Triplets Self Feeding

Triplets are 20mth old now.. (corrected age 18mths)

Recently had been very busy with them and also making some photobook.. Didn't really get the time to update the blog. However, yesterday manage to record a video of them self feeding (thick porridge), so... enjoys the video clip.

Video was taken at the beginning of meal time, by the end of the meal... the table, floor, face, hair.. everywhere are in mess... (should have taken a photo of it)

Meals time is always not easy.  Have to prepare some nutritious meal and yet something that suits all of them. Although 3 of them are identical, but they do have their own personality and liking.  
Self Feeding is another stage of learning which involves a lot of patience, time and mess.  However, it is still good to start them early, especially if you are having multiples.

Pasta: Cheesy Macaroni (Elbow Pasta)

 

Suitable for 1yr old toddler

(My triplets love it very much!!!) 

Ingredients: Macaroni (Elbow Pasta), Carrots, Apples, Cheese

Method:

1. Boil the pasta for 15mins (to get it really soft)

2. Boil carrots & apples, in the photo below, I boiled the carrots and then add on frozen apple puree

3. Blend the boiled carrots & apples into puree

4. Rinse the cooked pasta will cool boiled water

5. If your toddler is able to chew the pasta, then skip this step.  I find the pasta quite difficult to chew apart with the gums, so, to make my life (feeding time) slightly easier (the triplets tend to choke quite often), I'd decided to blend the pasta as well.

Do add in some water while blending it.

6. Finally add on a slice of cheese (while the puree are still hot)

7. 'Ta-Da'.. The final result after mixing all up

Could frozen up the pasta & carrot puree sauce.  Add in cheese when heating up.

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Good Morning

Good Morning Everyone!

We are having garden (car porch looking at garden to be exact) breakfast again today.

We are having rusk and rice cereal with milk.

Solid Food - Bananas

Cubbies are trying new food again...

Today is Bananas!

Early in the morning, after changing cubbies into their playsuits & send them downstairs, I start to prepare their breakfast.

Breakfast:
Rice Cereal with Banana Puree

6 tablespoon of rice cereal mix with milk

2 ripe bananas - blended (suppose to mash it, but it is too time consuming)

Mix the banana puree with the rice cereal

Final result - Banana Rice Cereal

Cubbies love it.  Bananas gave the sweet & fragrant flavouring to the plain rice cereal.
The cons - have to serve fast, cos the bananas will turn brown in very short time.

After breakfast, wanted to try if cubbies ready for some munching action.
Tried letting cubbies biting the whole banana (of course, with me holding on to it)
To my surprised, cubbies know how to bite the banana from my hand & start to munch it.
They love it, especially cubby HungHung, he kept asking for more.

Hence, I'd decided to give lumpier food for cubbies during lunch time.

Lunch:
6 Tbsp Smashed Potatoes &
Munchy Bananas

This time, instead of blending or mashing the bananas, I use cutting method.
I cut the bananas into very small cubes - the size that brings no choking hazard.

small tiny cubes of bananas

Cubbies took some time to get used to the lumpy texture.
Will try it again tmr.

Homemade Cereal for Triplets - Barley

Trying out new grains for triplet's porridge - BARLEY

This requires slightly more tedious steps in preparation.

Barley

After grinding it with blender - several time of grind & sieve

Results of quite fine barley powder

Cooking the fine barley powder gives very smooth creamy texture. Sometimes I do add in a bit of the less fine barley pieces to create slightly lumpier texture.

Optionally, I tried cooking the barley from the whole barley and then blend it. It looks like Barley Purée! Texture: very smooth & starchy (add in more water to reduce the starchiness)

Cubbies prefer this texture

1st Attempt making puree for cubbies

Cubbies has started on solid on their 7mth birthday.

They had been on rice cereal for a week. Time to introduce new taste/food.
Many websites recommend serving pears or sweet potatoes puree as baby first solid (after rice cereal) because these foods have natural sweetness which is easily acceptable by babies.

However, cubbydaddy is not around these few days to help in buying the ingredients. So, I just have to start them off with whatever ingredients that I can find in the fridge.
The 2 types of fruits which I found are Apples & Mango.  Since there are also websites that had introduce Apple Puree as 1st Food, I just start my 1st puree making with apples.

Apple Puree Recipe

Apples - I used 4 apples in this recipe

Steam for 10-15mins

Peel off the skin & cut into small chunks

Put cooked apples into the blender

Blend the chunks into smooth paste, add some water for easy & smoother blending

After blending

Serve warm, add luke warm water for slightly watery texture

Cool the remainder in ice cube tray,
Put the tray into a ziplock bag, frozen the puree,
Remove the frozen puree from the tray & store it in freezer (up to 2mths)

Cubbies Reaction towards Apple Puree

Hung

1st spoon: Frown

2nd spoon: Still frown

Following spoons: Frown, but still opens his mouth when spoon is near. Less anticipation as compare rice cereal

Syuen

1st spoon: Frown

2nd spoon: Less frown

Following spoons: Seems enjoying the new taste.

Juin

1st spoon: Frown, shiver

2nd spoon: Frown with mouth opening very small

Following spoon: Refuse to continue.... 

CubbyAngel's findings:

Smell: smells good during steaming & blending

Taste: sweet & slightly sour taste, may be due to the type of apple. Should try dark red apples as well

Texture: very smooth after blending, however there might be still some fibrous in the puree

Appearance: creamy colour, I was expecting it to turn brown, but it did not.

Morning Sickness

Many ppl might face the morning sickness during the 1st trimester...
However, I'd only started my morning sickness on week 10 (it had just started for 2 weeks).  Hopefully it won't last till the end of pregnancy.

I don't understand why is it called morning sickness when I have it throughout the whole day and night....

I will try to control not to vomit immediately after food.  Giving the stomach some time to digest & absorb the food before it is all throw up.  I have many small meals and many small visits to the toilet bowl for throwing out...

One thing I'm glad is that the morning sickness only comes every alternate days...
meaning I can have a day rest in between, I can go out and eat all I want during the rest day...



and the other day will be staying indoor & visiting the nice toilet bowl...

Yummy Food

Had been bored with the variety of food....

Started brainstorming with hubby what food will attracts my appetite.
Thought of 猪脚醋..

We went to the Morning market & NTUC to buy all the necessary ingredients on Saturday.
On this lovely Sunday morning, we cooked 猪脚醋.


Ingredients: Black beans, Vinegar, Ginger, Eggs & Vegetarian Mutton

It was quite a big serving which we didn't manage to finish it within a day (2 meals).

Although initially I crave for it, it only lasted for 2 meals, and I begin to felt bored with it...
Oh, need to start thinking new recipes.

9 Meals a Day

Although I might be vomitting very often, I still eat a lot.

I had 9 meals within a day... meaning every 1.5 - 2hours, I will be eating...
I get hungry easily even though the previous meal was a heavy meal.

All these eating are making me losing appetite and getting tired of eating & chewing the food.
Especially in terms of preparing the food.
My whole day is like prepare food, eat, clean up, sit down wanting to online/nap, then I could feel hunger is coming again....

Am I over eating??
Will I be over weight???
Will check it out during my next gynae visit...

Vomit as solution to poor digestive system???

No doubt pregnant ladies will increase in the "Rate of Consumption" throughout the 9 months (considering both intake of liquids and physical form of food), which caused increment of body mass by 10-20KG (depends on type of food and specific diet), bad news is, no matter what...at least a few kilos will be added,good news is...pregnant mummy are so lovely, chubby and so nice to hug...(I really mean it!)

...comes to the digestive part, it caused much confusion since we can't predict when helena is getting hungry and how much she should consume...end up we missed most of the meal time, and ate too much when her digestive system is not that active and shortly after the hunger session, this caused numerous amount of gas was trapped within her digestive system, which eagerly needed to be release from either side of the system, from the top (Burg...) or from the bottom (A..)...

whereby those trapped in between really create huge miscomfort for my lovely pregnant lady, end up she keep vomitting to release them (wind trapped), i feel so bad about it, i'm thinkin she can have some gassy drink to help the 'burg'...but it is still the same...then she keep eatin & vomit, eatin & vomit, eatin & vomit...and at the end...she feels comfortable by doing it...it's suppose to be a bad thing to vomit, but my dear she made it a solution to her non-schedule digestive system...how wonderful!...but i still wish that other solution will do to help her...mayb i'll try some 'eno' drink for her tonite after her food, to help release some wind...or mayb we shall take a really slow walk to help dear digest some food...

dear, it's really sad to see u vomit, i'll do my best to reduce that, i can't do it so frequent & i know it's not easy for u too...i love u.

Nutrients...for Helena

I put the whole concentration on Helena for her daily nutrients...and also hope that she could

Helena or mum-angel or cubby-angel (OH!!! another cute new phrase) insist on a healthy diet, which i love so much (since after years of trial and training...), for me it seems like what ever she eaten, it'll be absorbed and turn into very good things in her body, i can tell it since she still got the 'tenderness' and 'chubby-ness' of a baby...smooth skin and sweet smiles, hihi...you can't see a sweet smile from a person which is not happy or not healthy,which makes me so certain that she is always in a top health condition...therefore, i'm not worry on cubby-angel's diet, but only concentrate on those nutrients which she needs to prepare/stand-by in order for the little cubs consumption...i would consider they need the most is Omega-3 for the nervous & brain development (DHA, EHA....HA ...HA ...HA...& so on), calcium for bones (just to stock up very little in the body while or before those little cubs starts consume it cravingly), protein for lots of healthy cubby flesh...(from AMW...Y for sure...) Iron/zinc, Obimin and others...

So...in order to have sufficient nutrients for our little cubs, all this while we have being consuming nutrition sets by "Amw..y"...which i used to swallow since 20 yearsback, Helena is getting used to the daily similar process as me byconsuming them. Definitely to eat only good quality food would be my major concern fro my lovely cubby-angel.

As conclusion, cubby-angel is very healthy now and she is ready for the little cubs...

*hihi...can't wait to back from work and keep touching and "sayang" cubby-angel's cute little tummy...i want to feel it everyday while it's growing...

7th March 2010

It's uneasy and really sad to see helena feels not well sometimes, especially with her digestive system which doesn't sound any alarm when she is hungry, it's so unpredictable...therefore, the strategy is gonna be eating & eating & eating anytime when she is free, so that will not get gastric (for not eating on time) & get 'heartburn' (for eating too much after too hungry)...so since i'm free on sunday, i'll make more types of food in order to feed her together with the '3 little cubs'...which she carries...:"Dear...it's meal time"...her smiles worth every single hardwork...