halloWEEn

Yesterday was halloween so danielle died dyed abacus' pink stretch and grow and sewed a tail on it black and we painted her face up as a black cat hehe. see the flickr site for a cute photo or two.

whoa Abacus was wired tonight. I have no idea why, she was awake and charged up for like 5 hours, we were tired before she was, it was like "abacus, shouldn't you be putting us to bed?"

rolling over

We're yet to see it yet, but Abacus can rollover, we came in to find her on her belly the other day and at about 2 this morning, while danielle was making her milk abacus was kicking around on her little pillow, then the next thing i here a slight thud and she's rolled off and is face down on the floor. hehe. But it's not surprising as her tummy time has yet again accelerated, these things just seem to happen over night with no gradual improvement, all of a sudden she's 20 times better than she was the day before. The pediatrician told us we weren't allowed to support her head any more when we walk around, that may have contributed too. I've been taking her in the front pack facing outwards now, and she really enjoys it, she makes little kicking movements as though she's walking. hehe.

Mahia

Abacus went to the pediatrician last week and he said she was doing above average for her age which is awesome, that's for any child of her age. She's growing really tall, and has pretty much quadrupled in weight since she was born.

This weekend, seems our car is about to expire we decided to take it on one last road trip up to Mahia, or Morere more specifically, just south of Gisborne. Abacus woke us up nice and early on sunday morning and we were on the road by 6. She travelled really well, sleeping a lot of the way. We got to Waipukerau in time for coffee, for which Danielle had two vouchers for free coffee that were slipped into her wallet when it was sent back to us after we forgot it at the same cafe a year ago. We made it by mid afternoon, we were given this cute as one bedroom cabin situated on some farm land with sheep running around. The owners were really friendly farmer types and they had a cute wee dog named socks. Did I mention it rained the whole way ? It was a really gloomy rainy day, but monday was meant to be good. We all took a quick nap before heading over to the thermal pools, which boasted "fosilized water", as the water takes thousands of years of travelling through the earth before resurfacing again, all toasty warm at these little pools, it's supposed to have therautic qualities from in it's mineal richness. It was a realy nice little bush walk to get to them. I was a bit skeptical of Abacus enjoying herself in the pools but she was really calm and loved it heaps, for way longer than I had expected, but then she was suddenly hella tired and began screaming! So we had to dash back to the cabin and try and get her to sleep, if she msses her sleep window she can be really pissed, and she was, but after maybe 10 minutes or so she was all of a sudden happy and cute before finally drifting off to sleep. The bed was so comfortable that we just crashed out, and being in the country, the darkness was impenetrable and the heavy rain on the thin roof made our little warm cabin all the more cosy.

The next morning was as blue and perfect as the weather mystics had predicted, they must have slaughtered the right amount of chickens. And we drove off to explore the beaches around mahia. It was a beautiful area of the country, we had not been there before, the coast line was long and sraight and lay at the bottom of where the green hills ended at a neatly hewn precipice. There were also perfectly still estuaries that were perfect mirror pools of the sky and hills. We drove to Napier for lunch, to see if a cafe where we'd had lunch 4 years before was till there (sadly it wasn't - but its a mongolian barbarque now - oddly a couple of years ago danielle and i became obsessed with mongolia so it wasn't so sad after all (however, it should be noted that mongolian barbarque is not really a native mongolian practice, it's actually only found outside of mongolia)) Anyway, on the way to Napier the car began to overheat, so we had to drive with the heater on, and it was already a realy hot day, so it was tough going. It continued to overheat leaving napier (a town that seemed just a little too kid friendly - and really, who cares about art deco? If it was that good wouldn't they still be designing in that style ? It should be renamed the kitsch capital of the world) and so we were really really hot, I stopped to check the water again - which had already filled up and the bonnet (hood) wouldn't close properly, so I had to pound it shut with my fist in the forecourt of the petrol station but it got us back to Wellington.

Just as we got to the hutt however we hit a massive traffic jam, and crawled along for a good 15 minutes and found the cause of the hold up was some hunting day, there were all these possum and deer carcasses strung up, hahaha, only in the hutt.

a curious incident 2

oh and a funny incident. Danielle met her friend at a cafe at university and while they were talking a stranger came up and was like "oh, a baby! I love babies" and she held abacus and stuff. But then, a couple of days ago, danielle was metting the same friend, at a different cafe, all the way accross the other side of town, and they were just returning to the car and putting abacus in and she must have mentioned abacus' name because the same lady from the other cafe appeared and was like "Did I hear someone say Abacus?" hehe

it's not the only time either that abacus has overshadowed us, we went to t he same restaurant two fridays in a row and i paid the same waitress, but it wasn't until she saw abacus that she recognised us, "she saw her in her pushchair and was like "I remember you" and then recognised us. 

up till now

hrm. well what's happened. 

well we're nearing I think 6 months of interrupted sleep cycles, which has left me feeling a little like a CIA interrogation victim, ask me anything and I'll tell you.

but abacus is so worth it. a few weeks ago her hands found each other and now she's constantly clutching them together as though she has some plan she is hatching. And she gets a huge gummy smile, especially when you dance her around, she talks a lot, mainly in the mornings, but she also quietly talks herself to sleep, you hear her in the darkness making soft noises and then suddenly silence.

She is 5.5kg's so has gained a really really good amount of weight since she was born, and she is growing long too, she's so baby sized now, i feel as though we were given an extra amount of time with her, we got to know her as a fetus, and now as a baby, but I can already see she will not be a baby for long. 

Danielle got her a bouncenette, it's a strap in chair one, and she seems to really enjoy sitting up, she always has, really, almost as much as she likes being walked around. I think she will be quite determined to get mobile as soon as she can.

She loves eating too. We've given her pears and apples and mangos and avacado and she loves it all, she's getting much better at opening her mouth for the spoon and biting down on it. 

more later

i have the chessiest most unoriginal way to put abacus to sleep. you just say shhhhhhh shhhhhh over and over and watch her eyelids slowly drop, it's like hypnosis, suspense that ends with falling asleep. how oxymoronic. she just gets more and more animated, she loves being on the move all the time and doesn't care to much for being still. she's getting better at eating her pears and apples, though i think she likes pears more. she's been eating lot s of milk too and has outgrown her crib so now we've made up a makeshift bed which will have to do until we get a bigger place on our return from thailand.

for thailand we have a travel playcrib thing, which folds up like a tent - complete with mosquito net. it's going to be sooooo hot there and humid so we'll have to watch her fluids and see how she reacts.

last week abacus and I accompanied danielle to her award ceremony at university where she was awarded an outstanding volunteer certificate, yay! that was a day after she was accepted into the masters program for international relations, it was a pretty awesome week. We then decided that because we couldn't go to panama this summer that we would take the opportunity offered by danielle's victoria international leadership program to help burmese refugees on the border of Thailand and Burma. It sounds like an amazing experience and as we are already familiar with Thailand we think it'll be a really good introduction to traveling with Abacus.

Then on saturday Abacus had her sleep over which had been deferred from last week. She had a really good time, and slept really well. She spent all morning there too, hanging out with Zen and Reiden and Kaysey, while we slept, waking up once in the middle of the night with a minor hit of disorientation, before realising I could just go back to sleep. It was really good to see her again the next day and we had both missed her.

Yesterday Abacus had more shots. Danielle said she's never heard her scream so loud or for so long ! it was so bad one of the nurses had to leave the room. poor bubba. she's all good now though, she slept it off.

the apples and pears to heaven

Abacus is eating pears now and she likes it way more than rice cereal. She was supposed to go for her first sleep over on saturday night with a baby named Zen, but she was acting a bit strange, crying a lot, sleeping an hour here and there, and needing a lot of cuddles so we weren't sure what was going on, if she were teething or if she had caught something, so we had to call it off, but something fun came out of it, because we found out that Zen had had the same problem with rice cereal as Abacus did, and that he preferred vanilla custard instead - hehe. we hapened to have some pear babyfood in the pantry (which actually wasn't bought for Abacus) and so we tried it out on her and she seemed to enjoy it, she ate every last bit, well you know tongued it and swallowed and didn't cry about it which means -  good! and so now we bought a bunch of apples and pears and have been giving her them as an accompaniment to her milk. Also on sunday -  she's probably been able to do this a while but Danielle just gave it her on sunday - she was holding a rattle and shaking it round, with the occasional bop on the head, but no tears. It was pretty cute. (see photos)

growth

abacus really wants to suck her thumb, she s getting pretty good at it but it's still to small to replace her beloved dummy, usually she just shoves as many fingers as she can in there. We think she's been having a growth spurt lately which has disrupted her sleeping at night, and her getting to sleep, she gets over tired and cries a lot  and ends up smacking herself in the face which makes her cry more, all we can do is try to soothe and comfort her. But she makes up for it by being super cute the rest of the time. Oh yeah, she also love getting up at 6am, she's not hungry or anything, she just wants to be up, and t's not enough just to lay in the bed with us, despite the fact she can only lay down whereever she is, she knows the difference between laying on our bed and laying out in the living room, where she kicks excitedly and gurgles happilly knowing that she's succeeded in dragging us from our cosy slumber (this is usually after waking up at about 3am to eat tee hee) - no that's not exactly true, i can lay her down with her baby gym next to our bed and go back to sleep while she gets on to the business of pulling and grabbing and sucking her baby toys, quite contentedly.