I'm not sure if the following bit of laziness will earn me a Wikipedia mention under "free rider problem in economics," but even I have to admit that what I'm about to do is pretty damn lazy.  I'm desperate here folks... desperate to keep you up to speed and desperate to get to bed!

We opened our doors to the whole Economics Department this weekend for a back-to-school BBQ.  It would have worked out just super if people didn't automatically burst into flames upon stepping outdoors (it was like 105 or something horrific).  20+ adults, 10 or so kids, chocolate cake everywhere.  Eventually, the backyard was tolerable, but by then the kids were having so much fun doing laps around the house that I just went outside and drank my beer and pretended not to notice.  We all survived, but it was a close enough call for most of the 3 hours that I didn't even think to pick up my camera.  Fortunately, one of my colleagues (who conveniently blogs) did... and she didn't spend most of the day scraping chocolate cake off of oh-so-many surfaces, so she's already posted the pictures for me!  Yeayyy, Kace!  Enjoy everybody... free ride away!  http://kacecorner.blogspot.com/2009/08/attack-of-clones.html

I took the pink pig pictures roughly on time... there was a slight delay because Esen was still on the east coast with the camera (and he and Sophia were delayed an extra day thanks to airline problems).  Ella has obviously reached that important developmental stage we like to call "cell phone awareness" (also known as "cell phone addiction").

"Hey look, Ma... I'm texting my new buddy in Korea!"

Without a camera for nearly a week, but home alone with the baby... now that's a tricky predicament because I could finally pay attention to her and only her, and there were so many photo opportunities!  I was able to snap a few cute pictures using my cell phone.

One weekday morning I wasn't quite fast enough getting her over to school, so she wanted to nurse and then fell asleep on me... for an hour!  As you can see she was just so comfortable that I couldn't bear to move her.


You'd think that Suzy would get a break with 50% fewer children in the house, but I think Ella was so bored without Sophia that she sort of harassed Suzy more than usual.  I am really amazed that I was able to capture this Home-Alone-Macauley-Culkin moment where she tries to look innocent.  Suzy's face doesn't lie... she's clearly tortured and unable to find a suitably safe location now that Ella is walking.


That's all I have time for at the moment.  Bear with me... the start of the semester is upon us and life is CRAZY busy.  I'll try to get you at least a little bit of good stuff when I can!

Esen, the most daring man on the planet in my book, has taken Sophia on a six day trip to visit the Onurs of north Jersey.  They left Sacramento this morning and here's the cute series of photos Esen sent from his cell phone over the course of the day.

1. Proof that he was feeding her fruit in the airport

2. Blowing kisses before boarding the plane in Sacramento

3. Riding the airport tram in Dallas

4. Baggage claim in Newark

5. Blowing kisses from her bed at Kaan and Hande's house


He reports that the day of travel went smoothly and the pictures sure make it look easy, huh?  I'm not all that surprised.  He chose his flight times wisely and, as a result, she slept a bit on each of the three-hour long legs of the trip.  I'm sure she will have a great time playing with Maya while she's there... we'll see how Maya takes it!

Ella and I are on our own until late Monday night, so I'll surely be ready for Sophia's non-stop talking, running, singing, and screaming by Tuesday!

It's no secret... we're really happy with Shalom School where Sophia and Ella spend most of their waking hours during the work week.  We're happy with most of the normal stuff that you'd think would be important, but it's really several of the teachers that are making all the difference for me at this point.  Some of you who are educators are surely nodding your heads and saying, "Duh!"  It's clear that at least one of Ella's teachers is completely smitten with her and, given that this teacher is funny and a huge soccer fan and chock-full-o'-awesome all on her own (as in, I totally want to hang out with her socially but am not sure if that's allowed/awkward?), I'm thrilled at the thought of some of her awesomeness rubbing off on Ella.

Here's a picture that was taken with the teacher's iPhone and sent to me this past week.  Several of the teachers in the baby room call Ella "Ella Pie" because that's what Sophia calls her.  This picture was titled, "Pensive Pie."  :)

(As a side note, when I look at this picture of Ella, I am puzzled by who's child she is... she looks nothing like either of us!!)

Not long after, another version of "Pensive Pie" (created by an iPhone app called Faces Wild) was also sent to me:

Does it get more awesome than this?  Not really (in my opinion), but there is much, much more!  The teacher calls Ella "her muse", so it won't surprise you that I've also gotten the following "creations" over the past couple of months:

I was going to save these last two little squirrels for Christmas cards, but I just can't keep them from you any longer!  Sophia's little squirrel ears remind me of how her doot-doots used to stick straight up off of her head when her hair was really short.  :)

Now, perhaps you're scratching your head and wondering why I equate this behavior with good teachers.  I'm not sure there's much in the way of curriculum in the baby room at Shalom, but by taking the time/energy to make my daughters into hilarious little squirrels and astronauts and gnomes (among other things), I *KNOW* that they are giving them good lovin' all day long.  When Ella took her first steps at school, the teacher who told me teared up when she described the moment.  When Sophia runs into the baby room to get Ella with us every day, they talk to her and give her hugs, too, even though she was never in their room.  I know that most of the teachers genuinely care about our girls in the most nurturing and maternal way and that they realize how much trust it takes to turn Sophia and Ella over to their care every day.  Clearly we would all be lost without them!

I haven't posted any videos in a while.  I guess I kept thinking that Ella was going to start walking any day and then I'd share that milestone with you.  Three unaided steps was how we defined walking for Sophia, so we've been waiting for the same from Ella.  Well, Ella has been taking her sweet time, but finally took three steps today while Esen and I were down on the floor playing with her.  While I don't have any video proof yet (because she's still so much faster at crawling, that she always drops to the floor whenever she really wants to get anywhere), I'm working on it.

In the meantime, here are a couple of cute things.  The first captures Sophia and Ella playing in their indoor tent, which is a little contraption that I bought for Sophia to sleep in on the road or when we have houseguests and she gives up her room.  Turns out, she much prefers her inflatable bed, so the tent comes out for play.  Sophia was clearly in a monster mood and Ella LOVED it!  The lighting/picture quality is horrible, but this sort of interaction is so typical (and amusing) in our day that I thought I'd share anyway.
   
Here's a picture of the girls playing (with baby dolls) in the pink tent on another occasion:

As you can see, one of us was foolishly conned into joining them (did I mention that this this is for kids?):


I contemplated *NOT* bothering to share the next video with you all.  I mean, it's two minutes of Ella eating peas, which sounds pretty boring (unless you get really gaga over seeing how amazing her hand coordination has gotten).  But, as I was shooting, Esen and Sophia were having such a seemingly hilarious time playing in the other room, that I found it hard not to run and look.
   

I haven't written much about food lately, so let me share some highlights.  Although Sophia has gotten more willful about food, she's not really all that much pickier when I look at her diet over the course of an entire week.  She's much more likely to look at her plate and say, "Mama, I don't like <insert food here>," but then eat it anyway, so I just remind her to take a bite because it's something she's liked before.  I made some tabouleh today and, after I had squeezed in some fresh lemon juice, Sophia picked up the lemons and proceeded to lick/eat them (something her Baba taught her):

This just goes to show you that she's really not that sweet.  :)

Ella's eating has been really great.  She plows through any pureed baby food you throw her way and is really doing well with an assortment of finger foods.  Her favorites are small cubed sweet potatoes, peas, tofu, and Kix. I keep trying to get her to eat bananas and pasta, but she's not that crazy about them.  She's currently eating almost an avocado a day, which is great except that it's definitely *NOT* a finger food. 

Sophia did the same thing at this age (and for months and months... we should have planted an avocado tree!)... such California girls!  I sure hope that some fancy-pants scientists don't come out with a study that says avocado gives you leprosy or something.  Ella has also been eating yogurt for at least a month now and seems to tolerate it just fine, so I'll probably start letting her have some cheese.  Shredded cheese is a nice time-consuming finger food that might buy me a few more minutes to eat my own dinner (plus, Suzy is more than happy to clean cheese up off of the floor).  It's also time to let her try some scrambled eggs and some things with wheat in them.  It sure is nice having an older child and some additional information on the likelihood of allergies... I worried a lot more about different foods bothering Sophia.  Well, that's not quite right... I think I just worried more about following the rules regarding when to introduce certain foods to Sophia, which is problematic because the rules aren't all that clear about many things.  The second time around, the rules are just guiding my choices rather than dictating them.

Sophia's H has *both* hands and hearts:


Esen convinced me that I should be ice cream and we were all pleased with how it turned out:


The alligator seems to be Sophia's favorite:



And the finished project:


You won't be surprised to learn that Sophia has convinced me that Ella needs some special letters on her wall, too.  We started this morning:


Taking your suggestions for L's since we have two of them to do!

Thanks for sharing your exciting news with us this weekend!  Look at that happy, newly-engaged couple!

S is for SSSSSSnake.

O is for Octopus...

P is for Puppy!!


Any guess what letters are next?  I'd like to hear your suggestions for H, I, and A (although A is definitely going to be an Alligator, so really just H and I).  We'll hang them on her bedroom wall once we get her name finished and then either work on "Lale" or "Ella" depending on Sophia's preferences.  She might feel like Ella should have some fun letters on her wall, too.

Esen said that he didn't know I had such a creative side, but many of you regular readers are infinitely more crafty than I am and I have been fortunate to learn from some of the best over the years.  I really enjoy doing stuff like this with Sophia now that she can manage markers and (mostly) glue and is totally into using googly-eyes and pipecleaners.  These kinds of tasks give us some tangible things to do over the weekends when the days are just begging for some organized activities (particularly quite activities for when Ella is napping).  Also, they do such great art projects with them at school that I was starting to feel left out.  I mean, this past week Sophia learned all about bones (she now tells us that her skeleton is inside her), her heart, her teeth, and intestines... each was accompanied with amazing art projects to get/keep the kids interested.  I'm thrilled that she's learning all these things, but I just wanted to play, too!!

1. Ella continues to impress in the sleep department.  We've had several nights where she slept through (or cried minimally such that we didn't go in) and every other night since the sleep training began has involved me getting up no more than once to get her back to sleep.  Although I feel like I've gotten a new lease on life, the pessimist in me is just waiting for this heaven to come to a screeching halt.

2. Ella also took her first steps this week.  Not that we saw them, of course... she took two steps in between two of her teachers at school on Thursday.  Since then, she continues to tease us with a step here and a step there, but nothing that makes me officially want to declare her "a walker".  Sophia is incredibly anxious and cheers Ella on when I hold both her hands and encourage her to walk.  Sophia says that she wants to hold Ella's hand once she starts walking... of course, I imagine Ella falling as a result and being drug down the hallway by an oblivious Sophia, so we'll see how that sisterly-love thing works out.

3. The battle of the doot-doots continues to be lost on a daily basis (I've actually given up that fight and let the little hippie child just run around with her free-flowing hair), but for some reason Esen got her to agree to a pony-tail today... apparently in exchange for some tough love for himself.  He hadn't even been drinking, so I'm still amazed that he allowed this to happen.

If there's any doubt in your mind as to where Sophia got that cold, hard stare, check out the very next picture I took:

Maybe his doot-doots were too tight??

4. I was looking for something new and fun to do with the girls this weekend and I decided to set up the tent in the back yard.  It was a big hit and we enjoyed a (pretend) picnic lunch out there.  I asked Sophia if she wanted to sleep out there with me tonight and she replied, "No mama.  I sleep in my bed."  (There was definitely an implied "duh" at the end of her sentence.)


This was a nice way to let Ella down outside, which is something we struggle with because the patio is concrete (tough on the knees) and the lawn has Suzy-poo lurking around even though we try to pick it all up.  Ella was fascinated by the zipper on the screen door, which annoyed the hell out of Sophia (who wanted it CLOSED, ELLA!).

But my favorite picture of the angels by a mile is this little gem.  Although I did ask them to smile for me as I stepped outside the tent to take a picture, Sophia's hug was her own doing... she sure does adore her baby sister.