baby haumea’s first lessons

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6 months old – understanding “no”

Am going to use no each time she may hurt herself first to teach her that it is better to listen to it.  also when she starts screaming for food am saying no and refusing to feed before she stops and waits patiently – it does teach her it’s well worth listening to her parents.  decided am going to allow little bangs or or ending up with her head under water and swallowing some so she knows the results of not listening to “no” request and possibly avoids any bigger injuries

6 months old baby haumea – progress

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5 and a half months calls mama mama, then stopps and focuses on kinesthetic skills

As soon as finished 6 months learned how to sit up. turns over to her tummy then pushes walks back with her hands pushing herself up, often does split or half split before she puts her little lags in front of her.

Eats anything you give her. for the fist week or two of solids there was a drama each time next spoon is delayed. later learns more patients and reacts to “wait”

Definitely understands “no”

Many faces of little Haumea G

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portraits 0-6 months old

Aitutaki escape

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haumea aitutaki

Half a year with us !

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6 months old

filled with love

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OMG, I am so filed with love. Perhaps overfilled with love, it keeps spilling out. Your dad always keeps giving me more reasons to love him more but you have opened me to that, until now, unknown kind of love. I just came back from the vaccination, I loved you when you cried and hurt with you and it really really hurt me when you felt the pain. You see the other person I love with no limits is your dad and I feel bad for him when he doesn’t feel good, I feel sympathetic and I want him to feel better, I am sad about his pain but I do not suffer with him.

With you it’s so different. I would so much rather feel your pain instead of you and it hurts me too. And I love you

Then I love you again when you stop crying and are being really brave and strong, then I hold you and you snuggle up to me, put your head on my breast, turn towards me so no one else can see your face. I love you again.

Your dad said he keeps falling in love with me over and over again each day and sometimes I ask him so today? And he tells me yes, several times and I ask when and sometimes there are the most funny or peculiar reasons I would never think could make anyone fall in love with me but he says it makes him fall in love again.

I don’t know if you can fall in love with your baby but I experience these waves of love all the time. Then I love you again when you laugh to all the ladies at marcus’s office, wrinkle your little nose and they can’t believe that you just came back from your vaccination – you are not moody or crying, you are just happy little you, curious and beautiful

Then I put you on the floor of the car on the blankets your dad spread. We didn’t take your chair and I was picking up the car from his work so we had to come up with a way to drive you. And you are happy there and smile to me and I love you again and I love you when you fall asleep. I didn’t want to wake you up when we came back home. Now there is high tide and I could sneak pout for a little swim but I prefer to write this because there was so much love in me I had to spread it out and I am thinking I am crazy, when ever before I would have miss a swim in the lagoon to talk to someone and here I don’t even talk to you, I just write for you to read it, probably years and years down the road.

Well, love is strange and crazy. Can’t wait to talk to you, soon I hope you will be able to talk back. You seem to understand so much now and you know now about object permanence, when we hide something from you, you know it is still there, you look behind, you try to get to it. You also realise if something is too far for you to reach but as soon as something comes within your reach you will surely get you hands on it. And you are not even 6 months old yet.

Now I just can’t wait till you wake up, can’t wait till your dad comes back home!

Love you and this makes me so so happy

 

 

you make each day so different…

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Time is now measured by new things you learn and do. You growing up, last time I sat you on the airport scale you were 7 kg at 5,5 months. when you finished 3 months you started turning onto your tummy, you would cry because it frustrated you that you cannot crawl and since you could not turn back someone always need to come to your rescue.

Now you can sit by yourself, you can feed yourself from a bottle, tip it to get every last drop out and a couple of days ago I found out with excitement that you learned not to throw the bottle too far away, now you are in full control and can find a bottle lying next to you close enough, pick it with one hand by the teat, drag it towards you then grab in both hands and lift it to your mouth.  Somehow you just worked it out.

You had your first real bath in the sea last week, potty training today and when you are upset you now say mamama mam ma mam

You are  becoming your own little person now, we enjoy having you with us so much.

I am writing this not so much for you but for us so we remember these big moments in your little life and for your family in Poland and Germany.

In two days there is your dad’s birthday and we want to celebrate it in Aitutaki, if we find someone to help us with you on the boat then we will take you with us:)

We just watched a beautiful Argentinian movie El baile de la Victoria while you were asleep and we ate baba ganush, chicken, tomatoes with garlic yoghurt dressing, jasmine rice and grilled eggplant.   You are still asleep but you will wake up soon hungry. I will feed you while your dad will read us a new book by Ian McEwan, you in my arms, I in his, then when you are asleep we we will gently carry you to your new bed in the other room. We had to buy you a portacot because you were all over the floor, getting off your mattress, now you are safe and close to us..

And this is you at 5 and 5,5 months

love

mamamam mma ma

Walking in their shoes…

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What an adventure it is to have you and your mum around. I am still reeling from the delightful realisation that we left our home with a docile little newborn a mere two months ago and came back with a small child, with a mind of her own, astonishing abilities and mobility (remember your adventures with the train seat, Tristan’s couch and climbing out of all sorts of contraptions designed to keep you INSIDE of them?.) Before we knew it you could sit up and look around, take a drink bottle and finish it, take things and learn how they feel smell and most of all TASTE, realise that some things may be too big and too heavy for now and that your parents are there when you need them.

In the course of the trip you dazzled so many people, starting from queues of curious and cordial waitresses in Thailand, to your grandparents, uncles and aunties in Germany and Poland and even your grand grandmother to whom your gave the greatest parting present by just being there and smiling, to seeing your dear uncle Claudio for the first time to young and oldies ladies and gentlemen all over Italy and our friends in California who were a catalyst for me so looking forward to have you.

What’s more, i am so very proud of you and your mum which actually is a novelty for me. I may have met and spent time with a number of people in my life but your mum and you took it all to a new level. I just didn’t know these feelings exist in the real world and attributed them to fairy tales and cheesy literature. What i so like about our family unit is that it feels far less obliging than it feels liberating and fulfilling.

We have seen you undergo an amazing development in a very short time. We will try not to let this go to our heads a demand great deeds sooner, faster and better than others. After all, we love you and we merely look forward to have a smart, witty and great daughter.

Just one piece of advice: Man with beards can generally be trusted. Yellow buckets on the other hand are to be treated with suspicion. Ask your dad when you can read this 😉

Poznan, August 2012

Never miss a chance so you never regret

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She lived for 93 years, 32 918 days. I spent only half of that day with her and i will always remember this. You were there too little one, sitting clumsily and a bit uncomfortably on her lap, touching her hand with your tiny baby fingers, bringing smile to her face. You met Grand Oma Edith, Your grandad’s mum.

I regret I havent had a chance to get to know her better, i just heard many wonderful things about her from your dad who was very close to her and for whom she was very important, who he loved very much. I never had a chance to meet his other grandma or granddads, we met too late in life. My grandmums and grandads had passed away by then too. But I did meet Oma Edith one beautiful sunny day during our first family trip to Europe. You were just over 3 months old so it might be too early for you to remember but I will hope that there will be somewhere in, you a little soft feeling, glimpse of memory of your contact with that wonderful older lady.

We went to visit Oma Edith on the 3rd of Septemeber, a month before she passed away. We did not know if she will remember the good news we were bringing to her, about our love, marriage and you my little Darling. Oma had some troubles remembering new things she was told. Your Oma and Opa told her about Marcus getting married and having a child and even though this made her really happy she did not remember it by the enxt time they visited her, so they thought, so they needed to repeat the news and she was happy again. Yet when we came to see her she knew perfectly well, despite some short memory problems many older people have, who we were. She loved seeing her dear grandson and she squeezed my hand and kissed me and told me how happy she was that Marcus and I found each other. She knew who you were and she watched you asleep on the chair next to her and when you woke up I sat you on her lap and she cuddled and stroked you. She was happy.

At some point she turned to me, took my hand and pulled me towards her. “i love you, as much as i love Marcus” she said. first i thought she might have mistaken me with someone from her family. But i was her family and she was talking to me. She squeezed my hand and kissed it and said she is so happy to see Marcus happy and in love and that she loved us very much. Marcus said this means a lot because she loves him a lot and obviously she realised i was a part of him. She never forgot after this that her dear grandson was married, that he had me and you and that we made him happy as he never was before.

That was the last day Marcus spent with his grandma but he will always love her. A month after this wonderful meeting a great woman passed away. She was loved by all her children and grandchildren and spent her last days surrounded by them. Remember this my sweetheart, this is how i hope you will be, loved and respected by everyone. She will be also missed by everyone but her life was long and meaningful. She was surrounded by love when she was departing and she left a lot of love in the world in the lifes of all her children and future generations, the love which is and will continue to be a response to the love she once gave to others.

I hope you will learn about her from your dad but most of all from your opa, i hope he will find time and inspiration to write to you about his mum but if not then one day soon you can sit on his lap and ask him to tell you stories about grand Oma Edith.