Month 7 (01/18/2010-02/18/2010)

For Daniel's first half birthday, we obviously had to "celebrate" with a big photo shooting. ;-) And whereas we never quite succeeded at gettting a picture of all of us together looking their best, Daniel all by himself was as usual in love with the camera... ;-)

The beginning of Daniel's 7th month was mostly marked by routine: (not) sleeping, (not) eating, playing, bathing... - He is still in the habit of keeping us awake during most of the night and recovering from it during the day. He is still not quite accepting "solid" food as well as we'd hope. As a matter of fact, he seems to get more and more reluctant to try it, and also the doctor's advice of offering him various flavors did not help. But aside from that, he is curiously exploring the world - getting "professional" enough at sitting to be able to use a high chair or Jefferson's shoulders now, exploring his feet, even wanting to stand up already. We let him try a baby walker once, but after reading about its perils, we decided to keep this an isolated experiment. He's been having fun with his babysitter, preparing to get out into the cold, and taking his baths... These have turned much more fun since Jefferson (or occasionally I) have started taking him with us into the big tub, rather than letting him flood half the bathroom from his small baby bathtub... ;-)

The biggest event this month was the return of "Vovó" from Brazil, at the beginning of February. The first encounter, however, was rather heartbreaking, since Daniel decided to become suspicious towards "strangers" right when she arrived, for a day or so starting to cry bitterly every time she approached him. Luckily, he soon warmed up to her again, and now he is once again greeting her with a happy smile as soon as he sees her.

Last but not least, we had some more visitors this month and took a trip or two: Manuela and Mario came by to play some grown-up games with us again finally. We also went to visit a nice Brazilian lady, Luciana, and her two sons in Jülich, after we had met her in a store and found out we had many common interests. Also, we used my mardigras vacation for a trip to "Oma" and "Opa" in Kirchberg.