Before I tell our long, dramatic tale, let me share Ella's four month shots with the pink pig (a few days late since piggy-pie didn't travel to Turkey with us).  The first picture is from before her bath and the second is from after... the smile is so consistent that I'm convinced she practices it in the mirror:
Ironically, it looks shockingly similar to this smile from a four-month-old Sophia:

They didn't look much alike at birth, but now it's getting pretty hard to deny that they're sisters.

Ella and I hit the pediatrician's office this morning.  Here are her stats at four months old:
Height:  25.75 inches (Sophia was 26.5 inches)
Weight:  16 pounds, 14 ounces (Sophia was 15 pounds, 6 ounces)
These are both still 100th percentile, so even though Ella is slightly shorter and heavier, she's still in the "Big-N-Tall" category like her sister.  The infant car seat has a height limit of 26 inches, so we'll be moving her up to a big girl car seat like Sophia's really soon!

Now onto the drama...

Well, we did make it home as planned on Friday night.  The return flight to the US was appreciably better than the trip to Turkey as both girls slept more (so we slept more) and all were in better moods during our layovers.  We made it to the house before midnight thanks to our good friend Bryce who picked us up from the airport (and brought us some groceries to tide over our empty frig and stomachs until we could get to the store).  Sophia went to bed a bit after 1am and that's when the smooth times came to a screeching halt.  Ella began her screaming campaign about that time and really didn't let up for most of the night.  She had spiked a fever on the plane and so we knew that she was getting sick (actually, she'd had a cold during much of the Turkey visit - more on this later - so it was just that her symptoms took a turn for the worse).  I opted to let her sleep Saturday morning (because once a baby stops screaming after 5 hours of that nasty business, you just let them be), but that meant that I missed the pediatrician's Saturday morning hours.  When she woke up screaming and I started to really think we should see a doctor, our only option was the Emergency Room.  (Note: that's not quite true... there are urgent care centers in our area that the pediatrician recommended, but the drive out to the nearest one was a bust as they don't see babies under 6 months... even when they are screaming and throwing up in the waiting room apparently.)

The ER was great fun... full of homeless people with the flu and drunks still intoxicated from the night before (I spare you the details of the thug with the sliced arm that was cursing and stinking up the air next to us).  I learned a few things from our previously unsuccessful visit to the ER with Sophia as a baby... this time I played every card I had:  just back from international travel, fever, vomiting, history of laryngomalacia, sat next to passenger with bubonic plague on the London-Phoenix flight (ok, I didn't tell them that).  It worked... the triage nurse took us right back to see a doctor who proclaimed that Ella had an ear infection and that's why she was so pissed off.  Apparently, the nasty effects of the changing air pressure from the flights can be delayed and the fluid in the ears can start to move around after you've finally settled on the ground, and this can be quite painful.  I'm actually really grateful that the screaming didn't start up on the plane like it does with most babies.  The beauty of this ER visit was that ear infection is our familiar friend thanks to Sophia last year at this time, but the ER doc had a new twist on the treatment... instead of 10 days of hellish pink stuff administered orally (and continually thrown up leaving us to wonder about whether any medicine actually stayed in), he gave Ella a one-time shot of antibiotics that are supposed to be just as effective.  I'll take a single needle stick over 10 days of pink stuff anytime, of course, I'm not the one getting the needle.

I brought Ella home and felt like we had dodged a bullet by getting her the antibiotics before raging ear infections turned her into more of a screaming devil, but she actually got worse over the course of the night.  By early morning her breathing was so labored that her whole torso was heaving with every breath and she was making these awful watery-sounding wheezing noises on every exhale.  Maybe it's just something about the middle of the night, but I called the doctor again and was told to go to back to the ER.  By the time we got there at 6am Sunday morning, they had cleared the place of Saturday night drunks and the same crew of nurses and doctors greeted us warmly.  I am so grateful that none of them made me feel like I was over-reacting by bringing her back.  Breathing is just not something that you play around with, especially in such a little body.  They got Ella a chest xray to rule out pneumonia.  Thankfully, she cooperated during the xray, which requires a shot with her positioned on her side with her arms above her head.  If she hadn't cooperated, they would have put her in this horrific plastic torture device designed to hold her arms above her head forcefully.  The xray tech didn't show it to me until after it was clear it wouldn't be necessary and then he confessed that he nearly cries every time he has to put it to use because of how much the babies hate it.  Yikes.  I was very relieved to hear that she "only" has a bad case of bronchitis (i.e., really bad chest cold) and we went home to try to recover.  In hindsight, I'm really glad that I went back to the ER the second time... otherwise I would have spent the day worrying that she had pneumonia and that I'd be personally responsible for her demise.  Regret is a terrible thing in this sort of situation, so "better safe than sorry" is definitely my motto.  One of the ER nurses confessed that she'd probably be even more careful with her kids because of all the horrific things she'd seen in her few years there.  Makes you grateful to be sent home with a baby that is going to get better in a few days.

And better she is getting!  While Ella is still coughing (and puking about 50% of the time that she coughs with a tummy full of milk), she is clearly doing better.  The pediatrician checked her lungs again this morning and said they sound just fine.  I love our pediatrician (especially Dr. Bud, the one I saw today).  He explained so patiently that when babies and children have a lot of rattling noises in their throat area, that sound reverberates down the airway and makes it sound and *feel* like it's coming from the chest.  This is why a baby with a really bad cold can feel and sound so rattley when you hold them and they cough.  That made so much sense to me and I was really grateful for the additional explanation for why it sounded so much worse than it actually was.

OK, I know that I still have to write a post detailing our trip to Turkiye, complete with pictures and horrific tales of transAtlantic flights and such.  That's coming soon, but first I simply must attend to my lack of work productivity and sleep productivity. 

I'm sitting comfortably, looking out on a sunny view of the Bosphorus (from the best seat in the house according to Orhan).  Although it is quite lovely, it's time for us to return home tomorrow.  We're scheduled to make it back to CA late on Friday night, so I hope to post pictures from our trip over the weekend.  This is a function how well we're all functioning after the trip and the time change.  Esen swears it is easier traveling from east to west... I sure hope so or Monday (when we all return to work and daycare) is going to be awfully rough!

...although I'm pretty sure that I left my sanity in Phoenix.  Sacramento to Phoenix?  A dream.  A friend drove us to the airport, Sophia let Becky go through the x-ray machine without too much complaining, and we survived the 1.5 hour flight with little drama.  Things went downhill quickly after that.  For the record, Phoenix to London is a long flight... about 9 hours too long for Sophia apparently.  Although we departed right at her bedtime, she was not able to sleep... much crying and protesting instead!  That made our two hour layover in the London airport awfully interesting, too.  By then Esen and I had been up for about 24 hours with almost no sleep and Sophia had barely had any sleep except for an afternoon nap in Sacramento and a little nap on the first flight.  Ella was the only one who figured out that sleeping on the plane was the appropriate choice.  Thankfully, Sophia slept a decent portion of the London/Istanbul flight, although the last 30 minutes of that flight was horrific for all four of us (picture both girls crying/screaming loudly with us stuck in our seats unable to do much about it).  Next time I will bring party favors for those in the seats around us.  Door-to-door, the trip was almost exactly 24 hours long.  Remind me not to do that again anytime soon... oh, right... I get to do it again in exactly 10 days.  Nah, I think it might be easier to just have all of our belongings shipped here and move to Istanbul.  Anyone willing to fly Suzy over to us?

It's official.  I've become the person that I used to roll my eyes at.  I now occasionally (ok, frequently, if you don't count going to work) leave the house without make-up, without my hair in any presentable form, without any real concern for my frumpy appearance.  Sometimes I have a kid in tow, sometimes two.  I no longer balk at whipping out a boob to appease the baby.  Wait, I have a great idea!  Let's take this show on the road... via airplane... half-way around the world!  I feel sort of sorry for the suckers that are on our flights tomorrow.  They aren't going to know what hit them.  Although I theoretically have plenty of diapers, wipes, spare clothes, snacks, and new trinkets from the dollar store to entertain Sophia, this could be a complete disaster.  Don't worry... I'll be sure to let you know.  Turkey here we come!

I'm officially going to proclaim the first trip with two kids a success!  It sure wasn't easy, but we all survived and I don't remember wanting to slit my wrists very often.  I think Esen had a few tense moments on Saturday and Sunday morning when he was stuck with both kids as I attended the conference, but a few beers later in the evening seemed to smooth over those rough edges.  I had it pretty easy in the sense that my solo time with Sophia and Ella took place mostly during Sophia's nap time, so it was smooth sailing once I got her settled.  The most encouraging part of the trip was how well Sophia adjusted to a different sleeping situation.  She acted like she was sleeping in her own room instead of a strange crib near the hotel room door.  We actually had two cribs in the room, which was thankfully a room at the end of the hall with a little more space than most (thank you desk clerk from heaven!).  I pretty sure that everyone in nearby rooms ran for the hills when they saw TWO cribs being wheeled our way.  :)

Here are the sisters lounging on the bed together:


The common element to these pictures is Ella's look of terror... "Why have you put me on a bed next to this lunatic!?"  While Sophia didn't do any jumping on the bed, she was pretty active, so Ella had reason to fear for her safety.  I think Sophia just enjoyed breaking some rules... here she is eating in bed:

The hotel couldn't contain us, of course, so we did have some outings to give Sophia some exercise.  There was a nice little quasi-park near our hotel:



As you can see, Becky went EVERYWHERE with Sophia.

One outing didn't work out quite so well.  Sophia frequently eats eggs for breakfast and eggs are obviously not particularly hotel-room-friendly (think bagels and cream cheese), so one day when we were headed out as a family to find some lunch, I had the bright idea of going to the Denny's right near our hotel.  I figured Sophia could get some eggs and I wouldn't worry about misbehaving kids in a joint like Denny's.  Well, immediately after we ordered I discovered that Ella pooped on the short walk to Denny's, so I headed to the bathroom to change her.  The outfit-ruining blow-out was bad enough, but the real insult to injury was the malfunctioning changing table.  You know how they are hinged to the wall?  Well, the hinges on this one had seen better days, so when opened the table extended *BEYOND* perpendicular to the wall... for those who can't picture this, please imagine a baby sliding off onto the bathroom floor if set upon such a changing table.  Now, if a person could hypothetically prop the table with their leg so that it didn't extend beyond perpendicular, the hypothetical baby could be prevented from falling onto the bathroom floor.  This seems reasonable unless you are dealing with a poopy butt and poopy clothes and no shelf to set anything important on.  At one point Ella had clean wipes stretched across her face in my attempt to keep this whole balancing act going.  The best part is that the diaper bag with the spare clothes was back at the table, so I had to go back out to the restaurant with her in a diaper.  En route to the safety of clean clothes and an extra pair of hands, Ella pooped again!  Another trip back to the bathroom and my balancing act was really more than I could handle.  After that, I just had them wrap up my food and took it back to the hotel room.  Denny's isn't very good to begin with, but it's even less appealing cold and eaten with a plastic fork.  Lesson learned... no more restaurant attempts for us in the near future!

We found some big open spaces inside the hotel (the mezzanine level of most hotels have a big carpeted area) and Sophia just ran and ran and ran!  We should have just told all of our friends to meet us there, but instead we decided to brave some of the scheduled receptions.  Saturday night we went to the UVA reception and saw some friends and professors (some of which are also friends!).  Sophia pretty much cleared the cheese from the buffet there (so embarrassing), but it was 6pm and she was HUNGRY!  The next night we went to the reception hosted by the Turkish Universities.  Esen claimed that he wanted to catch up with friends, but I think he just wanted to show the kids off to his ex-girlfriends (yes, plural!).  Good times.  Here's a picture of some of the Turkish UVA posse from Sophia's 3-foot-tall vantage point:
 
Levent Amce (on the left) is coming to Sacramento tomorrow night to stay with us this week.  He and Esen are supposed to be working on a paper together, but I think they have some evil plan to hit the bars in the evenings.  My own evil plan is to make sure that Sophia is so thrilled with Levent that she runs him ragged and he's too tired to drag Esen to the bar.  :)  Shhhhh... don't tell them.

Off our rocker, that is!  We are heading to San Francisco tomorrow for a conference.  Three glorious nights in a hotel room with both kids.  Not quite sure what the sleeping arrangement is (or whether there will be much sleeping at all), but we'll fill you all in when we return next week!  Expect pictures of frazzled adults with Sophia bouncing between the beds and Ella screaming in the background!

Monkey Business!!

Now before you start lecturing me about the matching monkey pajamas, let me just clarify how this came about.  Sophia has had her monkey pajamas for months.  She loves them and makes very convincing monkey noises when she wears them.  We were at the monkey pajama store together a few weeks back and she saw them, grabbed them, and wouldn't let go.  I think she believed they were her pajamas and that they had somehow been misplaced.  I didn't really want to buy a second pair, so I found some in Ella's size and purchased those instead.  This is the first time they've been wearing them at the same time and, once I saw them together, well... I just couldn't resist.  I don't plan on making this matchy-matchy business a habit.  Let's not forget that Esen is an identical twin and isn't likely to tolerate it!

We had a low-key New Year's Eve.  There was a little party in Ella's classroom (that Sophia's classroom also attended), so we did a countdown to noon with the kids.  Here's a picture of Sophia in her party outfit looking as adorable as I think I've ever seen her:
We then hosted a "party", which was just really a collection of a few friends that didn't want to bother doing anything very exciting either!  Some day we'll go out and have a wild New Year's Eve again... some day...