Baby Steps

I'm a couple days late with Sarah Claire's ten-month monkey picture, but it's not because I haven't been trying! She has been a little bit under the weather this week with a nose running like a faucet and eyes producing massive amounts of yucky stuff.

However, as yucky as the stuff in her eyes was, she was not interested in having them cleaned. My attempts to wash them usually just triggered more crying which meant more runny nose and eyes!

So, my first two attempts at a monkey picture came up dry, but today we finally got a decent one. You can still see some of the redness in her eyes, but trust me, this is much better than she's been looking! I'm so glad that she's feeling better, and just amazed that she is really ten months old already.

This has been a fun month. She is an expert speed-crawler now, and she is so very close to walking. She took three tiny steps in a row one time today, but she usually falls after her first step. She is also doing lots of baby signs for us--dog, cat, more, all done, bye-bye, duck, and no-no are all part of her repertoire. And she gives the sweetest kisses in the world. :)

Happy Tenth Month to our little princess!

Our Little Poet

Lee Anna and I have read lots of poetry together this year, and she got excited when I told her that her assignment today was to write her own. She declared immediately that they should be "silly" poems, and then we worked together to come up with some ideas. The assignment was to write an "imagery poem," so we talked about making comparisons and painting pictures with our words.

Here are her compositions:

The Clock
One day my father climbed
into the clock
to make it ding.
He was the dinger.
I thought it was the clock.

The Rain on My Head
The sun shone on my head,
so hot that the sweat came down
from my head like raindrops.

The Hurricane
The baby goes from room to room
making a mess like a hurricane.

The Monkey
My monkey brother climbs, climbs, climbs
in our jungle house.

The Dust Storm
The dust rolls out like a sleeping bag
spreading out to be slept on.

I admit I'm extremely biased, but I was impressed! We both had so much fun that we will definitely be writing more soon.

Sunrise Celebration

Happy Easter, Everyone! We hope you had a joyful day celebrating Jesus.

This morning we did something new for our family--we watched the sun rise from a sailboat on the river! Our kids haven't seen many sunrises in their time (especially if you don't count the ones from an airplane window!), so this was a special treat.That 4:30 a.m. alarm sure was early, but definitely worth it. The kids only took a minute or two to come out of their fog and remember that we were going on a BOAT! Once that sank in, they sprang to life. We made the short walk to the sailboats and waited for our friends to join us.

We had a great time singing together (led by my floating minstrel husband), eating delicious breakfast treats, enjoying the peaceful calm, and of course watching for the sun to rise.

Here's our first glimpse!

We had a double-dose today, because we also got to spend time later with more friends as our families celebrated Easter together. I don't have any good pictures from that get-together, but we had a great time telling and reenacting the Easter story, enjoying lots more delicious food, and even hiding an egg or two. It was a wonderful day.

Happy, Happy Easter! He is Risen!

Special Visitor

We've had a special guest tagging along with us this week. The kids' cousin Autumn has been reading about Flat Stanley at her school in Texas, and she asked if she could send him to us.We were so excited to get Stanley in the mail, and we're having fun showing him around our city. Lee Anna even made some extra Stanleys to accompany Autumn's on all their adventures.
So far Stanley has seen the world's longest river, a thousand-year-old fortress...

and some slightly-newer establishments! We thought this last one would be meaningful for a classroom full of kindergarteners.

We have big plans for Stanley this week. Tonight he gets to go to the airport to pick up Mimi and Papaw who are coming for a short visit on their way to visit Uncle Andy. I guess we'll let them tag along with Stanley this week, too!

It's Monkey Time Again...

Sarah Claire is nine months old!

Our little princess is now towering over her monkey! As a matter of fact, before this photo shoot was over, she had thrown him out of the crib onto the floor.
She's come a long way in her 3/4 of a year of life. At last week's doctor visit, she weighed 8.8 kgs (19 lbs, 6 oz) and was 70 cm (27.5 in) tall. And the general consensus these days is that she looks a lot like her brother. We heard it four times in four days (from four different people) last week!

Here are some of my favorite recent pics...

We love you, Sarah Claire! You are a joy and a delight!

Our Little Artist

Today was an exciting day for Lee Anna. She got to go to her first day of Art Class! A sweet homeschooling friend of mine talked to a local art cafe about doing a class for our kids. They were happy to schedule a time for them to come.
So today, four very excited five-and-six-year-olds started working on their first project--a giant paper mache watch that will be a working clock! Today they assembled the pieces and "painted" the paper on. Next week they'll get to paint their watches. I'm hoping someone who has finished first grade will actually install the clock mechanism.

Lee Anna has been beside herself with excitement about this class. When I first told her about it (which was only two days ago), she said, "Oh, that will be great because I'm a really good art...um...artist." It took her a minute to think of the word for it, but she loves to do it!

Yesterday evening I suggested that she might want to pick out her clothes for today, and she came back with her t-shirt from the Jacksonville Zoo, chosen very thoughtfully because it has paint splotches all over it. She said she thought it would be a good one for art class "since it has art stuff on it."

Not long after that, Jason found her on the couch playing with her Magna Doodle. She told him she was just practicing for some things she might have to do in her art class. We'll be sure to share pictures of her finished products.

*Update from Tuesday, March 2*

Today one of Lee Anna's school assignments was to write about her first art class. Here's what she wrote:

On my first day of art class, I got to start making a huge clock tht looks like a giant watch. My teachers are going to put the machine in it and make it work with the hands. And I'm going to paint a dot right where I want the hands to be. My art class was at Art Cafe. David was ther. There were four kids, but I can't remember the other two. I wore my shirt that I got at the zoo for my brother's birthday, because it was a kind of art shirt. I liked it.

Streams in the Desert

We've been here a little better than four years now, and this is the second time we've seen enough rain to measure. In America, rain is considered a good thing. Here, well, it's a little different. This past Thursday was rainy-looking all day. It showered a little in the morning, and just stayed cloudy and damp all day.

Then, about 6:00, we started seeing lightning in the sky. Before we knew it, the wind was howling, and the rain was gushing and we even saw some hail! It made us a little nervous when we heard the hail tapping on the windows. It made the little ones more than a little nervous!

Lee Anna's rain gauge had over an inch of rain in it Friday morning. Of course, that's on the edge of our balcony, under the edge of someone else's balcony, but it had an inch of water in it from somewhere.

The bedrooms in our house each have glass doors to the small balconies, but we discovered that they're not really water-tight. We rolled up some towels next to each door and held back the deluge.

These street pictures were taken the next day, probably 18 hours after the rain had stopped. When you only have water in the roads once or twice a decade, it's not really worth investing millions of dollars in a drainage system. It'll be dry in a day or two.

The trees are all green and pretty today, but all of the dirt that had collected on them is now in the roads. When it rains here is a lot like when it snows in the South. People aren't really used to driving in water, and everybody that can stay home does. We had meetings cancelled Friday, and I saw lots of stores closed on Thursday while it was still sprinkling.

This last picture is of the hailstones collected in a planter off our front porch. There's not a local Arabic word for "snow," or "hail," so we just call it all "ice." But I was reading a local online paper Friday morning and clicked the Google Translate button and in English it said there had been snow in our city! No, there wasn't. But a good thunderstorm is just about as rare as snow here.

Check Me Out!

Now that I'm eight months old, I have much better things to do than sit down and wait to be photographed! I've been practicing my new stand-up trick for the last few weeks, and today I let my monkey stand beside me for my picture.

Now I just need to teach him how to stick his tongue out!
Here's my serious face. What do you think?
And a few more smiley ones, just because my mom likes them all!


Happy Eight Months to Me!
Love, Sarah Claire

Happy Valen's Time Day!

I'm not sure what a Valen is, but we're celebrating his time at our house today. :)

Lee Anna got flowers from her Daddy, which made this "the very best day ever!"She made cards for everyone this morning, and she was so proud to read Sawyer's to him when he came home. We also made special Valentine pizzas (above) and cookies (below).

We hope you've been able to spend this day with people you love. Happy Valentine's Day!

Fun With Friends

We've had a lot of fun guests in our home over the past week, and have been able to enjoy some parts of both of the places we call "home."

First, last weekend, my friend and her two daughters came over for dinner. I asked her to help me make some local dishes, and we had fun preparing the feast you see below. The kids on the right are a little more excited about the local dishes than the kids on the left, but they all enjoyed the rice!After dinner, we found a game that crossed the language barrier--Memory! Jason and the kids taught the other girls how to play, and they all had lots of fun finding matches and naming the pictures in English and Arabic.
On Monday, it was time for some all-American entertainment--the Super Bowl!

(By the way, after we'd been talking about it for several days, I realized that Lee Anna was calling it the "Super Goal." I can see why. She knew that "goal" was a sports word, but didn't know what a "bowl" would have to do with a football game!)
We were interested in seeing the game, but not interested enough to stay up all night, so we did what we've done in years past and watched the recorded game on Monday evening. We had to avoid our computers all day Monday in order to not find out who won ahead of time, but we managed to do it.

We had a fun group of Americans here to watch the game with us. In honor of Jason's New Orleans roots, we made red beans and rice.

Some girls even made a King Cake! They had a little trouble finding a baby to put it in, though, so they substituted the closest thing they could find--a baby rubber ducky! I'm guessing that's a first.
Sawyer and his friend Chase decided to get in on the football action themselves.
And Sarah Claire entertained the crowd by smiling with her tongue out and climbing all over her Daddy. It seems like lately her tongue has spent more time out of her mouth than inside it. I'm not really sure why, although it might have something to do with the two new teeth that have poked through this week. (On second thought, judging from this picture, it might just be genetic!)
This last picture isn't from the party, but she wanted to show off her newest trick. She's figured out how to pull up to standing, and is practicing every chance she gets!
It won't be long before she's wobbling her way around the house. Can this really be my baby?