Hannah's Hope

Hi Everyone,

Yip, our boy is 8 months old – amazing!!

And he is getting more and more verbal by the day!! He says dada (his first word!), mama, tata and woohoo (whenever he sees the dogs) and the day before yesterday he surprised us all by starting to clap his hands – something I’ve been trying to teach him for a while now.  We were so proud!! He’s also doing ‘mallekoppie’ where he shakes his head from side to side, thanks to his granny!!! You are covered in saliva when he’s done but he has such a ball doing it that you don’t mind.

Ah, teething.  He is actually so amazing when it comes to teething.  He gets a bit of a rush on his chin and cheeks, drools a lot is a bit niggly at bedtime and voila, the next morning there’s a tooth. Of course John HAD to go to the pharmacy and get SPECIAL cream for the rush, according to him the stuff I put on is just not good enough!! (Sigh). Sam has 4 teeth going on 6 at the moment, watch this space!!  His long-awaited cousin, Luanne, was born 2 weeks ago.  He’s absolutely mesmerized by her and tries to touch her face the whole time.  He’s also very jealous of his mommy and doesn’t like it when I pick her up.  Boys!!

Sam is trying VERY hard to crawl!  He's apt to lunge forward onto all fours from a sitting position and then he goes into a ‘precrawl’ exercise, rocking back and forth on hands and knees with his trunk parallel to the floor.  He loves doing this rocking exercise, as you will see in the photo below.  His emotions are also becoming more obvious. For instance, if he hears Luanne crying, he starts crying too.

He loves playing hide and seek and shrieks with delight when we ‘find’ him. He also eats like a champ and butternut isstill a firm favourite.  He loves his plain yoghurt, people are amazed when they see a baby eat unflavoured yoghurt, but he can’t get enough of it.  He’s eating 3 full meals a day (cereal and fruit for breakfast, veggies and yoghurt with fruit juice for lunch and chicken/beef, veggies and fruit & yoghurt for supper) and his 6-12 months clothes are getting to small for him, we unpacked his 12-18 months clothes this past weekend.  He’s a BIG boy!!  A funny thing about him is that he absolutely refuses to hold his one bottle!! I think he’s scared we won’t feed him in our arms if he holds his own bottle!! He is drinking his fruit juice from a sippy cup though and he has no qualms holding that.

We went to a game farm last week and Sam was mesmerized with all the animals. He saw a Zebra, Giraffe and antelope from very close by. He was all smiles and kept reaching out to touch them.  He also had loads of fun with his big cousins as they took him on ‘game drives’ in his 3x3 pram!!!

Sam is only a joy and a blessing to us all and his laugh is the favourite sound of everyone in the family, who are constantly vying for his attention.

Until next time!!

Hannah (and John and of course, Sam)

MY NEW COUSIN AND I

AT GRANNY'S HOUSE

'PRECRAWLING' AND ENJOYING EVERY SECOND!