Veggie Baby

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

 Some time ago, somehow, I found out about the Child Study Unit at Manchester Uni - I can’t remember how.  Anyway, I added Evie’s details thinking it would at least get us out of the house.  Well, today we went for our first study, and Evie LOVED it!!!  New toys to play with, and new people paying her all of their attention, all the time.

It’s a communication study, and must have something to do with pointing, because there was a lot of that going on!  First of all she got to play with some new toys in a bucket, which she thought was fab.  The two researchers were talking to her and playing with her.  I didn’t really join in, because I think the idea was to get her used to them.  I think.

Then she sat on my knee while there were puppets and lots of pointing, and she got rather excited.  Then there was a game where the researchers hid some toys, and some more pointing.  She liked that too.  Then they read books with her and guess what - more pointing.  Then - bubbles.  Oh my goodness!  They had a bubble machine and Evie was entranced.  She just stared and stared at them!

Then they had some toys popping out from behind some curtains, and Evie had to get our attention before we were allowed to interact with her.  That was quite cool.  There was definitely a difference between the quiet and noisy toys - she was content to just watch the quiet ones, whereas she looked for my opinion (or something) about the noisy ones.

We have homework too!  We were sent home with two books, and our own bubble machine, and I have to play the same games, and do pointing with her for 15 minutes every day.  We go back to the centre in 2 weeks, and then again 2 weeks after that.

A bit of a hassle getting there, but I know where I’m going now, and Evie had the best time EVER, and I enjoyed it too because she was so happy.

I’m not good with sticky mess, so I haven’t really been embracing self feeding and finger foods and all that.  But over the last week Veggie Baby has been becoming more and more keen on grabbing the spoon and trying to feed herself.  So I’ve been trying to do some finger foods at every meals - chunks of fruit and veg, breadsticks, oatcakes with hummous, pasta and so on.  She’s actually much better at it than I’d thought.  So I threw caution to the wind and gave her some sultanas and halved prunes.  Oh, the choking hazard!  I know.  But as far as I can work out, all food seems to be a choking hazard, so I thought I’d see how she did.  Most of the sultanas ended up on the floor, but I did see some in a later nappy, so some must have gone in!  The prunes were a success, she sort of sucks the flesh out of the skin.

I got several ideas from a website on Baby Led Weaning.  I think it’s probably a bit too late for us to go down this road as she’s almost there anyway, but I’m definitely going to use a lot of their suggestions for finger foods, and just give Veggie Baby a bit more freedom.  Yes, it’s messy, but she’s waterproof and i can wash her!

I’ve also been letting her have a go with a spoon, and she’s better at this than I’ve been giving her credit for.  As long as the food is sticky, she can manage to get some of it in her mouth.  So now we have a spoon each and while she concentrates on spreading the food around, I try to sneak some into her mouth.  She’s not eating vast amounts, but we get a little bit more down her with this method.

My freezer is beginning to look a little bare. I’ve been trying to cook more for us, and also trying to do more stuff out and about with the Veggie Baby, so that leaves a lot less time for making baby meals. I did manage to make some blueberry and nectarine puree (well, it was quite watery so more a sauce really) yesterday, and that was absolutely delicious.

1 punnet blueberries (approx 150g)
2 nectarines (or peaches would work well), peeled, stoned and chopped
2 tblsp water

Put the fruit and water in a pan and stew over a low heat for about 15 minutes or until the nectarines are soft. Puree according to your baby’s needs.

Evie loves this mixed with a little Greek yogurt (make sure it’s the full fat variety), or even with Mascarpone. it would probably also be really nice served over ice cream for older children or adults. And it freezes well. I did try to give it to her mashed rather than pureed, but that just didn’t work because the nectarines went a bit stringy and the skins on the blueberries caused hassle as well.  Oh, just a word of warning though - this can get a bit messy, but great photo opportunities.

OK, so I know it’s not particularly interesting or exciting, but bizarrely, my webstats inform me that several people visited her after searching Google for ‘freezer garage’. So, I don’t want to disappoint anyone, so here’s an update on my freezer in the garage situation.

As mentioned in the original ‘freezer in the garage’ post, apparently you aren’t supposed to keep fridges/freezers or similar in garages or other outbuildings because strangely they don’t work well in the cold. It’s now February and although we have had a particularly mild winter, we have had a few chilly days, and the new chest freezer seems to be absolutely fine. However, the upright fridge-freezer does seem to have started making a new noise. Mind you, that’s also always been in the garage (well, the out-house) and it’s always been fine before. It’s still working OK though, so I’ve decided to just stick my fingers in my ears and go ‘la-la-la-la-la-’ and pretend it’s not happening until it actually breaks down and stops working.

And the chest freezer has been really, really useful and I’m very glad we bought it. We tend to keep all of Evie’s stuff in the little freezer because it’s more accessible, and all of our stuff is in the chest freezer because we don’t need to get at it as often. I haven’t exactly filled it up with homemade cakes and stews, as I intended, but you can’t have everything.

After we got back from holiday, Evie took about a week to get back into a decent sleeping pattern.  Then, about 3 days later, she started teething again!!

Her first two bottom teeth arrived relatively hassle free, but these top two must have been really uncomfortable for her.  She’s had such a runny nose that she hasn’t been able to breathe properly when she’s feeding, so that makes her cross and frustrated.  Then I think because her mouth is sore, she doesn’t want to eat, so she wakes up in the night and is hungry, but can’t feed because she can’t breathe - and so on!  They’ve taken their time coming through, but they’re both through the gums now, and she’s not quite as snotty as she has been and she’s been feeding and eating a little better.

But it all seems to be two steps forward, and one step back - I get her eating lumpy food, then she won’t eat anything because of the teeth, and so we’re back to square one again!  I made vegetable goulash the other day for her, and that went down surprisingly well considering it was her first time eating mushrooms or kidney beans.  She’s much more keen on feeding herself though - unfortunately she’s not particularly good at it.  So I spend most of lunchtime fishing out larger chunks of beans and veg that she can pick up and eat herself.  Oatcakes are also popular, and she loves rusks - but they’re a bit of a last resort when she won’t eat anything else because they’re very sweet, and I’m sure that can’t be good.

Hopefully now we’re over the worst of the teething for the moment, so we can enjoy a good nights sleep and some happier mealtimes.  On a slightly unrelated note, I’ve rejoined Slimming World in the hope that Evie can have a slimmer mummy!