patrícia furtado

Helena calls me aunt Patita, knows how to plant the perfect kiss on a cheek, imitates my every gesture - specially dance moves -, bosses everyone around by pointing her little finger, makes faces for the camera, speaks a language of her own and her smiles and giggles are highly contagious. Better than sugar almonds and chocolate eggs, don’t you think?

“Hey, this bathtub looks huge! And Dad is coming in too! How strange! What are those? Other babies? This is crowded, dudes! Oh, look, toys! I want them all! Hey, what is this pink hat you’re making me wear? Take it off! Who wears a hat in the bath anyway?”

Baby Helena went to the swimming pool for the first time, and loved it. I promise you, though, I’m not turning this into a baby blog anytime soon. But I just couldn’t resist posting these photos.

The first time I posted some photos of my baby niece, she was 4-month old, and starting to eat solid food. She turned out to be very talented at eating. She’s now double that age and double the cheeks.

At the moment, we can’t look away for two seconds without her trying to get up on her feet, and falling on her nappy-padded bum. Apparently, she finds the scared looks on our faces extremely funny, so she keeps diving.

Next step for Helena: walking on her own. The cat better enjoy her peace and quiet while she can, I predict some wild chases soon.

How to feed a 6-month baby:

1. Talk gibberish and make all sort of ridiculous noises and faces in front of the baby.
2. Find out which combinations make him/her laugh the most and repeat them.
3. Sneak in a spoonful of green grub while the mouth is open due to laughter.
4. Repeat steps 2 and 3 until most the food is gone - you may have to go back to step 1 if step 2 stops working.

Result: A happy, well fed child, and green grub all over the your face, your clothes, the baby and the couch.

(No photos have been taken, in order to spare the camera from an otherwise unavoidable green yucky coating)

It’s a classic, people always complain about receiving socks for Christmas. Well, not me. I love new socks, and I count on the Christmas bounty to replace the worn-till-toe-peaking-out pairs and the missing-in-action-lonely-divorcees (by the way, does anyone know where my socks go when they leave their better halves?).

But as good as this year’s loot was, I couldn’t help but to feel slightly disappointed in the end, when there were no socks to be accounted for. Among all the beautiful scarves, interesting stuff to wear, to read, to cook in, whatever happened to the reliable socks?

It wasn’t just me, this year’s event proved overall poor in socks. With 13 people present, I only saw one lonely pair pop out of wrapping. It was however a night for pijamas, with 7 of them being offered throughout the night. And thankfully, one was destined to be mine.

Still, Christmas isn’t what it used to be. No socks. Sad, really. What saved it for me, though, was my cute adorable little niece, dressed up for the occasion, and always happy and excited about everything. Who cares about presents when you’ve got that to play with?

Baby Helena (my niece) is now 4 month-old, and her bottle feeding exclusive days are over. A whole new universe of gourmet baby food awaits her. For us… cleaning up after a meal will never be the same.