Salma is seven months old

Salma is seven months old. The new thing is that she's started to sit on her own.









Salma babbling in the bouncy chair...




Our friend John (see previous post) turned us on to the Svan high chair. It's excellent. And it's great to have Salma "at the table". Of course, now she's inducted us into the age old game of fetch where she throws everything off the side, and we go fetch. She's turning out to be not a fussy eater. She loves sweet potato, carrots, and peas. And of course there's banana and apple sauce. But she's also quite happy to eat spinach. Not so crazy about avocado though...


Feeding herself from a bottle...


With Dayi Ali...

Asa

The little guy on the left is Asa, son of John (aka gOm) and Lara. He's a few weeks older than Salma.





John and Lara are busy remodeling their house nearby and will be moving back into the neighborhood shortly. We're really excited about that.

Mom

OK, so I'm sneaking in some pictures of Zahra...I'm sure you all won't mind :)






The picture in the video is a bit dark, but this is really about hearing Salma laugh.

Nersi and Bella

This post focusses on Nersi and Bella. Admittedly it took Salma a little time to warm up to them. At one point Salma was always crying with Nersi and afraid of Bella. But not anymore... as you can see...

Salma is six months old

Look what Santa brought us...

Salma gets food by spoon

Zahra fed Salma her first spoon-fed food: rice cereal and breast milk. She seemed to like it.




Later, we had a visit from Laili, Mina and Nesa and uncles Reza and Ali M.

Rolling over... and back

Today, while in Modesto for Thanksgiving, Salma rolled over and back again all on her own. First time. She seemed quite pleased with her accomplishment and her new found empowerment.

She has also discovered yoga and accupressure :). She finds it quite relaxing to pull her feet to her head and chew on a special pressure point on her toe.





And now for another test of including video... For those who saw the prior test post that I removed sorry for the churn. Here's another test. This is a video of Salma at 2 months. I'll try to get something more recent ASAP.

This uses Vimeo

Playing at the beach in San Francisco

This morning we spent a fun couple of hours at Bakers Beach in San Francisco. It started sunny and cool but then warmed up nicely.






Warm enough for the nude sunbathers to come out. Gotta love CA.










This was Salma's first time at the ocean and the first time Zahra and I had been in quite a while.





It was great to get out and enjoy a fall morning.








So in the prior post, I was talking about how Salma was holding things more deliberately. Like her yellow thing for example...








Or even her bottle...







But of course, nothing tastes as good as thumb and bib...







And finally, today's guest star... visiting from LA... Marwa. As you can imagine, whe's welcome any time :)

November

It was the annual Rapt Halloween party, and the bunny family was in full attendance :)












Salma is starting to get finer motor control and I think she may starting to teeth. She would never take the pacifier, but now she really likes to chew and suck on the "yellow thing". And as you can see, she holds it herself and can bring it to her mouth.


Last night, Zahra went to a play so Salma and I were on our own. I gave her a bottle and she practically held it on her own and fed herself.



Last weekend we went to visit our friends Pascal and Judith and their daughter Alexia. (They've been featured on the blog before.) Pascal is a talented photographer. Thanks to Pascal for sharing...

Salma is 4 months old!

Salma turned four months old and little by little, she is transforming from infant to baby girl. In particular, she does "talk" quite a bit. Nothing word like yet, just those heart-melting cooing sounds. She has also firmly figured out her left thumb as you'll see...

Here Salma and Jaleh-joon enjoy a sunny autumn afternoon on the deck.


When she's not sunning on the deck, Salma likes to relax in her crib :)



See what I mean about the thumb?


It's been great to have Ali M around.


And once in a while 'pesar khaleh' Bahman comes to visit from L.A.


We had a few more visitors in October... Lisa and Dave....
and Nora and Angie.

We were also excited to have a surprise visit from Eliza (Lisa) Livingston who is a long time family friend and most recently was instrumental in getting Zahra (and me) through labor and afterwards. Unfortunately I don't have any pictures to share. In in my shameless desire to plug my friend's good work...Let me mention that Lisa runs a cute bed and breakfast on Vancouver Island if you're ever thinking of going that way. It's called Villa Marco Polo Inn. She has also written an book called Living with Colon Cancer: Beating the Odds
inspired by her own experience as both nurse and cancer survivor.