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.
September 7, 2008
September 4, 2008
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:
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!
August 13, 2008
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.
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.
August 10, 2008
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!
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!
August 5, 2008
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!
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!
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