Coe Family Adventures

Hard to know where to start with what new things Ella is doing.

She is officially standing now, long enough that we've stopped counting how many seconds. The boys still get excited each time they see her do it. She can lower herself slowly, but still often she sits down hard.

She is more and more responsive to music, loving to dance by bouncing. She also likes to wave her hands around when Eric's playing guitar. She sings along to anyone else singing, and also when we're rocking her to sleep, sometimes with her eyes closed. Often she literally sings, “la la la.”

We are trying to figure out if there are foods which Ella is allergic to. During our trip to Hungary, she become almost inconsolable at night. Since then, she is better most days. After returning here, she developed a rash of red dots on the back of her head and neck, and would rub them vigorously when crying at night. I think they look like heat rash, but then Tima’s pediatrician once said his red dots resembled an allergic response, and I’d written them off as heat rash as well. We don't know if those things were actually connected to her diet, but we're eliminating a lot of foods from both of our diets and will see if it helps. She was getting some dairy in my diet there, and maybe even directly as we were giving her mixed veggies as finger foods. The whole situation is confused by the fact that she is on her 3rd round of antibiotics for ear infections since Jan 3rd. So I'm hoping that the crying even in Hungary may just have been due to ear infections. (Though some people might say that so many ear infections is itself a sign of food allergies!) The latest round started when we were all sick, and the doctor said she had two raging infections. I have never seen her that sick, sleeping 4-5 times a day for about 30 minutes at a time and wanted to be held constantly. Not easy when Eric and I are also sick! Anyway, I'm still breastfeeding her 2-3 times a night, and now I'm just happy when she goes right back to sleep! (At her fussiest, she refused feedings at night, and wanted only to be carried for hours.) But we're debating whether to try some 'sleep training' to wean her of nighttime feedings. Or should we add some foods back into her (and my!) diet? On top of all of this, I'd love to wean her to either goat's milk or hypoallergenic formula, partially to simplify the whole question of what she’s getting in her diet. So, what to do first? It’s frustrating that each step takes at least three days to see if she reacts. We haven’t started yet, as she’s still fairly fussy from her ear infections.

Well, Ella's under the desk tearing a kleenex into pieces, and now trying to eat it... She definitely likes to eat anything. In fact, I think she purposely drops finger food from her high chair so later she can graze under the table!

Now she and Tima are in the bath. Ella is waving at me and saying “aye”. Every few minutes she puts her hands on the side, gets on knees and tries to stands up. When I say, “No, Ella, sit down.” She sits down and smiles and claps. This is where she seems the most obedient, but also loves the ‘game’ of me telling her to sit down. Soon she’ll stop obeying and then we’ll have to get out!

Words—or word-like noises. I have pretty high standards for what qualifies as a word. Danya and Tima don’t. They think she’s saying about 10 words, plus “da” in Russian. I think we maybe have 2. Her ‘aye’ greeting does sound a lot like ‘hi’. What I think disqualifies it is that she’s been saying it forever. Do we credit her with a first word at four months? Or was it six? Anyway, now she does seem to mean a greeting. The most unequivocal word, though, is ‘light’. Of course, it sound like ‘la’. She went through a few weeks where everywhere we went, she would point to al the lights and say, ‘la’. Now she doesn’t say it as much. She is definitely babbling/singing a lot. The day Eric returned, he started saying, “blah-blah-blah” to her, and she mimicked him exactly. She’ll do it with few different sounds, including “ma-ma’ and “la la”. When I come to get her after playpen time, she usually stands up quickly, goes to the music box on her crib and starts babbling at me, as if to tell me all about it.

She enjoys being read to, especially “Brown Bear” and her Sesame Street Pat-a-cake book. She does well as long as she sits in my lap and can turn the pages. She doesn’t have a lot of patience for the boys’ books, but will listen for a few minutes before trying to grab the pages.

Temper, temper! Is it possible to have temper tantrums starting at 10 months? And bite in anger? The boys call her “Biting Missy.” She will try to bite them when they won’t give her something she wants. And she’s bit my shoulder before, when she wanted down. Now, she’s learned to let her arms go up and throw her head back, so that she almost slides out of my arms. Oh, and when I put her in the stroller I have to put my hand between her knees immediately, because she arches her back and will slide right out until the straps are buckled. She does not like to be dressed or undressed, or diapered. I really miss our changing table. It’s hard to hold her down on the couch and dress her without her crawling away.

She is still amazingly affectionate. She loves to crawl up to people and put her head on their knee, or even crawl into our laps and lean her head on our chests. She loves to be held, and we still use the baby backpack in the evenings a lot, as she wants to be carried from about 4-7!

Speaking of which, this child is like a clock which automatically resets itself to the local time. She never really went through jet-lag, starting her evening crying right on schedule the first night. Even through her awful nights, she was tired at night (except 2 times that I finally let her get up to play). We hoped to keep her on her Hungarian schedule, which would have meant going to bed at 8pm here in Kiev. But she gets up earlier and earlier and is therefore tired earlier! So we’re back to trying to stretch her to 7pm every night. She wakes between 6 and 7am every day. Her naps are short—she usually takes two naps for only one hour each. So she often wakes from her afternoon nap at 2:30. That’s why she’s tired so early in the evenings! (I keep explaining it to her but so far she’s not convinced!)

This is the view from our living room, kitchen and bedroom. The building is the very expensive private international school with the American style playground. The woods are pretty, with nine-story tall trees, but it's a pretty small area, and a lot of trash. More, even, then in the woods in Irkutsk.

Our three small balconies are beautifully enclosed, very clean floors, even. It's really hot in the apartment, so we have the windows open outside and often the balcony doors!

Bath-time in a very nice bathroom. The only weird thing is that the showerhead is low... I can just fit under it. Eric gets a nice shoulder-level spray.

The kids' room. We hope to buy bunk beds, but so far just have the furnished beds--one of which is pretty bad. Ella's crib is right behind the door. They have a balcony which looks east over some small houses, and with tall trees in view as well.

The doors from the hall open into the living room. The kitchen is through the living room on the right.

This is the view when you walk in the front door. The bathroom is to the immediate right and the living room farther to the right. The boys bedroom is by them on the left, ours is on the right.

Coe Family Adventures

Happy First Birthday, Ella Rae Coe!

More about Ella

Ella's development update

Outside photos

Our home in Kyiv

Satellite View of Our Home

Eastern European Staff Conf, Lake Balaton, Hungary

Kyiv first stop -a room at church