Happy Halloween!

6 months old...starting solids...

Beni turned 6 months old on the day we came back from Cape Town. That day we had to get up before 3am to get ready to leave for the airport by 3:30am. Beni woke at 3:30. She was awake for almost the whole ride to the airport, and for a large part of the rest of the day. She only napped here and there, so needless to say, by the time we got home she and I both were ready for a substantial nap. I woke from said nap before she did and took the opportunity to snap a few pictures of my little sleeping beauty. Six months old! That's half a year!!!

Don't you just want to give her smooches???
I do- all the time!

She did wake up a few minutes later...

Ah, here we go back to Cape Town though... we stayed in a very nice self-catering rental house. The only problem was, it was cold! It was a big old house with very high ceilings and fairly poor insulation. There were lots of drafts. Often, it was colder inside the house than it was outside. That is how we came by these cute pics of Beni and Joel both with their hoods up inside the house. Why Beni is eating Joel's nose... well... I guess she was hungry. :)

Now speaking of being hungry... Beni is often hungry and for now, and what seems the foreseeable future, she will continue to get her nourishment from me. While in Cape Town, just a day or two before her 6 mos birthday, she had her first try at solid food. We decided to start with avocado. For her first try she seriously had two, maybe three tries. She was very excited for the first bite. It was new and all that. But basically, as soon as she had one bite, she pulled a major face and only took one more bite willingly. I have no intention of forcing food on her, so as soon as she showed she didn't want anymore, we quit. She had some more the next day, and ate 5 or 6 bites that day. Here are some pictures of that first try...







Since trying avocado, she has had more avocado and carrots. She seemed to like the carrots better than the avocado based on the initial reaction, but then, she hasn't ever wanted more than a bite or two of those either. I think we'll do some kind of squash next, or maybe peas. I'm not too worried. I am fully subscribing to the school of thought that all of her nutrition is coming from breast milk until she is at least a year old. Food is for fun and exploring and having new experiences. I am, however, looking forward to being in Oz for Christmas and being able to feed her a few more foods that we can't get here... including sweet potatoes.

A very sad story I can tell you is about sweet potatoes. I love sweet potatoes. My mom loves sweet potatoes. Often, while I was pregnant we would make a meal of sweet potatoes- just steam them, top with some butter, salt and pepper and eat up a huge bowl. YUM. Well, I found out last Thanksgiving that you can buy sweet potato in Angola, but, it is NOT the sweet potato that I know and love. It is white on the inside and dry and crumbly and frankly, not at all with a pleasant taste. Not the sweet, mushy, wonderful orange stuff I love. Well, sweet potatoes are recommended as a first food for babies in the States often (maybe elsewhere?). So when we were in Cape Town I picked up a kilo bag of sweet potatoes and packed them up in my luggage and brought them back to Angola. As soon as we got back I was going to make them for Beni. Well...do you see where this is going?

As I was going to steam the potato for her, I started to peel it... and there, to my shock and horror was that stupid, nasty white flesh of the fake sweet potato! It never crossed my mind that they would have the same stupid sweet potato in South Africa that they do here. I seriously almost cried. In fact I might have. My lovely orange sweet potatoes must be grown more in northern Africa. Sigh. So now I have this whole kilo of potatoes that nobody wants to eat. I did steam a bit of that one for Beni and even mixed it with some breast milk. She was having none of it! So, technically, she has also had a bite of nasty potato. Avocado and carrots I will continue to give her so she can learn to love them. I am NOT going to be giving her any more nasty fake sweet potato. Urgh.

OK, ending on a cute note... we made full use of the bathtub in the house. Even though we have 4 bathrooms in our apartment here in Luanda, we don't have any bathtubs (stupid). So Beni took more baths in her one week in Cape Town than she usually does in two weeks here in Luanda. :) I took one with her, and I think she had two on her own. Clearly, she enjoys the water. Daddy is so happy. :)

Cape Town...

So I'm trying to do an update post, but the internet is no longer letting me upload photos, so I'm going to have to stop here, and add another post tomorrow.

We got back from Cape Town, South Africa on Sunday. We had been there for about 9 days. It was a really, really lovely time. The weather was generally wonderful, if a little on the cold side. The landscape around Cape Town is amazing... green, mountainous, colorful (flowers and whatnot) and all surrounded by striking water. It was really beautiful!

We enjoyed a lot of shopping (ok, Joel didn't really enjoy that part, but, I did), good food (both grocery shopping wise and in restaurants) and time spent with friends. We vacationed with two other couples... Joel went surfing with the boys, while us girls went wedding dress shopping with one of the girls. It was fun.

We definitely got a reminder about how life is more fun if we respect Beni's needs. She is such a trooper about being out of the house- she'll eat anywhere, nap anywhere, etc... but, eventually, the days just get too long, and if we're not home by bedtime she lets us know. Neither Joel nor I am the kind of people or parents that want to give up everything we love just because we have a baby- we'd rather take the baby along, and include her in the things we love. But, there has to be some balance. Listening to her scream in the car because she's over-tired is horrible for all of us. We don't want to repeat that!

So, here are some pictures from Cape Town...

This is on the beach at Simon's Town. There is a penguin colony there- they are very cute, though not as small as the fairy penguins in Oz (and therefore not quite as cute), but they do hang out all day, so they are right there to look at all the time, unlike the fairy penguins.

Beni got hungry. Oh how I love the ease of breastfeeding!

Aren't they cute in their hats and sunnies? Penguins in the background...

Oh yeah, and then all the Chinese showed up and they were far more interested in Beni than the penguins.

This is chronologically out of order, which is why my hair is still blonde in the following pictures, but dark in the previous ones... on one of our first days we drove way up the coast to Hermanus to see the whales. Apparently it was a good thing we went when we did, because they moved out just the next day or something. We got quite the show as well...see pics below!

And here are some pictures back home again... but they relate to Cape Town because Beni's new toys are pictured here! We got her a few new ones- look at all that colorful plastic! I really want NICE wooden blocks for her, but we couldn't find any.

Here she shows off her bear pose... but no, she is not crawling at all. She gets up in this pose, cycles her feet, but does not move her arms at all. Also, that outfit she has on is a 9mos size!

Funny thing is we went to a pediatrician while we were in South Africa and Beni weighed in a 15.5lbs and 25.5in, which puts her at the 25th percentile- which is obviously on the small side. I don't know how baby clothing companies size their clothes, if a small 6 mos old is already wearing 9 mos size clothes!

I did quite a bit of shopping for Beni while in SA of course. This was one of my favorites of the things I picked up. Isn't it cute? I think it is a pajama (which is what she was wearing it as today), but I think it's cute enough to wear as an outfit. The words read, "Give me peace on earth". I love it! She's too cute!

So that's it for now... I'll try tomorrow to post more... I've got pics of Beni trying food for the first time, and some cute ones of her with her dad.

A series of smiles....

Ah, it was so nice to catch these smiles today. She had just recently woken from a nap. I had put her down on the carpet and for some reason she was just overjoyed at sitting on the carpet on her lettered blanket. She was cheesing up a storm.

It was a nice change of pace, because although we'd had a little reprieve, the last few days have been eat, sleep, 5 minutes of happy, 2 hours of fussing, drooling, chewing on things and repeat. Her teeth are obviously bothering her again, though we are still seeing no signs of actual teeth. Her gums remain whole for the time being.


I think Beni and I are both having a little bit of cabin fever too. Don't get me wrong- I am NOT complaining about being a stay-at-home-mom. I wouldn't have it any other way! But, being a SAHM is different depending on where in the world you live! The fact is, there just isn't much for us to do during the day outside the house. The only place we have to go walk is at school, and I don't think it's appropriate to walk around school when school is in session. So we stay
home. Sometimes we go out and sit on the grass in our compound, but after a while, I get sick of the gardeners watching us. And the ants crawling on us. So we stay inside a lot. And we play with the same toys over and over again. And I do the housework. And we just keep doing the same stuff again and again and again. I'm looking forward to our vacation in South Africa which will start this Friday so we can get some new toys for us (yes, I have to play with them as much as she does, so they are for us!), and just have a change of scenery. And it will be
wonderful to have a whole week of all three of us being together day in and day out. We leave on Friday and will be back in Angola on the 24th- on Beni's six month birthday!!! Where oh where does the time go???

Inching our way toward solids...

The truth is, I'm in no hurry to start Beni on solids. I love nursing so, so, so much. We're not anywhere near that relationship coming to an end, but, just the thought of it makes me sad. So that is reason number one. Reason number two though, is that nursing is just so darn easy! Requires no supplies, no packing, no cooking, no nothing...Beni's food is always at hand, always available, always ready to go! So yeah, that's another big reason to not rush the intro to solids. But alas, this baby keeps growing regardless of how many times I tell her to slow down or just pause for a minute, and like it or not, she's going to be starting solids sooner or later.

So, as we get closer to six months of age day by day, we are slowly introducing and supporting little things that all lead to solids. Beni has already had her first exposure to her own spoon, as can be seen to the right here. Of course, the truth is, we gave it to her, because it was the best and safest thing we could think of that would be a satisfactory chew toy for her. She was having trouble with all the teething rings she had because none of them really fit into her mouth nicely. So, something long like this was perfect. As you can see, she's got a way to go on using the spoon, but obviously, we're not worried about that anytime soon! She does like that
spoon though so hopefully she'll take to it once it has food on it too. :)

Next, Beni has shown us over and over again in the last few days that she can sit up on her own. And I'm not talking about the old gorilla arms look, I'm talking sitting up with a straight back, arms-busy-doing-something kind of sitting. Yes, she still fell over once or twice when she got overly excited, but, she was definitely sitting. So we decided that she should be able to sit in her table chair. We don't have a high chair, as it wasn't a practical buy for here in Angola, but we did bring in this table seat from South Africa. So, now she can sit AT the table, instead of ON the table.

She sat in the seat for the first time this evening, and seemed to like it ok. I feel better with her in there as she can't wiggle out of there- whereas she was getting pretty close to being able to flip herself out of the Bumbo chair. I also like this seat because it rotates 360 degrees, so if I'm cooking I can face her out to be able to watch me. When the time comes to feed her I can turn her to the side to face me sitting next to her. And finally, when she's eating on her own, I can turn her to face the table and she can go to it!

Beni loves to watch us eat- in fact, if one of us is eating, she just sits and stares. She moves her mouth along as if she's eating, and doesn't take her eyes off until we finish. So, she's definitely showing interest as well.

Now, we're just waiting for Beni to show us a "pincer" grasp- using thumb and index finger to grasp something- rather than a palmer grasp- using the whole hand to grab at stuff. Right now, she is definitely still full hand grabbing at stuff.

We are going on vacation to Cape Town in a few weeks- I think we leave on the 15th. Beni will turn 6 mos on the 24th of Oct, which is the day we return to Luanda. So, at some point after that we'll probably have a try and see if she has any tongue thrust reflex left (the natural reflex to push things (besides a nipple) out of the mouth). If she does, we'll wait another week and try again then. Like I said, I'm in no hurry, so, if she doesn't start on solids until 7 mos or more, I'm ok with that! We'll just see how it goes!

It'll be interesting to see what is in season when we do decide to try the solids. I've seen a lot of people mention avocado and banana as good first foods. Bananas will definitely be available here, not sure about the avocados. I have been buying them recently, but, the last one I got never ripened- it went from hard to harder. So not sure what that means. Anyway... things are going to get exciting soon enough!

I have to say too, that this is hard because, even without the food, just the sitting up makes Beni seem so old! She's no longer a baby that just lays there or even just scoots around. She can sit! It opens up a whole new world to her of being able to see things, and use her hands freely and interact more easily. I was thinking the other day as I watched her play around on her hands and knees how out loud I was cheering her on and giving her encouragement, but on the inside I was screaming out for her to STOP! Lay back down and be my tiny little baby!!! I feel like this is one of my first big lessons learned as a parent... I'm always going to be her biggest cheerleader, even if she'd doing things I'm not ready for her to do...I can't stop her growing up!!! Sigh. Ok, I gotta wrap this up and go snuggle my baby while she's still a baby!

Aw, baby feet!