While not yet able to speak, our little Amira is now coining her own phrases (well papa is coining them on her behalf). I figure if none of your names pass a spell check, and neither of your parents excels at spelling, you get to make up a word here and there. She is still too young to be truly beautiful, and more than just a cute baby, which makes her so cuteiful.
Month number 4 was fantastic with a triumphant return to her natural environment in the mountains. While she hasn’t made it to anymore countries, she has made big strides in moving to a different house each month with her “gypsy” parents (long story, but if anyone every tells you moving is fun, have them give me a call). She is really adapting well to the fresh air and beautiful scenery. 
Where her hand eye coordination is still developing, she seems to have well established her mouth to anything coordination. Although I must admit her strategy of attack things mouth first works well…once she’s drooled on it, she generally gets to hold on to it a little while longer. She’s deceptively clever our little one.
She has also developed a bit of the stink eye – assessing the size of anything within her grasp, staring it down with fierce and blinkless intimidation, and then bats her eyes at papa as if to say “Papa…can I eat it?” And so it begins…
As expected Amira has taken to the Bumbo chair, and went through a phase of rebelling and rejecting all other forms of self entertainment until she met the infamous jumparoo. It was love at first sight, or at least love at first bite. Sure she can’t quite touch the floor yet, but nothing that an atlas and a stretch onto the tippy toes can’t solve.
In a last ditch act of desperation, in hopes of getting a full night sleep, on May 2 we gave her her first taste of people food. Not that what she has been eating isn’t people food, but you get the idea. While it wasn’t a complete hit, it wasn’t a total disaster either, but with no improvement on the sleeping duration we decided it wasn’t quite worth the effort yet. I guess we shouldn’t have been that surprised; if ground up brown rice, boiled and then mixed with breast milk cured insomnia, life would be too easy.
Unfortunately, she has taken to gaining extra sustenance by sucking on her own feet. Barefoot, socked food, or leather shoe; it doesn’t seem to matter. I am concerned about what social issues this could lead to (although it is probably still less socially damning than becoming an engineer), but Laura encourages it and even throws in some foot kisses herself.
After an entire month of resistance, I finally caved. Turns out I am more flexible than I thought!
And of course, equally (if not more) important than turning 5 months old, is getting to celebrate your very first mother’s day with the woman who suffered through 42 hours of 
labour to bring your oversized and still bald head (I mean seriously, she has less hair now than the day she was born…and I’m not just talking about the stuff on the back that has worn off in the crib!) into this world. Are there two more beautiful girls in the world than these two? We celebrated with Amira’s first hike 
on a beautiful sunny day on a ridge just above town. She slept the whole way up and the whole way doen, but who can resist the confort of a baby bjorn? And yes, I am carrying the baby and the backpack and am smiling like any good father on Mother’s Day.
As we prepare ourselves for the arrival of the half year festivities (holy crap!), I present to you the epitome of what it means to be cuteiful (with a side of mischievous).
), then 2 days in Calgary with her Auntie Denise, Uncle Larry and favourite cousin Avery, before making the long journey to meet Uncle Ev for the first time (he’s a natural!…or at least he has 5 more months to perfect it). Good thing she likes airplanes so much because 9.5 hours alone with mom could have been a disaster. Don’t worry, she saved some of her best stinker attitude for the return trip when pops was around. Good thing she’s cute, or there were about 400 people on the plane that would have voted to give her a parachute somewhere over Hudson’s Bay!
) visit. I’m looking forward to reuniting with her on her first overseas visit at the end of the month, when she goes to first meet Uncle Ev. Of course, I am optimistically hoping her sleeping schedule is immune to jet lag…
