Home in the USA. June 22, 2007

We made it to the United States in one piece over the weekend, but it wasn’t easy. The trip from Senegal was broken up into two flights; the first one was about 9 hours and the second one was about 6. Maddie did great on the 9-hour flight, but had a complete meltdown on the 6-hour flight. I guess she simply decided that she had had enough.

We left Senegal right on time at 2:30 am and flew directly across the ocean to Atlanta, Georgia. Maddie slept for much of this flight, thankfully, and the times when she was not sleeping, she was an angel (she made “not a peep”, according to the South African rugby players seated in front of us). She was playful and not whiny at all.

For some strange unexplained reason, we were almost an hour late reaching Atlanta; the pilot never mentioned this and for us, it meant that there was no way we’d catch our connecting flight to Oregon. So we spent most of Father’s Day in the Atlanta airport, which actually wasn’t such a bad way to spend it, because it’s a really nice and comfortable facility. And in the end, it was probably much better for Maddie not to get directly onto another plane for 6 hours. She spent the day crawling around the airport and getting lots of exercise. As for mom and dad, we took turns napping once in a while. We arrived in Portland at 6:30 pm on a glorious cool early summer evening, and moved into our little bungalow for the summer. But that second flight was pure hell. No amount of soothing or playing could calm Madeline and particularly during the latter half of the flight (once we reached Nebraska), she screamed almost constantly.

Since our arrival in Portland, we’ve spent five delicious days doing virtually nothing; just lounging around, being with Madeline and each other, and simply unwinding after a most stressfull and complex end of the school year. Normally it takes me a few weeks to really unwind from school, and I can tell that this year will be no different. Maddie took a few days herself to unwind from the long travels as well.

Since she is such a poor sleeper to begin with, it is difficult to tell how the time difference has affected her (7 hours is not trivial!) She’s been just as stubborn as ever about sleeping but is sleeping more consistently at night, which leads me to believe that the time change is not a very big deal to her little body. But she has definitely not slept enough since we’ve been in Oregon.

Part of the reason for this is that she has a terrible cold right now too, her first ever (mom is just coming off of hers, and dad has had it for exactly as long as Maddie has). It’s hard to say whether we got it from mom, or someone on an airplane, or whatever, but needless to say it has been a pain in the butt. Maddie is very stuffed up and coughing a lot, to the point where she has absolutely no interest in eating anything (except breast milk). And she is generally pretty fussy about things. So yesterday we took her to a local pediatrician who looked at her and assured us that there is nothing to worry about – she has a simple common cold, like every baby gets once in a while, and it’s confined to only her sinuses. We are going back to see the doctor in a week for Maddie’s 9-month checkup (9 months now: WOW!) which is perfect timing for a follow-up with the cold. In the mornings pretty much all Maddie feels like doing is wrapping herself up in her favorite blanket and watching her Baby Einstein videos (see the picture).

We’ve been taking advantage of Mt Tabor park and have been taking Maddie on many walks since we’ve been here, at least one a day. She loves being outdoors and for her, Oregon is like a wonderland with all of its huge trees and bright green vegetation. We bought her a kiddie pool the first day we were here but so far it has been too cool to use it comfortably (other than crawling up to it and splashing the hands around in it). We are keeping Maddie bundled up a lot as the weather has been cold, at least for her. When we left Senegal it was getting very hot and humid, and the climate couldn’t be more different here.

No top front teeth yet! But we are still keeping a close eye on them.

Another big trip. June 14, 2007

Almost 9 months and rolling along! Unbeknownst to her, little Madeline is getting ready to travel aross the world again – this time to the west coast of the United States. Unfortunately, her night-time habits have taken a turn for the worse lately, and we are praying that they will ‘right’ themselves again over the next few nights.

At the beginning of the week, all three of us enjoyed two consecutive nights of uninterrupted sleep – all the way from 7:30 pm to 6:30 am. What bliss that was. But then this was followed by the worst sleeping night Maddie has probably ever had, at least while in Senegal. All of us slept only about 2-3 hours, and what made it unusually bad was the fact that she was fussy and crying all night (not the usual cute playful Maddie at 3:00 am). Fearing an illness of some sort, we started to worry, as all new parents would in such a situation. However, when she is awake during the day she is still her cheerful and playful self.

A few days later we discovered the source of our agony – her two top front teeth are just starting to push on her gums and are about to pop through. I wonder how long this will take? Those two top teeth seem much bigger than the bottom ones and I guess that’s why it has been more unpleasant for all of us. Also, she is now eating three hearty meals a day and still drinking tons of breast milk in between, which means that her stools are changing slowly but surely (unfortunately!). She has been constipated this week as well… and the icing on the cake is the fact that this is the last week of the school year and mom and dad are insanely busy during the days. There could not be a worse possible week for this to be happening at night. Ah, the joys of parenthood!

The weather is getting hot and humid again as the West African rainy season is starting to bear down on us.  Last night it rained in Dakar for the first time since October 2006, and the sky today was beautifully blue and clear.  Too bad we will miss the really big rains coming up.  Poor Maddie is not very used to the heat and humidity and her little head gets sweaty very quickly.

We’re saying our goodbyes to our friends in Senegal as we get ready to head back home for two months. Especially difficult is saying goodbye to Laye, Maddie’s very best friend. The two have become inseperable, and I worry about how Maddie will be when Laye takes her maternity leave next year for three months. That will be a crazy time for all of us.

And think about how different Maddie will be when she comes back in August! Laye will hardly recognize her.

Bon voyage!

Two teeth. June 3, 2007

One of the things you learn early on as a parent is how not to take any book seriously when it tells you at what age your child should be doing this and that… every baby is so different, you really have to take such information with a grain of salt. The good baby books make this disclaimer, but still there’s a feeling as a parent that your baby ought to be doing certain things at precise ages.

They say that babies teethe anywhere from 4 months to 12 months. That being the case, it’s easy to associate any fussy periods, poor sleep, and anything else undesireable to the fact that the baby is teething. For Maddie, we’ve felt that she has been on the verge of teething for a while now. For the past two weeks her lower front gums were hard and whitish. Then, suddenly on Monday May 28, two teeth appeared on the same day! Very exciting. That would make her first teeth at exactly 8 months and 4 days.

She’s now 8.5 months and really rolling. She is a lightning-fast crawler, and gets into just about everything she can get into. Since we are going to the United States soon, we are putting off the process of ‘baby-proofing’ our apartment until we get back, if possible. There are things about our apartment that would make an experienced parent gasp; lots of extension cords under furniture, etc. Why is it that little babies want to get into only those things that are most dangerous? Do they look more fun to play with, or do they just know that they shouldn’t be into these things?

I still think Madeline will be an early walker. She crawls everywhere with such ease that it bores her, and spends more of her time standing up on things. She is even consistently trying to free stand (without the aid of a chair or leg!) with shocking progress. She knows how to walk but just can’t quite do it yet… watching her put one foot in front of the other when helping her by holding her hands above her head is hilarious.

Her sleeping is still all over the place, and just when we think we have her mysteries figured out, she changes on us. For example, two nights last week found me feeding her a warm bottle of breast milk at 1:00-2:00 am, and getting her back to sleep in her own crib (instead of the usual bringing her into our bed with us at that time). I thought, ‘finally we have this figured out!’, but the next night, she would not take a bottle at this hour and would only accept the real thing in our bed. Since then, she’s been our our bed just about every night by midnight. I was out of town last week for two nights, and Maddie’s mom had a pretty nightmarish couple of nights, up several times.

But now I think we really have it figured out . Last night at dinner, we made sure that she ate a lot… in fact, it was more than I have ever seen her eat in one sitting (by the way, this is a pretty discriminating eater, a girl who prefers one brand of spinach to another, who never

seems to like the same food two days in a row, yet always manages to eat something). We had heard recently from another mom that the more her babies ate, the better they slept. Anyway, last night Maddie slept for over 8 hours on her own, then woke up only one at 5:00 am to feed and go back to sleep. Will this be repeated tonight? Stay tuned!