I just can't seem to keep up folks.  Although I did take pictures of Ella on the 21st, I'm just downloading them off the camera tonight.  She had ear infections when these were taken, so she has the same basic glazed look in all the shots I got:

Ella goes to the doctor Monday morning for her 6 month check up and shots.  I'll provide you with the stats after that, but I have no doubt that she'll top the charts in weight and height.  She's definitely growing longer and looking substantially less chubby as a result.  She's wearing mostly 12-month size clothes already and filling them out the same way that her tall sister did at this age.

We did celebrate her half-birthday... the same way that we celebrated Sophia's... with an ice cream cake! 

Yes, it was as delicious as it looks, but this time around we had to share with a third person... and boy-oh-boy did Sophia enjoy the ice cream cake!

We've got a steady stream of Turkish visitors over the next couple of weeks.  Levent, our friend from UVA, is here from Prague this week.  Sophia is thrilled to have a new friend to play with:

We certainly appreciate the lesson in integral calculus provided earlier this evening!  Like the econ professor that he is, he followed up the equation with a nice graphical representation (which is captured on a video that I'm just too exhausted to upload at the moment).

Sophia was not particularly impressed and returned to coloring on the marker board on the other side.  :)

After Levent leaves, Ilke will be here for a few days (he's in the states for a conference) and then Babaanne will also be here before visiting her other granddaughter in NY.  Fun times, lots of Turkish, and hopefully a little bit of Turkish food along the way!

I mean, rolling over *is* technically a trick that we teach dogs.  Now Ella can do it, too!  (Permanent link: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-4545678239458324743)
           
She looks so fat here... FYI, those are 12 month pjs she's wearing!!  Esen came and woke me up to tell me that she rolled over (from back to front, the hard way).  It is surely a sign that I am a poorer (and more relaxed) mother the second time around because I'm sure that I mumbled something like, "That's nice dear" and rolled back over in bed.  We're going to see if Ella has more good tricks up her sleeve this weekend... first up: sleeping in the crib.  She's napping there right now, in fact.  I am hopeful that she will take to it as easily as Sophia took to the big girl bed.

Here is a picture of my cool birthday gift from Esen... it is a Wasabi!!

It's like a new and improved Polaroid for digital photography.  As you can probably see in the picture, it's a tiny little printer that spits out tiny little prints on adhesive paper (Sophia is just starting to grasp the fact that I can now make custom-order stickers for her).  What's kind of cool is that the printer is inkless... it's the paper that holds the ink so to speak... the printer just activates it or something.  I don't really know how it works, but at about 50 cents per print, I'm lovin' it.  The big difference from a traditional Polaroid is that you can take 50 pictures with your digital camera or cell phone and then select the one that you want to print. As with all new things, it also works with bluetooth, so I can technically just beam pics from my cell phone (or my laptop if it were a wonderful new one with bluetooth).  Fun stuff.

I figured I'd better get some videos uploaded since Google Video is no longer going to allow uploads and I'll have to find an alternative way of posting videos to the blog.  Who knows when I'll time to do that!  So, I have a few more things to share with you:

(1) Sophia on her bed... singing "Monkeys jumping on the Bed", identifying animals, being generally cute (check out "Fofia").  (Permanent link: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1976733940336243402)
 

(2) The emotional rollercoaster we live with every day... one minute all is screaming laughter and fun, then melodramatic tears, and back again... all within the span of about 2 minutes.  It's a dark video, but you'll get the idea (and I think Esen's quote is simply priceless!)  (Permanent link: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-647216538209957125)
     

(3) Painting with Sophia last weekend!  Sophia has really been enjoying her new easel (thanks Kaan and Hande!!), especially now that the rain has stopped and we can go outside (the only place I am willing to let her paint).  Here is some of the action (permanent link: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3645682906885673204):
  

And here are the results:

Check out Ella's spare tire in that first picture!  Man, that girl needs to lay off the donuts.  You should have seen the cute little stripey pants that I tried to get Ella into first... it was like putting a fat girl in skinny jeans.  Sophia's smile is awfully cute lately, although I think it looks like her doot-doots are too tight.  You'd think that everyone was in full Fenerbahce gear to watch a big soccer game or something, but really the girls were just supposed to come to school in costumes one day this week.  Purim... yet another Jewish holiday that apparently involves costumes and a parade and such.  Who knew?  I swear that we're better Jews than 90% of the Jews I know.  :)  The most ironic part of the day for me is that one of the (American) teachers in Ella's classroom is a huge fan and totally knew about Fenerbahce.  It is a small world sometimes indeed.

Pulling out the Fenerbahce gear Tuesday morning made me recall one of the cardinal rules of having two girls close in age that I learned with Sally and Katie when they were quite little: you better have two of everything to avoid jealousy.  Ella got to wear little Fenerbahce shoes (which may have actually been purchased for Sophia when she was a baby) and Sophia wanted some too.  Even though Sophia had special Fenerbahce socks and a wrist band (and Ella didn't), that wasn't enough to prevent some tears.  I'm sure it's just the beginning.  I explained to Esen that I bought Sally and Katie the same thing for years to avoid this sort of sibling jealousy like the plague, but I'm not sure that he's very excited to have two of everything given how full our house is already!  After I joked that Esen should buy me a bigger house, he suggested that we better utilize the garage for storage and even play space.  Of course, that would require a better solution with regard to the cats (who are not very tidy residents out there), which is what caused him to say the following:  "Dead cats are cheaper than a new house."  Wow... can't argue with that now can I?

Anxious to get Ella into the crib (i.e., out of our room), we've been getting Sophia to move into the daybed in the green bedroom.  This past weekend I got the waterproof mattress pad and new sheets on, and she was definitely ready to accept the place as her own:


Now all we needed was the bed rail to keep her *IN* the bed and that arrived yesterday.  Here she is this morning after her first night's sleep:

Can you beat that smile?  It was awesome... she slept through the night and adjusted like a champ!  The best part is that I asked her where Ella should sleep now and she said, "In the crib!"  I'm very hopeful that there won't be any jealousy issues as I was initially worried that she would think that BOTH the crib and the bed belonged to Fofia.  Next step... movin' Ella's fat ass into the crib!  We'll let you know how that goes...

I only wish that I could have found the time to blog about my experience at Shalom School this week while it was still fresh in my mind.  It was sufficiently traumatic that I blocked most of it out after a few short hours, but I'll try to paint a picture for you anyway.  Here's what happened.  During staff appreciation week the teachers are all treated to a catered lunch, which requires some volunteer parents to staff the classrooms for a few hours.  I've been sort of feeling like Sophia's days at schools are a mystery to us, so I volunteered... silly me.  We get these little written reports at the end of each school day that have a few sentences about her day... "Sophia and Bria were running around the playground holding hands today" or "Sophia and Max went to visit their baby sisters in the infant room today" or "Sophia followed teacher Ivory around all day helping her to enforce the rules."  I was starting to feel like Sophia is developing into this little person who interacts with others in ways that we never get to see.  So, I wanted to see for myself and figured two hours of volunteering would be an easy way to do it.  Easy... yeah.  A room full of 15 toddlers couldn't possibly be easy.  It was an insane two hours that left me wanting to go drink margaritas!  A few highlights:

1.  Kids aren't too fond of sharing their parents with other kids.  Sophia stayed really close to me the whole time, but thankfully did allow me to play with others as long as she was right there, too.  The other parent-volunteer's daughter was in his arms sobbing most of the time.  That was helpful.
2.  There was a brand new kid in the room... Jack.  Jack screamed and cried the whole time, but seemed to scream just a little less if I was holding him.  I was quickly covered with his snot and wanted to burn my clothes afterward.  They later told Jack's mom that he had kind of a rough day, but that he was starting to adjust.  Yeah, I'm pretty sure that Jack's constant screaming did not technically qualify as "starting to adjust".  They told us the same thing when Sophia started, which makes me feel bad about how hard it must have been for her those first few days.
3.  Lunchtime with a dozen toddlers is insanity.  Wash all their hands before, attempt to clean them up after, and try not to watch too closely in between.  I can honestly say that Sophia was the best yogurt eater in the room (in terms of mess).  Owen, her table-mate, abused his yogurt in ways I still can't even wrap my mind around.
4.  After lunch, the pre-nap meltdowns began and that's when things really started to spiral out of control.  The one teacher that stayed with us was changing diapers and we were just left trying to keep the savages from killing each other or escaping.  Several of the boys displayed superhuman strength during this fun window of time.  Think King Kong.
5.  All it took was getting out mats to get them down and napping.  I think I've seen sheep that put up more fight.  Each kid has their own sheet on a padded mat that goes in the same place every day and they just take their positions.  Although a few kids (my friend Jack) took a while to fully fall asleep, nap time was a beautiful testament to what all those sleep books preach... ritual and routine.  How else could you get that many kids sleeping at the same time?

As soon as they were asleep, I went running from the room... back to the safety of my desk.  Even with all of the stress I feel there, it's still an easier gig than what Sophia's teachers face every day and I probably make three times as much.  Despite the low salary, I know they love what they do.  I know they get truly attached to those kids and feel sad when the kids move on.  Just this week Sophia moved up to a different room (with kids that are over 2).  Although she knows the kids in that room because they were all together previously, now she's not in the same room with her beloved teacher Ivory.  After the first day in the different room, Ivory and I both sort of got teary-eyed about her being separated from Sophia.  I'm sure grateful that someone as sweet as Ivory is willing to endure such hard days yet become so invested in our kids for so little money.  I sure couldn't do it.