Luka [heart] Gus (the cat)

It was bound to happen - and now it has - Gus is no longer safe, for Luka has discovered this marvelous creation known as 'KITTY'.  Now whenever Gus walks into a room, Luka's face lights up as if Santa just came tumbling down the chimney...

This little video is testament to the wonders of growing up with a kitty.

View it here: http://youtu.be/w_tSJtvvT-A

Play nice...

 It has been so interesting watching Luka and his peers develop their own sense of 'self'.  We believe that all the interaction with other kids will (hopefully) lay the foundation for important notions like 'sharing', 'empathy' and other traits I suppose every parent aspires their children to have.  For the time being though the whole sense of where 'you' begin and where 'I' end is not always so clear.

Once upon a time there were two little boys who loved
to hang out together and play 

From time to time the two little boys would have a
disagreement about who's turn it was to play with
the toy...

And so they would have to sort it out
the only way boys know how...

...by strongly voicing displeasure at the
current state of things!

...with requisite retaliation of course.

Mr. Mobile!

HELP!  Luka is ....*gulp* - mobile... not sure the world is ready for this....

Luka with the life jacket

Hey gorgeous! Whatsuuuuuuup??

Daddy carries me to the pool in
my new swanky flotation device

A good friend of ours always says - "he with the most toys wins".  While Chris and I have amassed our own collection of mountain bikes (Cannondale all the way!), snowboards (Arbor thank you very much), hiking boots (Asolo's are the way to go), and an array of kitchen equipment, some of which I am not entirely sure how to use yet - I think Luka might outdo us soon.

We figured, since we live on a tropical island that involves copious amounts of water-related activities - now is perhaps the time to invest in adequate flotation equipment - and so, after some (okay, quite a bit) of research, we settled on procuring a life jacket, or personal flotation device, for young Master Luka.

Mommy gives Luka the quick pre-flight briefing

We opted for the 'Lil Legends' jacket that says it is for infants under 30lbs.  We are very grateful for our friends in DC and Arizona who hand-carried two of said flotation devices (because of course we had to get one for young Master Adrian, aka neighbor and twin) from the US to Sri Lanka.

And "Launch!" - Luka the floating one in action.

We tested the device this  past weekend in neighbor "uncle Paul's" pool, just to be sure it works....

Luka, as always, was the perfect model and product tester.

Waning into weaning

While I am not yet quite ready to admit it, and my stubborn nature will insist I continue to try and reach the arbitrary goal of "1 year" which I set out for myself, I digress - it appears we may be inadvertently waning into a state of weaning.  The Oxford Dictionary defines wean as

"accustom (someone) to managing without something to which they have become accustomed to"

while Wiki is more specific in describing the process of weaning as:

the process of introducing a mammal infant to what will be its adult diet and withdrawing the supply of its mother's milk

Sound pretty harsh eh?  Well, yeah - and pretty sad too, considering where we started all those months ago.  Hours and hours of practicing, focus, trying, bleeding, crying and more trying.  Then we settled into a nice hum breastfeeding bliss where the feeder and feedie were generally on the same page, albeit the feedie could be somewhat demanding from time to time (the whole point in demand-breastfed I hear you say, so touche).

Well, that was then, and now is now, and now more closely resembles a mid-air refueling of a very antsy F16 in the middle of a dogfight ...

Breastfeeding an eight month old boy, nothing

more than a mere 'refueling' for more jumping!

Gone are the days of blissful breastfeeding, like a snuggly momma dog with her delighted pup...

...no, these days, despite having only one suckling, with only one tooth, I definitely resemble this poor momma dog more closely...

I know, it could have something to do with the fact that our feedie has turned into a bit of a foodie and loves all things fish, chicken, beef, broccoli, spinach, breadsticks, cottage cheese, gosh - you name it, he'll probably eat it (including chili, garlic, onion, curry...) but when I rush home clear across town to make it for the lunch-time feed - I expect at least, well, a bit of a feed - instead, Luka thinks it is a swell idea for mommy to come home to play and jump around with him.  Which, I must admit, in the grand scheme of lunch hour dates, is not all that bad.  

But boy oh boy, I will miss the whole "but I'm breastfeeding" excuse for that last piece of chocolate...

So, while I'm not quite ready to give it up yet, the signs are there that our little man is moving on to greener (and spicier) pastures. 

IKEA!

When you live in Dili, you learn to procure necessities any which way you can (remember our fresh organic turkey flown in and wrestled from the claws of customs for our Thanksgiving this year?)  So it was that we had a much-needed stop-over in Singapore to pick up a few critical items, including new towel and toilet roll holders, new eating utensils and a high chair (yes, seriously).  We stayed in a lovely hotel off Orchard Road, the main shopping and dining destination in Singapore - and hit the stores early on January 2nd.  I am happy to report that we survived both Toys R' Us (we had a very traumatic experience there last year when my dad tried to buy his pregnant kids a stroller and all we left with were latches for our fridge to keep the baboons out), and IKEA, in one day!  Luka was a trooper, riding along in his stroller, stopping every few hours for a breast or other feed.

Test-driving a sporty high chair in IKEA in Singapore.

While we were unable to find a mattress to fit his third-hand cot in Dili (who knew the Australian 'standard' cot size is different than just about everywhere else in the world?).  We did find a nice high chair though, which, thanks to bumping into Chris' former colleague in the check-in line, we managed to check without paying any overweight charges.

Now we just need to figure out who will bring us a mattress from Aus...  

Aah...Colonialism

Feel free to call me 'Madam'