laying in a hospital bed with a tiny weeny bundle wrapped in the bassinet beside me! How quickly things change! Today he’s a strapping, robust young fella who so far seems to be enjoying the world of solids.

As today was his half birthday we decided to go BLW blazing today. While Snufflebum was taking his post milk nap this morning I went downstairs and went to the BLW forum www.babyledweaning.co.uk to look up the recipe for porridge pancakes and whipped one up in the microwave, I put in 2 blackberries as well. By the time he had woken up the pancake had cooled down enough and he picked it up immediatley and began to destroy it! Some of it did make it to his mouth but I’m not sure any went down the hatch! I think next time I’ll use a smaller bowl so the pancake itself is a bit thicker and less destructible! We had a bit of coughing as some large lumps went towards the back of his throat but they all came up pretty quickly albeit eye-wateringly

I also gave him some galia melon … our favourite type. He gummed, sucked and manhandled the slice of melon until it ended up on the floor.

As he has been having a regular breakfast for the last two weeks I decided today to introduce a second meal so today he got lunch as well. Dave and I were polishing off the buffet leftovers which were not really suitable for Snufflebum, although I’m sure French bébés eat Camembert all the time. So we opted for good ole Philly which he had on a slice of ciabatta. Once again it went straight to his mouth and he gummed the crust for ages, some large pieces came off and he coughed up a huge lump of bread! Not sure how much he swallowed but he seemed to enjoy the whole experience.

So our first BLW day was fun … even if I did seem to spent the entire day feeding him

We had some friends round for lunch yesterday. Dave does all the cooking in our house and he whipped up a fabulous buffet with enough food for an entire garrison! One couple had not seen Snufflebum since he was born and were amazed at how he’d grown. He played his part very well and everyone was commenting on how well he was tucking into his roast potato!

Yay for BLW

Yup Dave is out on his departmental Xmas do and is staying over so it’s just Snufflebum and me tonight … I’m a little scared as this is the first time I’ve done a night on my own …. I’m hoping it will be OK. Snufflebum’s been a bit odd today, he’s happy as he always is but he would not sleep today, I think he had about an hours nap in total all day and come 6pm he was screaming his head off, even though he had about an hour and half to go until his next feed was due, his nappy was fresh and he’d has a lot of water. In the end I gave him his food early but he only had about 2/3rds of it. He carried on screaming and shut his mouth tight so he didn’t want any more food. I took him upstairs and managed to rock him to sleep, he slept for about an hour and was then up again. I got him ready for bed and we played for a little while, he was in good spirits and was chatting away “ra, ra, rah … ra, ra, rah” I gave him a bit more food and then put him to bed. Touch wood he’ll be OK tonight, he’s not stirred yet but he’s only been down for 45 minutes!

In terms of BLW we did banana today at breakfast, I’m pretty sure he swallowed some but a LOT got squished over the tray, the cushion, the bib, the floor …….. I learnt from my SIL that banana is an evil substance so we cleaned it all up pretty quickly and put all the fabrics in soak!! Not sure he was too keen on the banana but neither am I (unless it is on a BBQ and covered in rum and brown sugar …. mmmhhhh)

We did have one huge hit today and that was dried apricot, I bought some lovely sticky brown ones at the weekend and gave him one at lunch time today. it took him a while to pick it up from the tray … well they do look a bit gross! But as soon as it was in his mouth he loved it and practically ate it all.

I’ll put some photos up tomorrow …. am off to bed now!

Not long to go until we’re up and running full tilt into BLW. can’t wait and am very excited about silly things like giving Snufflebum bread, and pasta and stuff! In the last week he’s been sitting with for nearly every meal and watching the food intently, he’s also become a lot more vocal and is soooo close to saying his first word. He very almost said something that sounded like Dad today but not quite.

I’ve been giving him rice cakes (the apple flavoured one) which he likes but they get soggy very quickly and because the are small he only gets about half of it before he can’t hold it and eat it. I have some plain adult ones so might try him on one of those tomorrow. I have some puree left in the cupboard so will spread that on it to make it taste nice.

This last week I have been giving Snufflebum puree .. yes I know it’s not really BLW but we needed to use it up I’ve been loading the spoon up and handing it to him, initially he was putting the spoon on his forehead and dragging it down over his nose and into his mouth, which was hilarious to watch but very messy! He’s now a lot better at getting the spoon into his mouth. I also wanted to get him used to lumps so in a weird improvisation effort I threw some Cheerios into the puree … I actually separated out the rice ones and only used them! You’d think I had all the time in the world!

Oh I know what I meant to say … every Tuesday our HV drop-in clinic has a talk, this weeks talk was on weaning. I have to say I was expecting the puree, baby rice, puree speech. But I was pleasantly surprised, they were very supportive of BLW. Mind you … you should have seen the faces of the ladies with younger babies … “You give them finger food .. what from the start??” It was so funny. They couldn’t believe it. I hope I inspired them to at least read up on it before going out and buying baby rice. My friend from NCT seemed quite keen to give it a go as her daughter is about 2 weeks younger than Snufflebum and she’s been making puree for the last week. I’m seeing her tomorrow so I’ll ask if she’s handed out the carrot sticks yet

I told you, you’d guess the title, well actually this will include second, third, fourth and possibly more depending on how long Snufflebum sleeps for!

I waited a few days before giving him something else. I think it was a slice of pear, it was a bit too soft and so got mashed into the highchair tray! Some of it did make it onto his tongue and yet again he pulled a “eurgh yuck what is this stuff” face. To be honest I was quite relieved as I can’t bear raw pears and had been putting on my best “I love pear” face and making “yum yum” noises as I munched, I’m not a great actor, Dame Judi Dench need not be worried! So I was able to clear the tray of squished pear and escape to the kitchen to “pth, pth, pth” into the bin.

The third taste was a lot more successful for both of us ….. mmmh a lovely sweet and juicy galia melon. Snufflebum would not pick it up so I put it to his lips and let him taste the juice, he then took it in his hands and then began sucking away. My OH was amazed and having been slightly “yea, whatever you think” about the whole weaning thing suddenly started to get interested!

So that evening as we ate our dinner Snufflebum sat in his highchair and we gave him some broccoli from my plate, it was picked up immediately and put straight in his mouth. He gummed it for a while, put it down, picked it up again, gummed it, put it down, picked it up again, gum…. you get the picture!

My mother has been a little wary of the BLW approach and I have been worrying about going round there at Christmas. I know that she will follow whatever I decide but I’m not sure I’m yet armed to answer all the questions that will inevitably arise. So we were out the other day with my mum, Nan and Grandad. We were shopping and decided to go for lunch, now my Grandad loves Weatherspoon pubs and thus we ended up in one. There really wasn’t much that I could give Snufflebum as he’s not yet 6 months so I was avoiding bread etc. My mum’s wrap came with a cherry tomato, so I bit through the skin and held it for Snufflebum, he latched right onto it and sucked it dry. Everyone was amazed and were laughing. And Oh how they laughed when he smiled and everything that had been sucked out of the tomato fell out of his mouth onto my trousers … hmm.

Yeah we’re not quite at the swallowing stage yet!