10 months old today!

10 months old.... that is so close to a year that it makes me cringe a little. I know when she's 18 I'll be thinking that she was so tiny at 10 mos, but, right now, it feels like she might as well be 18 already she's so big. :) Look at those teeth! :) (Hopefully she'll have a few more when she is 18!)

At 10 mos, Beni is sleeping better than she was at 9 mos. We spent a few weeks doing our own version of teaching Beni to sleep- I just couldn't handle the waking ever 45 minutes anymore. So it took less than a week of getting her used to falling asleep without nursing (I nursed her and then put her in bed to fall asleep). There were tears, but, I never left her to cry it out on her own. She now goes down fairly easily for sleep- both naps and bedtime, and stay asleep at night for 3-4 hours at a time. Last night might have been a fluke, but it last 5 hours. That was nice.

Lookit that face. Beni is at the point now where she likes to eat more, and HATES having her face washed after eating. Oooeee...it ain't pretty. She struggles and squirms and yells. Ah, but Beni... no one likes crusty Vegemite or pears on their cheeks!

I can't get over how able Beni is now. Between the crawling and the balance and the grabbing and pushing and cruising and self-feeding... it's all a little crazy. She's such a different kid from who she was 5 months ago... heck, even 2 months ago. They change SO QUICKLY at this age!

Beni loves black beans. :) I like to make rice and beans and eat it quite often. Beni doesn't like the rice, but I pick the beans out for her and she gobbles them up. Yesterday she used the sign (as in, baby sign language) to ask for more beans when hers were all gone. It was awesome. She also knows the sign for all done, and bye bye. :)


I swear it was not long ago that she could not see over that table. Heck it wasn't that long ago she couldn't stand like that!
I didn't think I'd get looks like this from her until she was a pre-teen at least, but, there it is... classic, "Mom, can you knock it off? You're annoying!" Sigh. Like I said, growing up too fast!

Pretzels, take two

Those first pretzels were edible...but, just not THAT nice. I think I needed a lower oven with a longer baking time. Anyway, maybe I'll try them again some day, maybe I won't. But, in any case, I wanted to make a pretzel that would be appreciated more. That people would REALLY like. So I used this recipe that I got in an email from mothering.com. It was super simple, only a few ingredients...actually, it was sent as a recipe to use with toddlers. :)

Anyway...as you can see, the finished product of CHOCOLATE CHOCOLATE COVERED PRETZELS turned out great! I have to say, there isn't anything very pretzel-y about this pretzel. I guess the picture that came with the recipe had the pretzels twisted into the familiar knot, which did make them seem more like pretzels. Because honestly, it's more like a dry heart shaped chocolate cookie. With the addition of the melted chocolate on top, they are very nice. I think they would be even nicer if they were coated in say minty flavored frosting or something. Anyway, they kicked the other pretzels behinds. :)

Do you know that squeezy feeling you get in your chest when you think about how much you love your kid? Especially when they've been asleep for a full three hours, and you've actually had a moment to breathe? :) I'm having that squeezy feeling tonight. Beni is so awesome. She's doing all sorts of things that are just so cool. She has been waving bye-bye for a few weeks already... I can't remember if she started that in Australia or only after we got back. But today, or yesterday, she has also added in vocals to go with her little waving hand... she goes, "ta-ta-ta". It is so cute! We have been saying, "Ata" to her, which is bye-bye in Latvian... but you know how it goes when you're talking to a wee one, and you're trying to get her to respond, you end up doing something like, "Ata-ata-a-ta-ta-ta!" So, she's now repeating the ta-ta-ta part. :) Flippin cute.

Tonight, as I was trying to finish off making the chocolate pretzels, she was sitting at the table playing with random stuff. I had given her a highlighter and memory stick- two of her favorite things to hold on to and chew on. But, she managed to pull the fruit bowl over to herself.

First she grabbed an orange. She did actually puncture it with her tooth and must have gotten a bit of juice. She was pleased, but not satisfied.

So then she grabbed a nectarine. I've been sharing these with her the last few days, and she really likes them. She took a few bites of this one. She was really going to town on it...but then she got bored or it got too heavy or something, so she put it down and started trying to stick her fingers in it. That was when I took it away and ate it. :)

Lastly, she was going for the avocado, but, I honestly couldn't imagine enjoying biting into an avocado, so I pulled the bowl away at that point. :)

I just thought it was so cool to watch her first, manipulate her world as she wanted it (by pulling the fruit to her), then, doing the right thing with it! I mean, ok, most of us usually peel an orange before eating it, but, probably this is why she didn't continue trying to eat it! The fact that she spent so much time and effort with the nectarine just made her seem so smart! :) I guess, this is one of those moments where a mom just delights in the absolutely normal development of her baby because it is just so cool. It's cool to watch a baby put things together, to learn to do something like eat, and figure out the right things to eat, etc. And of course, it doesn't hurt that she is so obviously proud of herself for getting into things. :)

Beni loves Vegemite. She's daddy's girl! He fed her some Vegemite on rice rusks the other night... she was really showing those rusks who is boss with her one tooth. :)

Happy Valentine's Day!

I'm not big on things like Valentine's Day, but, I still can't let it pass completely uncelebrated. I think that, if you can avoid being sucked into the marketing and materialism of the day, it's a wonderful thing to make a special effort to let the people you love know it. :) That is what I did today. I wanted to get Joel one of his favorite treats.

Way back when I was pregnant and in the States Joel and I found chocolate covered pretzels. I don't know if he had liked them for long, but, we both fell in love with them while we were there. There is a store in South Haven- The Chocolate Company, I think it's called, that makes the chocolate covered pretzels that are to die for. They are what made me gain 10lbs AFTER I gave birth to Beni when I was missing Joel.

Anyway...sometimes you can buy pretzels in Angola, but I've never seen chocolate covered ones. That wasn't going to stop me though. Turning pretzels into chocolate covered pretzels is pretty easy. So, on the weekend, I looked in all the import shops for pretzels and couldn't find any. Dang. I still wasn't going to let that stop me. So I looked up recipes for pretzels. And here we go...

I made the dough, let it rise, and then used my fancy electronic kitchen scale to measure out 1 oz balls of dough.

Then I rolled the dough into snakes...

Then I boiled the dough for 30 seconds...oh and yeah, some of the snakes got made into hearts...

more boiling...

Then they got an egg wash and salt and went in to bake... (they got bent when coming out of the boiling water...)

I melted chocolate and butter in a double boiler and then spread it on parchment paper and rolled the pretzels in it! Then I added hearts and sprinkles for Valentine's day! :)

They aren't all that pretty- well, the hearts are nice, but, not so much the rods... but they taste ok. The first batch was in the oven too long and came out quite hard all the way through, not just on the outside. I took the second batch out just two minutes sooner and they are softer all the way through- more easily chewable, but more like a soft pretzel than a hard one. Ah well, the chocolate makes both edible! :)

Joel is also getting a second present... on Saturday I have booked a baby sitter so that he and I can leave the house together alone! Our dear friend Monica (and probably her fiancée Donovan) are going to watch Beni for a few hours... just long enough for us to grab a coffee and see a movie, basically. Monica is going to come over a couple of times this week to hang out some more, but ultimately, Beni does know her, and since we'll be back by bedtime, I think they'll do fabulously.

I have come to realize that people expect parents to "be adults" after babies go to bed...that is, people expect dates to happen at night! Well, I'm just not comfortable with that because the truth is Beni still needs me at night, plain and simple, and I'm ok with that! But then I thought- there is no reason we cannot have a date in the afternoon! So, Beni is going to have her first real babysitter. She did stay once with my mom for about an hour, but that hardly counts. :) We were hardly gone. :) And Joel and I are going to be alone together for the first time in over 9 mos. And we'll get to see a movie, which is something we mostly only get to do on long flights these days. :)

Also, just in case anyone is wondering, Joel did give me a present as well... a massage. :) Yay! I'm really looking forward to it- with all the working out I've been doing my sore muscles will really enjoy it!

Also just in case you're wondering, Beni just cut her second tooth, but it's not very far through yet. She is still crawling and cruising and loves to walk while holding someone's hands, but isn't venturing into standing or walking on her own.

Oh what the heck...here's a few pics... :)

Mmm...lens cover... mmm...

"Oh"

So serious...

Oh, Malaria.

My baby's got malaria. That is the saddest news I've heard since I heard that she had jaundice. :(

She'd been running a fever all day Monday, so on Tuesday when it climbed again in the late morning, I told Joel we needed to take her to the doctor. Our neighbors' little girl was in a similar position on Friday, and was diagnosed with malaria, so I was well aware of the possibility.

Even though she was running a fever (and not a particularly high one either) she was acting fairly normal. The nurses and the doctor all put it down to teeth after hanging out with her for a little while- she just seemed to be in too good a mood to have malaria! I insisted on having the test done, for my own peace of mind.

We got the call late Tuesday evening that it had indeed come back positive for level 1 malaria. I don't know what the highest level of malaria is, but, level 1 is the lowest. So she didn't have it bad, but she had it.

We went and got the antibiotics right away and prepared to give them to her. Can I just say that 10mLs of banana flavored thick stuff does not go down easy- especially down a baby who is already tired and not feeling 100%. In the end I had to pinch her nose closed so that she would open her mouth...and just after we got the last mL in, she gagged and brought up ALL of the medicine, plus some of the applesauce she had for dinner, and some of the milk she'd had before that. Sigh. It was not pretty. And of course then we just had to do it all over again.

Today, the medicine went down easier, thank goodness! She was still running a fever, so she also got some drugs for that. Here's hoping tomorrow is better than today was. It's only a three day course of antibiotics, so, by tomorrow or the next day she should be 100%.

Even though malaria is highly treatable when caught early, it is some scary shit. Joel was the one that got the call that the test was positive, and had the privilege to share the news with me. I'm not going to lie, he had tears in his eyes when he told me. The last thing you want to do as a parent is to put your child in harm's way. It kills me that I cannot be awake all night wearing night vision goggles making sure that not a single mozzie gets near her. It kills me that they choose to bite her over me.

We had a conversation about Beni and I leaving Angola even earlier than planned. Like now. In fact, Joel was quite sure that as soon as he told me the news, I would insist on it. I did not. I knew, because I know Beni, that even though a test says she's sick, that she was ok. I mean, yes, she's sick, but, she's ok. If she had a raging fever and any other symptoms (vomiting or diarrhea or anything), I might feel differently. But as it was, I knew we just needed to get her meds, and she'd be ok.

The scary thing is that, this could all happen again next week. The incubation period for malaria is 6-10 days at a minimum. That means that this malaria she has now is from a bite we didn't even know she got. I'm usually pretty good at noticing when she gets them. I know she got 4 bites Saturday night, so hopefully those don't lead to anything (I would assume that if there was anything incubating from the Sat bites, it would also be killed by the abx she's on now).

The thing is, if we did leave Angola now, we'd go back to Michigan...which is covered in snow and surely full of winter-time germs and maladies... the flu, colds, and loads of other diseasey germs that can bring a child way, way down... and many of which (the flu, for instance) don't have a cure. A child can die from the flu and there is no cure. At least malaria has a cure. You know? Malaria is scary because it's foreign to so many of us...but...at least it's got a cure. Right?

So here we are... and I think we're all going to go ahead and stay here. We'll continue to be vigilant about killing mosquitoes, and of course, insisting on malaria tests any time Beni is "off"- heck, even if she doesn't have a fever! It's worth it for the peace of mind.

But oh it sucks that our baby had to get malaria. It should have been me, or Joel. The desire to protect is so very primal, and the realization that you cannot always do so, is so very humbling.

And I have to say... to make matters worse, I'm pretty sure she's cutting her second tooth, so that is causing her pain as well. And, she is also trying out those teeth on ME, which is not cool. So, we've had a lot of tears over boobs being put away, over not feeling well, over being tired because we're not sleeping...it's just been a few of "those" days.