Back in the USSR
The lack of posting for two weeks is not because Genevieve has not done anything noteworthy but more because We have been on a long trip. We've been in Israel for the last two weeks and for some crazy reason decided to bring the baby. Except for the flight, G had a great time. Since this is a baby blog and not a travel blog we'll only be posting things relevant to G.
If you've never traveled with an infant but are planning to, now is your chance to reconsider. We planned the flight out so that it would coincide with bed time and she slept almost the entire flight. The return flight, however, was torture. She didn't sleep once. We had 10.5 hours of a crying baby. We tried walking her, bouncing her, threatening to throw her off of the plane, nothing worked. We know how to calm our baby but when you are on a plane and your baby won't stop crying everyone who sits near you thinks they know the reason your baby is crying and will tell you in excruciating detail how you should be doing it better. So in addition to crying we had 10.5 hours of parenting advice. Since this was a trip from abroad some of the advice was in Hebrew and we could only make out the simpler phrases like, "not good", "give her a bottle" or "Putting her in the overhead compartment is not a good idea. What is wrong with you?". Ok, I made that last one up but it was still a difficult flight.
She got over her jet lag pretty quickly in Israel. The first night she woke up in the middle of the night (her morning) and played for about two hours before we got her to go back to sleep. After that things went pretty smoothly. The hectic pace of a sight seeing trip isn't always conducive to good napping so some days she was pretty cranky.
Due to the heat we had to keep her well hydrated. This meant giving her liquids outside of her normal meal times and since we were always on the go it meant drinking water from a bottle instead of a cup. This confused her in the beginning and she would even spit the water out at first. After a day or so she got used to it and welcomed the extra water.
She also tried lots of new foods, most of which she liked. She even ate half a falafel by herself (no pita, just the falafel balls) and particularly liked mashing the balls and smearing them on anything that was near her. She also tried some traditional Israeli children's foods. One was a breakfast food called daniella which tasted a lot like sweet mascarpone cheese. She liked this and ate it whenever available. Another was bamba which looks like a cheese doodle but tastes like peanuts (we called them peanut doodles). She really liked them and enjoyed not only eating them but rubbing them into her face and hair. We're pretty sure we can get them near us so she might continue eating bamba for a while. Which means we'll probably be cleaning up bamba for a while.
Everyone in Israel adored her. We learned how to say what a cute baby and various other phrases in Hebrew fairly quickly. People liked pinching her cheeks and ruffling her hair. G seemed to enjoy it as well. We were in one ice cream stand and the guys running the shop thought she was so cute they gave her a free ice cream cone which she promptly smashed her nose into rubbing whipped cream all over her hands, face and me (noticing a trend yet?).
While visiting a Greek Orthodox church in Jerusalem an older priest kept kissing her and blessing her. At one point she waved and smiled at him causing such excitement the priest pealed with joy and kissed about a dozen crucifixes. Since I don't speak Greek I assume he was blessing her and not baptizing her. We thought she might now be Greek Orthodox but I have since been assured that since he didn't put any olive oil on her head this hasn't happened.
Genevieve has had two lower incisors for a few weeks now and has finally figured out how to use them. She really enjoys scraping food along them. She even used them to puncture the skin of a nectarine which she promptly rubbed her face in. If I totaled up the things that I've done on this trip by time spent I would probably say wiping food from Genevieve and her surroundings would be the winner.
Pictures to come tomorrow when Carrie wakes up.
If you've never traveled with an infant but are planning to, now is your chance to reconsider. We planned the flight out so that it would coincide with bed time and she slept almost the entire flight. The return flight, however, was torture. She didn't sleep once. We had 10.5 hours of a crying baby. We tried walking her, bouncing her, threatening to throw her off of the plane, nothing worked. We know how to calm our baby but when you are on a plane and your baby won't stop crying everyone who sits near you thinks they know the reason your baby is crying and will tell you in excruciating detail how you should be doing it better. So in addition to crying we had 10.5 hours of parenting advice. Since this was a trip from abroad some of the advice was in Hebrew and we could only make out the simpler phrases like, "not good", "give her a bottle" or "Putting her in the overhead compartment is not a good idea. What is wrong with you?". Ok, I made that last one up but it was still a difficult flight.
She got over her jet lag pretty quickly in Israel. The first night she woke up in the middle of the night (her morning) and played for about two hours before we got her to go back to sleep. After that things went pretty smoothly. The hectic pace of a sight seeing trip isn't always conducive to good napping so some days she was pretty cranky.
Due to the heat we had to keep her well hydrated. This meant giving her liquids outside of her normal meal times and since we were always on the go it meant drinking water from a bottle instead of a cup. This confused her in the beginning and she would even spit the water out at first. After a day or so she got used to it and welcomed the extra water.
She also tried lots of new foods, most of which she liked. She even ate half a falafel by herself (no pita, just the falafel balls) and particularly liked mashing the balls and smearing them on anything that was near her. She also tried some traditional Israeli children's foods. One was a breakfast food called daniella which tasted a lot like sweet mascarpone cheese. She liked this and ate it whenever available. Another was bamba which looks like a cheese doodle but tastes like peanuts (we called them peanut doodles). She really liked them and enjoyed not only eating them but rubbing them into her face and hair. We're pretty sure we can get them near us so she might continue eating bamba for a while. Which means we'll probably be cleaning up bamba for a while.
Everyone in Israel adored her. We learned how to say what a cute baby and various other phrases in Hebrew fairly quickly. People liked pinching her cheeks and ruffling her hair. G seemed to enjoy it as well. We were in one ice cream stand and the guys running the shop thought she was so cute they gave her a free ice cream cone which she promptly smashed her nose into rubbing whipped cream all over her hands, face and me (noticing a trend yet?).
While visiting a Greek Orthodox church in Jerusalem an older priest kept kissing her and blessing her. At one point she waved and smiled at him causing such excitement the priest pealed with joy and kissed about a dozen crucifixes. Since I don't speak Greek I assume he was blessing her and not baptizing her. We thought she might now be Greek Orthodox but I have since been assured that since he didn't put any olive oil on her head this hasn't happened.
Genevieve has had two lower incisors for a few weeks now and has finally figured out how to use them. She really enjoys scraping food along them. She even used them to puncture the skin of a nectarine which she promptly rubbed her face in. If I totaled up the things that I've done on this trip by time spent I would probably say wiping food from Genevieve and her surroundings would be the winner.
Pictures to come tomorrow when Carrie wakes up.
posted by daniel @ 4:37 AM
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