Suffer little children to come unto me, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven

TV Watching

Summer has whizzed past and now its time to go back to work! Time flies when you are having fun, no words have rung truer and then they are now. Lots happening, more excitement to come, pity I am going back to work. Call in sick maybe…. it’s tempting.

Anyway, I digress, the biggest news of the day is that Miss Malaika was baptized on Saturday 26th July. What a blessed day it was. She was baptized at Holy Rosary Cathedral and thanks to Father Dion who was so accommodating and made it all happen before Gogo went back home. She was such a good girl, she’d had a nice long nap prior so she was refreshed and no trouble at all, even when she had water poured on her forehead three times. Thanks to all her uncles, aunties and cousins: Nina and Sanaa who helped celebrate her special day. Her chosen Saints Name, which the help of Gogo, is St. Josephine Bakhita. She was a Sudanese-born slave who lived in Italy and was canonized in 2000. Through all her hardships she was known to be always smiling, an apt name as Malaika is always smiling and happy.

She now has five teeth and is just about ready to get up and start walking. There is lots of furniture walking, pulling up and standing to reach out to anything she deems fit to put into her mouth, plus there is a renewed interest in the constant city traffic now she can get to the window herself and look out to see what’s what. She now recognises the sound of someone turning keys in the door so she looks up, smiles and then you hear the tap, tap of her little hands and legs on the hardwood floor making her way in greeting to whoever’s come home.

Ready to go shopping

As a result the apartment baby-proofing continues. It never ends, just when you relax and think it’s all good she can reach something new or you see interested in something that you hadn’t thought would be an issue at all. This week we need a baby gate for the door to the balcony, by next week I am pretty sure it’ll be something else. So here’s a funny story, when we went to playgroup last week, Gogo saw a toddler pull out and play with one of those outlet/plug protectors and when he was done, he put in back in! Oh dear, his poor parents are none-the-wiser that he’s on to it. I have seen Malaika already seem like she’s just about figured out how to pull them out. In all honestly the chances of her sticking something in there and electrocuting herself are slim to none BUT do I want to be the one-in-a-million parent it happens to? I think not.

On the food front we are doing pretty well. She has renewed interest in food, milk just doesn’t cut it anymore. So I am back to boiling, pureeing and freezing every few days. Thanks to Auntie Ethel after we got back from San Fran we have had lots of raspberry-blackberry-and-pear puree, it’s a fan favorite. I might end up having to make a huge batch that’ll last us through winter since the berries won’t be in season soon. Bread is still very much a daily staple, at least two slices a day. Sadza, sadza, sadza: thanks to Gogo, sadza is now our daily dinner must have. She eagerly gobbles it up and open her mouth wide as we can to eat it! I don’t know how long it’ll last but I am going to ride that wave whilst its high. The last two mornings she’s been eating mealie porridge too, she’s gone off her brown rice cereal as well as the mixed grain now. I feel like a circus performer when it comes to food, always trying to keep her interested, and it’s tough crowd too! And I often have to sing nursery rhymes and sunday school songs to keep her engaged as she eats. The wheels on the bus have been going round and round so much I think the tires are flat! And if Father Abraham has any more sons he’s going to need his own ark just go to get to Mass!

Never too early to brush your pearly whites..

It’s all fun and games and it’s only going to get better.

On  sad note Gogo left on Wednesday. So now she doesn’t get her morning cuddles and chat with Gogo. Tasara tega tega, takangotarisana… (we have been left all alone, staring blankly at each other).

On a brighter note her father has a month off work and will be hanging out with her all day. Ambuya and Sekuru arrive on Tuesday, Uncle Nelson arrives at the end of the month and so does Uncle Bruce, Auntie Mildred and the girls from Edmonton! For three days in August they’ll all be here , at the same time, in our tiny apartment, no one will get a word in edgeways and it’ll be grand!

 

ps. How could I forget to mention she’s been sleeping through the night, I mean at least 10 hours solid, for two weeks now! Maybe cause I didn’t want to jinx it.. insert happy dance here, quietly… and go back to sleep glorious sleep..

The Mother of Lions…

Chilling like a boss

Those of you who are Game of Thrones fans will appreciate the analogy: Mother of Lions. I am not quite in the realm of Khaleesi and her dragons but we are all mothers right? My husband’s totem is the lion hence his reference to me as the Mother of Lions. I referred to Malaika as our lion cub before she came and she’s proving to be true to the nickname. I appreciate that all babies have nails that grow at the rate of knots that need to be cut quite often, they end up being sharp because they use them as tools scraping at everything but my daughter has taken to scraping and pinching me…. I can see the puzzled look on your face. If I ended up in ER they’d probably call child services for me, not her, its ‘mother abuse’… LOL! So this is what she does, when she’s breastfeeding she likes to clutch, pinch and pull at things, I guess it gets boring and she needs something to do. The objects of her entertainment end up being my arms, lips, nose, neck and anything else fleshy enough for her to claw at. It’s a real problem, I need a trauma unit! I hope it is just a phase and she’ll move on to the next thing much like the grunting she was doing a few weeks ago. Why let her do it you say, why not stop her?  I refer you to Einstein on the definition of : “Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results”, she doesn’t understand why I keep stopping her, she doesn’t understand me when I say ‘Malaika that hurts mhamha don’t do that’, if I pull away it is I who has wronged her, she gets annoyed and tightens her grip, hmmm, so lest I do become insane, I will let her be and hope she moves on soon… like tomorrow.

 

Nursing Necklace

In the meantime I have come across Nursing Necklaces, the very efficient and helpful Angie is sending me one from her Etsy Store. It is supposed to give her a focal point, something she can reach for, grab and play with saving the ‘feeder’s’ hair, clothes and skin. It also doubles up as chewbeads for teething. Hmmm, I hope it works, don’t need scratched up arms for summer.

On the subject of moving on or more precisely growing up she certainly is. She no longer looks like a baby, she looks like a little girl. She’s sitting up quite well one her own and moving around more easily. Yesterday for about 20 minutes whilst I was making more chapati/roti (her current favorite snack that she chomps with her gums) she got the giggles. She giggled at anything and everything.

She continues to be very engaged and alert to her surroundings, something that people always comment on when we are out and about. Another person cautioned me last week that I ought to be careful, she’d get stolen, you have to wonder if this is a valid concern. Imagine the reaction of the grandparents if such a thing happened, how would you even say, ‘Mwana abiwa’ (the child has been stolen). Good luck getting a ransom payout.  Bhabha is the only one paying the bills whilst Mhamha is on EI/benefit and the grandparents only have Zim kwachas (dollars) that you’d return quicker than Western Union could wire it to you!

In the meantime we count down to all our summer visitors Gogo, Mai Nove, Nove, Auntie Ethel, Jakob, Auntie Lucy, Mbuya, Sekuru, Uncle Nelson … Oh my, even the Queen doesn’t get this lucky…

Chapati chomping

Her gnashers are coming … I think

Gummy smile…

At three months old I could have sworn Malaika’s gnashers were coming. So I can see some of you thinking, ‘here we go again, that’s what you said last time’. At that stage she was drooling all the time, had a few weepy moments, her gums were changing shape and there were some white things that looked to be straining through her bottom gums. Then we went through a phase of three bib changes a day. Three months later we are still waiting.. The drooling had slowed down but it’s started up again. She’s furiously rubbing everything on her gums, she has teething rings but sometimes they fall out of her hands and it would take too long to pick these up again so she grabs whatever she can clutch to as quickly as possible. A couple of nights ago she was waking up crying something fierce, she was a little warm (no fever though) and just not her happy self. On said night she made it back into the now family bed, she was crying even as I was holding her, Tylenol seemingly had no effect. Hylands homeopathic teething tablets finally helped and everyone got a couple of hours sleep….

Now she has diaper rash! I thought cloth diapering would abate this but clearly not. A lot mothers say , babies can get diaper rash whilst teething. Randomly the lady at the Crabtree and Evelyn store at the mall a couple of weeks ago said to use her kids had that happen and I remembered it a couple of days ago when the rash appeared. Interestingly , as it seems to be case with a few pregnancy and baby related occurrences, medical professionals say it’s not the case and if you child has diaper rash or diarrhea whilst ‘teething’ then it is just happenstance and they are sick and should be taken to the doctor. However a good old Google search provides enough informal reports that infer otherwise. I also reached out to my Whatsapp ‘Boobies’ group and two out of three say their babies get diaper rash with teething.

The good thing is that her diaper rash most likely isn’t due to taking too long to change her diaper, chemicals (we use cloth with disposable inserts, alcohol-free etc wipes), allergies or an infection.Though I am not completely ruling any of those out. Breastfed babies are also less likely to get diaper rash but our little lion cub has rather enthusiastically started eating a surprising amount of solids twice a day (I think that’s why those two hourly night feeds were happening, poor baby was just hungry!). Whilst we are on the subject I added meat to the menu a couple of weeks ago and she loves it! Hence my emphasis on the lion cub, her father’s mutupo (totem) is the Lion so she’s holding true to her heritage..

So now poor Miss Malaika has a rather raw bottom that elicits a big cry whenever she has to poop and she is pooping sometimes 5 times a day, not diarrhea mind you just little ones but still pretty often. Lots of Burt’s Bees diaper cream and ointment are being used, lots of hand washing and diaper washing too. All combined with extra cuddles and kisses, it gets us through the day.

We are going to the doctor today since its not cleared and could lead to fungal or bacterial infection…hmmm there’s always something with these little ones…

The real parenting begins…

Bedtime routines

So up until now Malaika has been sleeping in bed with me, its been 6 1/2 months. It’s mostly been working well until now. More often than not in the last two-week she is feeding every two hours, she does it in her sleep with minimal disruption to her highness, she goes right back to sleep. Not so much for me, I am beginning to seriously feel like a zombie. She has had a pretty well established going to bed and waking up timeline, between 7 and 8:30 am and pm. Since she’s been going to bed early I have been trying to do more adult things in this time: watch TV, slowly eat dinner, have  a glass of wine, talk to my husband… I then try to be in bed before the next two-hour waking ( I know its my fault, I am totally enabling her).  The boss is well in control but its time for me to take back the reigns, take charge, be the parent (Am I trying to convince me or her? One has to wonder..) The ‘sleep when she sleeps’  during the day mantra doesn’t work for me, there is always something else to do: laundry, dishes, dinner, bills to pay, tidy up, attend to my fro, reply e-mails, return texts, blog,  or I am simply not ready to nap. Occasionally I can do it when Karl is home during the day, then I get a good two-hour nap but again I am not always ready to have one when he’s around. I also never really know whether she’s going to sleep for 30 minutes, 2 hours or 10 minutes! I started to write this blog thinking she’ll be asleep for 1/2 hour, its been an hour.

She surely can’t be hungry every two hours, it’s become a habit and I have let it well and truly establish itself and its now as home, in my bed, taunting me….She’s having solids twice a day now, this hasn’t made a difference to her sleeping (medical professionals say it’s an old wives tale, a full stomach doesn’t mean she’ll sleep longer, it makes sense but apparently it doesn’t translate so easily in reality). As the saying goes, there is a danger in loving someone too much, I have to exercise tough love, to be honest it’ll be harder for me than for her.

Last night was going to be the first night I was going to put her in her crib overnight. She sleeps there during the day. I was all set. She had her bunny and one of my t-shirts in her crib for comfort. I had a stool in the room to feed her when the time came, I moved the monitor, mentally I was prepared. She had dinner, a bath, she in her sleep sack and it was time… I was about to put her in there then I realised the room has zero insulation! I know it sounds like another excuse but he room is in between the kitchen and the bathroom. I could hear Karl making dinner in the kitchen, literally. I heard the fridge door opening, the tap running,  chopping of the veggies on the board. I can only imagine you’d hear the toilet flushing too. Granted it’s possible she’d sleep through it but in my bedroom we sleep with the fan on to drown out the traffic and train noise (we live downtown literally, city noises and drunken revelers are part of our noise pollution). So I abandoned that plan and put her back in my bed. Today’s mission it to find a fan. I haven’t given up, if anything the nights events furthered my resolve. She got up every two hours again. At one point I made sure I wasn’t close enough for her to reach out and tap me, she took a good 15 minutes to keep rolling and move around until she found me then she settled in quite nicely cradled and snug next to me, perfectly content, as beautiful and endearing as this was, I still need to sleep.

This will be a real challenge. Do I let her cry it out? Do I basically camp in her room defeating the whole purpose? Do I let only her father go to her the first couple of nights?

I guess this will be my first real parenting act…..where’s that manual again?!?!?

Mealie meal porridge: The Final solution

Carrot delight

So we started solids a few weeks ago. This was really the second attempt. The first time she was about 4 1/2 months old. She was sitting on her own, showing a healthy curiosity and reaching out to our food. We talked about it and I kept saying lets wait for 6 months because that’s the recommended. Karl said a few times his mother said to give her porridge, this was from about two months which I definitely felt was way too soon. Especially given her earlier digestion issues. Anyway, one morning we are having breakfast and she’s persistently reaching for the banana. So we mashed it up and gave it to her. She eagerly gobbled it all up, made a huge mess, stained her bib but she was happy as Larry. Since that went quite well and it was an organic banana I did it again a second day. For whatever reason I didn’t give her any on the third day and that is when the grunting kicked in … Poor baby was grunting and squirming to get her poos out. Bananas can cause constipation apparently, really? Karl and I both have one on a daily basis, never had these issues, maybe that’s cause we are more than 4 months old, hmmm… Research Fail modern-eco-mama!

She went from 8 poops a day to three! She cried sometimes when she was uncomfortable… OH MY WORD I damaged the baby! This carried on for 10 days, even in her sleep, needless to say I stopped the bananas and prayed for the squirming to stop. It did eventually, phew! No permanent damage (we hope). About a month later, after one of the nights when the night-feeding is every 2 hours I thought I would try solids again, maybe she’ll sleep better ( I have read any times that there is no connection between the two but I still hope it’ll make a difference ). So this time I am more prepared. I buy a hand blender, organic veggies, 2 oz containers for the freezer, we already have cutlery, plastic bibs and her high chair so we’re good to go. I spent a whole afternoon boiling , pureeing, portioning, cooling and freezing. We had carrots, mbambaira (sweet potatoes) and pears, avocados ready to mash and watermelon ready to chop. So because of food allergies you try one new thing for two or three days then move on to the next. Carrots started off well, then mbambaira but when we got to the pears ‘lemon face’ kicked in. She makes this face like you just gave her lemons, complete with the shoulder shuffle we all do when you taste something bitter… from then on it was a downward spiral…. I gave it a break for a day to and then went back to carrots that had been the most successful of all the experiments. Further reading indicated that one grain cereals were really the best thing to start off which. So organic-fresh-is-best mom gave her porridge rehupfu (mealie-meal porridge)! Success! It’s like manna from heaven! She gobbles it up and even opens her mouth for more….hmmmm…. she definitely African… or is the little bit of brown sugar in there…whatever it is, she’s sold on it and I probably should’ve listen to my mother-in-law earlier though I still maintain two months was too early!

An apple a day

So now we have porridge in the morning and veggies in the afternoon, fresh out of the pot and into the freezer today is potatoes and green beans. Hopefully Lemon-face doesn’t come back.. and oh she’s also into apples. The story is that her father was eating apples even before he had teeth, she is her fathers-daughter for sure!