Santé!

Angelina has said her first word!

We're teaching our kid well. Her Swiss GranPapa will be proud! Last night as we had dinner, Fredo and I clinked glasses and said "Santé!" Angelina smiled (she likes the sound of the clinking glass and the sound it makes afterwards) and said "Santé!" Then she picked up her sippy cup, hit my glass and said "Santé!"

Then of course she wouldn't stop :) (We do also say it when she sneezes, so it's not all wine related!)

Spoken like a true French-Swiss.

And another new friend

Update: Angelina was rather friendly with Juan, they shared mucus :(. Little Juan had a very slight cold when he was here, so his mom, Nicole, suctioned his nose. She wiped off the suction thingy, and was holding it. Well, she must have put it down because before we realized she even had it, Angelina had picked it up, put it in her mouth and was sucking. Great way to transmit bugs - boogers! Sure enough, about 55 hours later, she had a runny nose and was coughing. :( Fortunately it didn't last long and she's fine now.

Ah, sharing boogers!


Angelina is used to being the 'baby' and the star of the show. She had to share the spotlight this weekend with little Juan Manuel, our friends' 2 month old. Angelina was quite intrigued by little Juan, but not sure he felt the same. She did really well, even though the concept of 'gentle' doesn't mean much to hear yet.

Angelina has a new friend

Although Chakapu isn't so sure....

Our neighbors went away for 2 weeks so we took care of their cat, Perseus. Now, we know Perceus well as this is the cat we brought home from the babysitter, then gave to the neighbors. Percy often goes outside and plays with Chakapu, he even comes in our house. Chakapu normally doesn't care. That was until she had to put up with him overnight. Chakapu was NOT happy. We awoke often to crashes in the night from two cats fighting.

Perceus, however, is excellent with kids. He's used to the two older kids (2 and 5) playing with him. Chakapu, on the other hand, had not been so interested in Angelina. So when Perceus let Angelina "pet" him (more like grab his fur) and was clearly getting lots more attention, Chakapu started coming closer to Angelina and letting Angelina grab her fur. Chakapu still isn't so sure about all this, but Perceus could care less, he was having fun with Angelina.

Our little Beauty Queen

She thinks she's a model. As soon as the camera comes up, she flashes her eyes and smiles.
However she doesn't like hats. No matter what I do, she'll rip them off immediately. This one she actually kept on for a few minutes!

The little stinkypoo

That's my new name for our little stinker. No, not because she stinks, because she's too clever for her own good (or at least ours!).

She's never been a big fan of bottles, and the only one she'd take was the Playtex "drop ins," the kind with the disposable bag. (Actually, it wasn't the bottle but the nipple that mattered). Fast forward 7 months. She takes the bottle fine, but she prefers using it as a weapon.

She grabs the bottom end, aims it around the back of the car (I usually give it to her on the drive home), squeezes the bag and squirts milk all over the back seat! The babysitter said she does that at daycare too, but she aims it around the room. It's a big game to her. She just think it's hysterical.

My kid. She won't crawl, she doesn't *quite* have the pincer grasp down and seems to be lagging a tiny bit on some motor skills. But figure out how to use her bottle to take aim and squirt everyone? Yeah, she can do that.
(not quite squirting here, I couldn't manage to get a picture of her in action)

Let's just hope she doesn't take after mommy and find a contaner of tar.

My First Mother's Day

Thank you Angelina, for giving me a chance to celebrate it! I've waited a very long time for this, maybe not all 37 years but a good chunck of that time. Words can not express how excited I am. Not because we have anything particular planned. We'll do something fun, for sure, but it's not that. And yeah I'm exhausted and worn out and could surely use some 'me' time. But what do I want for Mother's Day? I want to hold my daughter and kiss her to pieces and play silly peek-a-boo games and make funny faces and just love the little creature who is responsible for this day.

I feel like the luckiest person on earth!

Here's a picture from her first few weeks, in her favorite position.

Our first - and hopefully ONLY - trip to the ER

We are still not sure what happened,but Angelina was weilding a large weight, er splint, for a few days. On Tuesday evening I noticed she wasn't using her left hand to eat, which she usually does, but thought nothing of it. She had been cranky all day at daycare, we figured she was teething and just in a bad mood. Then Wednesday evening Fredo noticed she wasn't picking up toys with her left hand. We tried to lift her arm and she screamed. Otherwise she was happy as a clam, but if you opened her clenched fist or moved her arm she let out a piercing scream. The babysitter said she hadn't seen anything happen, and we didn't notice any particular event.

Worried it was broken, we were off to the ER. We know this hospital all too well, and would prefer not to see it again for awhile. I figured since we were out of flu and RSV season, it shouldn't be too crowded. WRONG. It was packed. 4 hours, multiple X-rays and one splint later (and telling the 'story' umpteen times), we still had no clue what was wrong.

The doctor thought it might be Nursemaid's Elbow, but she didn't hear the 'pop' when she tried to manipulate it, just lots of screaming. Of course by then it was nearly 10 pm, so of course she was tired. Still, she was happy as can be when you didn't touch her arm. So they settled on putting it in a splint (her hand was SOOOOO stinky from having been clenching it/sweating for so long) and suggested a follow-up with the pediatrician in 2 days, not after scaring me by suggesting a possible neurological issue (unlikely because she had pain, but the mere mention freaked me out).


Her pedi pooh-poohed the suggestion of anything neurological, and suggested the X-ray procedure, which accompanied a great deal of screaming, actually popped the nursemaid's elbow back into place. So he removed the splint and suggested just watching her. By Friday night she was using her left hand again. She still favours her right, and will leave the left hanging at her side for a bit, but she's back to grabbing toys with both hands.

And she's happy as can be.

(side note: in my work I have to tell hospitals to evaluate their surge capacity in the event of an outbreak of pandemic flu. They need to consider using non medical rooms for treatment, such as conference rooms, offices, and yes, closets. Apparently this hospital has already done that: the room they put us in was very clearly a closet, but it worked!)