Amaiterai's first month (and a bit!)

Blogging and babies don't mix!
Yesterday Amaiterai was 5 weeks old, he's thriving and has already gained 6 cm in length and over 1.6kg in weight. The month since he arrived has gone by in an eventful blur of sleep-deprivation!





We said goodbye to April a few days after the birth, having learned a thing or two about sourdough and lilikois (passion fruit). Inspired by April, I've gone off on a fermented food frenzy, making sourdough burger buns, sourdough rice crackers and sourdough potato pancakes to name a few, I've also had a go at my first batch of kim chee and a very passable ginger beer! Probiotics are us!

Naturally we celebrated St.David's day (March 1st for all you non-welshies) as well as Wales' victory in the six nations rugby, with a blistering win over England in Cardiff.

We've had a film crew visit us to film our extremely talented trilingual girls, for an educational programme about multilingualism, to be broadcast here in Tahiti.

 

 The grandparents spent the best part of Amaiterai's first month with us, babysitting their hearts out, before a return to chilly Wales a week ago, they left in the snow and two months later returned to snow!

We're enjoying hot and sunny weather, though there is a little coolness to the mornings, heralding the arrival of our autumn! In the meantime there's work to be done in the garden - Amaiterai is not the only thing growing round here, look at these fabulous irises that have just started flowering here in th garden.

The jasmine, ylang-ylang and honeysuckle are also putting on a impressive olfactory experience at the moment. The most exciting new acquisition is cacao, Viriamu's friend in Tahiti he sent him some pods, so now I have Roald Dahlish dreams of creating my own chocolate delights! Talking of chocolate we're running up to the easter hols and our first busy period at the guesthouse with our new recruit! Hold on for a bumpy ride....

You're kidding

For those of you who've been to visit us, you may already know that we have goats out back of our house. There are only two, but they can make some unholy noises and smell very musky. Anyway, finally after a good few months of waiting we got our first kid yesterday.

Matotea was absolutely charmed.

She very carefully explained to me which one was the mummy, which one was the daddy, and of course which one was the baby goat, lest there be any confusion on my part!

Heimana's progress

Tuesday Heimana celebrates her first six months - her progress has been remarkable, even in the six weeks since the grandparents met her in the flesh. In late november she was just getting the knack of grasping things and had just started to prop herself up on her belly.

Yesterday she rolled over properly for the first time, and is already doing her best to sit upright unassisted, at least for a few seconds, followed by the inevitable face-plant and frustrated little screams.
The baby gym now serves as exactly that - a gym, she likes to do pull ups with the little toys and does the whole babyzilla pose that Matotea liked so much. She's picking things up and quite clearly throwing them away now.....or making them 'disappear'.
She's also discovered that you can make noises just for the fun of it, and for a few days she was screaming and yelping with glee, just because she could! She really loves her sister, her little eyes light up when she sees Matotea up to something (.....which she normally is).

She's still all smiles and charm......

Surfacing

Heimana has her two month check-up tomorrow, she's not quite two months, but she's already grown up a lot and now little bubbles of personality have started to break to the surface. She has a beautiful smile (it shines through from the inside mostly, though she is mastering a reasonable grin)..

...she loves to play....watching people wiggle their fingers in front of her eyes makes her almost pass out with pleasure, her whole body shakes, we even got a few gurgles yesterday. It quite different than from with Matotea. I guess every baby is a bit different, or maybe it's just 'cause I've already done it once, but she seems much easier to read and more responsive. Looking back over Matotea's pictures it's amazing how similar they both look, Viriamu can hardly tell them apart!

Both of them are/were able to mimic facial expressions at this stage (it's a common phenomenon that I first read about in Dr. Sear's Baby Book - and it really is true!). I spent hours teaching Matotea to stick out her tongue when she was about two months, and she was able to do it, and I can see Heimana trying to copy me now too. It's so much fun having kids (in between all the sleepless nights and dirty nappies)!

The first month

So, we've weathered our first month together as a family of four, and it's no bowl o' cherries, but we're "waving not drowning"....I think!

Heimana has put on over 800g and has grown 5cm (which seems quite remarkable), next month she's aiming to be 'this tall', or so she tells me! She's still a very mellow little creature, but we're having a bit of trouble with the old burping process. Hence several projectile vomit incidents, which I'm told are nothing to be too concerned about but are a little dramatic, and are causing the laundry pile to snowball. But MOSTLY we just like to stare inanimate objects into submission.

Matotea started school on tuesday, and she just LOVES it......by thursday she told me she wanted to go into the schoolyard 'tout-seul', I'm trying not to take it personally, as I see other bigger children crying for their mothers... ..and everyone tells me what a "petite champion" (sshiompion when said with a French-Tahitian accent, and roughly translated means 'very brave') Matotea is..... She's even started to go by that name, when she's not "grand bebe", just so we don't forget there are two bebe's around!







Other than this life goes on, I have lots of jam to make, yesterday it was papaya, today it's soursop......

Viriamu just inherited a horse.

The weather is FREEZING.....and I can't wait for summer!

Matotea is adjusting to life as a big sister. So all in all we're doing OK!

Fête de la musique!

This weekend we had Viriamu's friend Maeva Bougues and her husband Marco staying with us, they have a small guesthouse in Moorea and Maeva is also quite a well known singer song-writer. Her father was born in Rurutu though she grew up back in Tahiti, in May she visited us in her quest to find her roots and her family's land. She has fallen in love with the island and our guesthouse and is back again full of energy and enthusiasm to get things moving here in Rurutu, at least on the music scene. June 21st was the Fête de la musique a national celebration devoted to getting anyone and everyone involved in the music scene, with free concerts across France. Maeva had very generously organized the first celebration of this day here in Rurutu, working with one of the numerous local music societies on the island, and holding a meeting for all the author compositors on the island - music, song and oration are integral to the culture here and every July the heiva showcases original dance and music shows produced by each village. I am not a gifted musician, but I do enjoy live music, so being invited along to Maeva's impromptu little celebration was lots of fun.....the weather was perfect, cool but sunny and we had a great location sitting in a friend's garden, on large logs, surrounded by greenery. Very relaxed an fun, I'm just sorry I didn't take any pictures - Matotea was very taken with the whole thing, she loves to dance along to the traditional drumming. Even before she was born she would wriggle away in my belly whenever she heard a drum-beat. The new baby wriggles a lot, but mostly at night and I couldn't notice any pronounced activity. I'm growing impatient to meet the new member of our family, and not to mention to lose a few pounds!

Little friends!

Matotea and Elsa having fun throwing stones at the beach last week!

On thursday I had yet another prenatal visit, but this time, despite the fidgeting, it was clear that this next baby is another girl - just a rather large and fidgety one! Matotea is rather excited by the idea that she might be going to have a little friend to play with........though I suspect that she thinks that the baby is going to come out the same size and shape as her little friend Elsa! After just three days together, Matotea was heart-broken when Elsa left, even if things were not always harmonious while she was here - the reality of sharing ones toys was often a rather bitter and noisy pill to take!

Welcome Grace Isabella Claridge!

On May 4th around 2pm GMT Grace Isabella Claridge was born in a hospital in Belgium, far away from us here in Rurutu, but still my brother and his growing family remain in our hearts and minds. I am now an aunty for the second time (on my side of the family) and Matotea has a new cousin (that makes a total of eight first cousins now...). Congratulations to everyone!

She was a wee thing at just 2.3kg, but by all accounts she's doing well and growing fast.

It's just another little reminder of the big change that we're expecting in the next few months. I'm still feeling a mixture of excitement and apprehension about the whole thing......particularly as we are enjoying a dose of double-trouble toddlers at the moment. I have a friend and colleague staying here for a few days, with her daughter, who is just a few weeks younger than Matotea - it's a lot of fun, but also a lot of work!!!!

What's in a name?

We're thinking about names for baby at the moment, both girl and boy names, as there's still a certain amount of ambiguity about the sex - if the kid doesn't want to show us, what can we do, I say just wait for the surprise! Anyway we need something suitably Rurutu, and then I get to choose something Welsh, I don't know whether we're doing our kids any favors by not giving them a French name, like most other kids here, but I hope they'll understand when they are older. I think Matotea is a very appropriate name, it really suits her and it's also a very 'weighty name' with a few great stories behind it. Matotea literally translated means white - 'tea', cliff - 'mato' which sounds pretty weird in English (might just as well call her Dover), but it's the name of a rock-face in between our village and the neighboring village of Avera. It's a beautiful basalt core that was left here as a legacy of the second phase of volcanism which profoundly shaped Rurutu's topology, uplifting the island, which may already have been an atoll (i.e. flat as a pancake) by around 300m or more. The cliff is the perfect nesting spot for red-tailed tropic birds, and is covered in lichen, which gives it its definite white glow.

The rock is part of several island legends, one re-counts the history of a giant warrior from Tubuai, who swam over to Rurutu to attack the villagers of Avera, the villagers, unable to defeat the mighty warrior, devised a plan to lure him into the mountains, where they had dug a large hole, the giant fell into the hole and was turned to stone, forming Matotea. However, the tale that I like best is the tale of a fisherman who became lost at sea in a terrible storm one night, he was no longer able to find his way home and despaired of ever seeing his family again, but suddenly the light of the full moon broke through the storm clouds, lighting up the face of Matotea, allowing the fisherman to get his bearings, guiding him back to the natural pass in Avera and safely back to his family at home.

Second time around

Being pregnant again is fun, but very different from the first time around. Quite simply because it's not my first time around - so there's none of the anxiety or fear of the unknown, I know that I can make it through childbirth and that I'll be a 'good enough' parent, we've pretty much winged it with Matotea, and I think she's turning out OK. It's hard to describe, I'm not quite jaded, but I know all the disruption and change that a new baby brings, I wouldn't go so far as to say I'm ready for it, but I know more of what to expect. That said, it's not as if I'm the seasoned mother - not like my mother-in-law who successfully delivered eight babies in a little over eight years and seems to have been happy to do that! I frankly don't know how she managed, physically I know it's possible, but emotionally I don't think I'd be able to cope, I already struggle with the changes that one baby brings - I feel like I should devote my time to her, but then I already feel that I don't have enough time for me, so part of me wonders what it will be like with a second! This probably sounds selfish, and well it probably is, but I don't think I'm alone in feeling this.

I don't suppose that any two pregnancies feel exactly the same and this time it is a little different. I'm a couple of years older and over thirty now, I have a two year-old girl who needs my love and assurance and a considerable amount of chasing around the place, at the same time as being pregnant. This time there's no time for the yoga and meditation that I enjoyed the first time around. Another alarming difference is the rate at which my stomach has grown, I know that the second is supposed to go out quickly, and it certainly has, but at five months I already feel like I did with Matotea at around seven! This one is also a real wriggler, from around 12 weeks I have been able to feel some movement, now I'm getting a constant nudging and kicking. The baby was so lively that the doctor was having trouble doing his morpho exam at my last checkup, we still don't know if it's a boy or a girl, the cord was in the way and well there was just too much fidgeting to make much out. Viriamu has his heart set on a boy, I don't mind, as long as it's healthy and happy, but I also have a feeling that it's a boy, they're supposed to be more active and they also often show more than girls......but I guess we'll have to wait and see to be sure....

Now I just have to wait until early July, when I get to be 'medically evacuated' to Tahiti, to await labor - I'm not really looking forward to all the disruption that will involve and I also know that the hospital system in Tahiti won't allow me to give birth in the way that I would choose. It was a shock to me when I first discovered how medical birth is, pregnancy is a pathology here in French Polynesia - the doctor that visits Rurutu every two months has been unable to find anything wrong with the baby, despite all his efforts. He has a really awful bed-side presence, making me feel like a piece of meat, I don't doubt that he sees many hundreds of pregnant ladies every year, but there's room for some compassion, the idea of sharing something as intimate as a birth with him or any of the other doctors I have seen in Tahiti makes me recoil. With Matotea I chose the most liberal ob-gyn that I could find, but even then the idea of giving birth in any position other than stirrups was out of the question. I happened to give birth on a sunday night and had to wait to deliver the baby until the doctor showed up (he looked none too happy to be called out on a sunday evening - and I for one was also less than amused to have to wait for him, after all there were no complications and in the end I was the one doing the work here). I was also less than happy that they took Matotea away from me for her first health check within minutes of birth, maybe they do not understand the stress that this causes a new mother, there really is no reason why they could not do this in the delivery room in my presence. I was told by the midwife not to make noise during the delivery, as I was frightening the other mothers and my choice not to use pain medication was questioned several times. Despite this I did feel like this last birth went as well as it could, but it was despite the health care system and not thanks to it, I was constantly having to defend my right to give birth the way I wanted. Fortunately I have a friend who is a doula, and having her present was valuable in reminding me that wanting to give birth as naturally as possible wasn't something completely crazy. At the moment I'm enjoying reading Birthing from Within and Ina May's Guide to Childbirth, two wonderfully inspiring books for the pregnant woman and I'm feeling truly empowered, I hope that I will be more able to defend my rights this time. If I get my way, and if there are no contraindications, I will try to give birth in Moorea, the maternity ward there is overseen by a wonderful team of midwives and I know that, given my options, this is by far the best choice for me. Home birth is practically impossible here (even if I lived in Tahiti) there are no independent midwives here that could do this , though of course it would be my preference.

Where did february go?

It's been a while since I've had enough time to collect my thoughts here on the blog. I'm just trying to figure out where all this time has gone. The grandparents came to visit in mid-january and Matotea had A LOT of fun, training them up to do her bidding. Her english has really come on apace, it's just amazing how she just soaks up information at the moment, it's often hard to figure out exactly what she wants, but she is just getting better and better at expressing herself.

With the grandparents here, came a whole new set of learning-experiences...

CHEERS!

.....she learned to appreciate classical music (particularly when she was allowed to borrow grandma's MP3 player),
She ate lots of cake and ice-cream, as well as finding a taste for grandma's tonic water and grandma's special cereal!

She spent some serious time on the beach......

With the grandparents came a stream of presents, including a large collection of old childrens programs, that were enjoyed as much if not more by the GPs than by Mato, though she is pretty partial to the Clangers.

But as the saying goes all good things must come to an end, and so eventually we had to wave goodbye, even if we did get to go on an aeroplane all the way to Tahiti together first!

What else is new? Well, in this past few months Matotea has graduated seamlessly from nappies to grown up undies, just like that, without so much as a bed-wetting phase, in between. She really is getting to be a big girl now........which is good because we're expecting another one - that will appear, I am reliably told by my rather dour obstetrician, on the 1st of August, though I personally have a feeling he/she will make her debut a little earlier than that.....

We've also started to produce and sell our own jams, we're still taking baby steps, but at the 'Salon de Tourisme' in Tahiti this year, Viriamu sold 46 jars of the stuff, so I'm feeling buoyed up by that! The business also seems to be going well, it looks like it will be a good year for us, despite the global economic woes, and the more immediate tourism 'crash' in Tahiti. There are some advantages to living on a small island isolated in the central Pacific!

Matotea's first six months

bIt's been an action packed six months, Matotea has grown 20cm and almost tripled in body weight. She's already got quite a lot of personality and is clearly a good strong healthy Rurutu girl! Here's a quick review and an excuse for posting more baby shots.

The first month
To be honest not too much happened in the first month beyond A LOT of sleeping and a lot of growing, it was a 'getting to know each other' sort of a phase. I think she can be forgiven for this, because making the initial step from here.......







...to here, can be considered quite an achievement. It's hard to believe that she was ever really this teeny tiny!

The second month
Even more feeding and growing went on this second month, she put on over 1.3kg, quite an achievement. The signature quiff arrived as well as the grandparents!

The third month
Our arrival in her 'fenua' Rurutu and the ensuing social whirl ......









She got to meet some of the other members of her clan, including Uncle John, who met with general approval.

She played a starring role in the wedding.....

She celebrated her first Christmas with both her grandmas....

She hung out at the beach...

...had her first horseride...

.

..enjoyed splashing in the tub...

became mesmerized by blue and yellow fish...

...and decided to keep the signature quiff.

The fourth month
The grandparents bade us a reluctant farewell....

.....and she started to bust out the charm

Playtime started for real...

the quiff went soft-look.....

..and we all got a well-deserved chance to kick-back and relax in the hammock...





The fifth month
Matotea decided it was time to get in on the grown up food thing and try some solids.

We packed our bags for the island of Niau in the Tuamotus, for baby's first fieldwork and our first time on an atoll.






Matotea enjoyed looking out the window during the hour long flight, though she and dad found it a bit chilly onboard!

Rainwater is a precious resource in Niau, there is no running freshwater on the island.so she relished her limited bathing opportunities.


She got all dressed up in her sunday best, for a delicious Ma'a Tahiti, Tuamotu style.






The sixth month
From being declared obese at her four month checkup Matotea put the brakes on her weight gain and just became super active instead, and while sh'es still pretty heavy, 8.25kg at sixth months, a diet won't be necessary!!!! This is good because she really likes food.....wonder where she got that from...

I can't get over how alert she is, she's engaged by everything, and there's clearly more than a little frustration involved in her desire to know and do everything right away. She notices so much, she loves going into the garden and grabbing at leaves, big ferns or palm leaves are a favorite. She was watching the rain fall on the car window yesterday. She wants grown up food from the table, she considers babyfood, just like toys, a momentary distraction! She likes books and magazines (so that she can drool over the pages and mash them up a bit), computer keyboards to bang and chew, and basically anything unsuitable for small hands.

Roll on the next six months!