The camera mysteriously found it's way into the couch cushions at my dad's house, so it'll be a little while before I post pictures from our trip (unless some of you other photogs want to share yours!).  We made it back late last night... a 6+ hour delay thanks to a canceled flight from Denver to Sacramento.  Except for that fact, the return trip was uneventful actually.  My favorite part of the last flight was hearing Sophia (from several seats over) singing, "Ba-ba black sheep, have you any wool?" at the top of her lungs. 

Trip recap coming soon...

Well, we're taking our crazy show on the road again... heading out to ND tomorrow morning.  I am very hopeful that it will be an enjoyable trip, but there are oh so many opportunities for it to turn into a fiasco.  Here, let me list them!

1.  Flights.  Anytime you put two small children in an enclosed space for multiple hours and tell them to be good, disaster could rear its ugly head.  Sophia could melt down (Denver to Bismarck leg is during her nap time, so she *SHOULD* sleep), Ella could poop all over herself (regional jets do not, I repeat, DO NOT have changing tables), or... wait, let me stop there before I work myself into a tizzy!

2.  Sleeping.  Sleeping issues are a potential problem with any travel, but this trip could be particularly troublesome because all four of us will be crammed into the same room.  Although it's a fairly big room in Minot, it's a small one in Mandan.  Size probably isn't the issue.  The bigger issue is that one of our kids is still a crappy sleeper (won't mention any names, but it rhymes with Hella... yeah, I'm from NorCal now) and is currently cutting teeth (first tooth came out on Sunday, which explains my exceptionally crappy night on Saturday!).  One sweet angel will surely wake the other sweet angel up... probably more than once.  I'm not sure how that's all going to play out.  Don't tell me to be an optimist.  I haven't slept well in nearly a year.

3.  Behavior.  We're in the terrible twos folks.  Tantrums are a nearly-daily occurance at our house.  Add a lack of sleep and our desire to prevent meltdowns to that boiling kettle and I bet you can imagine what we'll get.  I hope that we'll continue to stay strong and follow our usual discipline routine, but doing so on unfamiliar turf presents some challenges.  I know what we should add to that mix... grandparents with a penchant for spoiling their adorable granddaughters!  Yikes.

I could go on I suppose, but I think my energy would really be put to better use by packing or prepping the house or meditating to find my inner peace while I still have the chance.  Sure hope people in ND have plenty of alcoholic beverages on hand!!  I'll post photos when we return on June 24th.

OK, I've never really been one to celebrate faux milestones, but Sophia will soon officially move into the preschool classroom and the teachers in her current room held a little ceremony for the kids.  It was sweet.  We got to watch Sophia playing with all her little friends and talk with the other parents that we usually only see briefly in passing.  Good stuff.  A little bit of madness as you'll see in the videos below, but it's nice to see her so comfortable and around so many people who know her and care about her every day.  You'll see lots of pictures/videos with Sophia and Bria... they're best friends.

Ella was there, too, of course... but she was sort of cranky about all the commotion at the end of her day and she eventually fell asleep on me.


Circle time... they sang lots of cute songs.  We have videos of lots of it, but they're really just a bunch of kids singing (poorly).  And actually, Sophia just stared off into space during most of it because the paparazzi was totally flashing in their faces the whole time. 


Here she is getting her "diploma":
    



The best part was all the running around after the fact.  Here's some hopping:
    
And some more hopping:
    
And more hopping:
  
And more hopping still:
    
Girls are silly, huh?  When she crashed, she crashed hard!

For the big occasion, the teachers had the kids working on painting self-portraits all last week.  Sophia clearly thinks she's Bria's sister based on the skin tone she chose:

She wasn't the only one with an identity crisis... one of her Asian classmates chose to put bright yellow hair on her self-portrait.  :)
Here are pictures with two of her favorite teachers, Ivory and Karen:

As you can see below, Ivory is already counting the months until she gets another Onur girl in her classroom:


I was hoping to get a decent picture of the four of us.  This is the best we could do.  My favorite part about this shot (aside from the restroom sign) is the look on Sophia's face... it's totally a facial expression that Esen makes all the time!  She's becoming his mini-me!!


As always, I got a shot of Sophia that is my new favorite.  Our big girl is movin' on...

This is Trevor Kott.

You can read his whole story at http://www.trevorkott.com/, but let me give you the abridged version.  He was born in Sacramento four months before Sophia, was diagnosed with leukemia, and died just six months later.  He needed a bone marrow transplant in order to have a chance, but none of his family members were a match and there was no match for him in the bone marrow registry.  I first learned of his story when his mom came on our local news and begged people to join the marrow registry so that they might find a match for Trevor.  As a new mother, I cried and cried when I thought of that poor mother so desperate that she was pleading with total strangers.  I thought about going right down to the local "marrow drive" to be tested, but I had my hands full with baby Sophia and I put it off.  A week later they reported that Trevor had died.  I felt so incredibly guilty.  What if I had been a match and had been able to save him?  How many other people thought about helping, but didn't?  The thought still haunts me and I still think of Trevor often.  A wise friend once told me that motherhood would make me feel like the mother to all children, and Trevor was my first introduction to just how strong that feeling can be.

My impression of a bone marrow transplant is probably similar to yours... painful, huge needles stuck in your hip bones, a lengthy recovery, etc.  I have this impression because that's how it was for a close high school friend of mine who donated bone marrow to his sister many years ago.  That view is dated and inaccurate thanks to a little thing called science.  If you're a match for someone, donating marrow now involves taking some drugs for a few days (to put some of your marrow into your blood stream) and then allowing them to take blood out of one arm, remove the marrow'y goodness, and put the blood back into your other arm.  Relative to big old needles in your hips, this is a walk in the park... an out-patient procedure with almost no recovery!!  You can watch two Sacramento donors talk about their experience in the video at http://www.trevorkott.com/.

Joining the bone marrow registry is simple, especially right now.  During the 2009 "Marrowthon" that starts today (http://www.marrow.org/HELP/Events/Marrowthon2009/index.html), you can have a kit sent to you for FREE!  A simple swab of your cheek with the enclosed q-tips, mail it back in the postage paid envelope, and you're done... sleeping peaceful with the thought of the good you're doing.  Imagine me on the news begging on behalf of Sophia or Ella if you must.  That's what finally did it for me. 

It turns out that people of mixed race/ethnicity are especially important to get registered since those with more complicated and unusual heritage are harder to match (and rarer to find in the registry).  That means that our little half-Turks are much-less likely to have a match registered than others.  There's currently another Sacramentan who is 1/4 Japanese and 3/4 caucasian, and he also has no match in the registry because of his unique heritage (his grandparents' Japanese/American union was unusual in the wake of WWII).  As a result, the National Bone Marrow Registry is also really seeking to make the registry more accurately reflect our increasing diversity.  Please pass this on to any and all that you think might be willing to help.

It's sad, but we may have witnessed our last "doot-doots" on Sophia's cute little head.  She's gotten increasingly unwilling to let me put them in and now actually requests "one doot-doot mama" (which means a pony-tail).  She looks so grown up!

Other changes in our house this weekend:  Ella has finally discovered that she can eat the crunchy cereal on her tray!  I think she previously thought they were just toys. 
  

So that's all I've got to share... pony-tails and crunchy food... big news in our little world.  :)

I'll leave you with some super cute pictures of Esen cuddling in bed with Sophia:

I think someone is becoming a daddy's girl...

Imagine Sophia, just up from an extra-long nap (2.5 hours) and cranky as a result.  She was hungry and too cranky to decide what she wanted to eat.  After about 10 different suggestions from us, we finally named something that she wanted.  Well, sort of.  I said, "Sophia, do you want to eat some broccoli with dipping sauce?"  She said, "Yes.  No, carrots.  And cauliflower."  I responded that we did have some carrots, but that we were all out of cauliflower.  Before this afternoon, I couldn't have imagined how poorly received a statement like "we're all out of cauliflower" might be, but whamo... I sure found out!!  She scrunched up her face as if I had just pinched her hard, and cried out (in REAL PAIN), "CAULIFLOWWWWWWERRRRRRR!!!!"  This cauliflower-induced fit continued as she sobbed in my arms and I laughed and laughed and laughed (until she looked at me as if I was genuinely hurting her feelings).  Seriously, how do we stand a chance in this environment?  I couldn't possibly be annoyed though.  How many parents out there are dealing with children sobbing over a lack of cauliflower.  Clearly it could be worse.

Here's what they looked like when they came off the plane... all decked out for the Godmother competition.

For those of you who have no idea what I'm talking about, the Godmother Olympics is my silly attempt at dealing with the difficult task of choosing between my two sisters for the roll of Ella's Godmother. 

Here's the back of Sally's shirt, which detailed all the reasons she should be Ella's Godmother.


Esen and I decided on 4 events worth 25 points a piece:
(1)  We started off Thursday morning (before coffee!) with the Clothing Challenge... how well can they dress the girls?
 
The videos are a little dark, but here are the results:
         
Katie got the screamer (fyi, she screams when anyone dresses her).  Sally had it a little easier because Sophia told her what she wanted to wear:
        
Sally won this event by a few points, but Katie earned a few props for the "popped" collar on Ella's polo shirt (even though it was a mistake).

(2)  Friday morning (after coffee) we put them through the Ten Commandments Challenge.


Alternating tasks of picking up Suzy poop and writing down the Ten Commandments produced some interesting results.
       

The results:

Katie won this round (with 4 correct to Sally's 3).  The best part was that our back lawn was poo-free at the end!!

(3)  Friday night WWJD Challenge:

Basically, we gave them 5 scenarios and asked for some free-response... the wholesome (Jesus) response to dealing with the scenario and their prediction of the less wholesome (Jess) response.  We had some good laughs over this (perhaps the wine helped, but those girls were creative!).  Katie eked out a win in this round, but it was close!

(4) The last event was Saturday... one-handed diaper changing!!  Timed, of course!

Funny stuff... Ella was not too impressed, but she settled down when she was given some technology:
            
Sally blew the competition away in this event and secured the gold medal in the process.

The Godmother Olympics were fun, but I definitely learned over the course of the visit just how much my sisters adore both Sophia and Ella.  We couldn't be luckier to have them in their lives and I am hopeful they will be able to help us cope with all the challenges of having two girls so close in age.  Fortunately, we're able to choose TWO Godmothers because I just wouldn't have it any other way.  Sally will continue to brag (probably for decades) about her win and Ella will finally have more of something than Sophia does!

Other fun pictures from the visit:





Looks like someone is taking Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star a bit to literally... :)

In other news, Ella is definitely making her move... to standing!  We've caught her pulling herself up a lot, so Sophia and Suzy aren't going to be safe on the couch for long!!