sorry ?

WHOA!. so sorry for the grand time canyon which runs between this and the last blog. So what s Abacus been up to ? well, she got her passport! she looks chubba as in it, now we have to fill it with stamps from far off places. She continues to grow, and make subtle advances on her skills, she sort of gurgles a laugh now which is so cute, but what s not so cute is the few times when she's screamed for ages and we don't know how to calm her, today Danielle had about an hour of it before she finally exhausted herself and fell asleep. 

The other day she went for an 8 hour stay with our babysitter (Jenna), whose son Leo kept kissing her, before jenna realised it was because he heard kiss, whenever jenna said abacus. Unfortunately Abacus has stopped eating rice cereal, the first couple of nights she kind of ate it as though it  bottle, but she has since wised up to that trojan spoon and closes her mouth until we give her a bottle, we try again every now and then, she'll be ready soon. 

What we've been up to is assignments and work and applications, hence the sparce amount of news i've posted, we're just a little short on time. 

this week abacus' tummy time improved ten fold, almost over night. She's suddenly grunting in great effort to hoist herself up really far, she's really determined to do it.

We had a bit of bad news this week too. We had been planning to leave in November to volunteer in a village in panama for a few months, but unfortunately a huge disaster struck the remote village. Two dams failed during heavy rains and the river flooded and swept away a lot of the village ausig a lot of death and destruction. The brother of guy who we were communicating with, was also killed, he was to attend a university in US next year with sponsorship. It's a real tragedy, but we will be very eager to go and help in April, which is when they said it will be possible for us to go.  

solids

that was the other thing, how she ate a whole feed while still asleep. hehe.

abacus had a pretty huge sunday, we both needed to get some assignments done so she went and hung out with her babysitters, apparently she ate one and a half bottles when she woke up and then went straight back to sleep! then we went to my cousins house so they could meet her, she stayed awake the whole time and seemed really excited and interested in everyone, especially alexa (sorry if my spelling is wrong) their youngest daughter, who seemed equally as excited and interested in abacus.

then, because abacus was sleeping through the night a week ago and now she wakes up at 3 again, "someone" told us that they started their baby on solids when that happened and the baby went back to sleeping through the night, DON'T TELL PLUNKET! but tell as many doctors as you like because they're chillaxed as about it. So, we got her some rice cereal just a real small amount to start with. She was so cute eating it, she kind of sucked at the spoon like it was a bottle, then after she ate all that, she had her bottle and went to sleep for . . . 8 hours!

crying like a grown up

I may have told you this already but the other day danielle made this low groan noise, kind of like a scary monster and abacus' eyes opened really wide and then she had this huge pout before starting to cry, as though she were scared, but she had no reference or association between the noise and anything bad happening, it's so wierd, we want to try it again, but also don't want to scare her so we probably won't.

last night, i'm talking about crying a lot here for some reason, but last night she cried like a real cry, not just an automatic response cry, but an actual emotional sounding cry.

there was one other thing i was going to write - i forget now, i ll tell you when i remember.

Abacus is getting really vocal now, making lots of little baby sounds, she's also getting a lot better at putting her hands in  her mouth which is really good but she s also getting good at pulling her dummy out and then crying about it. right now she's very excited to be playing with her toys and is kicking her legs and flayling her arms to show it.

a perfect day

on sunday the weather was beautiful so we went to take abacus on her first swimming adventure at the kilbernie pools, what s awesome about taking her is that we get in for free and her entry fee is cheaper than it would for either of us to go by ourselves. the pools are awesome with water cannons and lots of fun things going on. Abacus donned her cute red stripey bathing suit and danielle took her in. She was very still, a little wierded out by the whole thing but she seemed to enjoy herself for a short time. We'll definately take her out there again. On the way back we drove around the bays and saw the snow capped ranges around wellington and across the strait to the south island, we stopped at the maranui cafe and abacus slept peacefully while we ate our awesome lunch with perfectly cooked fries and probably the best shake ever, then she continued to sleep while i picked some stuff up from the office, she was so good.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/7597761.stm

it's amazing how much progress abacus has made in the three weeks since her last neurodevelopmental (N.D) therapy visit. Her neck control has continued to improve, being able to track us as we walk passed her, holding her head centered, how she stares at us and pulls objects to her mouth, how she's started smiling and cooing. The ND therapist (michelle) was really impressed with it all. I'd had to rouse abacus from her sleep for the visit, she slept well, 8 hours or so. The cutest moment came when michelle put te wheke (maori for octopus) on top of her little gym so as not to distract abacus while she was shown a smiley face rattle, but it had the opposite effect, you see abacus LOVES te wheke, she's always staring at it and bashing it round, so when she saw it suddenly looking down on her instead of dangling for her to bash, she was completely captivated by the novelty and stared at it excitedly, kicking and thrashing her arms with wide eyes and making noises. It was really cute!