One Smart Cookie!

I am sure all kids as they go through this amazing stage of learning about the world around them are smart...but we can't get over how clever Lexi can be. She now seems to singing several words in 'Twinkle Twinkle Little Star"; she said her first real sentence that I have heard 'It's there.' (in reference to where her milk was); she know how to get her way - and smirks when you give in to her.

She stepped down into the lanie without holding onto anything and she can get her self into and out of her strollers - and on and off our bed. She brushes her teeth by herself. As she won't let us help her any more, I am just hoping she is doing a good job. She knows to lift her foot up when you want to take off her pants while she is standing up.

Lexi is definitely becoming more indepent - lots of 'no' saying and shaking of her head. How will she rebel next? :)

Getting Clingy?

Lexi seems to be going through a clingy stage. More and more these days, it is only Mom that she wants to be held by. And yesterday, I took all the adults out in the car and Lexi started crying. She usually doesn't do that.

Her grandparents are having a lot of fun with her which is not surprising as we have a lot of fun with her as well. She is so interactive and expressive. She does this thing with Stephen where they both squeeze their hands in the air and wave them about making high pitched noises at the same time. That's part of her 'I'm excited' routine.

She is down to one longer nap a day which sometimes isn't long enough it seems as she will be crabby in the evening. So she is getting put to bed early a lot. She still sleeps in the morning until the usual time.

New words learned, new connections made

Suddenly, as I wrote in the last entry here, it seems that Lexi is picking up new words, and she is continuing to do it at a rapid pace. Plus, in the past few days, she has seemed to make the connection in her head that words can be used to identify things and get things that she wants. Her new favorite words:

• up (on the list last time, but still popular, especially now that she can use it to ask to be lifted anywhere)
• "mahk" (milk): This morning Jane came to ask me if Lexi had drunk her milk at breakfast because at mid-morning, Lexi seemed to be asking for more milk. I told Jane that Lexi had gotten her usual fill at breakfast and was just practicing a new favorite word.
• "lahk" (light): This word goes with a favorite activity - turning lights in rooms on and off. Now she's having fun identifying all sorts of lights all over the place - the lights at the grocery store, a flashlight, the moon (which we saw on Friday night, full and unusually large), etc.
• uh-oh: self-explanatory

Next up: Conjugating verbs

Lexi's vocabulary is coming right along. Here is the list of words she knows (or the words that we can make out and know what she's saying):

• Up (when she wants you to pick her up)
• Hello (answering the telephone)
• Habari (Kiswahili for “How are you?”)
• Ball
• Bird
• Kwaheri (Kiswahili for “goodbye” – knows to wave when she hears it)
• Mama, Dada
• Mana (food)
• Key
• Car
• Me (when she wants something or more of something)
• Bye

Of course, Jane speaks to her only in Kiswahili as per our instructions, and Lexi probably knows many words in that language already, but we don't know what they are (it's clear that Jane understands what she's trying to communicate often).

Also, last week we noticed that Lexi started imitating words/sounds immediately after we said them, so our interactions with her are moving to a new level.

A preview of Christmas: A visit from St. Nicholas

Today is St. Nicholas Day. Before she went to bed last night, we told Lexi to leave her shoes out near the door to see if St. Nicholas would leave her anything when he came in the night.

Sure enough, he came and left her some chocolate in the shape of himself! Lexi discovered it this morning and saw it in her shoe and was delighted. She knew it was a treat for her, and you could see the delight on her face. We were actually a bit surprised that she got the concept of receiving a gift! What fun we will have on Christmas!

Hillary, baby!

A little while ago, my mother found somewhere and sent to Lexi this onesie with Hillary Clinton's face on it. Presumably it was a leftover from the campaign, so presumably it was also sold at a deep discount.

However, Lexi can now wear this onesie with pride again now that our Hillary has been nominated as America's top diplomat. Daddy is pleased about this appointment (although part of him will always be disappointed that Hillary did not get the nomination to run for president and will probably never be president) and hopes to even work under Secretary Clinton some day in the Foreign Service.

It's Hillary at State, baby!

Temper Tantrums and Other Scrapes

When Lexi is upset/mad and is down on the floor wailing away, she bangs her head on the floor. How do I teach her that it is ok to to mad and to scream, but that she shouldn't be hurting herself? My mom reports that my grandmother said that when my dad was young, he would go in the bathroom and bang his head on the bathtub. Is this someone hereditary?

Lexi's knees were finally healing from scraping them on the driveway when she fell down and rescrapped the left one. Jane reported this to me and said something like 'she's scrapped her knee again - they will never heal." I replied, that yes, Lexi might have scrapes on her knees until she is 18! Jane protested that no, she would stop this falling down soon.

As per Jane

Jane tells us things about Lexi - some of which, I don't know always how much to believe. Anyway, today Jane told me (Stephen is away) that when Stephen is home, he usually works upstairs and comes down mid-afternoon for a snack. He wears sandals in the house so you can hear him coming on the paraquet floors. Supposedly when Lexi hears Dad walking downstairs, she has to run into the kitchen and indicates that she wants a snack too - usually, part of Dad's snack. I think she has figured out that Dad eats a lot of nice things - she never hesitates to point that she wants some, too. And then whatever it is just gets shoved in her mouth, no matter how big.

Clapping after Amen

Don't know if it is just the thing of the day, but Lexi clapped after we said
'Amen' after each of the meal time prayers today. Do you think she understands what happens before we eat (or rather, before Mom and Dad eat, she has usually already started)? We shall see if she repeats the feat tomorrow.

Mid-November update on Lexi's developments

Here’s an update on Lexi’s developments. She’s not necessarily learning new things as much as she was earlier, but most of her developments have to do with understanding more what words mean.

• She is understanding instructions (and thus words) from us more. She obeys when we ask her to sit down on the stairs so we can put her shoes on before going out. And she can take something (like vegetable clippings) from Sarah on one side of the kitchen and bring it across the kitchen to the garbage can and deposit it there. The garbage can has a foot-operated lid, and she loves to see it go down after she puts something inside. She’ll usually give the lid a few taps and/or clap at her achievement.
• She has become good at inviting one of us to sit down next to her. She’ll go to one of the stairs in our living room (we have a sunken living room), sit down, and if one of us is near, she’ll raise her arm, which is the signal that she’d like you to come sit next to her. Often she’ll want to flip through a book or magazine with us.
• She’s also good about asking for help when going up the stairs. She loves to climb the stairs. She can hold onto the vertical railing supports (she’s obviously not tall enough yet to reach the railing itself) with one hand and hold one of our hands with the other. We go up to the landing one way, and then she turns, and we switch sides with her, and up goes the arm that’s not holding onto the railing supports for our hand to take it (she doesn’t even look up to make sure you’re still there – she’s just so trusting in expecting that you’ll help her; it’s so cute). She has also become almost adept at climbing and descending the stairs on her own by crawling.
• She is increasing her vocabulary. She can take some action when she hears someone say a certain word. She either waves at someone standing in front her when she hears the word "hello" or else holds her hand to her ear like she's talking on the phone (she knows well that this is what you say on the phone). She also says "hello" herself a lot (and then holds her hand, or something like the TV's remote control, to her ear). She waves good-bye when someone says "kwaheri" (good-bye in KiSwahili). She says something like "up" when she wants you to pick her up. And the other day, we were all, including Jane, riding in the car on the way to her play group. Lexi said something, and Jane responded. I asked Jane what Lexi had said - how Jane knew what Lexi was talking about. Jane said, "She is talking about..." This was a bit of a revelation to me - that Jane and Lexi are apparently communicating more than we knew (although we should have figured this out; they spend so much time together) or that Jane can figure out what Lexi is trying to communicate, even if she doesn't know or can't say the words. Lexi had apparently said something after seeing some children walking on the street (the word for "children" in KiSwahili is "watoto," and Jane said Lexi had said "watoto," although I didn't hear it).
• Lexi has a child-sized plastic chair that she loves to climb into. She doesn't necessarily spend a lot of time sitting in it, and she loves to move it around the house. She's also become good at climbing up onto the adult furniture and grinning broadly as she sits down as if she's achieved something great, which she has!

Halloween and Guy Fawkes Day

Halloween is not really celebrated here in Kenya. Lexi had a Halloween outfit, but it was long sleeved and too warm for that. So instead, she squeezed into last year's Halloween outfit which still fit pretty well. Her grandparents had sent Halloween candy and trick-or-treat bags and so on the day, she, Dad and Jane took the bags down to the Coopers who live in #7 and have 3 kids. Dad had to explain what Halloween was - and that usually you don't go bringing things to other houses but get things. They felt bad that they didn't have anything for Lexi. But Dad convinced them that an apple would be just right. The house help all got treat bags, too.

The next day, we went to the Guy Fawkes celebration at one of the local private schools. In case you don't know who Guy Fawkes is, look up London and his name and find out. Anyway, this was sort of Halloweenish, as some of the kids were dressed in costumes and they told ghost stories. They also had a huge bonfire (that's the Guy Fawkes part) and fireworks. Lexi enjoyed running around on the big lawn and her parents tried to make sure she didn't crash into anyone. She also looked at the bon fire for a while and we did sparklers with her. When it was time for the fireworks, she seemed fascinated by the lights and only slightly scared by the noise. She did cry a little bit, but then would look up again at the lights in the sky.

In other news..
Lexi is getting better at stepping down stairs when you hold her hand and likes to run - which results in more falls and scrapped knees. She babbles up a storm saying a lot of things we can't understand and believes the remote control is a telephone. She holds it to her ear and chatters into it, pausing occassionally as if she expects someone to reply. She also hands the 'phone' to you to talk into. (But give her the real phone - with someone on the other end - and she pushes it away.)

Everything is mine to play with

We believe we have now officially joined the ranks of parents whose houses are pandemonium due to their young children. With Lexi being mobile now, she is finding all sorts of ways to entertain herself by walking around the various rooms of the house. Consequently, it is now hard to keep the house clean and tidy. We are constantly picking up toys and equal numbers of other items that are not toys but that Lexi considers toys. And we are finding things spread all over the place. Now all the time, items are taken from one room, brought to another room, and left there. Several days ago, fortunately I discovered our travel alarm clock in a garbage can before it was emptied. In the past couple of days, Lexi has taken to putting candles from our bedroom in my sock drawer in a built-in closet in another room. And we’ve had to keep the toothpaste in an unreachable spot in the bathroom because somehow Lexi got it open.

Hi! How are you?

If you meet Lexi these days, you just might be greeted with a “Hi” or “How are you?” or even a “Habari?” (KiSwahili for “How are you?”). We are fairly certain she is saying at least “Habari,” something she undoubtedly learned from Jane.

She loves to pretend she’s talking on the phone and will often hold up her hand to her ear like she’s taking a phone call. She’ll do this spontaneously and on her own and start with a “hi.” She thinks this is the thing to do with other, non-phone objects as well, or even a doll or stuffed animal that she’s playing with at the time. She will often hand us the doll or animal, and we’ll bring it to our face to talk to it or kiss it, which makes her think it’s a phone, so she’ll take it back and then try to talk “on” it by holding it to her ear. A preview of the teenage years.

Sarah has also taught Lexi to utter that breathy “ahh” one says after one takes a big drink of something. She needs to be prompted to do it most of the time, but when she does do it, it’s pretty funny. Lexi is doing quite well these days drinking from her sippy cups. She is fully on cow’s milk these days and enjoys drinking that and water with meals. We haven’t quite weaned her off her bedtime bottle yet (she still prefers milk then and milk in a bottle, as opposed to a sippy cup). But she’s not drinking very much milk at this time, and we need to start reducing it so we can end this habit all together.

In other news, I was gone for a few days last week as part of my work on the annual report for 2008 for Sarah’s organization. When I returned home, Jane told me that on the last day I was gone, Lexi came looking for me in our “office”/computer room, calling out “Papa” (or something similar – I don’t always rely on Jane’s memory or accuracy). If this is true, then it’s interesting that Lexi noticed I was gone and knew where to look for me, whereas she didn’t notice that Sarah was gone for a whole week last month nor did she ever look around the house for her. Lexi has taken to visiting me a few times each day when Jane brings her upstairs to get her diaper changed. Now that she can walk, I think she enjoys going around to the various rooms upstairs, and she knows where to find me and can come and say hi to me during the day.

Light switches and a Forgotten Mom

Some of the light switches in our house are just above Lexi's head. She can easily reach them and if she lines up her finger right, can push the switch to the other position. These switches are at this level in all of the bedrooms, near where they think you will put the bed, so you don't have to get out of bed to turn off or on the light. Sunday morning, Lexi woke early and so I brought her into our room. She laid in bed with us for a while but then wanted to get down. We are hoping that she will find something to quietly play with while we get a little more sleep - or at least keep our eyes shut for a while longer. A couple of minutes later, it is suddenly blindingly light in the room. Lexi had found the lightswitch. I reached over and turned it off and she promptly turned it on again. It seems that she is a little TOO clever sometimes...

I arrived home late Saturday afternoon after being gone a week. Lexi looked at me blankly and when I picked her up, started WAILING. It took quite a bit to get her calmed down and to help her figure out that she knew me. Kind of makes one feel bad when one's own child forgets they exist in a span of a week.

Developments in walking (and eating)

It was only at the beginning of this month that Lexi took her first steps and started walking on her own. In just a few short weeks, she has practiced a lot and is becoming more confident on her feet.

She is still pulling herself up on things like the couch or another stationary object to get started, although we’ve seen her stand up a few times on her own from a crawling or sitting position.

She is also having fun carrying things around in her hands while she walks, so we are finding things scattered and moved around the house more. Plus she has access to a lot more things from her feet, so we are having to watch her more carefully and what she gets into.

We are also letting her walk around more when we go out, and it’s fun to hold her hand and walk with her and to not have to carry her so much anymore. But of course she’s a much slower walker than us, and the disadvantage is that she’s into things when we’re out, such as touching everything or pulling things off the shelf at the grocery store. I think we as the parents are learning as much about a baby walking and what we need to watch and be careful of as she is about this new skill. Last night it was fun to take her on an escalator as a walking person for the first time and see her try to figure it out. Of course they are stairs – just moving ones – and she didn’t quite understand that she needed to stand still and not to try to climb the stairs.

On a different topic, the one of food, a few times in the past several months when we’ve eaten out, at a couple of buffet places, we’ve fed Lexi a few bites of fish. Sarah and I detest all forms of seafood, but Lexi has not objected to the tastes she’s had of it. We would be delighted if we could get her to like seafood early on. So at the grocery store, we bought her some popcorn fish (breaded fish balls) that we can easily cook for her in the toaster oven and that she can eat with her fingers. She eats them like any other food she likes. So far, so good!

What a doll!

Yesterday I was updating my mother about what Lexi is doing these days, and I had sent her this picture that I had taken of her, mostly to show Sarah, who is away this week in Johannesburg on business, the new outfit and shoes that I had bought Lexi while Sarah is gone. I noted to my mother that she looks so serious and poised in the picture, wearing those red shoes and holding a book, like I caught her in a studious moment. She never really smiles for pictures and doesn't understand that she should smile when a camera is pointed at her.

I also told my mother that Lexi is just so cute moving around on her feet now. I was sitting on the couch yesterday morning watching the news, and out of the corner of my eye I saw her come running out from behind the couch and circle in front of the coffee table and go around behind the other couch. And then a few seconds later, she made the circuit again. Later I was sitting at the dining room table, eating my lunch, and she seemed so delighted to walk up to me, banana in hand, to just pat my leg. Sometimes, like that, she doesn't need anything, but she just wants to be close to me or Sarah and to get our approval, which she requests with a big grin, and that makes it all worthwhile.

What a doll she is!

My mother told me that this was the most loving, sweetest thing she has ever read about a little girl and that I should print out my e-mail in which I had told her these things and put it in Lexi's baby book. Well, we don't really have a baby book for these sort of things for Lexi. Some parents keep a scrapbook or a journal. Our scrapbook/journal is this, our baby blog, which is our way of recording these sorts of moments and developments. It just happens to be public so you can enjoy them too!

What a crazy kid!

Lexi seems to be exploring a whole range of facial expressions these days – and we think she doesn’t know what most of them mean! Puzzled, quizzical, scowling – all have flitted across her face at times that don’t seem to call for them to her parents.

She is definitely getting the hang of walking though she still doesn’t automatically pull/get herself up to be able to get started. She has new scraps and bumps and falling happens regularly but usually doesn’t upset her.

She also seems moody at times – she will cry for what seems like no reason and then the next thing, she is happy again. Her words are still not understandable by her parents so maybe she is telling us what the problem is and we just don’t get it. Sometimes, she gets in the car seat happily, other times it is like trying to lasso a wild horse.

She is certainly a lot of fun and brings much delight to our days.

Practicing those walking skills

We went away for a long weekend, to Lake Nakuru, north of Nairobi in Kenya. The various places we were - in our hotel, at restaurants - gave Lexi many opportunities to practice her new walking skills. Here she is in our hotel room having a ball walking around:

More updates on what Lexi is doing these days

Updates on Lexi’s development:

• She is getting better at greeting people and saying good-bye. More and more now, she is saying hi when she sees people she knows. But it is done in a funny way and sometimes at funny times. She says it like it’s a question, lifting up her voice at the end: “Hi?” She’ll say it to one of us when we enter her room in the morning or when she sees one of us downstairs in the living room and she’s upstairs in the open area over the living room looking through the railing. And she’s slowly learning to wave bye-bye, but only when prompted, mostly when she hears the word “kwaheri” (“see you later” in KiSwahili). She also somehow learned that “hi” is what you say when you answer the phone. We don’t even have a traditional telephone – what you would use for a land line (with a receiver and a base) – at home. So it came as a surprise a few weeks ago when we had to spend the night in a hotel in downtown Nairobi when our flight to Johannesburg was cancelled that Lexi said “hi” when picking up a phone. We were in the hotel room, and she was crawling around everywhere, playing with everything, including the phone (again, not a cell phone, which is mostly what she has seen us use). It hadn’t rung, but she picked it up and said “hi” in a very high pitch. Every time we pretended to pick up a call on the phone and hold it to her ear, she did this, even at other hotels we were staying at in South Africa. Perhaps Jane has taught her this when they were playing together.
• She is continuing to speak in what sounds like formed phrases and sentences but in her baby babble language. But lately she has added strange facial expressions to her speech. It’s mostly a furrowed brow, so she looks at us with a frown or scowl on her face when we really know she’s not unhappy or mad. It’s just funny to see her try out new facial expressions and not really be aware of what they’re conveying.
• Her two bottom teeth are clearly in, and so are her two top teeth, although not fully. When she smiles, it’s now a different smile. I already miss her old, gummy smile and how goofy she looked like that (and didn’t even know it). Ah, she’s growing up too fast!

Exhausting her parents and a Doctor's visit

Going to church with Lexi has become exhausting! She has so much energy and wants to move around, take everything out of my purse, be picked up, get put down...it just goes on and on. When given the space, she can entertain herself quite nicely. Saturday afternoon, she happily moved around the living room amusing herself. Emptying things - like her toybox-seems to be a lot of fun as well as playing with Mom's keys (which we couldn't find this morning) and trying to eat the remote control.

Yesterday, we took her to a cardiologist to check on her heart murmur. When she was born, she had a small hole in her heart that was about 2mm long. We had it checked at 6 weeks and then had been advised to have it checked again at 1 year. She did very well at the doctor and managed to hold still for the EKG and the ultrasound. You could tell she was thinking 'what is this strange woman doing??' The doctor said that she could still hear the murmur, but had a very hard time finding it on the ultrasound. So it is now very, very tiny and will probably close up naturally as she gains weight (though don't ask me how that fits in). Before she goes to pre-school, we should have it checked again just to see.

More funny things that Lexi is doing these days

Some other updates on funny things Lexi is doing these days:

• She has developed a funny habit of putting things down people’s shirts. She really likes to put objects in things and take them out again (she can be entertained for a good five minutes – a long time for a baby – with the air-sickness bag on an airplane – taking out and putting in a bag of peanuts or her pacifier over and over and over). If someone – especially Sarah – is holding her and she’s playing with something in her hands, she’ll put it down Sarah’s shirt to “store” it there for a minute or two and then reach down to fetch it again.
• She is discovering the power of switches and buttons. We are helping her push light switches, and she is slowly discovering that it causes the lights in a room to go on and off. Also on a plane, she knows that the button above your head turns a light on and off, and she has fun with someone pushing this button with her (again, almost another five minutes of entertainment).

Making great strides

Mark this day, one that will go down in history in the life of Alexandria. She took her first steps on her own today! She has started to walk!

Jane, our house help/nanny, reported the news to us at lunch. Earlier in the morning Jane had taken Lexi down to house #7 in our compound to play with the children in the regular play group that Lexi has been part of. Apparently Lexi took several steps by herself then, and the whole group was full of acclaim for this accomplishment.

So at lunch Sarah and I tried to get Lexi to show us what she has learned, and, sure enough, she is getting more confident on her feet and can take a few steps on her own now.

Of course we are so proud of her and so excited that she has reached this milestone at nearly the 13-month-old mark.



After this type of news, nothing else is quite as exciting, but I've been meaning to report some other updates, so I'll proceed with those anyway:

• Lexi is getting the hang of giving kisses. We can put our cheeks to her mouth, and she will sort of suck our cheek with an open mouth (so it's often kind of slobbery, which is how I remember my maternal grandmother giving me kisses). She usually accompanies the action with a "mmmwaah" sound. It's sweet, of course, but not quite there with the delicateness and grace one usually gives a kiss with.
• She is also still talking quite a bit - with nonsense words, but she is forming this babble into nice phrases and sentences. She has no problem speaking up and chiming in when she sees someone or when she's with Mom and Dad. She's got plenty to say, but we still can't understand what it all means!

1-year checkup

We took Lexi to the pediatrician this morning for her one-year checkup. (The doctor always tells us when to come back next, and then when we show up for the next appointment, we’re always asked why we’re there! We always want to reply with, “But you told us when and why to come!”) The doctor congratulated us on making it to one year so far with Lexi. He says she’s in good health.

Her statistics:

9.2 kg/20.28 lb
29.5 inches tall

She received two injections for immunizations, and she cried only for a few seconds after each. Sarah’s job was to distract her, and I was given the job of holding her legs still (she got the shots in the thigh). I don’t know why the nurse gave me that job, since it meant I almost had to watch her give Lexi the shots. She noticed this, and I said, “I need to be distracted too.”

The doctor advised us to wait until Lexi is at least 10 kg to start giving her regular cow’s milk. We’re still feeding her formula, and now we are trying to move away from giving it to her in a bottle but in a sippy cup instead.

We were advised by the cardiologist who saw Lexi in the first several weeks after her birth about her heart murmer to bring her to a heart doctor again at one year old. The doctor today advised that as well, so we have made an appointment for that in early September.

We asked the doctor about calming her down, especially on plane rides, when we’re away from home and she refuses to take her naps. We are especially concerned about a long plane ride we have this Saturday when we fly to Cape Town to meet my sister, who will meet us there from Seattle, to spend two weeks together in South Africa. We weren’t going to ask the doctor specifically about drugging her, but that’s what he suggested – giving her a Tylenol or an antihistamine. He said we could do this, but that we should just be thankful we have a normal, healthy baby who is moving around a lot and is curious rather than being at the neurologist trying to find out why our child isn’t normal. And we are grateful for this – for all 9.2 kg of our very squirmy baby.

A year in pictures

Over the past year, we've taken a photo of Lexi on the ninth day of every month - the day of the month she was born on. We try to take it in the same spot every month for scale (although we've lived/been in too many places this past year). This continues a bit of a tradition we started when Sarah was pregnant with Lexi. We took a weekly photo of Sarah in profile with her growing belly.

So for Lexi's birthday yesterday, I put together all of these monthly growth photos so you could see the growth she's done all in one place.

Turning 1, a la Suisse et Afrique (or "Christmas in August")

Our darling daughter turned one year old yesterday. While a few people who came to a party we had in the afternoon for her congratulated us on our achievement as parents, supposedly for having raised a healthy child thus far, I actually thought very little about what I or we had done throughout the day, and my heart swelled with pride more for Lexi. Indeed, it’s true that Sarah and I as parents have done most of the work and that Lexi as a newborn hadn’t consciously decided to grow from a newborn into a 1-year-old in the amazing ways she has. But I spent much of the day proud of her for even the natural ways that she as a newborn has been gaining control of her faculties and discovering the world around her, and how a human being can be created seemingly out of nothing and how they grow into people like we are today. This first year of life seems to be a frantic but fun race by a newborn to become a person – learning to eat in various ways, learning who her parents are, learning to express herself – and the first-year milestone was a moment to pause and think of how she has embraced this process with such gusto, much of it because of her personality, which we celebrated yesterday too.

OK, enough of being philosophical – here are the practical details of all the fun we had: Sarah and I held an open-house birthday party in the afternoon. Because Lexi was born in Switzerland, we decided to have a Swiss-themed party to remember her birthplace (also because it was the Swiss national day on August 1). We ordered a cake that was red with a white cross, like the Swiss flag, and that had “Bon anniversaire” on it (“happy birthday” in French, the language of the part of Switzerland we lived in). And we served some Swiss-like foods. Many were actually French, because, when it comes right down to it, there are actually very few authentically Swiss things, from their foods to their language. These included chocolates, French bread with brie cheese, and we needed some savory snacks as well, so we just ordered some finger food from the Indian restaurant at the food court where we usually do our grocery shopping – we like Indian food anyway!

In attendance were mostly Sarah’s coworkers or their families – just a small group. The two families where her recently acquired playmates are from are out of the country on their summer/school holiday to visit their families back at “home” (that’s what Lexi gets for being born in the summer, Sarah says). The house help, also named Sarah, of one of these families – the Coopers at #7 in our compound – was able to come to represent that household.

Although we told people not to bring gifts, most brought a small one or a card anyway. Sarah’s boss and his wife came and brought Lexi a gift of a toy xylophone, a very appropriate gift for a child with musical parents. With that, I figure we can start Lexi with organ lessons on Monday! To me, however, the best gift was from Sarah, the house help from #7. As a domestic servant, she makes very little money and probably has few possessions of her own in her small, simple servant quarters where she lives behind the main house. She came with a small, tubular object wrapped in the obituary page of the newspaper. When Lexi opened it up (with a bit of help from Sarah, although Lexi enjoys taking things out of bags and things like that), it was a large banana. What a perfect gift from the giver and for the receiver! It was the quintessential African gift. Church goers in Africa often give things they’ve grown, like a bushel of corn, or things like a goat or a cow from their flock, as their offering. So Sarah had given what she had – something from her basic possessions and her food supply. And for Lexi, bananas are her favorite food. Of course, when she saw this, she immediately wanted to start eating it, so Sarah (Mommy) allowed her to peel it and gave her a few bites. Lexi could have stopped there with the gifts and been happy. What better thing to do at one’s birthday party than to eat one’s favorite food?

After the gifts, we gathered around the table again to sing “Happy Birthday” to Lexi and cut the cake. We let Lexi eat a piece herself. She loved it. As you can see from the picture, the frosting on the cake was red – very red – and Lexi made a huge mess of herself on her face and hands. Sarah (house help from #7) actually took charge (our own house help, Jane, could not come to the party because she needed to visit her land up country) after a few minutes of Sarah and me trying to clean her up. She took her and sat her on the edge of the kitchen sink and washed her off.

Lexi had not taken her two naps during the day, partly because of the excitement of the day, but mostly because we have a much harder time getting her to fall asleep than Jane does. We managed to speak to both sets of grandparents on the webcam, who wished her a happy day, and by 7:00, she was getting very crabby. So she went to bed an hour early. Sarah and I ate some of the leftovers (we bought way to much food for the party) and then fell down in front of the TV to watch a movie. We ourselves did not make it to even 9:00 – it was a full day for us too. So we went to bed early too.

Well, if Lexi is too young to know how to grow or care for herself as a young baby, then she’s too little to really know what her first birthday party was for. So actually it was for her parents, and I admit it. I admit that I had fun planning and preparing her Swiss-themed party, and it was a milestone that we had to mark for our own sakes, especially without any of our family here to help us celebrate these things with us. But the focus was on Lexi, and I hope from the attention she got that she could see she is loved and cared for and has been since the day she arrived in our lives a year ago.

When I was probably 5 or 6, I had a birthday party that my close cousin Caroline, who is a year or two younger than I am, attended. As she left, she declared, “That was the best Christmas ever.” She was too young to distinguish between a birthday party and Christmas, which are both occasions where people open gifts. She had thought my party was Christmas (even in February, so soon after the real day). So this is now a cliché of mine, which I say after almost every social gathering. But this time, for Lexi, it was true: It was the best “Christmas” ever!

More teeth, more talking

After careful examination of Lexi’s upper gum the other day, we think we have spotted a third tooth, the first of the upper ones, coming in!

Lexi is as talkative as ever. This morning at breakfast, she was speaking quite decisively in a spirited conversation that involved some bold hand gestures. It could probably be considered one of her speeches, which she gives on occasion these days. Of course, we had no idea what she was saying or talking about, but she does a fine job of making noises that sound like words and delivering them in groupings that sound like real spoken phrases. We’ve got a famous oratorical dictator in the making here!

You are invited

All readers of this blog are invited to the open house birthday party for Lexi on her birthday next month - on August 9. If you can make it to Nairobi, of course. Drop by if you're in the neighborhood! There will be lots of Swiss/French food (the party's theme is Switzerland in honor of Lexi's birthplace and the country's national day, which is on August 1)!

The official invitation:

Our daughter, the alien

An update on the noises Lexi is making these days:

Lexi is becoming more talkative, but it’s all still just baby babble. Sometimes it’s just squeaks and squawks and beeps that sound to me like noises that an alien would make. She makes these alien-like sounds when she’s very energetic and excited, and it’s usually accompanied by a lot of fast crawling.

More often now she will make noises to us like she’s actually conversing with us. Her noises have good inflection and sound like she’s forming real sentences. Trouble is, we just can’t understand what she’s saying in order to respond.

Lexi and her new cousin

Lexi has a new cousin! My sister, Miriam, gave birth to a girl on the 15th. Her name is Nora. Miriam and Andy posted some pictures on their web site and I showed them to Lexi. She got VERY excited - lots of happy chatter and pointing and clapping. I am not sure if she recognized Miriam and Andy and the proud big sister, Olivia, but I think she might have.

Then we went to look at my brother's blog. On it is a picture of Lexi's other cousin with 2 second cousins. She also got VERY excited by that picture as well. Imagine how she will be when she sees them in person?? (Not sure when that will be, but it will happen....)

Lexi had a play date on Thursday. Stephen took her and Jane over to another family's house. They have 4 kids once of whom is 2 weeks younger than Lexi. It sounds like they had a great time - in the swing, chasing the cats, etc. I feel like I missed out.

A pointed observation

These days Lexi is doing a lot of pointing - extending her arm and pointing at something with an outstretched index finger. Neither Sarah nor I taught her how to point with her finger in this way, but perhaps she learned, either by explicit instruction or from simple observation, from Jane, our house help, who spends a lot of time with her outside, pointing with her own outstretched arm to birds, airplanes, the wind blowing through the trees, etc., helping a curious Lexi learn about the world.

So there is a lot of curiosity on Lexi's part, but much of the time, we can't figure out why her eye and finger are drawn to a particular thing, but we look in that direction too and acknowledge what she's pointing at. Sometimes it is something interesting and worth pointing at, and other times it's just the light fixture or the bookshelf or just pointing in some indeterminate direction. As always, it's another thing that is interesting to watch a baby do as she discovers and learns about the world.

Being Sick

Well, Lexi pretty much made it 11 months without getting sick. She has had minor runny noses in the past, but nothing really of note. On her 11 month birthday, though, she was definitely sick - diaherra, vomiting...yuck! Of course, the only person that she has vomited on has been Mom - go figure. We have been to the doctor and gotten a variety of medicine, most of which she refuses to take. She has taken some but not at the dosage she is supposed to. The vomiting has finally stopped and she has started to eat again, so we take that as a good sign. She has managed to pretty much sleep as normal which is good.

Temper tantrums and a new friend

Lexi can throw a temper tantrum! If you take something away from her or sometimes, for reasons we can't even fathom, she starts wailing away. If she is in your arms, she twists her body every which way. If she was on the floor crawling, she puts her forehead on the ground and just sobs. We anticipate many more months of this to come....

Last night we went to a 4th of July party. The host's youngest son is 2 weeks younger than Lexi but quite a bit smaller. After Lexi warmed up to the environment, at one point, she came over to Max and either tried to kiss him or bite him on this head! Either way, Max felt attacked and promptly cried. But it was interesting to see Lexi want to touch him. They also had a doll with a pacifier in its mouth. I didn't see it, but Stephen reported that Lexi was taking the pacifier out of the doll's mouth and putting it in her own. She only gets her pacifier at home when she is sleeping.

A second tooth

Quick news update:

We reported earlier on the sighting of the first tooth in Lexi's lower gum.

Now, just after the first tooth has begun to poke through, a second one has suddenly appeared!

We have each put a finger in her mouth to feel these teeth coming through, and they seem a bit sharp!

Hard at Play

Lexi plays hard. She has SO much energy and is always on the go. If there was a competition on emptying laundry baskets, she would be one of the speediest. And crawling up the stairs would be another contest she could enter. I think her speed has increased...though she still hasn't figured out how to go down, even though I keep showing her.

On our walk to the grocery store today, she didn't want to sit back in her stroller but kept craning her head around to see everything that was going on. Was I ever this curious?

She looked at Stephen a little blankly when he came in the door this morning. He had been away for over a week. She warmed up to him quickly though.

I'm so hungry I could eat the plate!

In the first days of feeding Lexi solid foods, I shot this video after she ate with us. Believe me, we didn't starve her to the point of forcing her to eat the plate!

Learning to clap

By popular demand, the video everyone's talking about, the one where Lexi is trying to clap. After much practice, she can now get her hands together, but this was in the early days of learning how to do it. She's standing on the lap of Lora, Stephen's sister, while we were all riding in a boat on the Victoria Nile River in Murchison Falls National Park in Uganda, where we went for Easter weekend this year.

Lexi crawling

Soon after Lexi started crawling. In the background, the sound you hear is Jane, our nanny/housekeeper, telling Lexi to come (kuja in Kiswahili)

What a noisy eater!

In her younger days, when she was just a little thing and when she first started eating solid foods in her high chair, we were so amused at how noisy Lexi was.

Lexi's daily exercise routine

Because Lexi quickly got the hang of crawling and from there wanted to move right into walking, she's taken to climbing and pulling herself up on things to move toward the walking stage. Often she'll head straight for the stairs and try to climb up them, so we've taken to just allowing her to climb the stairs a couple times a day while we watch her just so she can be satisfied with doing it and to get her exercise. Fortunately we live in a tall three-story house, so she has plenty of stairs to climb.

Now that I'm in Chicago, where I have access to a decent Internet connection, I can upload some of these videos I've taken of Lexi over the past few months and share them with everybody here. Enjoy!

Fussy eater?

Maybe Lexi is a fussy eater or maybe she is just fussy. Who knows? She really likes things she can pick up and eat for herself. Lately, anything on a spoon is soon batted away. This morning, she ate almost two whole sections of waffle (usually she just has one). But she didn't want any of her yogurt. Bread products in general seem to be good as well as potatoes. But green beans seem to be a non-starter as well as cooked carrots. She seems to eat pretty good at lunch time but the evening meal lately has been largely unsuccessful. Ideas welcome on what would help her different things!

Who are you?

When I came home from my business trip after being away for 4 nights, Lexi just looked at me blankly. It's like she wasn't sure who I was - or was definitely indifferent to me. Then she started crying and wanted Dad - this strange lady wasn't going to comfort her. Eventually she did warm up to me, but I feel a little sad that she wasn't immediately excited to see me - in the past, she has been. It was also sort of funny, though, to see her blank expression.

I think she might have a cold. At the minimum, she has a runny nose. It is quite cold here today so maybe that is causing it.

It is the truth: We have a tooth!

After a few weeks of trying, I finally got a good look inside Lexi's mouth today, and can confirm seeing the top of a tooth that is breaking through her lower gum! We have not noticed any ill effects from this - no fever or discomfort.

As with all of Lexi's developments, of course we're thrilled and so proud of her!

Early June update

As sometimes happens, there hasn’t been any actual event to report on regarding Lexi, nothing big that has made us run to this blog to report on. So this is just a general update.

Lexi will be a whole 10 months old next week. She is growing so fast. In May, her progress was remarkable. Fortunately, my (the Padre) grandparents were here on a visit to see all of it. By May 1, she had finally gotten coordinated and had mastered crawling and started to move around on her own. But almost immediately, with some willing helpers around, she also wanted to start walking. Especially Lolo (grandpa) spent a lot of time holding her up by her arms so she could start walking around.

By the last week or so of May, she was starting to pull herself up onto things – the coffee table, the side of the bathtub, the footboard of the bed, etc. And by early June, she had learned to return from this standing position to sitting on the floor again and even to squat, while still holding on with one hand, to pick something up.

During May she also fearlessly decided to start climbing stairs as well. Nobody ever showed her how to do this, but one day she was crawling along toward the two stairs from the living room to the dining room, and without stopping or even hesitating, she lifted up her arms and legs and climbed them! She must have keenly observed where the stairs are and what happens on them every time we carried her up and down them. So it wasn’t long until she was crawling toward the big staircase, eager to ascend to the upper floors of our house. They don’t sell the typical baby gates (for doors or stairs) here, so we had to go to a furniture-making shop down the road and ask them to cut us a piece of plywood that we now use to block the bottom of the stairs.

In terms of her disposition, she is still a very happy baby. She often chatters away during the course of the day with a lot of different noises and laughing. She is starting to wake up a little earlier than her usual wake-up time at 7:00, but often she will entertain herself with a variety of noises until we’re ready to wake up. And, best of all, she is starting to sleep through the night. Most nights now we can count on her to not wake up, although she sometimes does and makes a few noises but seems to put herself back to sleep.

Thanks mostly to Grandma Bradway, she learned “Patty Cake” and now starts clapping whenever you say those words. For a few weeks now, she has known how to wave, first when someone said “bye-bye,” but now I think she does it when people say “hi” as well. And she can lift her hands above her head when someone says, “so big!”

Of course we are amazed at this rapid progress and very proud of her as well.

A boyfriend??

The family in#7 in our compound have 3 children - a girl, age 5, a boy, age 3 and a boy, age 1. This morning, the mother told me that they were talking over breakfast about who was in love with who - "thing" right now for the 5 year old girl. Charlie, the middle boy, when asked who he loved, said ..."Lexi"! I got a kick out of that. A boyfriend, already?? I'm sure things will change for him - before Lexi even knows he was interested. :)

Growing Up

Our girl is getting big. And while the doctor says that she could put on a little more weight, I think she weighs a ton already.

When she gets up in the morning, we often find her standing up in her crib. When we had the mosquito net on her crib, because of the fact that we don't have a proper frame for it, she ends up with her little head pushing up against the netting. I think she looks pretty funny.

Her crawling has improved and the other day, Stephen watched her back while she climbed up the two stairs between the living and dining rooms. Oh, boy, nothing is safe now.

Lexi is mostly sleeping through the night though she does still make her noises. If I don't hear them, then that means more sleep for me. Otherwise, I listen and wonder if I should go and try to make her quiet down. She doesn't seem to need anything really but a little comfort.

Show us the teeth!

More updates on Lexi’s development:

With Lexi moving so quickly in so many other ways in her development, a big question is when her first tooth will come in. It’s the biggest question on our minds, and everybody else is asking us too. Observations of her gums reveal no signs of a tooth. She’s not drooling or chewing her fingers any more than usual. I asked the pediatrician about it yesterday. He said not to worry if she has no teeth by this stage. So we will continue to wait.

We are also eager to have Lexi start sleeping through the night. The pattern for the past several months has been for her to wake up once at some point in the middle of the night (usually around 2:00 or 3:00 a.m.) to drink a bottle of milk. In the past couple of weeks, however, there have been hopeful signs that she is ready to give up this nighttime feeding. She has slept through the night on three nights in this period. I asked the doctor about this as well yesterday, and, based on how I described Lexi's behavior, he seemed to be saying that her waking up was largely psychological, that it is just how she has been conditioned, that her internal clock has been set to do this, not necessarily because she's hungry and can't sleep without being fed at that hour. So he suggested we try weaning her off this nighttime bottle, which we will try.

Breezing past 9 months and not looking back

I have just returned from Lexi’s 9-month check-up at the pediatrician. As usual, she passed with flying colors. Here are her latest stats:

Height: 73 cm (28.74 in)
Weight: 8.3 kg (18.3 lb)

The doctor said she’s a bit under average for her weight. Sarah and I had made our usual list of questions for the doctor, and one of them was about when we could start her on cow’s milk. He said that the formula that we are buying here to feed her is derived from cow’s milk, so she could easily make the transition now, but because she’s below weight, he recommended keeping her on formula, which has protein added and which will help her add some weight.

I wanted to explain that probably one reason she’s below weight is because she’s getting too much exercise. She’s now joining me at the gym daily. Just kidding. But she is as physically as active as ever. Since about the beginning of this month, she has quickly gained good coordination of her limbs to be crawling in a normal way. In the first few days of crawling so that she was actually moving, it was sometimes upsetting to her. She would stop every few minutes and just cry. It seemed to be so much work for her little body. I was worried that she just hadn’t figured out yet why she needed to crawl, that she was still just doing it because instinct told her so. But now, while she still hasn’t totally figured out the benefits of crawling – so she can move around well and go get things to go to people – she’s not distressed by it so much now. It’s just so cute to see her little hips move back and forth and for this little body to be moving around below foot.

And we were also worried for a few weeks there that she would bypass crawling for walking. As reported earlier on this blog, she was beginning to get on her feet by pulling herself up to a standing position in her crib. She is having a lot of fun being held up and walking with an adult’s assistance.

She also has a lot of fun just crawling and climbing on people, like if someone lies down next to her on the bed or if she’s lying next to someone on the couch. She really enjoys cuddling next to someone or the challenge of climbing up onto them so she’s in a standing position.

In all of this, late last week she turned 9 months old. On that day I asked her what she preferred – living on the inside or outside of Mommy, since she had spent an equal amount of time in both places. She seemed to say that she preferred it on the outside or has chosen to stay out here because she seems to like exploring the house and moving around and eating waffles for breakfast, which she couldn’t do before she was born. Fortunately, my parents, who are called Baba and Lolo, are visiting us in Nairobi for several weeks, so we were able to have a little birthday celebration complete with a candle and a pineapple upside-down cake that I had made.

It seems that all of Lexi’s development and getting older is taking place at lightning speed, but we’re so proud of her for all the ways she is growing up.

'Mmmbwa!'

Last weekend, the first weekend that my parents and a friend were here on a visit, we went up to Lake Naivasha, about a 1 1/2 hour drive north of Nairobi. While there, Lexi discovered her latest favorite word: mmmbwa. Well, I would spell it mbois. I think it's a combination of the little bit of French she's learned from us (occasionally she gets a lesson from a French/English picture book in place of a bedtime story) and the Kiswahili she has learned from Jane. The "m-b" sound at the beginning is a typical Kiswahili sound, and the "wah" sound (oi in French) at the end is a typical French sound. She said this word a lot and repeated it whenever I said it back to her.

We decided that yesterday, the first day of May, Lexi was officially crawling. It's not graceful movements or anything totally coordinated, but it's happening slowly. She must have decided at the beginning of the month to start something new. We're so proud of her!

To Walk or To Crawl?

Lexi is still working on trying to figure out how to crawl - she is SO close. It is pretty amazing how we learn to coordinate our muslces to do such things - and then they become second nature. She happily 'walks' if you hold her hands and walk with her. It's hard on the adult's back, though! She is pulling herself up on just about everything and laying on the bed today with me, she was trying to squirm over me to get to the other side. What for, I don't know.

Stephen's parents are here visiting and are having a good time with Lexi. While they are here, we will leave Lexi with them for 3 nights and take off for Mombassa. It will be interesting to see how she handles that. She is getting a little more 'mommy' clingy but Jane (the house help) manages to distract her easily enough so she doesn't wail too long. And she is happy to be held by just about anyone. We are currently in Tanzania and the hotel staff have all wanted to hold her.

Onward or upward?

Lexi is continuing to become better at moving herself around. A few days ago, she showed us that she can now pull herself up to a full standing position in the crib we have downstairs. She is quite proud of herself for being able to do this! This morning she did the same thing by pulling herself up on me while we sat on the couch.

The question now is if she feels she needs to go straight to walking and bypass crawling. But for crawling, she’s so close to being able to do it. She just can’t seem to dig in her knees enough to push her forward, and we think she realizes what needs to happen and how she needs to get all her limbs coordinated because she gets frustrated whenever she tries to crawl. We encourage her to keep practicing, however.

There is no sign of any teeth yet, although she can now eat things like pancakes and waffles when Mommy and Daddy eat them. She pretty much has the hang of picking up morsels and putting them in her mouth and chewing them, but this took some learning.

I "eight" well yesterday!

Lexi turned 8 months old yesterday.

She is just so curious about everything, and we’re doing our best to feed her appetite of curiosity about the world – including her literal appetite for food. She’s on quite the varied diet now, having at least tried all sorts of fruits and veggies – paw paw, mangos, garbanzo beans, bananas (her favorite), sweet potatoes, butternut squash, and carrots. And now we’ve introduced her to yogurt and cottage cheese. She doesn’t have any teeth yet, but we’re trying to teach her to chew her food, so we’re giving her tiny chunks of banana, sometimes for her to pick up with her fingers herself, rather than mashing it up and feeding it to her with a spoon. We’re also giving her Cheerios as a sort of dessert after dinner. She enjoys the challenge more of picking them up with her fingers, and we figure that everything she picks up gets put in her mouth anyway, so giving her food to do this with would serve another purpose. Well, she doesn’t quite get the concept of putting food in her mouth and keeping it there yet.

What gets me laughing out loud about her behavior these days is the faces she sometimes makes when trying a new food that has a strong or distinct taste. (Just think about trying some foods for the very first time – nobody could tell you that this or that tastes fruity or like chicken if you don’t have those tasting/eating experiences to draw on.) Only a young baby doesn’t have the inhibitions that would prevent her from showing how strange (or awful) something tastes.

A Wrestling Match

We had moved Lexi's changing mat down on the floor several weeks ago since she was wiggling all around when we changed her. Now when you go to change her diaper, she likes to roll over onto her stomach - and sometimes, nibbles on the edge of the changin mat. You turn her back over and she quickly reverses again. Do you know how hard it is to put on a diaper bottom side up?? It's not easy! I have now figured out why Jane gives her the baby bottom bottle as a distraction. With that in her hands, she isn't rolling over on you.

It was very odd to spend 3 nights away from her and Stephen. They did very well together and Lexi is sleeping better at night, though still getting up once. She is also napping longer during the day which we also appreciate. When I got home later Friday afternoon, I think she did recognize me right away - she squealed anyway and flapped her arms like she does when she is excited. She has also been very cooperative at meal time which she wasn't when it was just Stephen alone with her. So maybe she recognizes that I am home.

A mind of her own...

We definitely need to baby proof the house. Even though Lexi isn't walking or crawling yet (but she's working hard at trying!), she is VERY mobile in her walker and can pretty much scoot around wherever she wants. We have a small chalkboard that sits on a low easel. We had already moved the chalk and eraser, but now we need to do something with the chalkboard itself. Lexi wheeled herself up to it tonight and started hitting it with her hand. I was afraid that she would cause it to topple and bonk her on the head.

She also found my book of Suduko puzzles that was sitting on a low end table and tried to open the doors on the credenza that we have in the living room. The water cooler is also a potential trouble spot - she can just about reach the water spouts - and one is for hot water! And just to let you know - when we steer her away from one of these 'trouble spots', she throws a royal fit. "Don't you take me away from that/take that away from me!! You are ruining my fun."

Our girl is growing up...check out the latest photos in the link on the right - March ones have been added!

Next she'll be learning Chinese

Two things to report:

Lexi's development is really happening fast, even by the week and day. Case in point: When she has dropped something that she was holding, she can now recognize where it went and look down and, if it's reachable, pick it up again. This was not happening even as early as last week. And already, in just a few days, she is pushing herself forward in her walker chair after doing it only backwards for a couple of weeks and can get through doorways or over to a shelf or the stove to play with things (like the dish towels hanging from the oven door handle). We need to do some baby-proofing around the house.

Second, yesterday I was sitting at the dining room table, eating my lunch. Jane (our nanny/househelp) was in the pantry, sitting on her plastic chair (don’t ask my why she relegates herself to this confined spot in this huge house, but yes, the pantry off our kitchen is big enough for shelves of food, a clothes-drying rack, and a tiny sitting area for Jane), with Lexi on her lap, feeding her her lunch. Lexi made one of her noises, a repetitive sound that I’ve heard many times before (though not a lot lately). Jane did it back to her, and then I realized – it’s the same sound the birds in the trees above our backyard make (well, Lexi doesn't squawk exactly like them, but she makes the same rhythm)! Jane said that yes, Lexi has been imitating these birds for a while when they sit outside on the plastic chair together, which they do a lot every day.

This also explains Lexi's constant arm flapping – she’s trying to fly! We've got a baby bird on our hands here! We've been trying to raise her as a human this whole time. How did we get it so wrong? And how did we end up with a young one of a different species?

Leaving Lexi with Dad

On April 1st, I will be going to Sudan for 4 days for work. This will be the first time that I have not spent the night in the same building as Lexi. I am a little concerned about Stephen handling her alone for 3 nights. I am afraid that he might get little sleep! Her sleeping habits had improved (or maybe I am just kidding myself) and she did well while we were in Uganda too. Basically, she was only waking up once a night - which is something I can live with as it is an improvement!

But the last nights here at home have been bad. She has woken up midnight or so and then 4 AM and sometimes, she really doesn't go back to sleep. She isn't hungry in the wee hours of the morning. I am thinking that maybe she is cold (Oh, how I wish she could TELL us!). It is fall here and definitely cooler in the house which has no heating system. We have a small heater in her room, but we are nervous about leaving it on when the whole house is asleep. We could put blankets on her, but she rolls around so much, they would soon fall off. I think I might try putting a hat on her tonight....wish us luck!

Our squirmy wormy

As with anything, you usually gain a new perspective in a situation you’re in when somebody from the outside enters the situation and tells you their observations. So it was with the visit of my sister for the past three weeks from Seattle (she left on Tuesday night). One of the parts of her visit that she was looking forward to the most, besides visiting Africa for the first time, was seeing Lexi again and spending some quality time with her. She last saw her when we visited Seattle in late October last year, so she was in a good position to notice a lot of changes in her growth which we have probably not observed as closely as we are with her daily and see these developments only very slowly.

The major observation she made about Lexi was how active she is, that she is constantly moving around – that she’s very squirmy. As we have mentioned many times on this blog before in our own observations, because this is our first baby, we don’t necessarily know what is normal for a baby in each stage of development. Not having been through this process before, we don’t have any other babies of our own to compare Lexi to. Of course, we know plenty of other people who have had babies as well around the same time Lexi was born, and we are more observant of other young babies now too when we go out or travel. But we’re not with any of these babies enough to know their minute-by-minute behavior and habits, which we know with Lexi. Comparing Lexi to the closest baby, the one who lives physically nearest to her, Freddy, the youngest child of the British family who lives at #7 in our compound (he’s a month or two older than Lexi), Lexi seems dramatically more active with her bodily movements. When we see Freddy, he’s always sitting very still and simply gazes up at you with big blue eyes with a very questioning look. Freddy is bigger and chubbier than Lexi and just seems to be a sack o’ potatoes who doesn’t move much.

Lexi is always moving her body. She often flaps her arms like she’s a bird trying to take off, which sometimes expresses her excitement or that she wants to play at the moment. We’re trying to teach her to bring her hands together to clap when she flaps her arms like this. Or she is moving her head, looking around, no matter where she is, being held by someone or sitting in her bouncy chair. Her head and eyes spend only a few seconds at a time looking in one direction before her attention is quickly drawn to something else. And when being held in someone’s lap, she is just generally squirming her whole body. She hasn’t yet figured out what adults know – that your body won’t necessarily move in any direction or shape or do certain movements or move in any relation to another object or person (or that, as much as you’d like it to, your upper body won’t do a full 360 at your waist). So if she has that primal urge to be over there, yet her body is facing the opposite direction or if there’s no way to get over there without an adult moving her whole body over there, she simply twists and contorts her body to try to get it where she wants.

Part of this, we know, is simply a normal part of learning about her body, and she’s very close to figuring out how to crawl. And I know that young children love to just roll around and push themselves around while lying down – squirming by themselves or wrestling with each other.

So again, we don’t know if all of this behavior is normal or unusual, but we’re so much more aware of it now that an outsider, Auntie Lora, has pointed it out to us. Now I have a bit of fear that some doctor will eventually diagnose Lexi as being hyperactive or having ADHD. But for now, I’m just content to know that she’s probably just a very curious baby with a lot of energy and can’t absorb all the new things she’s discovering in the world around her quickly enough. I have told her that there’s plenty of time to learn new things. After all, I’m still enjoying traveling around the world or observing the news and learning fascinating things that I never knew existed a full 35 years after my birth, and even though I finished my schooling many years ago. Well, I know there are many basic things that she needs to fill her mind with in her first several years just to function at a “normal” level.

Even after almost eight months, much of my fascination of this young creature, this emerging person, has still not worn off. It’s still baffling to my mind that this thing, a person, a human being, something so complex and priceless, could be created from essentially nothing. (To me, a writer and a journalist, whose business and skills are to observe and articulate in written words, it’s still a struggle to describe these thoughts here. It’s like trying to describe love in words. How can one really do that?) It’s still so amazing to see how a person develops and acquires the skills and behaviors she needs to survive and simply be in the world. As adults, we take so much of what we do, think and behave and how we move our bodies for granted. Dish towels are so ordinary to an adult, or you never think about how being in water (in a bath or a swimming pool) is different than being out of water, but to a 7 ½ month old baby, these things are really new and different, and there’s a lot to experience by touching, feeling and trying out with them!

More advanced discourse

In Lexi’s ever-evolving way of communicating, she’s moved on to some advanced noise-making. Several times a day for short intervals, she will “speak” a few phrases. The sounds are still gibberish baby talk, but she’s doing a good job imitating regular speech by putting some inflection and phrasing in it. Of course, we have a good time “talking” back to her in the same way, but she has yet to get the hang of the back and forth of conversation – she just sort of blurt things out as she’s inspired inwardly.

She is making one sound that arguably is a word. In fact, her favorite sound in this “speech” she is making is a “dada” word. Sometimes it’s just “dada,” while other times it’s “da-da-da.” Now Sarah and I are debating whether this can be counted as her first word or not. Of course, I think she loves her daddy so much and has quickly learned to call out for me. Sarah isn’t willing to recognize it as a real word yet. Perhaps what it actually could be is a Kiswahili (the local language in Kenya) word that Jane, our nanny/housekeeper, has taught her. We have told Jane to speak to Lexi only in Kiswahili, which she does in the many hours a day they spend together.

In all the speaking and playing Jane and LExi do together, Lexi gets revved up with excitement and still does some good screeching. Yesterday I was in the kitchen with Lexi and Jane, and Lexi was doing this, and it hurt my ears. I know it’s only the beginning of ways that she will touch a nerve.

As this “speech” evolves, Lexi is making her popping (sort of a quiet smacking) sound with her lips less often. That seemed to be an entertaining game with her. It seems to have been replaced by quick breathing through her nose, something we recall Olivia, her cousin on Sarah’s side of the family doing, a few months ago.

SO Big!

Today when we went to the grocery store, Lexi rode in the cart for the first time – in the kid’s seat, that is. Before, we have either carried her or put her entire car seat in the main part of the grocery cart (they have very large carts here) and piled the food around her. But she has been sitting up well enough (still not completely stable, but close) that we thought we would try it. She seemed to enjoy the trip as she was able to look around more. She did keep trying to turn around so that she was facing the direction we were pushing her, but obviously couldn’t.

I have also been talking to some of you about Lexi eating solid foods so I thought I would share with everyone because there are some differences in what is available here. First, we have not been able to find baby food in jars. So this means if we want to feed her anything besides cereal, we have to make it ourselves. Having house help is nice as since the blender is now getting a lot of use and neither of us like to clean the blender, we can have Jane do it. We have cooked and mashed up/blended sweet potatoe (not liked too well by itself), squash and bananas (not cooked).;l,vcfcC~Cccccccs aas,,,,,,,,,m (Lexi was helping with the typing there.) This week’s new ‘real’ food is paw paw (a fruit).

There is a variety of powdered cereals though that you add water to and we have tried several flavors. Wheat or rice are the bases – and you can get them plain – and then they are flavors like wheat and banana or rice and carrot, etc. Today, we picked up a different brand of cereal – the flavor is chicken and vegetables. Sounds tasty! J Lexi seems to really like all of the cereals so far no matter what the flavor. There is also Nestle brand baby cereals but we are avoiding them for ethical reasons. If you don’t know why, ask us.

No real changes - just more

I know I haven’t written in a while on what’s happening with Lexi (although Sarah has). Actually, I tend to write about changes in me instead as I learn about this strange creature and try to adapt to the way she changes.

The reason I haven’t posted in a while here is because there haven’t been any dramatic changes in Lexi, nothing that I think is especially strange, funny or incomprehensible. The only thing I can say that has changed is that she’s doing more of what she started in the past. She still loves to smile at us when we look or talk to her. She’s still a very happy baby in that way. And she gets excited more often by kicking her legs and beaming broadly in that funny gummy smile of hers.

Lexi is also “talking” a lot more. Now there’s a whole strange repertoire of noises. There is sort of the hissing or “talking” by quick breaths from her mouth. It’s almost as if she’s trying to say words in her mouth but can’t get a sound from her throat. And there are strange shouting outbursts that are sort of like quacking. It’s a rough sound. Sometimes among these sounds are high-pitched screeches, but these sometimes come on their own, which are especially hard on my ears, but she really enjoys making them (it’s when she’s excited). She has a good time all day conversing with Jane in this variety of ways.

This means she’s getting better all the time at interacting and responding to people. She turns her head when someone from behind her calls to her. And Sarah noticed the other day when she took Lexi to see Freddy (the baby of Sarah and Ed at #7 in our compound) that she was really chatting away to him, while Freddy just sat silently, staring back with his big blue eyes with slight concern (although he does this with everyone). I’m beginning to wonder if Lexi needs some playmates now!

Getting Bigger

Lexi and I went to the doctor Tuesday for her 6 month check up and vaccinations. She now weighs 7.03 kilos and is 67 cm in length – pretty much right around average in both categories. She did very well with her shots: she didn’t cry after the first one at all and only for a few seconds after the second one. I think it has affected her a little more than usual though – she was running a slight fever after I came home after work and didn’t get all of her cereal for dinner like usual. The doctor said she is doing very well. We don’t go back now until she is 9 months old.

What a strange creature!

I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised as a first-time parent because every stage of Lexi’s life will be new to me, but I am still confounded by the newness of Lexi and the strange way she is learning to do things.

The latest addition to her behavior in the last few days is making chatter. She’s done this in some ways in the past, but this is a new way and a little more sophisticated than the last. It’s just a bunch of grunting and baby “gaga” and “goo-goo” sounds, but they’re formed in a way that is closer to real speech and sounds more like a conversation. It’s fun to talk back to her when she’s doing this, like we really are having a conversation. She just sounds so busy when she’s “talking” like this, like she suddenly has a lot to say while we’re changing her diaper or at other random moments when she has these outbursts.

The way Lexi plays by herself in her chair while Sarah and I are eating dinner and then looks up at us as if she expects us to say something or just pauses to look at us like we’re strangers who have suddenly arrived in front of her just makes me laugh. I’ve said to Sarah several times in the last week or so, “What a strange creature!”

She’s always been a curious baby (well, maybe all babies are like this, but it’s new to me), but it’s fun to see her be more organized and controlled with this curiosity. Like this morning in church, I was holding her against me, with her head looking behind me over my shoulder. She had to get a good look at everyone behind us on one side of me and then move her head to the other side of mine and spend a few minutes looking up and down the pew at the people on the other side. We do recognize this curiosity in her, and we try to cater to it. When we prepare dinner each evening, she’s in the kitchen with us, and when we can, one of us holds her so she can watch the other chopping veggies or stirring what’s in a pot on the stove. We hope she learns to cook this way and learns to enjoy doing things like this.

Scared of a Sneeze?!?

In the last week or so, Stephen has sneezed and Lexi burst out crying. We think it scared her! I can just imagine how she would react if she heard Grandpa (my dad) sneeze (if you have heard my dad sneeze, you will know why)!

And we don’t need to buy her lots of expensive toys, she is happy tearing up the newspaper and playing with plastic sacks (don’t worry, she’s always supervised). These days if she is crying – and not hungry, wet or tired – it’s because she has grown tired of what ever she was playing with and is ready to move on to something new. Sometimes finding the “right” entertainment is a challenge! She loves to stare out the window and see what is happening in the natural world. I am not always sure exactly what has captivated her attention; the trees moving? The flowers? The birds or bugs?

Tonight I had leftovers because Stephen is away. I put them in the microwave to heat up and Lexi perked up. I think she was expecting a bottle to come out – Jane heats up her bottle in the microwave (yes, I know you aren’t supposed to but it works). She looked at the microwave very expectantly when it dinged. In many ways, we can tell she is learning new things.

Stranger Anxiety & Pressed Nappies

We have gone out to eat again. This time to a French-Swiss restaurant called (and run by) Rudy’s. Rudy came up to greet us and Lexi – and she screamed her head off! She doesn’t react that way to the wait staff who are all black. As this is the second time she has screamed at seeing a white person, we think maybe she is scared of white faces. She is definitely going through some sort of stranger anxiety phase.

I think Lexi is one of the best pressed babies around. Jane (our house help – see Stephen’s recent post) thinks all laundry should be ironed. I don’t really need my underwear to be ironed, but it’s being done anyway. She also irons Lexi’s cloth diapers, onesies and little oufits. I doubt any of Lexi’s cousins in the US wearing cloth diapers have them pressed so neatly!

Growing and doing new things

We took Lexi to the pediatrician this morning for her five-month checkup. There wasn’t anything major the doctor needed to look at, and there were no immunizations that Lexi needed at this time (and, in fact, we saw a different doctor this time because our usual one was out or something).

But Lexi is growing, and this is most clearly indicated by her weight. She now weighs 6.6 kg (14.55 lb), which is 600 grams heavier than a month ago. There was an error in measuring her height this morning, so I won’t give that. But I think most of her weight is going to her thighs.

The doctor asked us several general questions about her eating and sleeping habits and examined her a bit and declared her healthy, telling us, “Good job, guys!” It’s good to get this sort of affirmation for something as hard as caring for a human being who’s so dependent on you.

Several days ago, on the eve of her 5-month birthday, we started Lexi on solid foods. It’s true what you’re told before you have a baby – that you’ll just know when your child is ready for certain things, and this was the case with starting on solid foods. She was becoming quite observant with watching us eat – she knew we were taking things from plates and putting them in our mouths. Plus she is very much into the oral phase, to borrow a medical term from the doctor this morning, and is putting everything in her mouth anyway. So we started to feed her a little bit of rice cereal at the beginning of the bedtime routine to see if this would fill up her belly more solidly and get her to sleep for longer stretches at night as well.

She’s adapting to it well – well, as much as we can tell because we don’t know exactly how this should go, this being our first child. She likes to make a lot of noise when she eats – sort of a humming thing in the background while she “chews.” It’s kind of funny.

Then, to make it all official, we went out over the weekend and bought a real high chair for Lexi. Now, suddenly, it seems that the whole house has been taken over by large baby equipment – strollers, car seats, cribs, bouncy chairs, toys, etc. Well, we’re used to adult equipment – things like living room furniture or a desk with a computer on it – but having baby things and big baby things among the furniture still feels strange.

Otherwise, her personality is largely the same. She likes to look at us a lot and smile often. She is still good at smiling at strangers who talk to her, although the other night at the Chinese restaurant, the Chinese woman who owns the place was talking to her, and she started crying that “I’m afraid” cry. Lexi hasn’t figured out that she’s very pale-skinned compared to the many African people she sees around and who talk to her.

So Lexi is growing and learning new things all the time, like how to eat solid foods. Here’s a picture of her doing something else new – we’ve got her learning how to do housework with Jane, our nanny/housekeeper. Here they’re hanging Lexi’s cloth diapers outside to dry after they’ve been washed.

Bedtime blues

We have started giving Lexi a little rice cereal in the evening hoping it might help her to sleep for longer stretches at night. I'm not sure it has really helped. We are also having problems establishing a bedtime routine and sticking to it - and knowing when to let her cry and when to comfort her. Stephen is rather frustrated with me as I keep changing things and he is tired of talking about the changes - he wants us to just stick to it! I want to find THE thing that works - and of course, I want it to work the first time. So we struggle on.

Some nights have been better than others...we shall see.

A Morning Person?

I think Alexandria may be a morning person. She is usually in such a good mood in the morning - she can happily amuse herself for quite a long time without any interference from an adult. But as the day wears on, she tends to get fussier and want to be held more. Maybe it's because she sleeps well at night and doesn't really nap. She will take short naps, but she often wakes up and seems as unhappy as she was before she laid down.

We shall see when she gets older....