Travel Wrapup & Eating!

We have arrived at my parents' place in Northern Germany. Here is another video of Clara and Lucia playing with each other (unfortunately I mostly got Lucia's back). The talking at the end is very cute.


The 13-hour train trip from Konstanz to Stralsund went much much better than expected. Clara should win a prize - she honestly did not complain until over 10 hours into the trip. Only in the very last 20 minutes she let me know that she'd had enough of this. But by then it was also way past bedtime and even I felt quite tired of it all. So this trip was really a pleasure to be on with Clara - we played, and she slept a little from time to time, and I even managed to read a bunch of newspapers. At this point I was quite glad that Clara's only food right now is still breastmilk. At least this way I didn't have to worry about how to prepare food for the little one. Here's a picture of our space on the train - the car seat was quite handy as a seat/bed for Clara.

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And now for something completely different: Clara is finally getting interested in food! In our time here at the sea (not even one week yet), Clara has already taken a piece of apple from my dad and sucked on it, and sucked on a piece of bell pepper (below). Today we fed her carrots (from a jar) and Clara just loved it! Of course they went all over the place but a good bit also made it into her mouth and she figured out the swallowing really well. It was a huge difference to the times that we tried feeding Clara a month and a half ago, when she would never even open her mouth and just push all the food back out. This time she was clearly very interested and happy to try (although she still would have preferred to feed herself, and it was really not easy to keep the little hands out of the way). I guess at -5 weeks this time now makes her just over 6 months adjusted, so it all computes pretty well. Well, now we will have to figure out how to feed the little hungry caterpillar with more than just breastmilk - good that Chris is coming here soon to help. =)


Oh - and I weighed Clara today (on the entirely unreliable bathroom scale), and she still weighs 7kg (15lb 7oz), the same she weighed at her six months appointment. This basically confirmed the impression we had anyway: Clara hasn't gained weight, but instead has grown in length by quite a bit. She's about 70cm (27.5"), a good two inches taller than at six months. Accordingly, she is a lot leaner now and has a neck where before there used to be just a double chin. ;)