Keira Ilana Schwartz

The fun began as soon as we landed in Cape Town. We got our luggage and walked out of baggage claim and saw a man holding a sign that said Mike Shwatz, he was our driver sent by Yola. He was an Afrikaner so he sounded just like the main character in District 9, in fact to my American ear all Afrikaners sound like the main character in District 9, it provides me with constant entertainment. Anyways -This was the first time I'd had a hired driver pick me up at an airport, it was great. He called Mike "sir" and I was "lady". As we walked out to the car I wondered what it would be, a towncar, a regular taxi? Nope, it was a 1977 Volvo with green pleather interior. We shoved our copious amounts of luggage into the car and set off for our new abode.

Our apartment is in the Garden's district of Cape Town, it's not too far from the famous District 6 that was brutally evacuated during Apartheid times, which was not that long ago. (Apartheid ended in 1996 when Nelson Mandela became president.) It's a great place, close to restaurants and a shopping center where I can buy organic yogurt and baby food. I set about settling in and learned a few things. First, a plug adaptor and a power converter are two different things. If you bring your spice grinder to grind up your flax seeds and you plug it using just a plug adaptor big sparks will fly out of the bottom. Don't leave your house at noon on a warm day, it's too hot to walk around the block. The cars have the right away here, look RIGHT first! BaBa is baby, everyone loves her and she loves everyone. All of South Africa has told me how clever she is and I must agree. Keira had her first mouth kiss last weekend. We were sharing a table at a restaurant with another couple who had a two year old. The mom, Abigail, was holding Keira on one knee and her son Harris climbed up on her other knee. Keira loves faces, especially toddler faces and she kept trying to grab Harris's face. Abigail said, "Why don't you give her a kiss." And so he did, right on the smacker. Of course Keira was trying to put his face in her mouth at the time so it was a sloppy kiss. Her interest in faces is mostly a strong desire to get your tongue. Sometimes she tries to grab it, but other times she puts her hand on your checks and tries to get your tongue in her mouth. I'm fairly sure that she's completely unaware that her mouth comes furnished with it's own tongue. I'm sure that we'll all think it's a lot less cute when she's a teenager kissing boys like that. We'll cross that bridge when we come to it.

Keira's other new thing is walking. She needs two fingers belonging to a wiling adult to walk around with her. It started between the two couches in the apartment that face each other. She walk between Sean and I, between Mike and I. Now it's laps around the apartment. When she's not walking she's working out for it. We call it sitstand. She sits, she stands, she sits, stands; it's like baby squats. One time I counted and we got to 25 before I got tired and wanted to do something else.

Africa with a baby has been a lot like home. Keira breaks the ice by smiling and endears everyone to her. We go out to restaurants, markets, walks and adventures with her. She sleeps in the ergo when it's nap time and eats when she's hungry. So far nursing in public hasn't been a problem, quite frankly most people don't even notice. We leave for the Garden Route tomorrow and our real African vacation begins.


Sunday in the Winelands 3/29
Mike, Keira and I had a great day in the winelands of South Africa. We sat in the sun in a beautiful valley, tasted a little wine, ate cheese, olives and fresh baked bread. Keira watched dragonflies play in a waterfountain and then we went  into the town of Stellenbosch. It a little like Calistoga, only African. We had some wine and chatted with friends who just moved here. Then we bounced Keira to sleep as we wallked around town, looking at art and popping in and out of great little stores. We start in the shadow of a huge rhinosourus statue and looked in our foodie guide and looked for a place to eat dinner in town. Time after time we found a restaurant that sounded delicious, not too expensive and baby friendly, yeah, oh, closed for dinner Sunday. OK next place, next, next, next, ok, next town. We drove to Paarl, and drove around and around and around. We didn't find what we were looking for but everything was closed, except McDonalds, where I peed and we drove onto the next town. Same story only now it was dark. We finally stopped at a Mall that had a little chicken and ribs restaurant, Uncle Vinny's, and it had an OPEN sign, yeah!, it was closed. So Mike had some chicken from the KFC and I had some crackers and then we drove back to Cape Town. FYI South Africa is closed on Sunday night.

I was not concerned about the 26 hour plane ride, at least not in regards to how Keira would handle it. I KNEW that I would hate it, but Keira, she is happy anywhere with Mama. And she was. This is not to say that she was never cranky but overall she had a good time.

Things to entertain a baby with on an airplane or in an airport: A water bottle or a cup, especially if you drink out of it first. She much prefers it if these vessels are empty, she pulls back if any water comes out of them and it goes all over the place. The seat belt, she got her own seat on two of the flights and she loves her seat belt. The scary thing is that she can almost unbuckle it by herself. They did not design these with keeping children seated in mind. The safety talk, Keira may have been the only person on our flight paying attention during the safety talk. She loved it, she was smiling at the flight attendant the whole time. A bag of chips, really any wrapper will do but the bag of chips was great because it was puffy from the altitude. Keira snagged it as we walked by a snack cart on the way to the bathroom. It was a score for one of her random fishing expeditions. Other people, generally other people are cooperative with this and make all sorts of crazy faces and noises to entertain the baby, they are rewarded with a smile and will continue for a good amount of time. At one point she was entertaining the people behind us, this was on the 16 hour flight from Atlanta to Johannesburg, I said to them, "Remember how cute she it right now." They laughed and even though she did let her frustration be known a few times on that flight, they were still friendly at the end of the flight. A napkin, really this works anywhere, it can be a napkin, a tissue, a magazine, anything she can tear up and throw makes her happy.

All in all we kept her entertained and she was happy. The hardest part for me was that she really wanted me to hold her most of the time so I got very little sleep. For the long flight, they kept the seat belt light on most of the flight so walking around with her was a limited activity and this was the best way for Mike to keep her happy. If she couldn't see me then it wasn't a problem. We all got a few hours in at the end of the flight when Keira passed out and we both followed suit, I even slept through the landing and all the people getting off the plane. Mike woke me up and we were in Johannesburg on an empty plane.

Now we just have to survive the plane ride home...

Keira loves to fish, for anything. She has discovered that the world is at her fingertips and that all she needs to do is reach out and grab it. She's always happy with what she gets whether it's Mama's hair, a flower, a receipt (she LOVES those) or the wall. Her method is simply to reach out whenever, wherever she has a change. I have to be careful how close I get to anything while I'm carrying her because at any given moment she'll lunge and grab. I don't even think that she has an object in mind that she wants when she goes for it. It's like she thinks, "Hey a new pond, let's see what I can get."

Food is a fun and exciting thing going on now. Keira had her first food, avocado, more than a month ago. After that she had avocado a few more times and some sweet potato, but nothing was regular. We were just feeding her when the opportunity arose and not really getting into it. I kept meaning to make some baby food. I wasn't going to feed my baby food from a jar, I was going to make it at home with love and sunshine. Well it turns out that a mama that holds her baby for all of her naps does not have time to make baby food. So I was at the hippiest of hippy food stores in San Francisco, Rainbow Grocery, and bought some organic baby food. I'm sure that they make it with love and sunshine too. There are only two ingredients on the jar, whatever veggie is in the jar and water, and that make me happy.

Keira's food repertoire is expanding, she eats avocado, sweet potato, butternut squash and carrots. Tomorrow we are going to try peas. My girl loves to eat. It took her a few spoonfuls to get the whole swallowing thing down but now she's a pro. She sucks the food right off the spoon and swishes around in her mouth and swills it down, then she opens up her mouth again like a little bird. It's very cute. She's grabbed the spoon a couple of time and tried to feed herself but she tends to knock the food off. She figured out pretty quick that the best way to get food in her tummy is to let mama do it. According to the various baby books we own, the baby will eat as much as she needs and then let you know that she's done but turning her head when the spoon approaches or pushing it away. According to "them" baby will only eat a 1 or 2 tablespoons of food at the beginning and not to worry, it's enough. So far my baby has never indicated a desire to stop eating. She's been downing a whole jar of food from the beginning. I stop feeding her because we run out.

We are getting ready for our trip to Africa. I have lists and lists of what we'll need. I'm bringing some food just because I don't know what they have there. Yes, I know they'll have food but will the have carrots and sweet potato?

Time is passing so fast, sometimes I just stare at Keira and try to imprint the moment into my memory for always. But I know that in time it will fade and I need to record all her moments in a more permanent place than my brain. You gotta love the internet, not only can I keep a record of my beautiful daughter for myself, my family and friends but perfect strangers can read about her adventures and her antics. These are just my meandering thoughts, a record of Keira for me to look back on when she comes home one day with purple hair and a hickey the size of Texas.

My daughter is already a character and it's amazing to be there with her as she discovers the world. She is very vocal and makes her likes and dislikes known. In the last few weeks she has added a new range of sounds to her repertoire including the "ma" sound. It's not mama yet but it's nice to know that she has the skills to put my name into play when she's ready. She's sitting up too, it's probably the skill that she's worked on the hardest -- I think it's cause it give her reign of her playmat and all the toys on it, although if she reaches too far for a toy she lands on her face, not a position she enjoys. But of everything she does it's her amazement and fascination with the ordinary that gets me. I stand close to a wall and she becomes enthralled with the texture. She thinks that a sound repeated is hilarious, and really -- if you listen -- it is. Last night she played with a sticker for 15 minutes straight. She was so into the stickiness of it that she never tried to put it into her mouth, or maybe she knew that I would take it away if she tried. Sometime I really underestimate her and I realize that she's already a step ahead of me. But I love to see things through her eyes, and ears and hands and taste buds because when everything is new again it's so amazing.