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Morris Family Webpage The update: Andy, Laura, and Luke ---------  ---------  ----------  ---------  ----------  ----------  ----------  ---------  ----------  ---------  --------- June 29 Luke is crawling!!  It's official.  Granted, he is still perfecting his technique.  More to come later . . . June 23 Lots of rainy weather.  It is the rainy season.  I know that it is supposed to rain everyday around the same time, 3:30pm or so.  Still, when the weather actually continues to follow through on what it is supposed to do, I get a little disappointed.  No afternoon walk.  No dry diapers.  Housebound until . . . tomorrow?  The rain does bring with it a wonderful coolness and a peacefulness that was hard to come by in the dry season.   Updates: Luke has "el gripe."  He has been breathing through his mouth and drooling a lot more, as a result.  Otherwise, he seems to be doing fine.  Andy has been working hard with the students and driving to Pinares, as usual.  I am doing well, enjoying my time with Andy and Luke, as well as my free time.  I've been doing a lot of reading recently. An important new event in our lives is Ada.  Ada is a girl who goes to our church.  At church, she was always the first to come get Luke and hold him during the service.  She is very smart, does not seem to have "pena" (a type of shyness/shame which seems to be typical of rural areas and which is quite frustrating), and she has a great time with Luke.  So we have asked her to come twice a week for two hours to babysit Luke so that I can get some other things done around the house.  I must admit that it was very nice to have that time.  What did I do with my first two-hour block of time?  I cleaned and rearranged the contents of some of our kitchen drawers and cabinets.  Luke did well, and Ada was great with him.  I look forward to those two-hour blocks on Mondays and Thursdays, now. June 20 Separation anxiety.  Luke's.  It is getting worse.  I have been told or read (I forget which) that it peaks at 15-months.  That seems to be a long way away.  If I am in the room, no one else will do, not even Andy anymore.  If he sees me walk away (while with his dad), he starts screaming at the top of his lungs!  If he is in his high chair but wants to be in my lap, he starts whining and putting his hands out to be picked up.  We have started saying, "Luke, no whining."  And he shakes his little head, imitating our "no."  He stops whining, for a little while.  I have also been told that separation anxiety and maternal attachment is completely normal, that we should be worried if there was no attachment.  At times, though, his love of mommy gets to be a little hard to take, especially for Andy because he has to put up with Luke lunging out of his arms to get to me and screaming in his ear because he wants me, not dad.  It is hardest when I hear people tell me that he doesn't get out of the house enough or that he needs someone else to be around him more often so that he isn't so attached to mom.*  However, I don't think that he is under-socialized.  Regardless, some people tend to think that a baby being so attached to his mom is a bad thing, or at least I get that impression from more than Hondurans.  From what I have read, this attachment that Luke is experiencing right now is setting the stage for healthy development in the future.  Luke's separation anxiety may be stronger than other babies'; however, every baby has a different personality.  I have the time, right now, to devote to my son.  It will not be the same after moving back to the States, nor will it be the same for the next child (in the distant future).  I am relatively free to spend my days with Luke, playing, walking, singing, etc.  Am I doing something wrong by taking advantage of that?  Is there something else I should be doing?  So I have been thinking a lot about this as Luke continues to cling to my hip.  Of note is that we are in the process of trying to find a babysitter to come two days a week for a couple hours in the afternoon after nap time.  If that works out, it will prove to be challenging if I am in view of Luke.  Hopefully, with time, maybe six months, everything will smooth itself out. *As a side note, I do want to say that Luke is around a lot of people.  He gets his daily time with Andy, Ana (the secretary), Maura, Marin, Jack, Florencia (Jack's babysitter), all of Marin and Maura's friends, brigade people, and others (Maria, Belkis, Lesly, James, Marisela).  Plus, when we are both well, I try to take him on walks to get out of the house.  We will soon institute playtime and story time at the library, which will be fun for all. June 18 We are back from a weekend trip to San  Miguel, El Salvador, a surprisingly short 3-hour drive away.  Only three hours to the nearest grocery store and mall.  Not bad.  La Esperanza is three hours away, but not quite as big as San Miguel.  We left Saturday morning, got there in time for Luke's second nap time, shopped, ate pupusas, and swam.  Andy, I think, had a great Father's Day, complete with some new shirts and new DVDs (thanks to Brett who is with the recently arrived summer group).   On that note, we have a group of six new students here for two months.  Two are med students, two are recent college graduates, and two are still in college.  This is in addition to Alec, our scorpion stung college student who will be working on various and sundry projects; Ariel, a MPH student from Columbia working in Pinares on the water project; and Tanya, a med student who used to live and work at the clinic in Santa Lucia who will be in Pinares for a month.  All of these students are here, at the moment.  We have a full house, which is nice but also not what we are used to.  I am sure that when they leave we will miss their company.  It is nice to have some new faces around and more people to talk to and get to know. June 11 The big news today is that Alec, one of our summer students, got stung by a scorpion this morning in the men's dorm room!  He is doing fine.  He, actually, never got really bad, thanks to some quick action on Andy's part and probably a weak sting from the scorpion.  The scorpion has been preserved as a warning to further scorpion trespassers.  There have been quite a few sitings the past four days, which does make me more vigilant about checking Luke's room, around his toys, under and in his crib, etc.  It also makes me a little worried about our almost mobile son.  A scorpion run-in would be bad news.  We will continue to be very watchful. June 9 Luke is 9 months old on this sunny Saturday!  Today, our cute guy has been playing with Marin and Maura, eating bananas mixed with carrots and broccoli (YUM!), and actually taking naps.  Woo hoo!  He really, really wants to crawl but is not there quite yet.  He tried beans for the first time and has taken a liking to turning the pages while reading.  We love our little guy and can't believe that 9 months has flown by.   June 8 Just a quick note to say that things are going well.  We have electricity again after not having had it for about 24 hours.  That is a blessing!  Luke is starting to get back to normal, though he is still a little fussy.  Luke and I got the laundry washed and on the line together this morning.  He is just waking up from his nap, now.  I got to take a shower in the rain yesterday (in my bathing suit) because we didn't have electricity to run the pump and I hadn't gotten a shower in a few days.  That was nice.  Andy had a good day in Pinares with the brigade, and returned home tired but in good spirits.   June 6 Something died outside our window.  I'm not sure what it is, maybe a chicken, maybe a cat, maybe a rat.  Whatever it is, it stinks.  And it is attracting vultures.   Luke and I have been sick.  We have since recovered, for the most part, though Luke continues to refuse most solid foods (except bananas).  Andy has been wonderful the whole time, bringing me Gatorade, changing Luke's horrible diapers, and always making sure there is a barf bag on hand.   On Saturday night, the worst of it, he was up the whole night with Luke and I, administering the necessary meds, bathing Luke in the middle of the night, changing out all of Luke's bedding, and soothing us both.  The rest of this week, so far, has been spent recovering.   In addition to being sick, Luke has been teething, bonking his head on the floor in attempts to figure out how to crawl, and not taking naps.  He is a rather grumpy fellow at this moment.

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