Da Keiki Blog

Our trip to California had 2 sides – it was wonderful to see old friends again, refeshing to hike and walk in moderate weather, and Leilani enjoyed the walkable neighborhood in Santa Cruz so close to the beach.

The other side was that the houseswap did not work out as planned. When house swapping with a baby it is extremely important to have privacy, private space, and the ability to spread out, and that’s just not compatible with roommates…. but that’s a different post. At least the people seemed nice enough, and they left our house clean and as they found it.

The rest was great. Leilani was really good on the flight to California, napped for a while, played, looked at books and magazines. At the house, she adored the little boy who lived there, and didn’t seem to mind that it was a one-sided affair :-) There were new toys and books for her to play with. One of the two sisters there was actually very nice (the one whose boyfriend does not have gang tatoos all over the visible parts of his body). The days we stayed in Santa Cruz we walked right out the door after breakfast and saw the Monarch butterflies arriving day by day at Natural Bridges State Park:

Hiking and playing at Natural Bridges State Park

Leilani learned to do grafitti on rock at the beach with charcoal, enjoyed the many dogs on the coastal path, and the many large birds to watch at the beaches. We got to see Lisa several times, not her dog Buddy.

I took it very easy the first few days, mostly walking around, to Wilder Ranch, the Lighthouse, Natural Bridges parks and helping Leilani adjust to the climate. We were very happy to keep her on Kauai time, so she stayed up later and we could go out for dinner.

Birds at Ano Nuevo

Birdwatcher at Ano Nuevo

Raghbir, Bhupinder, and their 8 month-old Amelia visited us on Thursday, unfortunately I forgot to take pictures of the adults:

Ray drove up from Ojai near LA on Friday, and we had several nice walks: Natural Bridges again, the Santa Cruz Boardwalk, and in the evening at the Neary Lagoons.

Saturday we had a potluck picnick at the rosegarden in San Jose, and met many of our old friends there. I hope very much Anant or someone else took photos and will email them to me so I can post them.

We spend the rest of the weekend in San Francisco with Ruwan, meting Thelan and his new girlfriend Moira too. Monday I stayed in town to visit the Austrian Consulate in the financial district for Leilani’s Austrian citizenship. Leilani was very astounished abouth the high buildings and seemed fascinated in general.

Leilani rides a lion at Sutro Heights Park

Cypresses in San Francisco, near Seal Rock

Meeting Thelan in San Francisco

We got a very nice carrier for Leilani, and Andy took Tuesday off, and we went hiking in Ano Nuevo

Thursday we visited Andy at work, Leilani even had a guest badge

On the last weekend we went backpacking (hiking and camping) in Castle Rock State Park with our friends, and I’ll post the whole article as soon as I am done with the photos.

Sunday we went to Fry’s electronics store with Ruwan, had dinner with Connie and Michelle, and a late-night visit with Kit and Odem. Leilani went to bed past 11pm, and had to get up at 5:30 for the flight back home.

With Connie and Michelle:

Mirror, Mirror on the wall…

Odem, the cat

We are back from California! A lot of things changed while we were there, I’ll write a separate post about the rest, but the biggest change was food.

Leilani was a great eater when we first introduced solids, but recently her enthusiasm had faded. She never liked food that came out of the baby jars, but in the last 6 weeks or so she refused them most the time. She was not so big on fruit anymore either, she mainly wanted avocado, fresh veggies (not frozen), flax-oatmeal cereal, and soybeans.

Unfortunately when we went to California we were busy the evening before and the day of the flight, and at the end of the flight Leilani had eaten (or I should say not eaten…) from baby food glasses for the last 36 hours. We arrived at 10pm – and she was hungrier than we were. Of course most restaurants were closed, but we found a little Mexican place – I figured they’d have rice and avocado. They did – just the Mexican rice is spiced with garlic, onions, tomatoes… and salted. Leilani just loved it. The waiter, the cleaning lady and a couple eating at the table next to us all commented on Leilani’s appetite. I felt a little guilty, about the salt, but there was no easy way out.

Restaurant Crew at Sri (source: MetroActive.com, Stephen Laufer)

The next 2 meals were fresh steamed veggies, and rice cereal with flax, she ate so-so, but for dinner we went to a Sri Lankan restaurant – “Sri”. Leilani screamed in protest when I tried to feed her baby food, and I was so embarrassed… I let her taste the cauliflower from my curry, and she ate it all. She also ate 1/2 of Andy’s salmon and a lot of rice. The waitresses were really happy with her, and even the cook came out to play with her. She made a huge mess with the rice though.

Sri became our favorite restaurant. we went there 5 times, and Leilani tried all their veggies, fish, chickpeas and rice dishes. She loved every one of them. We let her eat Chinese food at the potluck and at a Dim Sum place in San Francisco, and American food (Salmon, rice and greasy but very tasty veggies) at Carrows. We had more Mexican food. All we tried was to get rice centered meals, it made the trip so much easier…

I once picked several apples from a tree, started to eat one and stashed the rest in the sling which I used to carry Leilani. She took one out and seriously started to eat it. She had gnawed on apples before, but usually given up after a few tiny bites, not on this one! See the result in this photo.

Now of course there is no going back. I steamed her some peas the other day – and she took one bite… I made pea sauce with them, spiced it with garlic, and she ate 1/2 of what I cooked (intended for all 3 of us!!!) Same with broccoli carrots and okra, which we ate with peanut sauce (she can not have peanuts yet) while she was sleeping. Maybe 4 bites. Andy fried it up in olive oil with soy sauce, and she ate it all. We introduced wheat, and she had pasta with pesto and vegetables, home baked bread (whole wheat and spelt with flax and basil) with guacamole.

Next week I’ll introduce corn, and then peanuts I guess, I’ll just space the known allergens a little, but I am so happy that she eats adult food. We’ll prepare food a little more consciously, especially go easy on the salt, but I’m not even feeling guilty anymore, just relieved. I would not want Dr Ancharski to read the post though… I guess I should say only a little guilty…

And an anthropological observation as a sideline: People living on Kauai usually ask “How long do you plan to nurse?”. Europeans ask “Are you still nursing?” (Often surprised) and in San Jose I got several “How long did you nurse” and “Did you nurse her?”

When we got up today around 7:30am Leilani had slept more than 30 out of the previous 39 hours. She went to bed at 4pm (16:00), slept until 5am, got diapered and played a little and went back to sleep for 2 more hours at 6:30. 11:30 she fell asleep again (while I carried her) for over an hour, and at 5pm (17:00) went to bed to sleep until 7:30 am.

Today she had 2 naps again – I woke her up from both of them, the earlier one inadvertently, I was carrying her and had to sit down, the later one on purpose , because it was 5pm already and I feared she wanted to start her nightsleep. She went to bed at almost 8pm.

Well I guess nobody complains if a baby sleeps to much, but I worry a little. I’ll call Dr Ancharski tomorrow, even though otherwise she does not seem sick, just fussier and moodier than usually. I think it is from the vaccination she got on Wednesday, hopefully she is over it by now.

Leilani’s second pair of teeth were the top two in front, but they were hard to see because she rarely moved her upper lip high enough. Now they are long enough to see when she smiles, and I’ve been trying to get a picture of them. Here they are finally, today at the beach (I apologize to my subjects for these bad portraits, the light at noon at the beach is so strong and vertical):

And sometimes, when she smiles real big, we can see all four teeth.

In that last photo, you can see the next two teeth just starting to break the gums on either side of the top-front two. So that may be the only photo with four teeth.

After baby-proofing all the kitchen cupboards, Leilani would watch us open them and want to check them out. Now that she can crawl, she would see us open a cupboard, crawl over, and we’d have to close it in her face. Then she would pull at the door, and we were afraid she would learn that the baby latches aren’t very strong, and then she could get into all the cupboards.

We’d read that the solution is to make a cupboard for the baby and teach her to open that one. So we emptied out the bottom shelf of our pantry cupboard and put some of her toys in there. She figured out how to open it and crawl inside, so we try to rotate the toys to keep her interested. She once got into the plastic yogurt containers and seemed to enjoy them, so we put them in for her, too. And finally, Mommy had a really good idea to keep her busy: she put some of her favorite puffed cereal inside a little see through plastic container.

After playing in her cupboard several times, Leilani knows the puffs are always in there, and she goes looking for them. Now that she knows to look for them, we put them all the way in the back. So now she has to rummage a lot to find them, and she throws a lot of stuff out on the floor. Once she finds the puffs, she plays with the container a while before getting frustrated, and then one of us opens it for her (and refills it later). We tried showing her how to open the plastic container, but she can’t do it yet–but we did find teeth marks on it: