Train Cake

The Boy celebrating his birthday in blue and sugary style!

One today

My not-quite-so-baby Boy is one today, it's hard to believe that this last time last year we'd only known him for three hours.

Happy Birthday little one :-)

The Urban Baby

We discovered in Thailand that my Urban Boy apparently can't walk on grass or sand - if you put him on it and walk away he cries 'till you come back and pick him up.

One downside to this big city life.

Flying with babies - A Rant

The only real downside to our trip was the continuing and ongoing story of what to do when flying with a baby.

They don't make you buy a seat for him, and even if they did they wouldn't provide a safe way of restraining him in his own seat.

Now, apparently, the FAA no longer advises a lap belt attachment for the baby, they recommend "you hold on tight". Does that sound right to you??? In a form of transport where they are so anal about safety for all the adult passengers they are happy for you to just hang on to your baby.

And I guess that wouldn't be too bad if they were consistent, I actually have a harness that I can use and think is way safer than a lap belt extension but I didn't bother to take it as on flights to the UK they made me take it off during turbulence, even though he was asleep, and put their stupid lap belt extension on.

I asked around for other mummies' experiences and found out that they've all had the same problem, different airlines, routes and staff, insist on different safety precautions on board - some insist on the lap belt extension, some on using a carrier, some on nothing, some on taking your sleeping baby out of the carrier and putting them in a belt extension, some forbid carriers, some won't let you use your own harness.

Even car seats aren't the answer as some airlines make you prove they are FAA approved, some will allow you on with any car seat and some no longer allow car seats with the new seating they are installing and will provide baby seats.. but, I hear, only on some routes.

I guess after this what I've realised is that they just don't know what is safest, they haven't done the testing and they have no idea. Which is fine(ish) but if this is the case I really wish they'd stop insisting on their airline's arbitrary standard - let him wear the harness I have researched and chosen for him, or let me put him in the carrier if I want to, hey, let me hang on to him if that's my decision just stop telling me what to do (and waking him up!)

I told you it was a rant.

Thai Thai - the food

Food, it's one of the things I love best about Thailand and I think The Boy is turning out just like his Mother.

I avoided anything too hot, I didn't think he'd like a curry or a spicy papaya salad for instance but he ate pad thai, seafood rice, lots of spring rolls (too many spring rolls considering how deep fried they are but hey, we were on holiday) he also ate a lot of rice with veggies as well as bbq king prawns and snapper baked with garlic and herbs.

Then we tried street food, G had a banana and nutella pancake and I had mine with banana and chocolate - funnily enough, the boy liked them both!

He also discovered a new love for fruit, there's just something about eating fruit close to where it's grown, it's sweeter and more flavourful and The Boy scoffed lots of pineapple and strangely heaps of watermelon, something he has no liking for in Hong Kong.

We'll be back soon Thailand!

Coconut Milk

The Boy has discovered a new best drink, our helper in Thailand had prepared coconut milk served in the shell to greet us and I let The Boy try it and it went down very well indeed.

Then he tried to eat the orchid it was served with...

Thai Thai - the journey

DH headed off for a business trip this week, a whistlestop 4 days in Delhi then London. So being the Tai Tai I am I decided to take The Boy and G and head to our holiday home in Thailand for a couple of days - Hong Kong is the kind of city that's great to live in but sometimes you just need to see a bit of green and breathe some fresh air.

I was a little apprehensive about the journey but The Boy was his usual self, charming all and sundry with his blue, blue eyes and blonde hair. People stopped us in the airport to ask if they could pose with him for photos - I'm worried he's going to grow up with an extraordinary idea of what a normal amount of attention is but it'll probably get less as he gets bigger.

I made a mistake on booking as I'd asked for a baby meal and got two pots of puree for my trouble - as if he'd eat that!! So he ate a good proportion of G's noodles instead. Then he trotted up and down the aisle grinning at people until we had to sit down for landing.

Afternoon Tea at the Mandarin Oriental

OK, I know the aim of baby led weaning is not to make it easy to stuff them full of refined carbs and sugars when it's convenient but having ordered the afternoon tea set at the Mandarin Oriental coffee shop I didn't feel that I should eat it all on my own.

The variety and little mini portions of everything are perfect for The Boy's three second attention span. He had a pint-size smoked salmon sandwich, a slice of quiche, and then a little chicken pie generously donated by one of my dining companions. This was followed by a bit of scone with cream, some carrot cake, some chocolate cake and a bit of marble cake.

All in tiny little portions for those of you who are about to call child services.

Some of it went on the floor, a lot of it went in his hair, but most of it went in his mouth.

The Boy is going up in the world.

Drinking

Not the social kind, the learning how to kind.

In the early days before The Boy started eating solid food I used to look at the array of plastic cups they do for babies in bewilderment. The manufacturers seem to have convinced us that we will need to teach our babes to drink in 'stages' and... amazingly, buy a different cup and spout for each stage.

Cups with a straw are labelled as being suitable for either 12 or, in some cases 24 month old babies and it wasn't until I saw one of his friends happily sucking watermelon juice through a straw at around 9 months that I thought to question this. So I got him a cup with a straw a couple of weeks ago and he drinks from it fine, I suspect he would have done months ago.

So now he drinks out of a normal cup at home or one with a straw when he's out - so simple, who knew!?

Sigh, plates

It would be really nice if The Boy understood about plates.

If he's really hungry then he'll eat food off one happily but once the initial hunger is gone or if he has a particularly chewy mouthful and he needs to kill time then over goes the plate. After that, the plate, with all the food still underneath it is swept up and down the table before being sent over the edge in what seems to be a particularly enjoyable two handed shove.

Ugh.

Muffin success - thanks Hugh.

I've never made muffins before but I'm very, very proud of my first attempt (in fact I wish I'd thought to take a picture).

And more to the point The Boy loves them and they make a good portable snack item for him.

We made the cheese and bacon ones. Lovely.

How much I love buffets now

I've never been a great one for buffets, unless you're in a super swanky joint they're usually lots and lots of so-so food whereas I'd always rather have a small amount of so great food.

But, now I'm eating out a lot with The Boy I do love a buffet.

Why?

Because he has the attention span of a mayfly (DH says he will be in sales when he grows up) he gets so easily bored with meals that have one element or flavour i.e. a plate of pasta or cheese on toast.

He needs variety, so if I order cheese on toast for him he'll eat it all but it needs to be interspersed with interesting titbits from Mum or Dads plate or food from home, like grapes. Otherwise it all goes off the table sometime after the first slice is demolished.

Buffets mean that I can pile high a plate of tiny pieces of wildly differing food. You think cake and curry doesn't go together... you think wrong! And The Boy will entertain himself literally for hours investigating each new type of food as I hand it to him. OK, a lot of it goes over the side but there's plenty more where that came from.

Three cheers for the buffet.

The Boy Walks

Nothing to do with Baby Led Weaning (or at least I don't think it is) but The Boy can walk.

Yay, go The Boy!!!!

He does have an egg allergy after all

He's fine with well cooked eggs when they're baked into things like quiche or cake but scrambled eggs are a big no.

I gave them to him once and he got a little red around the mouth and then the second time he had a stronger reaction, eyes puffed up and were obviously itchy and a nasty red rash all over his face, very scary and we very nearly rushed him to the hospital (which is fortunately right next door), we hung in there and it faded after about an hour.

Thankfully google came to the rescue...

"Some of the allergenic parts of the egg are changed by cooking and become non reactive. This is why some people react to egg that is raw but not to cooked egg." Presumably scrambled eggs is just not cooked enough!

Apparently two thirds of children with a mild egg allergy will grow out of it by five years of age.

Fingers crossed for the little man.

Our own bread

As a follow on from the salt thing we bought a bread machine, if I'm trying to control the amount of salt The Boy eats one of the easiest ways is to make as many things as I can from scratch.

It's so easy and really nice to know exactly what is going into our food (about two teaspoons of salt per loaf, so not to worried if he has a couple of slices!). At the moment we've stuck with a fairly unadventurous wholemeal loaf recipe but I'm planning to branch out into french bread and other exciting flavours soon.

Mmmm, there's nothing quite like freshly baked bread!

Not food

With the enthusiasm that The Boy shows now with eating every new food we give him it was actually quite a relief that he is able to identify that some things are just not food.

Green poster paint f'rinstance.

Salt

To begin with, in the first month or so of blw I was super concious about salt then, when I thought through how much goes into our home-cooked food vs. how much he was actually eating, I relaxed again, the reality was that the volume of food he was eating was so small there was only so much he could actually be ingesting.

Now, as The Boy's consumption of 'real people food' increases and he's more and more able to eat exactly what we eat I'm becoming more concious of the salt content of what he's eating again.

I have to be realistic, food has salt in it, you can't make bread or cheese without it and The Boy likes both very much. I also can't control how much salt he has when we eat out, I try to make good choices for him from the menu but who knows how much salt really went into that pasta sauce or those sweetcorn fritters.

I have to concentrate on what I can control which is the food he gets at home. We make a point of not adding pure salt to anything while we're cooking it so all the salt he gets comes from cheese, stock cubes or ham etc.. that are cooked into the recipe.

I also bought two new cookbooks the BBC Good Food; 101 More Low Fat Feasts and Healthy Eats in the same series. Not that I'm sponsored by the BBC or anything but I have found them really good, they are all tested recipes and they really do turn out like the pictures (!) and the have some very tasty ways of adding flavour without adding salt.

As a saltaholic honestly, I sometimes miss the salt but I like that we have 'the salt thing' under control and I guess I like that The Boy is forcing us to be a bit more healthy!

Cherries

Go down a storm in our house!

FIGS!!!

A few of my fellow blw'ers have extolled the virtues of dried fruit, usually prunes and apricots soaked overnight to make them soft.

It's something I believed but never really got around to trying until last week when in a rare trip to the supermarket I walked past a display of 'Crazy Jack' brand organic stuff.

I picked up some figs and some apricots (found an interesting fact about dried apricots, which I'll come to later) soaked'em in some water and gave them to The Boy and now they're a staple of his diet. He thinks they're great, especially the figs and always finishes them and they're good for him too.

Win, win, win.

Now my interesting factoid about dried apricots

Apparently, they're not supposed to be orange, they're naturally brown when they dry but they add some sort of chemical to make them orange so we'll eat them. My tip of the day: buy the organic brown ones!

Speaking of Fish

DH doesn't like tinned tuna. So when he goes on a business trip I (a bit tragically, I know) look forward to a baked potato with a bit of tuna mayo and when I'm feeling exotic I throw some spring onion and sweetcorn into the mix. Oh yeah, I am just so rock'n'roll!

So DH went on a business trip a few weeks back and I made us both baked potatoes with the aforementioned rock'n'roll mix, and The Boy loved, loved, loved it. I thought the spring onions would be a step too far but he was scooping up handfuls with both hands and cramming them in his mouth just as fast as he could.

So the boy seems to like fish in all it's forms and if people could stop chucking mercury into the ocean we would have the basis of a very healthy diet here, as it is he can only have it about once a week.

Tinned sardines

Loves 'em. Who'd 'a thought it!

Recipe

Take the sardines out of the tin.

Mash.

Spread on toast.

Watch the boy lick it off the toast.

He'll also grab handfuls of mashed sardines out of the bowl and eat those if you let him.

My Boy is rich in Omega-3!

Mum-mum-mum-mum-mummeeeeeeee

His first word! :-)

Fruit Cake

We recently moved house and got a new oven - joy!!

Our previous gas oven was designed for cooking Chinese style duck with the rotisserie attachment and very little else - it had a fierce set of burners at the top and bottom and a completely arbitrary 'temperature' scale on the front. In reality it only had two temperatures very hot and cold.

My previous attempts at lovingly baking things for the family resulted everything being crispy on the outside and raw in the middle which is not an ideal state for any sort of baked goods.

Very, very excited by the new oven I dug out my mum's 1974 Dairy Cookbook and made a (if I may say it myself) fantastic fruitcake. I dropped the nuts from the recipe because of the choking hazard they present and once it had cooled I couldn't wait to offer the boy a slice.

I'm happy to report it can be added to his list of likes, he rarely drops any and mmmmm's and laughs as he works his way through his portion.

He probably doesn't neeeeeed cake at this age but it's so much fun to watch him enjoy it and much better a homemade one than something storebought, I reckon.

A sophisticated palate

I think The Boy has one.

;-)

Tonight we gave him mother's favourite which is salmon with low-salt soy sauce and some roughly chopped ginger and garlic all wrapped in tin foil and baked in the oven - lovely, steamed strong flavours.

And he loved it.

My garlic breath boy!

Eating out

Pick your restaurant with care.

Most places are fab and accept the little bit of mess that goes along with blw philosophically.

The Boy won't chuck food he likes over the side but if he's distracted enough he can drop it accidentally and in restaurants there are plenty of distractions.. other food, waitresses, other kids, customers, salt and pepper shakers, side plates, cutlery...

We met DH for lunch today and I went for a place I knew was fairly child friendly and had high chairs.

The staff were all young with obviously no experience of babies which resulted in them flying to the rescue with a cleaning cloth every time he dropped something. They gave him plastic cutlery which I let him play with before the food arrived which got replaced with a new set twice because he had dropped them on the floor and they were 'now dirty'.

This is a child who will happily eat people's havianas if left unattended for a fraction of a second - I don't think cutlery that has dropped onto a sparkling floor for a fraction of a second is going to do him much harm!

I suppose I shouldn't complain about such attentive service but honestly it was a little trying and far from a relaxing lunch I was acutely concious of what might happen every time The Boy's food stuffed fists wavered over the edge of the high chair and I just couldn't wait to get out of there.

The Boy enjoyed himself though.

It's always teething!

So here I was, pleased with the success of blw but still a bit worried that though The Boy obviously liked food and enjoyed eating it he wasn't what you might call scoffing it.

He was eating but always gave the impression that if I didn't bother to give him the food it's not like he'd be bothered.

Earlier this month tooth #1 and tooth #2 appeared and after tooth #2's arrival the boy is eating... I mean really, really eating like, next time we go out he's getting his own meal or I'll starve, eating.

The debris around his chair is now reduced to the stuff he throws over the side deliberately because a) he doesn't like it (red and green pepper and lettuce) or b) he's finished eating and mostly wants to play now.

Now he will finish a bowl of pasta, a small sandwich or a baked potato plus yoghurt and fruit without any problems and has radically reduced his milk intake - a tangible sign of success methinks!

Go The Boy!

England IV - 1 baby, 3 toddlers and another understanding waitress

Should you be ever be passing Gunwharf Quay in Portsmouth with your baby led weaning baby and be feeling a little peckish, I suggest dropping into Brasserie Blanc.

The have a 'proper' children's menu offering, among other things, freshly made fishcakes or pasta with a choice of sauces. They have highchairs, crayons and paper tablecloths you can draw on (if that's your thing).

And presumably they have a very good cleaning crew as we went in there with six adults one blw weaning toddler, one baby led weaning baby, one (really quite tidy) three year old and a (not so tidy) one year old.

The food was lovely but the chaos we left behind us had to be seen to be believed, again the staff were lovely about the whole thing.

A bit of discount shopping followed by a delicious chaotic dinner with the extended family - my kind of day!

England III - A very messy breakfast (and a very understanding waitress)

As part of our trip we spent a few days in Cornwall at the most excellent Trengilly Wartha Inn (which I can't recommend enough by the way, fantastic locally sourced food with an all too extensive wine and spirit list and lovely atmosphere in a beautiful rural spot).

Breakfast was included as part of our stay and when I saw their light beige carpeted Breakfast room I made DH go and get a newspaper to put down (FT, as it happens) the waitress came out and saw our arrangement with newspaper and highchair and laughed saying there's no need to do that... little did she know.

The Boy hoed into a starter of weetabix, followed by toast, which was succeeded by bacon, fried egg, black pudding, grilled tomato and sausage all donated from his generous parent's plates.

He enjoyed and tasted everything but with such an embarrassment of choice he developed a habit (which he still does now) of very deliberately holding any piece of food he has tired of/sucked the flavour out of over the side of the highchair and letting go.

After breakfast DH and I sidled out of the room a bit sheepishly trying not to look at the carnage The Boy had wrought but the next day the waitress greeted us and our baby and our newspaper very cheerily saying "who'd have thought that little dot of a thing could make such a mess".

Is it wrong that I'm proud of him for that!?

England II - Pie

You may not know this, but my sister-in-law makes a very good pie.

The Boy thinks so too! He's particularly a fan of pie-juice soaked pastry and ate all of his, then half of mine and then all of his less appreciative cousin's pastry. That's a lot of pastry for a small person.

In the interests of a balanced meal he also discovered a liking for the insidey bits of courgettes which he ate with gusto and threw away the dark green skin.


Who ate all the pie?

The Boy did!

England I - Floor Curry

Just don't do it, people!

In an empty headed packing moment I forgot to take our portable high chair jobbie so I figured, on a visit to the recently moved and semi-unpacked in-laws, that it would be basically the same thing if I sat on the floor on his messy mat and held the boy firmly.

Nope.

It was almost impossible to hold my standing, crawling, rolling, wriggling son still; he was on the floor, he could see lots of interesting things, he knew that with just the right twist and wriggle combo he could get away from me to investigate them in person.

He had his carefully selected curry in front of him but was totally unable to concentrate with all the distraction and unusualness so pretty much just threw it around and over the mat, himself, me, passing strangers, whoever.

Then, realising he couldn't get away he turned around to give me a great big sticky, multicoloured, chicken tikka masalarey hug. All over my new jacket.

Floor curry: The Boy 1, Mummy Nil.

England

These are the stories of our adventures in England. They're in no particular order, just as they occur to me.

Some general thoughts about England;

1) It's lovely when it's sunny.
2) The food is a lot better than when I left!
3) The predominance of carpets in homes and pubs makes blw very challenging indeed.
4) The chilly climate makes clothesless blw (which we are big fans of here in HK, make a mess and straight in the bath!) impractical.

Big Hiatus...

...in the blogging caused by an unexpectedly extended trip to Europe (Iceland, you have a lot to answer for) and then a house move.

The Boy is thriving except for a mean dose of jet-lag which involved him being up and bouncy all night for the last two nights and Mum being distinctly the worse for wear and unable to make a decision as to just where all these boxes of stuff should go now we don't have a cavernous storage room!

Eek!

Allergy? Part II

Turns out that it's a hummus allergy not an egg allergy - he scoffed a large bit of cheese omelette today with no reaction.

Such a relief, eggs are great!

Here we were thinking The Boy didn't like fruit...

... and it turns out he doesn't like cold fruit!

He's been turning up his nose at and throwing away almost every fruit we offered him except banana. What I didn't realise is that banana is the only fruit we don't keep in the fridge. (It's warmish here and fruit left out tends to go of fairly quickly if left out).

I discovered this because he's not yet up to crunching apple so I microwaved it and he ate three slices, after some thought I realised what microwaved apples and bananas have in common and now if we take the fruit out of the fridge a couple of hours before we offer it to him or even better, zap it in the microwave for a couple of minutes.

So now I'm proud to say he very much enjoys;

Oranges
Apples
Strawberries (they give him a bit of a rash but he loves them so I can't stop giving them to him!)
Plums (mmmm, microwaved plums!)
Kiwi

With the sour fruits he does the best screwed up, ikk face when he puts them in his mouth but then goes ahead and eats them anyway.

That's my boy!

What we've had to eat

Mum in HK has been feeling very sick and sorry for herself of late but The Boy has been thriving and eating almost everything in sight.

A quick run down of the last few days;

- dim sum
- roast butternut squash
- roast courgette
- spag bol (well, you've got to, haven't you)
- lovingly microwaved apple
- kiwi fruit
- cucumber
- orange
- more dim sum
- rice
- chorizo

I think he's doing quite well :-)

Quiche

The boy ate a whole mini chicken and leek quiche yesterday - no sign of the egg allergy this time so fingers crossed. Chewed the pastry and leeks happily and spat out any wrong size bits of chicken - wrong size is too small to be held in little fist with a bit sticking out to be gummed off but too big to be swallowed whole.

So cute, he's taken to making a very serious faced mmmm, mmmm, mmmm sound as he eats - we think it's enjoyment.

Rice cakes

Just because I don't particularly like something doesn't mean I shouldn't offer it to the boy and lots of other blw'ers have reported that rice cakes went down very well.

I had trouble finding suitable ones as the rice snacks in the supermarkets here tend to have lots of soy and mirrin and other salty deliciousness on them.

I eventually found what I wanted at Bumps to Babes and doubtless paid a huge premium for these imported goodies but they were salt-free, baby-sized, organic rice cakes and it's not like I'm going to make my own!

The first one I gave him was enthusiastically sucked but what was left at the end was a damp whole rice cake.

After a nights sleep he obviously developed a plan for tackling this new object and the one I gave him the next day was pretty much demolished.

Now it's great because if I'm eating something incompatible with the toothless one's diet then I can always give him a couple of rice cakes.

Simples!

The Roast Dinner

Allergy?

Following on from my last post, I'm trying to inject a little variety into the breakfast offering.

So on the menu for the next few days;

French toast (sucked but ultimately rejected)

Weetabix (is on the menu but we haven't tried it yet, suspect it will go down well 'cos it's a bit porridge-like)

Toast with hummus (the hummus was very garliky, he sucked it off the bread with enthusiasm and had garlic breath for the rest of the day)

Toast with cottage cheese (again sucked with enthusiasm)

But, when he was eating the hummus on toast I gave him a bit of my fried egg which he picked up smeared round his face and then threw away. About 20 minutes later he went red all around his mouth and chin which faded after about 15 minutes.

I'm wondering about an egg allergy - maybe this is why the (delicious, in my opinion) French toast was rejected.

I really hope not just for all the lovely eggy things he would miss out on!

Baby Led Eating!

I got a bit concerned that the only meal we were consistently giving The Boy was breakfast - we know he likes porridge but I didn't want him to start thinking that the only food available was oaty mush.

So I mentioned in passing to G that I thought we'd try giving him some pasta'n'pesto in the afternoon. After an extra long, long lunch I came back wondering if The Boy would be awake and up for a pesto pasta fest only to find him sitting at the table with G tucking in to said feast.

And he really was tucking in! As G and I discussed our days activities (he does much better if you are not paying attention directly to him while he eats) he scoffed the original five or so fusilli on his plate, so we gave him 5 more, which he ate so I gave him quite a pile more which he ate and ate... to the point where I almost wondered if he wasn't going to stop!

But like the book said he would, he let us know very clearly when he was done by pushing the plate away and trying to stand up.

Eating, done. Now we have to work on his table manners ;-)

Marmite on Toast

Well, he's British isn't he - sorta. So he has to like Marmite, my theory was if I start him young he's bound to love it.

And he does!

Choking and Gagging - Part II

As a responsible parent - no, really - I sent G on a baby first aid course this week with particular instructions to ask about choking. Interestingly she came back with the following information...

1) As long as the baby is still coughing, he is not choking. Coughing shows that he is still able to take air into his lungs and is doing all the right things to dislodge whatever it is.

2) If he appears unable to take a breath that is when he is choking. (With The Boy there has been lots of coughing so far but no choking and most of my fellow blw'ers have reported the same thing.) This link has good info on what to do if a baby is actually choking

3) If he is coughing don't pat baby on the back - this could be harmful as he is doing everything he needs to to dislodge the item and patting may actually distract him and could cause it to fall further in.

Kind of reassuring that actual medical professionals seem to support what we were doing anyway which was just letting him get on with it!

Five Star Boy

Sunday brunch in the Grand Hyatt - very Ab Fab darling.

It's the most high end venue we have attempted to take The Boy to and I was keeping everything crossed that we wouldn't have a meltdown similar to the one we had the other day, as the thing with posh places is that there is very little ambient noise to drown out the screeches of a discontented small person.

The Boy is going through a stage of high chair rejection, at least I hope it's just a stage - I think as soon as he realises he can be up high with us all and join in the conversation and eating, he will put up with the being strapped in but until then it's laps or pushchairs for this little man.

So we took the MacLaren - not exactly five star transport but it folds up with one hand and fits in a cab and that's really what you want in a pushchair in this part of the world.

It all went rather better than expected, he was well napped and looking for entertainment. He positively devoured the soft breadstick that I gave him - he ate the whole thing, no mushy bits left anywhere on the floor or the pushchair. I wasn't there for the swallowing moment but apparently he coughed then gave a big gulp and it was gone - Result!

He successfully gnawed his way through a small bit of broccoli - much less actual eating of this and more chewing but even so. Semi-Result!

He looked at and promptly threw away frittata that I gave him. Humph.

Porridge and bread - so far baby led weaning is all about carbs with The Boy.

BLW - our first lunch out

As the mother of a more-or-less textbook baby, right on the 50th percentile and pretty predictable when it comes to when he sleeps, eats and... everything else, it can come as a nasty shock to the system when things get a bit more challenging.

Buoyed very successful play date yesterday when The Boy missed a nap but stayed cheerful to the end I had no qualms about taking him out to lunch with friends today. The Boy has always been highly portable, not stressed by new situations and, if he's tired, able to sleep almost anywhere.

So lunch today was a bit of a shock to the system - he would not sit on my lap, he would not sit in a highchair, he would not lie on the bench, he punctuated his usual cheerful moments with (to my ears) bloodcurdling screams and struggles.

The bright spot in this meal (baby-wise) was when my sandwich arrived, grilled pepper, aubergine and mozzarella and The Boy made a grab for it and kept coming back for more - he wasn't actually eating it, the sandwich was of a texture and proportions that our toothless, newly eating little one couldn't possibly manage but he gave all the ingredients a very good suck and seemed to enjoy them.

Towards the end he gagged on something which is still quite scary but I felt more confident that ever before when I said to my understandably nervous dinner companions "don't worry, he won't choke".

That episode marked the end of the sandwich based entertainment that had been keeping him occupied and we had to leave shortly after due to the noise vs. embarrassment factor that I'm sure every mum can identify with!

BLW - update

Not much to report on the food front at the moment.

We had tried fitting in a second practice 'meal' for The Boy in the afternoons as well as his breakfast extravaganza but as no one else was eating with him he'd sit in his high chair and look a bit bemused and stressed as G and I sat with him and encouraged him to eat his lovely butternut squash and broccoli. So we dropped that idea and plan to try again next week as DH will be away so The Boy and I can have an earlier meal together, I feel like he definitely needs the example of someone else eating at the same time as him.

That will be more exciting as I am planning to give him exactly what I eat, minus the salt where possible (I am a fully paid up member of salt-aholics anonymous so have to be careful he doesn't get too much).

On the breakfast front he is getting better and better at eating porridge and probably eats about three teaspoonfuls and then wears another three - not bad for a six month old!

Tuna

DH and I bought some lovely and very expensive tuna steaks at the weekend and whilst I sat on the sofa and consumed empty calories in the form of wine, DH slaved in the kitchen... well, he threw the tuna on the griddle pan and got the salad out.

We like our tuna rare but DH cooked a little bit all the way through for The Boy, I don't know if you have to do that for small people but better safe than sorry and all that.

On the upside The Boy liked the flavour, he put all the tuna pieces we gave him in his mouth and looked for more. On the down side he failed to actually chew or swallow any - he did a sort of tuna-squirrel thing storing it in his mouth for a while then eventually had a prolonged coughing fit and spat it all out again.

Tuna
Flavour - Success
Actually Eating - Fail

Porridge Fun

I think The Boy does better if whoever is feeding him is eating as well and appears not to be paying attention to him, so the best meal for baby led weaning for us is probably breakfast.

Being a slow mover in the morning I will attempt to give The Boy his breakfast bottle at 7.30 am which he isn't normally very interested in, but then by the time I've caught up on the morning news, showered, dressed and actually made breakfast it's usually gone 9 (I said I was a slow mover) by which time The Boy is hungry enough to show interest in the food and not in need of his next nap yet - perfect.

My weekday breakfast is porridge and blueberries and in the best principle of blw I thought I'd try and give him what I was eating. I wasn't prepared to give him porridge with no cutlery at all, it's just not practical although I guess it would have been messy fun, so I thought I'd try a loaded spoon left on his tray for him to pick up.

The results were both entertaining and successful - he seemed to like porridge (the pre-squished blueberry not so much as it turned up in his bib later). He figured out which was the business end of the spoon (after shoving the handle in worryingly far and causing another fit of gagging) and had a good go at four small spoonfuls before losing patience and indicating loudly that it was in fact, now naptime.

HK Life - Lion Dance

I know it's a terrible photo but I think this sums up Hong Kong with it's mixture of tradition and consumerism.

At the start of the new Chinese Year the Lion Dancers perform a routine which will bring luck and good fortune in the next year. These lion dancers were performing a dance in each of the shops in one of the many high end designer malls that Hong Kong is littered with.

He seems to be on a bit of an eating go slow at the moment

After a storming start The Boy seems to be on a bit of an eating strike... I think it might be the tomato - he really didn't like the tomato and I hope it hasn't put him off the whole idea of eating!

Even the usually crowd pleasing Broccoli hasn't gone down too well.

We have noticed that he's had one red cheek and ear for two days now and I just googled "red cheek sign of teething?" and apparently it is - what did we do before the internet!?

Choking and Gagging

Not an S&M post, still in the realms of baby led weaning, sorry.

Honestly, the choking situation is a worry.

I think I'm probably a fairly laid back parent but at the sound of my little one making a choking noise as he eats I feel my heart beating faster and I tense in preparation for turning him upside down and patting him firmly on the back in a baby heimlich.

But, following DH's excellent example I sit quietly and try not to look worried or even send The Boy subconscious Mother to Baby worry vibes.

When G and I are feeding him we both pretend that we are not worried and yet are secretly wondering which of us will crack first and whip the offending food item out of his little mouth.

And the thing is, The Boy doesn't care at all, he makes his chokey noise, sometimes a bit ducklike and sometimes a lot of coughing and he either brings the food back to the front of his mouth and spits it out or he swallows it... then he smiles like he's done something clever, which I suppose he has.

He's not at all traumatised and he always goes in for some more - I notice that after he has a big mouthful of food he often stops and sucks his fingers for a while to let it go down before weighing in again.

At the moment it is scary for me but I'm trying to bear in mind that this is the very early days of The Boy learning to do something new.

It seems from what I have seen The Boy doing so far, that he has the instinct to chew his food already and I want him to give him the opportunity to practice and strengthen that skill with blw. And most importantly he obviously has a very strong instinct and knows exactly what to do when he feels overwhelmed by a big lump of food. The reality is that he is not choking at all, just gagging as he learns how to deal with the food.

From what I've read of other people's experiences with this two things happen; one is that I will get more hardened to hearing those noises and two, he will very quickly develop all the skills he needs with respect to chewing and swallowing and learning how to eat and the gagging will get less.

So check back with me in a couple of weeks and I'll let you know!

Philadelhia on Toast - Redux

He was quite excited when he saw philadelphia on toast for breakfast again this morning but his new found toast-grabbing-confidence now means that he shoves the whole darn thing in his mouth and gums it until it's a claggy mess in the roof of his mouth and then starts a prolonged coughing fit in order to dislodge it.

It's a worry.

The Very Hungry Boy and The Nasty Red Fruit

Once upon a time there was a little boy and his mum was giving him a selection of new foods every day.

On day one he had banana

On day two he had a carrot and some pasta

On day three he had banana, raspberries, potato and broccoli

On day four he had toast, cheese, mango and another banana

On day five he had... a tomato

... and I think he still hasn't forgiven me!


N.B. any resemblance this post might have to any books about caterpillars is entirely coincidental.

HK Life

I was looking for rice cakes for The Boy as apparently they make a good snack with a bit of hommous - couldn't find them but I did find Cubic Pastry - which is apparently both Convenient and Handy.

Good to know should I ever get bored with the old 2 dimensional pastry.

BLW - Day 4

Philadelphia on toast.

Toast bread

Spread cheese

Cut into small person sized fingers

Watch The Boy (surprisingly dexterous when it's something he discovers he likes) pick up every bit of toast, systematically suck the cheese spread off each bit then throw the resulting mushy wilty bread fingers over the side of the high chair.

Toast, it seems, is little more than a cheese delivery system.

He's a lot like his mother, that Boy.

BLW - Day 3 Valentines Day

Day 3 started with G popping back in the middle of her 4 days off for Chinese New Year to tackle the chaos she somehow knew would be awaiting her (psychic G). Proud mum me was keen to show her The Boy's new talent so set him up with another banana and some raspberries.

Not his most impressive demonstration of eating! Getting the banana from tray to mouth proved as tricky as before and apparently we're just not a fan of raspberries.

G said all the right things but I suspect she secretly thinks mum is a bit mad.

It being Valentines Day DH cooked Chicken Mole, an interesting spicy dish of chilli, chocolate and... chicken.

As we were unsure of how he would receive this exotic fare The Boy had broccoli and mashed potato.

He clearly enjoyed the mashed potato and weirdly loved, loved, loved the broccoli - seriously chewed it, sucked it, spat it out, ate it, swallowed it, smooshed it, ate some more.

Hats off to all the people on the blw forums who say babies love broccoli, I didn't believe you and I was wrong!

Then, as a sort of encore because the Mole turned out not to be crazy spicy I gave him some of the sauce with some rice (no chicken yet though) and he loved that too.

Not many babies can say they had Chicken Mole and Rice as one of their first meals... well except in Mexico I guess. Not many in Hong Kong certainly.

BLW - Day 2

Lots of posts today as I am starting this blog on Day 4 of BLW and want to share all the details of the first few days.

Day 2 began with carrots due to some vague idea of starting with orange vegetables (note: orange vegetables not chocolatey eclair goo) so I made DH and myself some breakfast (bacon sarnie if you're interested) and cooked up four small carrot sticks for The Boy.

Lesson 1 - don't put the food on the high chair before you put the baby in it, this will result in baby grabbing the food before he is strapped in and you having to take it away while you put his arms through the straps sending entirely the wrong message about enthusiastic grabbing of food.

Lesson 2 - carrots, much like bananas, are sort of ok but not generating huge amounts of enthusiasm. The Boy picked them up put them in his mouth, chewed a bit, swallowed a bit lost interest and sucked his fingers.

Mum took this as a challenge and thought long and hard(ish) about what to offer The Boy next.

I have confused ideas about what babies this age can and can't eat - largely because the medical and baby care establishments have confused ideas about what to give to babies this age. And the world wide webster? well read enough of it and you could go mad trying to follow all the advice.

What I was sure about was that I didn't want to give The Boy what DH and I were having - I forget why, probably chilli related. So I cooked him up about 6 fusilli pieces debated putting pesto on them, decided against it due to a worry about the amount of salt in it plus a worry that the oil content would make the fusilli slippery and render them bananalike in their ungrippability. So I sprinkled some mixed herbs on them for flavour - gourmet, who me?

I feel like the fusilli was the start of BLW for us as The Boy showed a real enthusiasm for this offering. He picked it up he chomped it, he spat it out, he rechomped it, he swallowed a bit, he threw some over the edge of the chair (onto his Messy Mat, thanks to my cousins for that bit of advice) he grabbed some more and in fact, happily occupied himself with the delights of plain pasta with a bit of mixed herbs for the whole time DH and I were eating our food.

Watching The Boy, smile, show enthusiasm for his food and keep coming back for more was incredibly and unexpectedly rewarding.

Return of the irrepressible grin!

BLW - Day 1

Hidebound by convention I started with bananas... well, no hang on, stop there, I actually started just before Christmas with the inside goo from a chocolate eclair which The Boy couldn't get enough of. Two months too early and chock-full of sugar and cream. Bad Mother.

Moving swiftly on to BLW Official Day 1.

The Boy is five months and four weeks and I started early because it's Chinese New Year and DH has four days off so can share the first food fun. And I started with bananas... because babies like bananas right?

Some hitherto unknown things about bananas will follow;

Babies do like them but not nearly as much as they like other things which we will come to on Days 2 & 3.

Bananas are gooey and squishy and really hard for a little unco to pick up and put in his mouth.

Banana goo sticks like cement to every surface and cloth it gets onto.

Banana goo leaves permanent black specks on clothing.

Meal 1 went like this;

Put together new much searched for aesthetically pleasing wooden high chair (Bumps to Babes in Ap Lei Chau, in case you are wondering).

Realise that although The Boy can sit unaided for short periods of time something about the aesthetically pleasing wooden seat and the designed-by-a-spanner harness makes The Boy slump unhappily to one side unable to reach the tray or use the arm he is slumped onto.

Try to take The Boy out of the high chair but not being an expert yet precipitate a "What are you doing to me Mum" screaming fit.

Worry that I have traumatised my baby without even presenting him with any food yet due to a desire to have a high chair that somewhat matches my living room furniture.

Enlist DH who points out that if I loosen the straps and stick a cushion behind him The Boy can sit comfortably at the tray with the use of both hands and arms.

Finally present The Boy with much longed for banana.

Watch and grin.

Who, What, When, Where

Thinking about it, this should have been my first post.

What's my blog about?

For now Baby Led Weaning although I have no doubt I'm going to very easily get distracted from this topic.

It's not advice although I will share what I'm doing and what I've found does and doesn't work. I'd like to hear about other people's experience as well.

I've started this blog really because I was in danger of overposting on Facebook. You know those people that go on and on about one aspect of their life, yeah, them - well I'm so enthused by baby led weaning two days in that I know I'm going to bore my baby-free friends and annoy my babied-up spoon feeding friends. I've already posted two videos of "My baby eating" and I do appreciate that if I post many more people are just going to think I'm one of "Those" mothers. Maybe I am.

Who am I?

This is the bit I'm having most difficulty writing as everything I put sounds like a lonely hearts ad. Mid 30's mum of one (so far), serial expat, now living in HK would like to meet....

So I'll move on to the real star of the show. DS (Darling Son), six-months old in six days variously known as peanut, sausage, squeaky, cost centre 1 and one-of-small but hereinafter for the purposes of this blog known as The Boy.

And a quick mention for DH, (that's Darling Husband) the person proofreading this blog and assuring me I'm not about to make a complete prat of myself by publishing it. At this point I could include a para explaining how much I love him and how much fun it is being married to him but let's face it - we're English and stuff like that makes us feel very uncomfortable and more than a little silly so I'll skip it (He knows anyway x).

Last but certainly not least is another DH, those here in Hong Kong will know that DH can also mean Domestic Helper and ours is the lovely and incomparable G herinafter known as... G to avoid confusion with the other DH.

That's the cast of characters.

JVNT

Postscript 1.

Please excuse my often shocking spelling and grammar, my mother taught me better.

Postscript 2.

Anything in this blog is Just My Opinion and should be thought about long and hard before being accepted as any sort of fact. I often present half remembered snippets of information as fact mainly because I can't be bothered to look it up and check if it's true.

Postscript 3.

Children are for life not just for Christmas ;-)

Baby Led Weaning and Me

I haven't got "The Book" aka Baby Led Weaning yet - I halfheartedly looked for it here in HK (sent Dymocks an email and tried Bookazine's online search engine) not really expecting to find it and was (or wasn't) disappointed. Thanks be for Amazon's international delivery.

The upshot of this is that I don't know the science behind it, may update this when "The Book" arrives. In the meantime my understanding of the whole BLW thing:

What is it? Strapping baby into the high chair. Put food in front of him (normal food, like carrots, broccoli, pasta that sort of thing). Let him get on with it.

Why? I heard... but don't know if it's true that the whole pureeing baby food thing started when the recommended age for starting solids moved to around three or four months - the only way to get solids inside a baby that age would be to puree. Then we moved the recommended age back to 6 months but carried on pureeing.

Why 2? It makes sense to me that learning to eat should be about learning that orange, stick-like things are probably going to taste carrotty, (or, I guess like Cheesy Wotsits but I don't plan for him to know what those taste like for a while yet!), small green trees will taste broccoli-y. Spooning puree into baby, whilst not, in my opinion a bad thing at all, will just teach him that spoons contain all sorts of surprises, some nice, some not and, in the words of Forrest Gump's Mother "You never know whatchya gonna get".

Why 3? Laziness. No, really. It seems like the easiest way to go. Yes, they are going to make a mess but a mess now or a mess later on when they start self-feeding anyway... shrug.