bushbaby1

Sunday, December 24, 2006

Happy Holidays!


Hope you all have a happy and peaceful Christmas time with your loved ones. Maya is enjoying her family - all the Nielsens are together (Auntie Zoe has come from Vancouver and Uncle Jason from Melbourne) and she is getting handed from person to person. Tomorrow Noah, Maya and I are off to Brisbane to my cousin Melissa's house for Christmas and Boxing Day with my family. Alas, my sister, mother and father are far away, but that is just how the geography of our lives has unfolded.....

Happy times ahead to all of you!

Lots of love - Erica, Noah and Maya

Saturday, December 16, 2006

Teeth etc...


Maya's centre bottom teeth are just starting to break the surface! On Tuesday morning, I saw a little bit of one sticking through on the left side, and if you rub along the bottom gums you can feel a hint of sharpness. I hear the teeth can move up and down before they really poke through, but it is exciting nonetheless for us. However, I don't know how exciting Maya finds it - she seems okay but is feeding more frequently at night, if that could be at all possible. She's also chewing on her hand quite a bit more than usual, but other than that, she still seems happy.

On another note, we've had a technological breakthrough - webcam! Finally, my mother has been able to see Maya 'in the flesh' with the aid of video conversations. We had been discussing for months the possibility of webcamming, but it all seemed too hard, somehow. Last week I bit the bullet and bought a cheap-ish webcam, and Mom did the same the next day in Seattle. Wiithin 2 days we could see and hear each other across the Pacific - amazing! The picture is stilted and the sound delayed, but it's better than nothing...

This photo was taken by our good friend Kath, who came to see Maya for the first time a couple of weeks ago. We took Kath up to our rammed-earth-house-in-progress, and she snapped this one of Maya down the hallway. Congratulations, Kath, on your PhD. Yay, Dr Marles! We enjoyed the graduation on Monday night...

Thursday, December 07, 2006

Girls' Night Out

Ruth, Maya and I, along with some other Barkers Vale women, went out last night to the Annual Nimbin Women's Dinner at the Town Hall. This event raises money for women's projects in the area, in particular those that focus on domestic violence. What a wonderful night - great food, amazing women, lots of babies, good comedy, talented musicians - all with that unique Nimbin touch that you just don't find anywhere else in the world. My favourite was the comedian who sang (and danced through) a hilarious rendition of the song 'One Night in Bangkok', but changed the words to 'One Day in Labour ... Makes a Hard Woman Humble'....you had to see it to believe it.

Do you like Maya's gold sequin dress? Disco-baby. Thanks for the photo, Grandma Ruth.

Monday, December 04, 2006

Recent Happenings











Ok - I get the message! Sorry for the wait between posts, but we have been travelling yet again. We went to Sydney for 5 days (flew this time) for a conference, then to the US Consulate to get Maya's US passport (both Noah and I are US citizens - and Noah needed a passport, too), then to the Blue Mountains for Noah's research.

Maya is 6 1/2 months now, and is becoming brighter and more socially interactive each day. She is much more receptive to different people now, and smiles a lot. You may recall my earlier posts where at the early age of 3 months she would get startled and cry if handed to others, but that seems to have mostly subsided as she settles into her little being-ness.

As for sleeping, well....the little baby has gotten used to a pattern of waking about 3-4 times a night for a feed. I could keep going with this, but have decided to make some sort of change. I did buy a 'portacot' when I was pregnant, but have never dragged it out (the thought of all of this baby equipment and figuring out how it all works just seems too tiring sometimes!). We've set it up next to my side of the bed, and I am putting Maya in there when she goes to bed at night, and then letting her cry through the time when she would usually have her first night feed- which is somewhere between 11-12pm. I have only done this 2 nights now, and the crying usually lasts for about 5-10 minutes. It is hard, but I really don't think she needs that first feed. At one of her feeds later in the night, I pull her back into bed again, and sleep in with her in the morning. I love this time with her and can't quite give that up yet, nor do I feel I have to...BUT I would like to get her used to sleeping through without so many feeds, so any change feels good. We'll see how we go.

Enjoy the photos (Noah and Maya at the Three Sisters in the Blue Mountains - Sis, that's your shirt she has on; Maya enjoying a 'ride' on her dog Bindi).