Barbecue, baby style

Now, if you’re looking for saussies you’ve come to the wrong place.  Though I can assure you the 2-44 year olds (except me) had plenty of traditional Irish barbecue (lots of meat and clouds) the babies were another story.   I sat Theo on my knee while I ate my delicious halloumi & courgette skewers, grilled asparagus, & beetroot salad  – seriously, how do any of you people need meat when things like that are available? I fully expected to hand him sticks of various things and to watch him chuck them to the ground.  He’s a shouty distracible baby so with his brother and 6 cousins around I figured he wouldn’t go for much.

The best little eater I know

But soon he was transfixed.  We all were truth be told.  Theo’s little cousin Tessa (8.5 months) was quietly and determinedly working her way through several pieces of courgette, her little fist firmly wrapped about it.  Then she chomped down on some delicious asparagus.  But that wasn’t enough, so next with the aid of her dad to steady the load, she munched her way around a large ear of corn.   The thing that struck me most of all…the neatness!  See that blue plate?  It’s not even glued or suckered to the table, she just didn’t bother with The Swiping or The Throwing so beloved of my sons.  *sigh* Jealous!  Tessa is the third of three children, and the first one of them to do baby led weaning.  She could not be a better ad for it!

Theo, wide eyed and inspired tried everything he saw over the next day.  We’re gonna have to hang out with Tessa a bit more!

oh this? is it good?

well if Dom is gonna leave his sandwich lying about…

oooh! squishy.

I’m okay fans!

Hello all, I’m feeling much better. I’m a bit warm still sometimes but I like the medsin, meddzen pink stuff I get when I’m a bit warm.  I point at it when I see it but then mama goes and puts it in the room where I have my bath so I can’t see it and then I don’t think to cry for it.   I’m really hungry and dada and mama are delighted about that.  Food over one isn’t for fun anymore you see, it’s a serious business.  When I was in the hopspital I didn’t eat anything all day until the very end and then when they saw me eat toast they sent me home.  Is eating toast bold like standing up hitting Iggle Piggle on the tv?

I ate lots of fud yesterday and none of it came back up in a big puddle out of my mouth.  I have made big puddles on my cot and my bedroom floor, and my chair and mama and dada’s bed and bedroom floor and the sofa, and the kitchen and everywhere I could think of.  So today I ate porridge for breakfast and I didn’t want much of my water.  But after I had a lovely long nap I wanted my sippy cup back and I had rice cakes with almond butter and some raisins at lunchtime, and a fruit pot and sweetcorn rings for a snack and then mama thought to make something she hadn’t made in ages which was spinach balls with pasta and courgette sauce .  It was yummy and dada loves it too.  mama left me some more for lunch today and dada kept eating them I saw him there better be enough for me because I AM BACK.

– Dom

first refusal

Ah cosmopolitan Ireland.  Full of unseasonal asparagus and soya this and soya that, and most importantly sun dried tomatoes.   Well not for young Dominic.  Nose was turned up at a pilaf type dinner (we do a lot of makey-uppy recipes) with wild red rice, courgette, onion, green pepper & sundried tomatoes.  I am going to try him on tomato-less leftovers as I think the sharpness (may have been too salty in hindsight, they were the rehydrated ones rather than in oil ones) of the tomato put him off the whole thing.  He tucked into an oatcake & a couple of segments of clementine instead.

Not without a bit of drama first though.

my first curry

This week, mama thought I should try some new tastes.  She made green curry, but with lots of coconut milk so it wasn’t too spicy for my little tum.  Also, she sucked the sauce off my fud a bit before I got to it so I was only getting a little taste.

I had baby sweetcorn which is yummy and easy to hold and chomp and carrot sticks and courgette and quorn pieces and rice.  Daddy didn’t think I’d be able for rice but I showed him.  You can eat anything if you grab it with your fist I find.  I made really funny faces because I was a bit surprised at the new flavour.  I think mama and dada thought it might have been a bad idea but then I kept eating so they figured I must have been okay with it.  Sometimes I can’t be bothered holding onto the food and I just suck on it for ages.   Like with courgette.  Its slippery to hold, so I just put it in my teeth and leave it there for aaaages.

I ate outdoors again this week.  Mama brought me to the War Memorial Gardens in Islandbridge, and we went for a walk, and I had some snacks sitting on the grass – Organix Carrot Sticks.  Dada thinks they look like bad food but mama set him right.  She does that a lot.  I got a bit distracted by a tractor driving up and down, I know about tractors from my book “That’s not my Tractor”.  They bought me “That’s not my Dinosaur” this weekend because mama said dinosaurs can’t distract me from eating but I’m going to keep an eye out for them.

– Dom

New tastes. Mama a bit sad.

3 cheers for other BLW’s.  Dom had some of his beloved (well he loved it that once) pasta-with-courgette-sauce-and-spinach-balls for lunch there and happily wolfed it again.  Excuse his hair, it looks like I’ve just taken his rollers out.  He’s a fluffy headed child no doubt about it.

The recipes on the offical Baby Led Weaning forum are great.  I’ve thought sometimes when I’ve read them, hmm, how on earth is he going to eat that. And then he shows me:  Mama, what are hands made for!?

It’s the bolognaise part of this lentil lasagne recipe. So good for all of us – lentils & kidney beans for protein, spinach for iron, and all the rest of the lovely tastes – onion, tomato, herbs.  Was delighted with myself for offering this up in nutrition terms, and it was a parental team effort too.  Bonus is the recipe made enough for 4 adult dinners, 4 baby dinners and a batch to freeze to make the actual lasagne from!  It’s oranginess meant an early bath for Dom.

Now, the hard part.  Most people know I’m vegetarian for the last 15 years.  In fact by this Christmas I’ll have spent more time being veggie than not being veggie.  No meat, fish, jellies or marshmallows (keep meaning to buy such sweet treats here at sweet and sara or here at scrumptious sweets Or if anyone wants to do that for me, that’d be fine too.)  Anyway, we’re a Percy Pig free house, in every sense.  However, I’ve never forced veggieness on anyone, as husbag is oft reminded when he moans about veggie cooking being too hard to make interesting etc etc.  We had 5 years of discussing whether we’d bring up our  hypothetical child as a vegetarian.  Now that child is a reality-child, I chose not to fight that battle.  He will hopefully, like his mama did, see sense & become vegetarian.  And I will buy him Thats Why We Don’t Eat Animals, so that he has a balanced viewpoint.

We were at a friends house this weekend eating an outdoor buffet lunch.  Such is the sophistication of the baby led weaning baby, and the laziness of its parents that it can partake in the adult food also.  Brown bread & hummous! yay!  Cheese! yay! cucumber & tomato from the salad! yay!  chicken…oh, wait.  He had some chicken.  He fairly nommed it too.  So I held up my hands, and offered full rein to the da over Dom’s meaty-eatin’ ways.  Last night, a chicken roasted in our oven.  This has never happened in any oven of mine.

And this evening, together, father & son partook in some chicken salad together. Dom ate some in what can only be described as iceberg style.  95% in his cheeks, 5% sticking out.  His 3 teeth did their best, but the chicken won this time and had to be pulled out.  I handed over some tomato and it was squished and sucked and taken out and put back in and whimpered for.

All is not lost my child, all is not lost.

-jill