Welcome to AC Model & Talent

Welcome to AC Model & Talent

11 Month Old! The older the busier!

Proof of being busy is lack of writing on this blog. It is good busy though. Besa is now almost walking, saying mama, drita, ( light ) gives us kisses with her mouth open though and climbs stairs like a hiker.
This week has been amazing and it must be a growth spurt because she’s eating pretty much anything we offer her, takes long naps during the day and sleeps thru the night. It such a nice phase that we know won’t be for long since we are still waiting for the teething to start. My mum has been gone one week now and our Indian’s friend mother comes to the house and takes care of her. Luckily she is the same age as my mum and just as sweet so the change was super easy. They bonded from day one.
The Holidays are here and off to shopping. The waiting lines are killing me.

Obama Girl

She picked up the newspaper herself : )
We don't talk politics with her yet but she knows who she likes. We will take her suggestion.
Besa is baby no more. She's figured out how to demand attention but has not outsmarted us out yet. Distraction works like a charm. Give her any cellphone and she will forget about bumping her head in a split of a sec. Our house is always messy and Ben has finally come to terms that it will be like that for a awhile. Thanksgiving is right around the corner and we are going to Omak. Every holiday now will the first one so we will make every effort to spend it with family. Nothing like a first. First Christmas, First Birthday, First valentines and on and on.
Our latest news is that my little brother living in Italy has been granted a tourist visa for a year. He come December 20th to meet Besa and stay for about a month. We are so excited. We have not seen him in 3 over 3 years. The americans at the embassy have not been very nice but finally they were convinced that he does not intend to stay here illegally.

The World Of Crawling

While many parents complain about their babies getting into everything when they start crawling we love this phase. She can get to where she wants without our help showing some of her personality traits which are independence and curiosity. Actually too much of both but cannot complain.

She pulls her self up grabbing onto anything to help with standing. Her memory is developing amazingly. She will remember that a week ago she got hurt by a toy and won’t touch anymore or will push it away if we hand it to her.

Besa is sleeping and eating better but we feel busier

Our lives have changed a lot since Besa likes taking naps only in her room. That means a good chunk of the day we have to be home. Can’t blame her for having a strict sleep schedule it just means that we have to be very creative in finding time to do anything else. As for visiting people, we’d rather have people visit us.
She is now determined to crawl and is almost there. She’s figured out to push with only one leg and move her hands in a coordinated motion. So for just barely a few feet at a time. She likes food better now. Practice makes all the difference. She never ceases to surprise us with her food taste. She thinks she has teeth and chews on food like she has teeth although there are not signs of cutting the first tooth yet. She’ll most likely walk before she has teeth. It’s cute.

So much for mami or babi as first words:" Hajde"= come

Now I believe my sister when she said how every phase of the baby growing is better than the last.
Besa is now almost 8 months old and has gotten used to all kinds of foods. Feeding her is no longer a daily “test” to pass. I appreciate her cooperation. She also has just babbled her first words and who would have guessed that instead of babi or mami it would be “ hajde” which is come here. So far she only orders that cat to “ come “ here and I’m sure she will start ordering us around here very soon. We could not believe my ears at first but she kept repeating it to the cat since she was not obeying to Besa’s orders.

Waving back to people is also new. Strangers will wave at her and get all emotional when she waves back.
September 5th we had our first outing without Besa for my birthday. While she was missed, it was so nice to enjoy good food and wine without being needed. The dinner was a blast. It turns out that all most of our friends are either new parents are parents to be. The laws of baby attractions.

Photos

Photos

Photos

Dreaming of Vlore, Uji i Ftohte, Llogara, Dhermi, Sarande

Our friend Ben Koci just got back from Albania. We are having dinner with him tomorrow and catch up on his visit. Ben and his wife Migena spent sort of their honey moon in Southern Albania and their photos reminded me of how much I miss going back. I am making a point of here because I was so envies of their trip. What losers are they? Visiting my favorite places while we had to sit here and beg for some Sun.

Forget Baby food. Give Besa some Lamb!

It’s been a long time since I have posted but we have been enjoying what’s left of summer too much to sit in front of the computer. We have discovered that Besa’s food taste is very adult like. We gave up with baby food. She would close her mouth and if she was tricked in opening it so I could sneak in a spoon of food she’d spit it out as fast as it went in. On our recent trip to Ikea with Ewan, Leya and Leo we gave her some “Ikea soup” with beef, noodles spices and who knows what else. She could not get enough of it.

We had to take it away from before she ate too much and throw it all up. Ever since, we have been feeding her everything from lamb soup (what a meat eater) to lentil soup, egg yolks, homemade yogurt, quiches, mashed potatoes. They say to give the same food for three days in a row so in case she develops allergies, it can be easily detected what food caused it. We just can’t do it when she eyeballs everything we eat ourselves and begs us for some. Can’t blame her for having a good taste for real food.

We can’t wait to go to Omak next weekend and get Besa to try Omak peaches for the first time. If she is anything like me, we’d have to pull her away from the orchard.

Link to Snapfish photos

http://www2.snapfish.com/thumbnailshare/AlbumID=170972713/a=85079637_85079637/t_=85079637

Ahhh.. The Sun!

Besa has proven to be my daughter once again. She loves tanning in the sun, the beach and swimming. She may have looked like a whitey when first born but after some time under the sun lately her skin has changed to looking more like my skin color : )

We got back on Sunday from a beautiful trip to Lake Chelan. I had forgotten how beautiful that lake is. We went up with my parents, Elaiza, our friend Maria, her daughter Katherina and my cute little niece Elaiza and stayed in a hotel in Wenatchee.

We even managed to meet up with Nana and Dada for dinner. I’m glad they came down to Brewster BC driving to Omak with two little squirmy girls in the car would have been too much. Besa knows clearly who her family is now and is not shy to show her love.

Our goal for the remainder of the summer is to go somewhere new every weekend to make up for such a short summer.

This weekend are going camping to a place still to be determined. It will for sure have water though.

Six month shots!

Besa had her 6 months shots for Tetanus, Haemophilus, Polio, and Pneumococcal.
I am the wrong person to go in with her for that. I could have eaten the nurse alive. Seeing Besa in tears like that it’s so painful to watch but 5 minutes later she forgot all about it. Unlike the 4 month shots, she did much better this time around. In pain only while in the process. After that the usual happy, smiley Besa.
As for her growth, she falls in the 90th percentile for height. Anyone surprised? She does need to catch up on her weight though and with eating solids now, hopefully she will.
Not to show off or anything but the doctor said she is pretty advanced for her age. If I leave the bottle a few feet away from her, she will roll and roll until she will get a hold of it and drink on her own. I have it on video. I’m not sure if it’s advancement or just a survival instinct.

Besa's Six month mile stone and so much more

It has been quite an eventful period since my last post. Ben’s uncle Jim and his son Dale from Australia visited us. Between all the site seeing, family gatherings and eating too much food, we felt like we were on vacation too. Today we dropped them off at the airport and I do not envy a 17hour flight back to Melbourne. Besa got to spend a lot of quality time with Jim and Dale and is already missing them.

We can’t believe it’s been a half of a year since Besa was born. She has become so much the center of our lives that we can’t even remember what life was like without her.
Some amazing changes happen when a baby reaches six months. All my worries that she may not like solid foods went away today. I had been introducing Besa to solid foods for quite sometime now and she did not seem to like it, unless you give her a bone of lamb than it’s a different game. Today I tried giving her polenta out of all things and to my surprise she ate a good portion of it. It could be the six months magic number that she likes solids better, or that we are giving her adults kind of foods.
Rolling over now is her favorite thing and reaching for toys. Also testing out her lungs.

We are amazed how this kid can sleep through any noise. When she gets tired, it’s her time to sleep. It could be next to live music, fireworks, you name it, she will sleep. The loud music we played in the car while pregnant with her is paying off. Highly recommended it. Getting the baby prepared for the outside noise, it starts while in the womb. So all you mothers to be out there, start on rocking.

Besa's Mama first run race!

Besa was cheering for mama at doing 5K Burien Strawberry Festival Run Race. My intention of the run was to not finish last and surprisingly I ended up somewhere in the middle at 43 minutes. Mind you, I had absolutely not trained for it so I feel kind of proud for not passing out.

Today we also went to Angelina’s Baptism Celebration in Bellevue where we got to see Viki’s family visiting from New York among other friends. Besa got to see uncle Rob and Manita.

We can’t wait to have Uncle Jim and Dale, Mum and Dad to visit here soon. It is time for the grandparents to see how healthy and beautiful their granddaughter has grown. She is such a happy little girl. She loves when we go out with her and is fascinated by world around her.

We are still waiting for the long awaited sun so we can try out our new pool.

The 5 month Milestone!

Besa’s is leaping forward to some more physical and intellectual abilities. She is getting closer to sitting and is remembering to miss us when we are gone. She gets so happy to see us now when we get home from work. Her reaction to strangers has changed as well. We thought she was friendly with strangers but now, she is so much more aware of the familiar faces, surroundings and unfamiliar faces.
Learning to eat is the newest adventure. So far, she prefers fresh bananas, over other fruits. It is so cute watching her make faces when trying something new.
The “June” weather has not be so encouraging for dressing her with the cute dresses yet I’m afraid that by the time we get some sun she will have outgrown them all.
We still take our walks to the beach and Ben continues to enjoy his Kite flying.

Growth Spurt

Now that we have gotten some sleep I can post Besa’s adventures. Her adventures involved a week of growth spurt where we could not feed her often enough. Her every hour to the hour wakening may have been a combination of hunger, belly discomfort and who knows what else but we are glad the phase is over with. Even cousin Leo tried to help with landing Besa his nice swing but it did not do the trick. Rice cereal seems to be working really well.

We love taking walks to the beach. On Saturday we took a long walk, down the hill to the beach, up some 300 stairs and around the neighborhood for over 3 hours and she slept the entire time while I was sweating off some serious calories.
Ben has been doing his kite-flying thing. I can safely say to him. Go fly a kite : ) and he will actually be glad to hear it.