Christmas Part 2

Araminta also helped Daddy open his present.

Then she got to open another one of hers. This one was from Ruth’s Mum.

Great excitement over a blank book and some crayons, which were put to good use immediately.

Thank you Grandma!

Christmas

Araminta was a little more aware of Christmas this year.

Here she is Christmas Eve spending some quality time with the cat.

On Christmas morning, Jeff cooked pancakes.  Araminta was very happy to eat pancakes…

…until she tasted the fresh blueberries. Then she only wanted blueberries for breakfast.

After breakfast, we opened presents. First the Christmas stocking:

Bubble bath, because Araminta loves having baths.

Then we opened the presents under the tree:

She needed some help to get the presents open:

But there was success in the end:

There are lots of other photos, so I’ll break Chrstmas day into two parts. We really missed not being at home with family this year.

Scrapbooking

My friend Kerin, is a fabulous scrapbooker, and she has been sending me supplies to encourage me to begin. I’m finding it a lot of fun and recently created some new pages for Araminta’s scrapbook

She loves looking at herself in the book.

A day out

We had fabulous weather on Sunday, so we took Araminta for a drive up the coast. We are lucky to live in a really beautiful part of South Africa

We took this picture on the way home, if you look closely you can see the snow at the tops of the mountains. It’s been cold here!

Araminta has a hiking backpack that we were given by friends who emigrated, most of the time she likes it. She actually fell asleep in it on Sunday.

Jeff went off bird hunting for a while, so Araminta and I sat and waited for him.

I spent a lot of time saying: “Not in your mouth, we don’t eat rocks”.

Hope you enjoyed seeing Araminta’s day out.

8 months and three weeks

We’ve begun letting Araminta choose her own clothes when we go shopping. On Friday we needed to buy her some more warm pjs. Since she’s grown out of a few. Jeff held up a pink one and a blue one. There was no question: she lunged for the blue – so here’s our little girl blue in her car pjs that she chose herself.

Ruth finished a new quilt last night. Araminta gave it a road test this morning.

It was hard to get a picture because she kept crawling off it.

Today is Father’s Day here in South Africa, so Araminta and I are going to take Jeff out for lunch.

8 months 2 weeks – The weekly photo

Kerin reminded me that it’d been two weeks since we’d updated Araminta’s site. Sorry, life got away from us

Araminta is now standing every chance she gets. I love this picture – she looks like such a big girl.

The knitted ball and the crocheted cardigan were both gifts from Mummy’s internet friends.

The really good news is that I heard this week that the internet start-up company would like to keep me on when my contract ends. So folks, it looks like we will be able to afford to come home at the end of the year after all!!

Playing and eating…

Kerin recently sent a bear and some other goodies over for Araminta. The bear laughs when you press his hand, and although she was a little unsure of him at first he is now a firm favourite at play time.

Examining bear closely.

Hugging bear while posing for Mummy. I love how serious she is in this picture.

She’s sitting quite well on her own now.

Here, she really starts to play with bear

and loses her balance…

Araminta has quite an independent streak, here she is wiping her own face after dinner.

First Braai

 

Araminta went to her first braai on Friday. We were celebrating a friend’s birthday by roasting a lamb on a spit.

Here she is enjoying the atmosphere with Mummy.

and with Daddy

She was remarkably well behaved.

One of Mummy’s friends took this picture of her

On Saturday afternoon Araminta went on a picnic with the students from the Language School where Mummy used to work and with the visiting tour group from Khazakhstan.

There are no pictures because she slept the whole time.

Here is a little hat that Mummy made.

In other news, Araminta has now regained her birth weight. It only took her a little over 3 weeks to do. Don’t worry though, she’s not going hungry. She feeds well and often.

Last night was good, she went down at about 10.30 – 11 and then woke at 2.30 and then at 5.30. Mummy is not a morning person, luckily I’m able to go back to sleep once it’s light. Araminta is quite good at night, she usually has a feed and then goes straight back to sleep, which is a blessing. Mind you there have been nights when this hasn’t been the case, and it’s usually close to midnight before she actually goes to sleep.

Araminta got two parcels today – somebody is a spoilt girl. She was sent a gorgeous teddy bear from her Great-Aunty Linda (Ruth’s mum’s sister) and some cute clothes, and one of Ruth’s internet friends sent her some Gorgeous handknitted booties, a handmade bib with turtles in batik on it and a very cute sock-monkey zebra. Picture to follow in the next post.

22 Week Scan

Had the second scan with the ultrasound machine from Star Trek. The technology is pretty amazing–and the doctor even threw in two 3D pics for free–of course we had waited over 30mins past our scheduled appointment as there was some sort of emergency telephone consultation taking place. Everything is fine–no defects of any kind are visible & the placental function is also fine. The placenta is still a little low but it shouldn’t be a problem. The kid is lying transversely which is fine for now but if a shift doesn’t take place it will mean a caesarean.