The very hungry baby

We'd had a good innings with the food. Alice has been eating nicely for a few days and today it all went to pot. Or rather, stayed in the pot.

I've come to the conclusion that babies are like old people. They like to eat early and they have their funny little ways. Alice needs to have eaten breakfast by 8am, lunch by 11.30am and dinner by 5.15pm. Then she likes a hot bath and some warm milk.

The culmination of this schedule is that I am either preparing meals or washing up for most of the day and am just grateful that Stu is happy to take himself off to work with just a sachet of lemsip by way of sustenance.

Today I missed Alice's windows for breakfast and lunch and they were both tough going. To compensate, we started dinner early. I should also note that things have moved on, from the position we were in two weeks ago, where she would only feed herself. For the last little while, she has been refusing such mundane tasks. She may suck on a piece of apple if I hold it for her but she is far more likely to throw any finger food straight onto the floor (as opposed to all toys, fingers, baby wipes, TV remotes, mobile phones etc, which go straight into the mouth).

It started badly. She wouldn't look at her mashed potato, so I relented and gave her a Raffertys Garden sachet of carrot, pumpkin and apple. She wolfed that down. Then a sachet of banana, mango and pear. She wolfed that down. By the end of the meal, she had consumed 3 sachets (organic), 1 portion of mashed potato (organic), 3 rice cakes (organic) with avocado (organic), 5 cooked apple slices (organic) and 1 Farleys rusk (not organic [gasp] and counterfeit to boot - smuggled in by Nanna Keefe, although perhaps I should not put that in writing or else Alice and I will end up on Border Security). I think she would have kept on eating but I thought it was time to draw a stop to such matters, since avocado was actually starting to come out of her nose.


After third rice cake...and she was still hungry

I'd like to credit her little friend Charlie (as well as hunger) for the improvement between lunch and dinner. We met them for coffee (or as Charlie likes to point out when he passes any cafe, to his mother's chagrin "CharlieCinoMummyCoffeeCake") and Alice enjoyed some banana bread before the chums ate pieces of apple together. Hmm, Alice's GI levels may not have been ideal today, all things considered. Still, as you can see, she's thriving.


But, I'll forgive her anything, since she is now saying ma-ma, waving her arms to be picked up, sings alone to the radio in the car and has refused the dummy since we arrived back in Australia. Self weaning - we'll take that!