11 months old today!

I can't believe it! We're only one month away from Beni being a year old!!! Where does the time go?

Well, here's what Beni's up to these days...

She's standing on her own, without holding on to anything, more and more confidently. She won't really do it if you try to force her though. She'll only do it when she's not really thinking about it. She'll be standing there playing with a toy or something and then she'll let go, and just stand for a few seconds... it doesn't last long. Every once in a while if you catch her just standing and you clap and smile for her and say encouraging words, she'll stand for longer. It's pretty cool. The other day, she also took a pivoting step just from the couch to her play table...her one foot didn't even move, but still. It was something. I think some of the time when she is just standing there you can almost see it in her eyes that she's thinking she should just walk...but then of course she drops down and crawls. :) It'll be interesting to see how long it takes until she's walking. I really wouldn't be surprised if it's quite a while still, but we'll see!


The worst thing she is doing right now (RIGHT NOW!) that is driving me bonkers is gnashing/grinding her teeth! Oh it's horrible! I've seen her do it with her mouth open- she moves her lower jaw all the way over, and then brings her teeth together so that the sides of her top and bottom teeth scrape against each other. It is a horrible sound. I keep telling her to stop, but, she doesn't listen. :)

She is sleeping... better and worse. Her naps are on schedule- 9am and 1pm every day give or take 10 mins. But the length of her naps varies from 30 minutes to 90 minutes. Both extremes are pretty rare and generally she's right on for 45 minutes. The totally random 90 minute days are AWESOME, but very, very rare. Sometimes I try to catch the moment when she about to wake up and lay down with her and get her to keep sleeping, but, it's only worked a couple times. At night, she goes down fairly easily, and sometimes stays asleep for hours...like 4 or 5. She definitely still wakes up to nurse though. She is starting the night out in her own bed (a mattress on the floor next to our bed), and then she joins us in bed sometime after midnight- sometimes just after midnight, sometimes around two, and once not until four!

Beni has always been very observant and into the details of things. When we go on our play dates she loves to watch the other babies and moms. She examines toys very closely and touches them all over. These days she is re-examining some of her own toys, checking them out, seeing how she can use the differently and so on. She's been spending a lot of time reading her books, looking very closely at the pictures, exploring all the different textures that some of them have.

Beni is doing a lot of talking these days... to the point where I often find myself wondering, "Did she just say...???" Her receptive language skills are obvious... she'll react to some questions or directions. She is also using a few signs... she is waving bye-bye again (she'd stopped for a while, she does it without prompting now), she signs for nursing, for more (when she's eating). I guess that is it. She's very verbal though- first words do not seem far away.

She's very easily offended these days. She's definitely learning to express her like and dislike. She hates closed doors right now and will sit and scream at and hit the door- even if someone else is on the same side of the door with her. Last night after work Joel decided to take a quick shower. I was out in the living room, but Beni decided to crawl down the hall and sit in front of the bathroom door crying and hitting the door.

She's eating much better than ever. She seems to not be a huge fan of thick textures, so we're working on getting her used to those. She will still eat stage 1 purees that are ultra smooth and she will eat finger foods, but she doesn't like the in-betweens. Her favorite foods right now are black beans, cheese (she gets shredded cheddar, and she likes parmesan on pasta) and Vegemite on crackers. She also just had olives for the first time and seemed to like that well enough. She definitely seems to like salty foods. That said, she has also been eating yogurt- I guess the only thick food she'll eat. Sadly, I buy her the only baby one I can get here, and the second ingredient is sugar....it's probably not even yogurt. But she likes it. When we get back to the States I'll be buying her better quality stuff! At this point we are not doing as well as I would like on eating fruits and veggies... but we'll keep working on it! I have been making her purees (combinations of apple, carrot, butternut squash and more) so she does get her veggies in there. She really liked some of the "green" baby foods we had once upon a time, but, we ran out of those forever ago, and I haven't gotten anything else green into her since. Sigh.

She has 4 teeth and more on the way. Her incisors all seem to be working their way in now. They always seem to be bothering her. It's pretty cool to hear her eat a cracker though- with four teeth in she can now properly crunch right through one! :)

So, all in all, she's a happy baby. She's healthy and often smiling. Can't wait to get her around everyone we're going to see in the next few months! We're all very much looking forward to it! :)

Almost a year...

Alise and Mara, Summer 2009

It's been almost a year since the last time I visited my great-aunt Alise. I'm not sure of the dates exactly, but I know I was heavily pregnant and Joel was with me- so it was late March or early April. She did not look anything like she does in the above picture. When we visited her this last time, she was, quite literally, on her death bed. She was frail and very, very thin. She was hardly conscious the day we were there. I stood over her, silently letting tears flood down my cheeks, Joel behind me, holding me up. I didn't know what to say, or how to say it. I was very sad that our baby was still on the inside, and that Alise would not get the opportunity to meet him/her. I said to Joel, "I really hope we have a girl, so we can use her name." Benita Alise was only two weeks old when we all went to my great-aunt Alise's funeral.

For some reason, she's been coming up in my thoughts very often lately. Maybe it's because Beni is nearing her first birthday, and I can't help but think all the time about, "this time last year." Maybe I keep thinking about her, because I finally have the emotional head space to deal with her loss. I don't know the day she died. I was at home with a less than two week old baby- I have no idea about ANYTHING that was going on then outside of the 3ft right around me! I do remember, though, Joel getting the phone call. He spoke to my step-mom, and they spoke for quite a while, and I had no idea what they were talking about. I was eating dinner, Beni was asleep on my chest...or maybe she was eating dinner to...either way, she was in my arms, on my chest. When Joel got off the phone, he knelt down beside me, and very solemnly told me that she has passed. The food got stuck in my mouth, and I felt silly doing something as simple as eating dinner when she was passing from this world.

Needless to say, a lot has happened since that day- it's been a very busy time. Babies are all-consuming! Therefore, it is possible, that I haven't actually mourned her loss as fully as I might have, had she passed at some other point in my life.

I know she couldn't be with me forever, but she was SUCH a special person to me. She was always my special (great-) aunt. I spent loads of time at her house as a small child when my family still lived in Indianapolis. I have a feeling that to some extent, as life may not have been too rosy in my own home, I was more comfortable at her house than anywhere else. After we moved to Kalamazoo, we still visited often, and I never tired of spending time with her. I loved her little routines and habits. I love, love, loved listening to her stories- especially when she and her sister (who passed in... 2003? 2004?) would tell them together. They were like a comedy routine. It never got old. She was often a comedy act on her own... the older she got, the more bent over she got- to the point where by the end, she was a walking L-shape. During this visit when these photos were taken she made some comment about how she stays out of the kitchen saying something like, "It's not worth going in there...I just bump my head on the counter tops!"
Alise was fiercely independent. As she got older and less able physically, she would rig all kinds of systems around her house to help her accomplish the things she still wanted to be able to do on her own. She lived on her own, in her own house for my whole life until her last days, when she was cared for by family. I know that wasn't always the case- she had been married once upon a time- but that was before my time, and not who I knew her as.

It is impossible for me to write any of this without crying many more hearty tears over her being gone. It still feels like a very new, raw hole in my heart. For the last 7 years that I lived abroad, every single time I went home, I made absolutely sure to make a trip down to Indianapolis to visit her. Sometimes it was only for a quick overnight...once even just an afternoon... but I always made sure to stop by. I was very lucky to have had her be such a big part of my life.

If there might be one regret I have about living abroad, it is that there were so many years spent so very far away from her. She would always mention that if I lived in Indianapolis, I could live rent-free just for taking care of a few small things. I wish I could have rearranged the world a bit for a while... and made it so that I could have been there with her, helping her, but still having all the adventures I did.

I can't but be sad when I think that Beni will never get to know her. I look forward to the day when Beni asks where her name comes from, how we chose it, and I'll get to tell her about her great-great-aunt. I imagine that had she lived a bit longer, they would have loved each other. I can't see it being any other way.

It does make me wonder if Beni will have a great-aunt, or some other family member, who will be as special to her as Alise was to me. I remember watching my aunt Lilija dance with Beni at her krustabas and thinking, "That's her great-aunt..."

I suppose it's only natural, babies are born, and the elderly die, generations come and go.... it never makes it any easier to lose someone we love. It's been nearly a year since we lost this amazing woman... and yet I still think of her often, miss her dearly, and luckily, find myself smiling at happy memories of her that float up at random moments. You'll be in my heart forever, Alisite!

Mamma 'Round the World

So, I've started a new blog. Yes, another one. :) This one is called Mamma 'Round the World and is going to be slightly different than This is Us...Today.

First of all, MRTW is public. It's open for everyone and anyone to read- in fact, my goal is to drive as much traffic to it as possible, so, please SHARE THE LINK with your friends and family- if it will interest them, of course.

The basic idea of the blog is not so different from this one- it'll chronicle our lives, but I am going to focus on all the normal stuff we do and how it is affected by living abroad. And obviously, I am the author, so, it's going to be written mostly from my roles... mother, wife, woman, etc.

A while ago I started censoring myself quite a lot on this blog because for the few people who seemed to still read it, a lot of the stuff I wanted to write about didn't really seem appropriate reading material. Well, on MRTW I am going to delve back into some of those topics- so consider yourself warned. I will write about my internal struggles, including my disordered eating and struggles with depression. I may also explore aspects of my marriage. The idea is to appeal to the mommy crowd- to write stuff that other women might be able to relate to, but to throw a fun international twist on things. I will try to keep things mostly light and humorous, but I'm just saying, you're going to find content there that you haven't seen here in a long time. And obviously, please remember, that often, in fact, most of the time, the whole story probably won't be portrayed, because, of course, I will try to respect Joel's privacy as well as yours (this is directed at other friends and family).

Finally, you will see that the new blog is covered in ads and links. There is a money-making aspect to all of this, and these ads and links will hopefully achieve that purpose. Cross your fingers for us on that front, because a little extra pocket money will come in handy as we transition to Laos and one smaller salary than we have now. :) And like I said, send readers to the blog...anyone who wants to keep up with what we are doing... let them do it there! I'm pretty sure every visit will earn us a few cents. Hopefully it will add up!

I will not abandon this blog...I might still post in depth Beni updates here which would not be appropriate for the completely public world wide web...so, don't stop coming here altogether, however, do expect that posts will probably slow down. I will try my best to make sure they don't stop completely.

Thanks for your support in this new endeavor! :)