Balancing on the umbrella...

Alicia has a habit of playing with my umbrella... since today's a rainy day and I used it when I went to the market, here's what she was doing with it when I left it out to dry in the kitchen:

Experimenting with Alicia's menu: Chicken veggie combo

Made this for Alicia's dinner yesterday. I thought to give her a break from porridge so I decided to run this experiment. She was quite wary of it at first but later warmed up to it... even then, she wasn't VERY keen... she definitely wasn't going "more! more!" but well, she ate it though she didn't finish all of it. I may try it again some time later again, varying the texture and ingredients...

If mashed up totally, it's actually suitable for younger babies too. :)

Chicken veggie combo

Ingredients:

• 2T cooked chicken fillet
• 2T broccoli
• 2T yellow sweet potato
• 1T carrot
• 3T potato
• 1T uncooked alphabet pasta
• water
• pinch of salt
• a few drops of oil
• 70-80ml stock
• unsalted all-purpose herbs

Method:

1. Bring a small saucepan of water (with oil and salt added) to boil then cook the alphabet pasta and potato till soft.
2. Steam everything else for about 5min.
3. Mash the cooked potatoes and carrot (I have to hide this as Alicia's not very fond of these).
4. Chop the cooked chicken fillet, broccoli and sweet potato into smaller bits.
5. Bring the stock to a boil.
6. Add all of the cooked ingredients to the stock and bring to a boil again.
7. Add a few dashes of unsalted all-purpose herbs before serving.

Independence

Took these photos of Alicia eating lunch today. Actually I was trying to capture her trying to pick out the broccoli to eat only but I only managed to get one shot of that (unfortunately, I can't see the broccoli!)... Anyway, whenever she's in the mood for self-feeding, she won't let me help her, even if she's not successful in her attempts....

Sometimes it's really exasperating to feed her. Take for instance, today, first I fed her noodles... then after three mouths of noodles, I thought to try one piece of broccoli to break the monotony. Then the fussy one spat out the broccoli... but had second thoughts so she started digging around the noodles to pick out only the broccoli and when I tried to feed her noodles, she spat that out... and tried to salvage the broccoli bits from the mouth-full that she spat out... *faint* so I left her to eat on her own after that... she picked around some more then decided she had enough. Sigh...