Dance Machine Levi

Nov. 12-Nov.18, 2007
Levi is a dance machine now. He loves running around and dancing to the music and he can even do cute little hops with he’s feeling the rhythm.
We started mixing cow milk with Levi’s formula and its working. I don’t know why I didn’t think of that before. Isaac just transitioned from breast milk to cow milk without much problem. I tried giving Levi plain cow milk and he wanted nothing to do with it. I mentioned the problem to my neighbor Kai and she said just to mix them. Brilliant idea.
Isaac suffers from a condition of being a little too open with his thoughts. He’ll say things like “Can I lose Levi” or “Can I hit Natasha” but then he’ll also say baby Levi and Isaac are best friends and Natasha, come read me a story.
The Ohene Opare’s moved out and into their new apartment on Friday. Natasha found a good job as a nurse in a Children’s Hospital. The good news is that’s its not too far away and they’ll still be in our ward.

Ohene Opare's come to stay

Nov. 5-Nov.11, 2007
We had a couple of friends move into our house last Friday—Natasha and Emmanuel Ohene Opare. They’ll be here just for a couple of weeks while they find another apartment and one of them finds a job. He was working for Cemex, but decided it wasn’t the company for him, so now they’re in limbo. Anyhow, they’re both very cool and extremely helpful with the kids! Natasha is really good with both boys and good at distracting them if I need to get something done really quick. They are also excellent cooks and we’ve gotten a lot of good ideas from watching them.
I had to get the second half of my root canal on Monday. No fun. But the good news was that I didn’t have to worry about finding a babysitter because Natasha was available to help out.
Levi definitely recognizes Dora the Explorer now and whenever he sees a picture of her he starts singing “Do Do Do Do” to the tune of the song they sing at the end of the show.

Halloween Pics

Levi's 1st Birthday Party

Happy Halloween

Oct. 29-Nov.4, 2007

Halloween! We celebrated Levi’s birthday on Halloween so that we could have a fun little Halloween birthday party for him. It was fun to have a dress-up party and let the kids run around doing their festive fashion parade. Levi loved the cupcakes and tried to eat all the frosting in one bite.
I took the kids to the pediatrician on Tuesday and they both have ear infections. Isaac’s has come back and Levi’s is new. Dr.Paredes gave them a prescription for antibiotics so we get 10 days of medicine fun again.
Levi was Superman and Isaac was Spiderman. I guess I kind of cheated because I just dressed them in their super-hero pajamas (definitely a good investment).
Isaac loved ringing doorbells and getting candy. He got really good at saying “trick or treat” and when he woke up the next morning, he was ready for more trick or treat.
On Monday I got my first and hopefully last root canal. Well actually they said that I have to go back for a follow up next week so its definitely not the end of my tooth woes yet. I was really grateful for the local anesthetic but its no picnic to hear drell bits buzzing in your mouth as you strain to keep it open and just pray for it all to be over soon. My friend Claudia Hartenstine watched the kids and Isaac had a blast feeding her fish—I thing he also tried to feed them tape though. When he got home he said, “Claudio dijo. . Claudia said, don’t put the sticky tape in the fish tank”

Pumpkin Patch Time

Oct15-21, 2007Isaac hit a Spanish resistant stage this week. Sometimes when we speak Spanish he just goes “English! English!” He just wants to pray in English—I think its probably because we go to church in English now. He’ll still speak in Spanish with us, but he definitely gets into some new “English only” moods. Isaac is getting better at using the first person in English. He’ll say things like, “Why I’m being naughty?” (we’ll work on question formation and naughtiness later). He’ll also surprise me and say nice things like, “I want kiss baby Levi”Levi likes bringing shoes to everyone. He does it one by one though and makes a lot of cute mismatches. He’s always ready to go outside and play and he knows if he can just get everyone to put shoes on that he’ll be one step closer.I got really, really sick on Friday. I’d had a cold for the past couple of weeks, but then when I woke up on Friday morning I had extreme vertigo and it made me throw up repeatedly. James took me to the urgent care center and the doctor said I had a sinus infection and an inner ear infection that was affecting by balance. He prescribed antibiotics, decongestant, mezcline for vertigo, and cough syrup with codine so that I could sleep. He told me to stay in bed for a couple of days and just get rest and drink fluids, HA! What a mess. James had to take off work on Friday and our neighbors helped us with the kids. Luckily it happened over a weekend so James was able to take care of the kids and the house. My friend Sarah came over and took the kids to the zoo Saturday afternoon and James was pretty grateful for the break.




Oct.22-28, 2007On Monday when I was focusing on making pizza, Isaac was trying to get my attention and he threw my cell phone in the sink. I don’t think that I’ve ever been so mad at him. The phone totally blitzed out and is definitely out of commission. I’m holding out hope that it will dry out, but so far no luck. I’ve really missed my cell phone though—its crazy how dependant I’ve become on it. Now I have to do without and its been pretty frustrating. It’s hared to imagine a world without Levi’s contagious smile and bouncy personality. Levi now says “da” for anything he wants to pick up. He also learned to say a modified version of giraffe, “ja” and dog “dah”(not to be confused with “da”). His other word is “ba” for babies. Whenever he sees Caleb, Peter, or Cecilia (the babies in our neighborhood) he points and says “ba!”Levi had his 1 year birthday on Tuesday, but since I’ve been sick we didn’t do much more than sing happy birthday and take a few pics—we’ll celebrate it with a fiesta next week.Isaac’s been struggling with a bad cold/flu/fever after his ear infection so things have been a little rough. He did finally start taking his medicine by swallowing it himself instead of us pinning him down and plugging his nose to force it down.Isaac has several names he likes to call me lately ranging from “om” to “my mother” to “momma llama” to “mama” Levi is very good with his hands. He’s figured out how to get pen caps on and off—bad news for our walls and furniture because he also loves trying to draw on everything. He also figured out this week how to unscrew the plastic top off of a plastic bottle.The director at Isaac’s preschool says that he can stay enrolled in class even though he’s not fully potty trained. I said that I would take him out if it was a problem, but she insisted that he stay. I’m glad, but I do hope we can help Isaac make progress with potty training, we’ll kind of at a stand-still right now.

My cuties