Scratch Patch

My sister in law recommended the scratch patch at the V&A Waterfront as a fun place to go with Noah (with the added bonus it's right next to the aquarium, and right next to the parking lot). She was right! 

Noah really, really loves rocks and has started picking them up wherever we go, often to my embarrassment. So we thought rather than constantly tell him that he can't take rocks with him, we'd take him to a place where he could! It was a really fun hour, where we paid R25 for a little bag and Noah collected, emptied, and collected again for as long as he wanted. He clutched the bag the rest of the day, and has been inventing games with them ever since.

"More rocks there? More there More there, More rocks more rocks more rocks more rocks?!" Yes Noah, more rocks.

 Later in the day, Eli had his bottle.

Noah is obsessed with the flash on our camera and insisted that I take "one more" "two more" "three more" photos. I had to stop after a while for Eli's sake.

A Much Longer Photo Update

I've been thinking about tone during my break from posting: how to avoid making it sound like our lives are perfect, and how to avoid sounding like we're wallowing without making progress. I may be especially guilty of comparing and trying to measure up to people in blogs I read, but to the extent that there might be a few people who actually try the things we do, I want to figure out that balance. Until I figure that out, here are pictures that hopefully are a good representation.

Since Eli was born,

We still go to the aquarium pretty often.

I still make sourdough, though it now takes 16 hours to rise (with the winter), which is actually better. I want to branch out, but I'm going to stick with the tried and true sourdough until Eli is a little older.

We don't have nearly as many pictures of Eli as we did of Noah, and for some reason we struggle to take good pics of him.

We celebrated Noah's birthday at my brother and sister-in-law's house. We said no gifts, but Noah got this incredible train anyway.

I love their living room and the beautiful fireplace.

Cousin Ethan is also expecting a new brother. He's practicing on this doll.

This is how we multitask. Poor Eli.

He's not actually going to school or anything. Just wanted to wear the bag.

This is how crammed we were before the sofa. Yay for the sofa!

Mornings consist of orange and grapefruit juice and Kipper  on Youtube with daddy before I come downstairs with Eli. Kipper keeps Eug sane, so I now love Kipper. When Noah wakes up in the morning, he says "Down, daddy, arroorororo (Paroro, his word for cartoon, because his first exposure to video was the Korean Paroro) rusk"

This is our beautiful fireplace- it makes our living room feel like home.

I started pumping 1 bottle/day two days ago, because apparently babies need to get used to bottles around 6 weeks or they may reject them totally. Eli is ambivalent, but willing to try. 

Noah loves the new couch so much he pretends to go to sleep on it.

The bathroom floor is almost complete after the long wait for the cement. Eug keeps having to do extra adjustments, so it's a lesson for us in DIY and patience.

Runaway capitalism: we bought a soda stream to celebrate buying our sofa. No, really it was a planned purchase since Noah associates daddy with coke, Eug wanted to try something more natural- we won't' use the syrups.

A Short Photo Update

Sadly our iPhoto library is still lost, and I am incapable of thinking through making a new one. When we were getting rid of all our stuff and scanning all our files, having that external hard drive gave me a huge sense of security and grounding. Even though we were saying goodbye to many physical reminders of our lives up to that point, there was evidence of those things in the forms of photos and so on.

It was actually not that hard to lose the hard drive. It was much harder for Eug from a technical standpoint: how could this happen, how could we not have a backup? Perhaps it was not hard for me because the present is so all-consuming. 

He's really cute and fat, I promise. 

But Eli is doing well, Noah is doing relatively well. I alternate between thinking Noah's the most wonderful thing since chocolate and having absolutely no idea how to understand and process his fiery emotions. I was reminded that when I was two, I thought my parents buried our dog alive and nothing could convince me otherwise. Even at fourteen, by which time I could rationally conclude my parents wouldn't bury our dog alive, the memory remained so powerful that I couldn't quite let it go. With that in mind, I try to take Noah's point of view seriously, however outlandish it seems.

Like Noah, Eli came out small-average and is quickly becoming huge from my resorting to breastfeeding pretty much any time I'm not sure what else to do. Breastfeeding covers over almost everything.