And in other news...

Suddenly this month we haven't just been new parents, but we've had a whole load of other things taking up our time too.  Life has been so busy that looking back on the month we've hardly taken any photos and hardly done anything beyond Leila, cook, work and sleep!

For me this month saw the IB TOK Marking come online and suddenly I went from working one day a week at school, to working every free minute trying to mark 170 essays before my 1 May deadline.  The first challenge was getting back into the TOK mindset and getting my head around the essay titles posed and the mark scheme.  I did a series of practise scripts and two sets of qualification scripts before I was moved on to 'live' marking.  I knew that I had to average 7 scripts a day to get to my target on time and luckily I managed to exceed this some days so made the deadlines with enough time.  There is no way that I would have been able to get the marking done if Leila hadn't changed her sleeping patterns.  Every 30 minute nap in the cot meant I could mark one paper and without being so tired from constant wakings in the night I knew that I could mark once she had gone to bed too.  At the weekends Scotty would look after Leila for the day while I marked in the other room.  Although it was tiring and utterly time consuming, it was excellent professional development and I'm really glad I was able to do it (and the bit of cash will pay for our summer flights home).

The way we spend our evenings once Leila has gone to bed has also changed with my new dairy-free diet.  Previously we would cook up a big meal once a week and then have this for a few nights and then order in the other days or cook a simple meal.  As we can't be sure that what we are ordering in has not been cooked with dairy, we have needed to cook every meal ourselves.  Because you can't get 'ready meals' out here either, we have been cooking everything from scratch.  We have had some lovely healthy food with loads of fresh, seasonal veg in it, but it has been tiring to have to buy fresh, prepare and cook every night.

Scotty has had a huge amount of work on these last four weeks with the school production of Les Mis.  He spent hours and hours preparing the music when Leila was first born (and we were up all hours anyway!) but since January has been able to have a little break from it all.  This month though saw weekend rehearsals and the usual jam-packed final few days trying to get everything just right.  It was all worth it though because they pulled it off and as a school managed to stage not a school-version, but a west-end version of Les Mis.

Now though the production is over, I've finished my marking and the last day of term as been and gone.  We've made it through the second term, we've made it through six months with Leila and we're finally having a few days to ourselves as a family here and our first 'holiday' holiday in years - five days in Luxor.  Phew!

BLW

We decided to try Baby Led Weaning (BLW) with Leila as her introduction to solids. This means that we give her the food that we are eating in chip-shaped pieces so that she learns to chew then swallow, rather than the other way around with purees. We think this will be fun (we know it will be messy!) and we hope that it will mean we eat well, and that she eats well and enjoys food.

Leila's first food was sweet potato.  The first time we gave it to her she mashed it in her fist and then licked it from her hands, but the second time she stuck the sticks in her mouth a bit more and attempted some biting and chewing.  We're not sure if she likes it (!) she just seemed amazed to taste a taste on her tongue!

Happy Half-day Leila! Leila's sixth month

It seems like a lot has changed (again?!) for Leila this month.  Our daily (and evening) routine is very different from what it used to be and she is growing into a little person now.

Sleeping
Last month sleeping was not so great, as Leila was up loads in the night and would only go back to sleep if she was fed.  After a few really tough nights (and a constant strong will on our part) we are now at the point where Leila will fall asleep herself if we put her into her bed when she is tired.  This is pretty huge for us!  She still needs to wake in the night to eat, but this is normally once some time between 1 - 3am and then she wakes in the morning around 5 - 6am.  Although a lie in would be nice (!) it's lovely to get Leila up and for her to spend some time with Scotty before school.
This change in falling asleep has also meant that we are now able to put Leila down in her cot for naps.  This is beyond huge for us, as before this I was taking three walks a day for Leila to sleep in the sling (each walk being at least an hour for her to have a half-hour nap).  Her nap time is between 35-45 minutes three times a day (sometimes sneaking an extra fourth one in in the buggy at the end of the day if she has napped early!).  There have been a few times that she has managed a 90 minute nap which has been amazing for getting things done around the house!
Leila can sleep in the sling or the buggy if she is tired - like on the way home from Baby Group - but to stay asleep she needs to keep moving so we use these options if we are on the go. 


Tabibi
We had another poop incident that worried us this month which has led to quite a few changes.  We found blood in Leila's poop and so took samples to the lab and the doc.  After lots of too-ing and fro-ing with the lab (her mucous levels were off the scale according to one sample, but then were normal according to the next one) and the doc, he diagnosed a likely milk intolerance for Leila.  It might seem odd that an intolerance is being diagnosed five months in (!), but the doc had suggested it as a possibility some time ago.  At the time I did cut back on the amount of dairy I was having and switched to soy milk, but now I have gone entirely dairy-free in my diet (and after an omelet one evening, I am now need to limit eggs to once a week too).  We think this has made a change in her poop and it seems to have made a change in her too as she is generally happy (although this could just be a coincidence).  She is still 'sicky' sometimes after a feed, but we are trying to pin this down using a food diary for me and a poop/sicky diary for her!


Feeding
Leila is getting better at feeding 'properly' and waiting between feeds rather than 'snacking'. She still struggles to feed at Baby Group or if there are any other distractions like me talking.
Feeding for me though has become more of a challenge!  There have been two big challenges with going dairy-free.  The first being that a lot of my standard snacks/lunches involved dairy, and the second being that we have to cook everything from scratch rather than ordering in!  It's been good for the amount of fruit and veg that I am eating, but cooking has been a bit of a challenge because my free time during the day has been taking up with marking this month. Thank goodness we didn't have anyone bring us out easter eggs - that might have driven me over the edge!
All of the other babies her age at Baby Group have started solids this month, but we haven't done yet.  This is partially because we have been waiting for her to sit up on her own as we would like to do Baby Led Weaning, and partially because the doc has been monitoring her progress each week on my new diet.  We're the only ones at Baby Group who aren't doing purees, but we're happy to give this BLW idea a go as it seems fun and friends have said that it leads to less-fussy eaters.


Playing
Leila has really changed in her playing this month, with the major thing being that last week she began to sit up by herself.  It's really great to be able to sit with her for 'play time' and it feels so much more interactive compared to her lying down.  Although we use the playmat with arches still for lying on her back, she spends half her time on it sitting up and playing with the toys dangling at eye-height.
Now that Leila can sit up she wants to do it all the time (!) and so when she is on her back she is always pulling her head forward and holding her arms out for you to help her up.  When she is in her bouncer this translates to pulling herself forward using the toys for leverage.  Although we still use it sometimes she really is too big for it now and so we decided to get the next stage toy for her... a walker/activity-station!  It is a rather dear import from Mothercare, but we know that it will be good and will last a fair while and we have got all other 'big' items second handout here, so spending a bit more isn't a problem.  She seems to enjoy it but hasn't quite figured out all the toys on it yet. 
Leila really loves it when Scott plays the guitar and so every evening they have 'music time'.  This includes Bohemian Rhapsody - a favourite from when she was just weeks old - some Tom Paxon songs that Scott remembers having a tape of when he was little and one of our own creations: the Captain Calamari song.
We are buying lots more books now and are gradually developing a little collection.  Leila mainly likes to eat the books and so we have been buying thick card books for her that will survive a little chewing.  She has recently learnt to turn the pages in a book and is fascinated by the fact that it is different on both sides of the page - this means we don't actually read the book, but end up turning the same page back and forth for about five minutes!
 Leila has started to hug us now when we hold her and it's great to have her wrap her arms around our necks. When Scotty comes home from work if I am holding her then she will look at him and smile and then will turn away and put her head into my shoulder in a coy way, before turning back to see him with an even bigger grin!

Leila's eyes are still blue and everyone always comments on how beautiful and big they are.  She just loves to stare silently and watch everything that is going on around her.  Although she can babble, Leila is often quiet.  Sometimes though, when she is in the right mood, she will become really high pitched and will shriek with joy!  Leila's hair has started to grow too and she has some (relatively) long whispy bits on her crown.  It's coming through blonde and as it grows she is gradually loosing her worn 'bald' patches.  The strawberry birth mark on her chest is starting to break up and is less raised now.  It will still bhere for a good few years we expect, but it's amazing that it has started to go down already.

Third Christmas

Leila celebrated her third Christmas Day today.  Those was an exciting day already as  JT w yuas cooking which is always uu

Nok nok! Who's there? High chair!

As Leila approaches the six-month mark, we've been increasingly thinking about what to do when she starts on solids.  We've been considering the different approaches to introducing food, but a key factor in whatever we decide is getting a high chair.  For the past couple of weeks she's been sitting at the table in a brilliant clamp-on seat that the P's brought out at Christmas and, while it's a great design and Leila likes being in it, the length of the clamps and the way they attach to our table mean that she won't be able to reach her food.

 

We've therefore decided we need to get a dedicated high chair.  If we were in the UK we'd probably pop off to Ikea and get their bog-standard Antilop model for £16, but as Ikea hasn't opened here yet (and bringing one in from the UK isn't going to be possible any time soon) we've needed to look for what's available here.

 

Our first stop was the trusty Mothercare catalogue we picked up from the Citystars branch back in September.  The thinking was that looking online would probably bring up a load of models that you can get in the UK but can't get in Egypt.  We were right.  Having identified a couple of models in the catalogue Alice therefore went to the Citystars branch with Leila to see what they had.  They didn't even have the range listed in their catalogue.  We’d particularly had our eye on this - http://www.stokke.com/en-gb/highchair/tripp-trapp-product-concept.aspx – a very clever chair design that ticks lots of boxes for us, and which we thought we might be able to get out here because it’s a big brand. However, even after trying a range of baby shops nowhere seems to have it or anything similar.  Therefore last night we spent a while discussing our options and settled on a model from Mothercare that would cost us 1100LE.  In the UK it would be half that.

 

Now, we've always said that the quality of locally made Egyptian crafts is fantastic, although we've usually been talking about soft furnishings or ouds.  However, we've just got back from seeing something new.  We were given the heads-up about www.noknokgoodwood.com by a friend from baby group, who has bought furniture for her son’s room from them. Having seen the website we were expecting to take one look at the price-tag and walk away but...wow...it’s amazing.

 

The thing that really attracted us to visit was this photo on their website:

 

Nok Nok's chair - handbuilt in Egypt

 

Compare that chair to this:

 

The original Stokke chair - probably built on an assembly line in China

 

That's right - Nok Nok do an exact copy of the chair! We went, we saw, we ordered. 700LE for the chair (in natural finish), and another 150LE for a custom built tray table with integrated harness.  Altogether, it's costing us less than the Mothercare chair we were going to resort to.  Admittedly some of the measurements of the Nok Nok version might be a bit different from the original, so that may limit the range of 'official' accessories we can get, but having played with it in the showroom we are very very happy.  It's being custom built, and should be with us in 2-3 weeks.

 

Leila checks out Nok Nok's version of the Tripp Trapp chair

 

 

So there you have it - local craftsmanship wins again!

Sleepy

We have been working on Leila's sleep these last few weeks.

Last month she was waking up loads in the night; starting in the evening just a few hours after going down, and then waking every hour in the mornings. After a few terrible nights of trying to get her to sleep on her own she finally managed it. So not only was she then able to fall asleep without being fed to sleep, but she was also sleeping for good stretches at a time.

Not only that, but she has been able to get herself to sleep in her cot for nap times. A real relief that we might not need to pound the streets of Maadi with her in a sling in 35 degrees!

Last night she managed to sleep right through the night (i.e. mum woke up before Leila!).  But we think this was a bit of a fluke, so aren't holding our hopes out for tonight!

Today though was another first when she fell asleep in the car on the way back from Carrefour. She has fallen asleep in the car before, but this has only been with a lot of encouragement (i.e. muslin draped over the car seat to provide dark shade, finger to suck and white noise to calm down).  This time though it was around her nap time and she grabbed hold of her favourite horsey, got chewing on the seat belt and let her eyes droop away!