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Our Weaning Essentials

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After several requests I have decided to do a post about our favourite weaning essentials! Please feel free to comment with your must have weaning items!

  • Tripp Trapp high chair.  We love this! Harry eats before Alistair gets home from work during the week but we make an effort to eat together as a family, all 3 of us, at least a couple of times a week.  We love that Harry sits at the table with us and joins in with the social aspect of meal times.  I also love the way the chair looks. It fits in with our kitchen furniture and tucks in under the table out of the way perfectly, which in a small kitchen likes ours is a Godsend!image
  • Slow cooker. Anyone who knows me will know that I’m a huge fan of minimal effort, maximum taste food. I like to spend time with Harry and not in the kitchen so our slow cooker is amazingly helpful. I can prepare a healthy, tasty meal for tea whilst Harry eats his breakfast and just leave it to work its magic during the day.  I learned a fantastic trick recently to help reduce sauces in the slow cooker which has made me use mine even more. If you put a tea towel under the lid on the inside of the slow cooker it helps to soak up the moisture and thicken your sauce. It saves using cornflour or gravy granules and I love it!
  • Tommy Tippee free flow cup.  These are the cups we use most with Harry.  They are handy to pop in our bag and take out with us and also, luckily for us, are one of the least expensive training cups you can buy.
  • Doidy cup.  Harry has recently shown an interest in drinking from a cup like we do.  This cup is fantastic as it makes it easier for him to drink from without too much spillage.  Don’t get me wrong, he still gets water everywhere but it definitely helps!  We also love the Munchkin 360 cup.  It offers all of the benefits of the Doidy cup in that they drink from it like they would an ordinary cup but means no spills! Bonus!
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  • Cutlery. We got Harry’s cutlery from the Beatrix Potter museum long before we started weaning. Harry loves using them and they are the perfect size and shape for him to practise his skills.  He has always shown a preference for using a fork more than a spoon for the simple reason he finds picking food up by stabbing it much easier than scooping it!image
  • Ikea is fantastic for children’s weaning items.  Harry had an antilop high chair at his grandparent’s house and it is fantastic. It folds down nice and small, is easily cleaned and is very sturdy.  The long sleaved bibs you see Harry wearing in most of my photos are also from Ikea.  They protect Harry’s clothes exceptionally well and are easily wiped clean after meals, meaning they are clean and ready to use again much faster than fabric bibs that need to go in the washing machine.  
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  • Our plates that you see on most of our pictures are either from Ikea or our Baby Bjorn plate. The Baby Bjorn plates are great because they have the raised edges so make it easier for cheeky little monkeys to chase their food around with a fork or a spoon.  We used to put Harry’s cereal on a plate for his breakfast when he used his hands to eat everything.  It helped avoid excessive milk spills which can only ever be a good thing!
Yummy!
  • Once we started weaning we realised we were wasting a fortune on baby wipes to clean up after meals.  We decided to buy some cheap flannels from Ikea and they have been fantastic. They come in packs of ten and are amazing! We use one to clean Harry after each meal and then just throw them in the washing machine.  We have been using them for several months now, three times a day and they are still in good condition.  We will definitely not be going back to using baby wipes again.  We are saving money and the environment by using these, what’s not to love?!image
  • One of my favourite cookbooks when cooking for Harry is the Baby Led Weaning Cookbook by Gill Rapley.  There are some fantastic, quick, tasty recipes in there that we use regularly. Tuna croquettes and porridge fingers are some of Harry’s favourites. It’s definitely worth a read, whether you are following baby led weaning or just after some fantastic finger food ideas.
  • I have been making a big effort recently to save money and reduce food waste in our house.  Using a weekly planner and my bullet journal has really helped me to stay organised.  I will be posting copies of our weekly meal plan and shopping list on here so you can see how we organise ourselves and what our favourite go to meals are!image
  • Barnardo’s recently offered free recipe cards through a promotion on Facebook. It helps to raise awareness of a great cause and the recipes sound delicious. We love these and can’t wait to try out all of the recipes.
  • Something that always gets commented on on our Facebook group is our table cloth. We love it. It is so easy to wipe clean and is bright and fun for Harry. Everyone loves ‘The Very Hungry Caterpillar’! We got this from Dunelm Mill and it is one of my favourite weaning purchases by far. I am tempted to go back and buy another piece to put on the floor under Harry’s high chair when we go out and about!
  • Whilst I’m on the topic of cleaning I must add that we love Cif, straight to floor cleaner.  Our floor is usually a mess after each meal but this makes mopping quick and effortless. It takes away the need for big mop buckets and leaves our floor looking and smelling beautiful! IMG_20160823_125134
  • Last but not least is a really handy little gadget that one of my good friends lent us. It is a Gro Company fabric chair cover  that adds straps to any normal dining chair. We have used it several times when we have been out and haven’t had a high chair available and it is just amazing. Eating with a child on your knee may sound lovely but in reality it involves being covered in food and usually hit and kicked by a wriggly toddler whilst they steal your food. This avoids all of that! I love it! I also love how small it folds up so we can carry it in our changing bag wherever we go, just in case!

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6 Replies to “Our Weaning Essentials”

  1. Great choice of favourite items Kayley.
    My top 3 (other than those you mentioned)
    1) ikea antilop highchair
    Its practical and easy to clean (extra cushion can be bought for a snug fit) The tray can be put in the dishwasher if needs be.
    2) Bibette bibs
    These are expensive but are really thick and have a little crumb catch pouch on them. There are some options with arms but I just use the traditional style bib.
    3) tommee tippee plastic spoons
    Usually come in a pack of 5 and some have soft silicone tip. I found these the best type for us to allow baby to learn to use a spoon. Especially with yoghurt. They do a slightly shorter version which are easy for little hands to hold.
    Keep up the good work Kayley, loving all your updates.

  2. Fantastic slow cooker trick, I’m definitely going to have to try this!

    I would like to add Tommee Tippee catch-all bibs to the list. Useful for finger foods but I also find it useful for catching weetabix as some of it falls off the spoon and then I can just scoop it back out of the bib.

    1. ooh we love those bibs!
      The slow cooker trick is amazing. We used to take food out to cook in the oven for the last half an hour with the lid off, making more washing up. Now we don’t have to!

  3. We had lino left over from the bathroom which we put under the highchair as it was much easier to clean than the wooden floor.

    Talking to other parents, seeing posts on Facebook, or searching #weaning on Instagram has helped to keep the food varied and interesting.

    Learning to enjoy cooking has been a big game changer for me.

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