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

the last days were busy with friends visits, Ui Ariki festival, bread making, long talks and movies and heaps of TLC. you seem to have some growth spurt again and consume copious amounts of milk, still you were lighter than a sigle plate of food filled wth pork, taro and chicken which  we were given at the Ui Ariki celebration.

I spoke to my good girlfriend a couple of days ago, here i was, the one people always found so free spirited, full of crazy ideas, never settled, always curious, always going somewhere and always suprising. Suprising I was. Iza still can’t believe when she talks to me that I have a little baby of mine in my arms, it’s only when I stop the conversation to say a few words to you, cheer you up or answer your grooing that this fact hits her.  And here I was telling her to make herself a baby. I care for her, she is a good friend even though we see each other so rarely, and i know that from her perspective now having a baby is not at all an appealing option.  I could look at other families and I know if you didn’t happen to me watching some other happy parents and kids would never make me think of motherhood.  I did not feel I was missing anything and I was scared of that huge commitment.  it seemed like the baby would change my carefree life, would fill my house with baby toys, food stains and baby’s cry.

Why is it like this that if someone buys a new car everyone wants it, noone sees it as a source of an expense, fuel consuming machine that polutes the air, a place in which you can get stuck in a traffic jam…it has bad points too after all.

So only now I learn that the house doesn’t need to be filled with baby toys, you don’t need all that baby crap everyone buys, mattresses, chairs, beds, all the special things the producers tell  you the baby needs. All that baby needs is your love and care and a healthy warm place to live and you need just a bit of imagination and inventiveness and can create  spaces comfortable for the baby anywhere you go from things you have at hand. And any evil things we see in having a baby are well compensated by  that overwhelming love  love you feel to that little creature,  joy it gives holding them in your arms, feeling their warmth, hearing them breath, tenderness they awake in you.

When you watch a stranger halling about their baby trying to pull the arms through the sleeves of a romper you feel they are wasting so much time on trivial boring things like this all day long now but when you do it gains a different meaning, you are giving something to someone else, someone who trully needs it and needs you.  giving is beautiful but giving anything to another adult is never that much fun. You may find that you are being taken advantage of and you never know that who you give it to truly deserves it or it would have been better to give those limited resources of time or money to someone else. with baby there is no question like this. giving is a pure joy.  And for a woman dressing up and feeding the baby suddenly brings back the childhood times of dressing dolls

so here you are sleeping in an adult hammock in your little car seat carefully placed inside, sides of the hammock clipped with clothes pegs to the side of the handle to create a nice little cocoon around you shielding you from the wind.  We siwn you a couple of times and with the waves leaping underneathh you, the distant sound of the surf you fall asleep to dream some happy dreams I hope

When you start waking up i pick you up, knowing well that when you discover you are waking up alone you will start crying and won’t stop until I start feeding you. You make a funny face first and in the past you would start crying anyway because you always wake up hungry but now hearing my voice you trust you get your milk soon and you smile faintly and say uugh and i feel swarm by a huge wave of love and all that is missing now is marcus beside me because I so would like to share this with him and that love is always for you and him at the same time

so i start feeding you and give him a ring and he tells me he bought nu for me and fresh tuna for sashimi for us and that he loves me and will hurry back home and the world is …just perfect

Dear Haumea,

it is such a privilege seeing you grow and learn new things every day, adding to our happiness with new expressions of glee and seeing your mum taking such good care of you (and not forgetting daddy at the same time) and all this happening thousands of miles away from what we call home. Yet your grand parents and aunties both by birth and adopted already show so much of ‘it’ and care, calling almost every day, melting away when you squawk into the mouth piece and keeping the snail mail man busy with all those lovely parcels for us.

The word in question of course is Love. One day when you understand that the love you receive from your parents and family is not the only kind there is you may ask what this is and frankly i wouldn’t have been able to answer you until recently. Not because without your mum you wouldn’t be here to listen but because i myself did not know and knew i didn’t. People who will bump into your life will tell you how much they care and how much they love you but too often that is just words and so it was for me until i met your Mum who gave the word a true meaning. If you ever need to know, your Mum is a well of information on the subject and your dad a happy witness.

My baby girl, finally we hold you in our arms. You are so so beautiful. we asked maybe it is just us, parents so in love with their baby would obviously think so but I think it’s true, you are gorgeous, sweet and innocent…

There is that love completely new inside me and I can hardly contain it. I feel like in heaven.

I started writing for you telling you what has happened and how i feel but this may take a while, at the moment I am exhausted and my wounds still did not heal so it is painful to sit for long but there is so many people waiting to see you and hold you in their arms, our families are so happy and supportive and wonderful that this flow of love is just overwhelming. Your polish grandma got just one photo and she kept going and looking at it over and over again and showing it to everyone.  How many times can you make people look at the same photo?

So i will put just a few photos now for your wonderful carrying and loving ohana. it turned out your ohana is so big and includes also many new friends here on the island. You are a blessed child baby girl and I hope we can give you the best we can and we can make you always happy. Truly and deeply happy with happiness that comes from having happy parents who are in love with each other, who, even if sometimes may seem strict or demanding of you will always have you in their heart and your best interest in their mind, happy because you know so many people love you care for you, happy because you understand the world and appreciate things, happy because we taught you how to love. not only how to receive love or even repay love but how to love unconditionally weather someone loves you back or not.  this is what you already taught me. the very first lesson your mama received from her little coreczka, you opened the whole new world for me, thank you baby, you don’t even know how much you have already done with just your presence.

I am sorry if I gave you some pain at birth, I am sorry i couldn’t push harder, but now you are so happy and content, you quickly managed to show us when you cry because you are hungry and when because your nappy needs changing, you eat a lot and then fall asleep by my side, cuddled into my breasts you just drunk from and filling them with love

here you are baby girl