Our funny child

A bunch of random pics with no order..

Yea!



He's getting to be a big boy and can have his snacks on the ottoman because he stays still long enough. And he can climb up and down by himself now too.


Maybe it's a boy thing, but when he can't get the stroller to go where he wants it to (it only goes straight, you have to "re-aim" it to get it to go to the sides) he just picks it up and carries it. Other kids will just guide it where the want it to go...not our guy. He always wants to carry the heavy stuff.


Our grouchy child...sometimes we just have those days. And sometimes we have a lot of them.




This is Elijah's new baby sign "Help" - a GREAT one for him to know because it eases a lot of frustration for him (and us!) because we know exactly what he wants. Especially at this age where a lot of his words sound similar (help, up, cup...)


Elijah thought he was such a big boy when he put his sippy cup in one of our big cups...hey it got him to drink a lot more milk than he normally does, so I'm a fan.

There's a pea in my.....what?

Elijah is such a messy eater with some things (spaghetti, yogurt..anything with utensils) now the he HAS to use a spoon or a fork with every meal. "Frk please" "Spoo please" So we've started taking off his shirt for him to eat. The other night we went to take him out of his highchair, and what did we find in his belly button but a pea!!! Have no idea how it got lodged in there. We couldn't believe it, we laughed for quite a while.

(Doesn't he almost look like a baby model in this one...haha!)


I still don't understand...hope you get a laugh too.

Just some new pics

I am just celebrating that we found our camera by posting some new pics from the last 2 days!!! We realized that we hadn't seen our camera in about 5 days....after searching the WHOLE house, we came to the conculsion that someone must have stolen it out of my purse or Elijah hid it really well. Take a guess......we found it hidden behind our froshes (our type of couch) which you can't just pull out easily because it wraps around the whole wall. Wonder who could have done that???

Elijah and Daddy having some guy time "wrastlin'"

Elijah wins....


Looking at this picture, I can't believe how much he has grown. He's such a big boy now.


This has been one of Elijah's favorite things to look at....I put together all his "baby" pictures (from 0-14 months) and he will sit and flip through it for a long time. He points to the pictures and says "Li-ya" or "Mama" or "Dada." It is helping him learn the names of his "Ran-ma" and "Nana" even though he doesn't see them much.

Videos Galore!

This post is more for the grandparents and those that really want to see video of Elijah over the past few months. Now that we can finally upload them!!! All these videos are from last month.

One of Elijah's favorite things to do is go in and out of his balcony doors and watch the buses drive by our street. He tells the buses "bye bye" and gets so excited.




This next one is Elijah's new (last month) face for uh-oh. His first word was uh-oh (or dada -- Bruce and I aren't really sure). And now he does this face instead or in addition to saying uh-oh.

Elijah LOVES to go outside!!! Whenever we say "Elijah, do you want to go outside" he either starts running for the door saying 'side' or runs to his closet to grab his Baby Bjorn...watch.

This next one is Elijah's all-time favorite video to watch. He's riding the 'Daddy' Horse around our apartment. When he watches the video on the computer, he moves like he's still riding the horse and laughs and laughs - his favorite part is at the end - the "crash and burn."

Hope you guys enjoyed! Not sure if anyone is still checking the blog after our long lapse in posts...let me know if you're still checking!

Let's get married!

I had the great pleasure of going to my first (of many, I'm sure) weddings here in N. Africa. It was quite an experience and completely different than I'm used to. The men and the women are separated for most, if not all, of the time. The bride had 3 different outfits that she wore and she and her new husband would come out and sit and watch the other guests dancing. No smiling involved - at all - at all, at all. They would stay for about 30 minutes and then the bride would go change outfits, come back out....repeat. We ate quite a delicious meal and I enjoyed practicing my Arabic with my tablemates. They were impressed with what I knew. They corrected my pronunciation - and taught me (then quizzed me later) on some new words.

Here's the bride in her 3 outfits (white, teal & green) and me in my (borrowed) keftan.





(This is Mounia, the girl who watches Elijah while we are at class. It was her brother who was getting married.)

I learned how to dance to Arabic music....what a sight. Glad there's no pictures of that! I think all the women were encouraging me to keep dancing because I looked so silly...they were really amused by an American dancing. But, you'll never learn new things unless you try, right?

Happy birthday to Mom!

Morgan's birthday was April 6th and we had a great weekend!

I was awakened to the sight of this cute face! What a treat! Elijah had a "Happy Birthday" sign taped to his chest and he was grinning from ear to ear to see his mom.


Then Elijah and Bruce took me out to breakfast at this yummy (& cheap) place! Here's Elijah reading the menu, deciding what to get. He went with a croissant. :)

Some of our friends joined us as well... This is Allison and Jeremy.

Bruce bought all the stuff to make (my favorite) apple crisp! It really turned out kind of bad because you can't get brown sugar here. I later learned you can mix molasses with white sugar to make brown sugar. A few days later our good friends here made me a proper apple crisp to enjoy.


We went with a bunch of our friends to TGIFridays which just opened in our city!!! How exciting to eat American food - hamburgers and steaks! Their "Mexican" section still isn't up and running - you bet we'll be back as soon as it's in!

And the entertainment for the night was a magician who used me as his assistant for the show. Ha...

Long overdue video

After a suuuuuuuuuper long break from posting, we are back! It's been 2 months since we've been in North Africa and we JUST TODAY got our internet working at the correct speed. Yes, things take much longer to do here than they did before. We are all doing well and settled in and enjoying our new life here.

We can't really update you quickly on the last 2 months now, but we wanted to share this video of Elijah from February that we just adore. It gives you a brief look at his "silly side" -- he's such a nut sometimes (but I guess the apple doesn't really fall too far from the tree, eh?) Enjoy!