One year on

It is hard to sufficiently express gratitude for the past 12 months. Despite some initial challenges in getting this whole parenthood thing started, I would say we made out like bandits. Judging by the speed with which Luka is acquiring mobility, babblebility, dexterity and a whole lot of other 'ity's - we're in for an interesting ride.

Today we got to celebrate the first of many joint birthdays for my boys, and I couldn't help but think back one year ago to when I was a terrified, first-time pregnant mom in a foreign country, dreading going into labor.  Yet, here we are today, celebrating the first birthday of many more to come!!  Here are a few of my favorite photos from today...

If my year of baking results in a book I will call it 'A Year
in the Baking' and this recipe will feature - Serious Eats'
Brown Butter Pecan Carrot Cake - yummie! And I go back
to my belief that I now need a cake decorating class.

The BIRTHDAY BOYS!

Happy Birthday to y'all! Happy Birthday
to y'all...

With mommy/mamma...

Ah yes - daddy and mamma's birthday gift to the little
terror....a HELMET - (with that mischievous look, how could
you NOT want to put a helmet on him...)

What a lovely day, with two amazing people....

Nostalgic Baking

Since I am a complete sentimental fool, I decided to bake the same cupcakes for Luka's 1st birthday as we made for his 1-week anniversary in hospital in Darwin.  Only this time, instead of being in an incubator - Luka was helping me in the kitchen which was, to say the least, awesome!

Luka helping mommy mix the batter

Corny shot with the blog post from the 1-week birthday

My very poor attempt at decorating these (I've decided
that a cake decorating class is in my future...)

The end result

Marking 11 months today.

I suppose when you are a new parent, every new experience is exactly that, an experience.  But more than that really, it is also a milestone.  And so it is today that Luka celebrates his last birthday counted in 'months' (at least in so far as it is the last one prior to one being counted in year(s)).  If this does not quite make sense, today is Luka's 11 month birthday.

For his birthday today Luka got an extra 200g for the past month, which means that he officially (we double weighed to make sure) topped the scales at the big 1-0-k-g this morning.  That's right, our little bruiser is now officially freaking heavy!

To say that he is a joy in abundance, is to lack the words to describe the sheer pleasure we derive from his reaction when we walk into the house from being out for some or other reason.  More often than not we will come home and notice his play room door is slightly ajar, knowing that he is in there playing with books, musical toys, and other stimuli with his lovely nanny, Michelle.  Yet, when he hears one of our voices, he is like a bat out of hell, climbing over the local Timorese-made throw pillows, swings the door open, and leopard crawling at light-speed to get to one of us.

There is perhaps not a more incredible feeling at the end of a long, hard day at the office, than to have 10kg of adorable, smiling, cooing (squealing, really) baby boy come charging in your direction when you walk through the door, demanding to be picked up, cuddled, then promptly put back down so that he can resume the game of annoying the cat by endlessly chasing him around the dining room table.

Pouring the batter into what will be the final installment
of the 'months' cake series

For some reason this eleven-month mark has been quite emotional for me.  I found myself today thinking about our time in Darwin, about the baking, the long hours in hospital, and eventually about how Chris and I used to have to strap our (then still premature) baby to our chests, in bed, shortly after arriving in Cape Town, to ensure he is kept warm, secure and safe from slipping off.  Which, as you can imagine, meant that neither one of us slept for a good few months.  And, as per the tradition, I baked a cake.  This time a simple Vanilla Bean Pound Cake (hey, I'm a full-time mom that does not even have time to buy my own eggs - thanks honey!)  It was not so much for the cake, but for the act of baking that I simply had to be in the kitchen tonight.

The final product 

Chris said tonight that if we did this again, he would surely need amnesia - but I thought it comes with that automatically, hence why I don't remember the 1.5-hourly breastfeeds, or the entire month of October at all for that matter.  And as we enter the last month of his first year, I cannot help but feel incredibly sentimental about our time together in Darwin, Cape Town, Oxford, Scotland, Sri Lanka...and soon to be California, Arizona and elsewhere.  How blessed we are to have been given the privilege of guarding over this little person for a few precious years, how I wish the next few won't go quite as quickly...

Countdown to Luka's 1st birthday family extravaganza starts now....

Luka turns two months!

Luka in his cute "100% pure Baby" outfit
on 22 May, 2011 - his 2 month birthday
(a gift from Nicole and Phil in Senegal)

hmmmm....

And so, with almost a week left before his due date, Luka celebrated his 2-month birthday on Sunday, 22 May with the Marx family in attendance. Fortunately for him the rapture did not impede on the celebrations, and mommy even managed to complete the challenging Lemon Meringue Pie ordered by Luka's Oupa to double as the birthday cake.*


To try and describe the past two months in a post seems almost impossible, but suffice it to say that in two months Luka has lived on two continents, nearly doubled his weight, applied for two passports, and made two people incredibly proud and happy to be his parents.

With ouma and oupa in the backyard

* The pie combined the Lemon Curd and 3-2-1 Flaky Pie Crust recipes from the book "The Secret of Baking" by Sherry Yard, and the meringue topping from Irma S. Rombauer's 1970's classic edition "The Joy of Cooking"   

Luka turns 4 Weeks!

In keeping with the tradition of celebrating each small milestone Luka achieve, (and to some small degree to keep up the nurse bribery scheme we have going) we baked a 4-week birthday cake for our boy.  It is hard to believe that we have been 'parents' for four weeks, albeit in a completely controlled environment that sees us leave the old hospital building empty-handed at the end of every long day.  We are nonetheless aware that this little person is from here on out, completely dependent on us, and we hope that we can live up to his expectations and needs.

Happy birthday little man!  Mommy promises to stop the 'Disco' themed cakes as soon as I run out of blue and green sprinkles!

19 April 2011 - Luka celebrates 4 weeks in style with his daddy
and his Ouma 

For the event, we chose a deliciously moist and easy to make Carrot Cake. Despite the recipe calling for a 'sheet cake' the lack of a 9x13 inch baking dish made us revert to our round cake pan (yes we bought a cake pan).  Our schizophrenic oven meant we baked it for about 1.5 hours instead of the 40 minutes in the recipe... so all the power to you to figure out the right baking time. 

1x Baby; 2x Kilos; 3x weeks

Our family on Luka's 3-week birthday, April 12, 2011.

Well, it is that time again - celebrating another week of Luka entering our lives.  Indeed, it is hard to believe that it is a whole three weeks since Chris and I unsuspectingly went to work on a Monday morning, only to end up spending the night in a Darwin hospital.

While we would much rather be lounging in our lovely house in Cape Town, still 'preparing' for this wondrous thing called child birth -  our motto of 'it is what it is' rings true.  As such, we choose to celebrate every milestone along the way - even if it only means looking for an excuse to bake something fattening and sweet.  Seemed like reaching the 2 kilo mark on his 3 week birthday was an excellent excuse for a fittingly named Lemony 1-2-3 cake.  (Tacky disco decoration not included, that was all Susan's idea (fault?).

(The nursing team leader asked me why we baked, I said it was to 'de-stress' - now every time she sees me she asked me if I 'de-stressed' again last night...)

Luka's 1-week Birthday

Susan on forced R&R away from the nursery

As part of our elaborate birthing plans, we had intended to bake a cake for our baby on his or her actual birthing day.  The idea had been suggested to us by a dear friend and mother of three adorable boys in Dili who had done this for all of them.  Our plans were somewhat disrupted since the maternity ward at the Royal Darwin Hospital, does not come equipped with its own kitchen.  As such, and given the stress of the last seven days, we decided to celebrate Luka's first week in true Chris & Susan style.

The family one-week into this adventure

After spending an average of 10+ hours a day in the Special Care Nursery, we were finally in a frame of mind to take a few hours to ourselves.  Where did we go?  To the food store of course - leaving with a trolley full of fresh goodies, good cheeses, and baking supplies. This afternoon was spent in the kitchen of our rental home, baking cupcakes for Luka's first "birth"-day party.

For anyone interested in baking, these might actually have been the best chocolate cupcakes ever.  For the recipe, please visit here.  Not being fans of frosting, we simply melted good quality dark chocolate to spread as a topping before decorating.  We passed the cupcakes around the Special Care Nursery and the Birthing Suite where we birthed Luka a week ago - they were enjoyed by nurses, midwives and new mommies alike.

To scale.

Happy 1-week 'birth'-day Luka.

Update on Luka:

Today was a good day for us.  His second cranial ultrasound came back negative for hemorrhaging, after the first test came back inconclusive.  The volume of his feeds continues to be increased, he is now actually at 'full feeds' for his weight, and we are hoping he will now be growing fast.  Despite his initial weight loss from 1.777kg to 1.585kg in the first week, our boy has already grown 1.5cm.  His SBR numbers (jaundice-talk) continue to be slightly below the level requiring photo treatment, which allows us many more hours of cuddling instead of watching poor Luka bake under the light like a little chicken.