Weaning – week 14

21/06/201606/07/2016

We have more or less totally dropped back to two meals a day this week which is quite frustrating as it feels like a step in the wrong direction. I’m wondering if it is to do with her tooth that has started to come through as she just doesn’t seem to want more than a couple of mouthfuls and will sometimes refuse a meal outright. I want to try and keep mealtimes as fun and relaxed as possible and I know that she will eat if she is genuinely hungry, so I don’t really want to try and force her to take food from the spoon if she isn’t in the mood! I guess all we can do is keep monitoring her weight to make sure that she isn’t slipping and hope that she gets more interested in mealtimes soon.

Father’s Day 2016

19/06/201624/07/2016

So today was Father’s Day and my dad stayed at ours last night so that he could come and watch Clara’s swimming lesson this morning for the first time. Afterwards, we decided that seeing as the weather was nice we would take another trip to Leith Hill and go on a bit of a walk. Somewhere along the way we must have missed a signpost because the circular walk took quite a bit longer than it was meant to and we were all starting to wonder slightly if we were still heading in the right general direction!

Following our walk we were all starving so we headed to Regional Thai Taste in Reigate. The food was delicious and Clara was very well behaved throughout the meal, although she did take a couple of swipes at my crispy beef so we had to keep everything on the table well out of arms length!

By the time we got home we were all shattered, and I don’t think I would be alone in saying that we were all a little bit envious when Clara went down for a nap. All in all a very successful and enjoyable first Father’s Day for Jamie and first (Grand)father’s day for my dad.

Clara learns to clap

15/06/201624/07/2016

Yay! finally, after weeks of trying to teach Clara a party trick she has mastered the art of clapping and is happy to show off for anyone who asks. I couldn’t be more proud of her. It feels like a massive breakthrough to finally be able to see that she is able to understand instructions and carry them out and I’m sure she will build on this over the coming weeks and months by learning more and more skills and understanding more and more requests.

Weaning – week 13

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This week we had a great little picnic for dinner one evening and got Clara trying a stick of cheese for the first time which she absolutely loved! She is getting a lot better at chewing her food now, and even though she still takes quite big mouthfuls sometimes and then gags on them, she is definitely a lot more confident at moving the food around her mouth. We also gave her a whole peach to tuck into. I took a bite out of it first to give her somewhere to get started and peeled a bit of the skin back to make it easier for her. As it was a flat peach, it was the perfect size for her to hold in her hands and she had a lot of fun with it. I definitely feel like she is getting much more accomplished at what she can handle these days.

Tooth number two has arrived

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OMG we have a second tooth! It’s the right bottom middle one that has just started to stick through now and again she has been very tolerant – if it has caused her any pain she definitely hasn’t made us aware of it, I’m so proud of her!

Yesterday we began to brush her teeth for the first time. We used a small finger toothbrush and combined it with a little song to make the experience more fun. Clara is quite curious about what we are doing and it doesn’t seem to bother her too much, although she likes to bite down on the brush which makes it really hard to move it around in her mouth! We are going to make sure that we incorporate it into her getting up and going to bed routines from now on so that she learns to get used to it. Even though she has only got the two teeth we are still brushing her whole mouth as if she has a full set as I think it is a good idea to start as we mean to go on. I guess we will move onto a proper baby toothbrush fairly soon once a few more teeth have appeared as it will probably become quite painful to keep my finger in her mouth if she keeps on biting the brush!

Weaning – week 12

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This week we revisited egg again to determine whether Clara has an allergy or not. We only used the egg yolk this time as the egg white is more likely to induce an allergic reaction (we will try this again at a later date). I kept it quite simple and just hard boiled an egg, popped out the yolk and mashed it up with a little bit of my milk. She ate some of it from a spoon and the rest of it I spread onto some buttered toast fingers. Luckily, she seemed absolutely fine afterwards so I think egg yolks are safe! Yay!

A busy weekend

05/06/201604/07/2016

This weekend has been pretty hectic. On Friday, both of my parents were over for the day so Clara got a good bit of quality grandparent time. She is starting to really recognise family members now and is very smiley for them whenever they are over which is great to see.

And she’s off…

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Clara has worked out how to commando crawl! She has been trying to push herself forward for days now so we guessed that it probably wouldn’t be long before she sussed it out, but it has still taken me by surprise a bit.

Weaning – week 11

31/05/201604/07/2016

We tried out a veggie dhal recipe this week which was really tasty and had a bit of a spicy tingle to it. Clara enjoyed this one so it was a good introduction to foods with slightly stronger flavours. Apparently, the flavour of my milk changes depending on what I have eaten so to be fair I guess she is probably already used to more flavours than we realise! We also gave her some roasted sweet potato wedges which were part of our dinner and she enjoyed holding and chomping on these.

Weaning – week 10

24/05/201604/07/2016

This week’s new foods were tuna, pork & spaghetti. Clara really liked the tuna, which I mashed up with some avocado, but both the pork and spaghetti meals were a bit more of a struggle. I don’t think it is that she doesn’t like the flavour, but she definitely had real texture issues with both of them and didn’t seem to like the way that they felt in her mouth. I think we are going to have to mush her foods up a little bit more than we have been, as ever since we switched to chunkier dishes she has been fussing over them a lot more than she used to.

Bringing up Bubba

The journey of a first-time mum