A future musician?

Elizabeth continues to love playing with our piano. Since it is electric and I keep it turned off, she needs to ask to play it…which she does more and more! And it is no longer possible for me to play with her around. She immediately comes and pulls at my arms, asking to be put on my lap so she can play too.

I think she already has an excellent form!

But she often gets distracted by all the buttons and red lights. The plus side of a digital piano is that you can turn it off when you don’t want a baby banging on the keys. The down side is having all these buttons that can be pushed. Sometimes I just have to turn it off to reset it because I can’t figure out what she has pushed and am unable to get it to play normally again!

Her grins says it so well. She loves the piano!

Lekker Kaas

Thanks to Oma and Opa, we have authentic Dutch cheese in the house! It was Elizabeth’s first taste of good excellent cheese.

 

Reaching, with excitement, for her portion.

All new food needs to be inspected. It is a serious business!

The first taste…

Reflecting on the taste and forming her opinion.

Lekker! Who doesn’t love Dutch cheese?!

A New Activity

Filling this box with clothespins has become one of Elizabeth’s most preferred activities. I’m amazed at how long this can hold her attention!

She often congratulates herself for a job well done :)

Random Assortment of Pictures from Oma and Opa’s Visit

Elizabeth took her first steps the evening before her birthday. She kept busy practicing during her grandparents’ visit. But it has been just in the past week when we have noticed she has gained confidence and a lot better balance. It won’t be long before she is cruising around on her two little legs without the support of one of us nearby!

 

Helping Oma fold the laundry. Elizabeth is starting to really enjoy being involved with whatever activity the adult in the room is doing. However, I think it is also partially driven by curiosity! At the moment, it makes cooking more complicated since she now wants to see everything I am doing!

 

 

Listening to her singing birthday card…over and over and over again!

Enjoying the Old City souk. This picture is awfully posed…but sometimes it is necessary to get a semi-decent picture!

Getting some extra help with the spoon. Using an eating utensil has a huge learning curve! At present, her focus on using a spoon has waned. Perhaps partially because of how frustrating it must be to always have your food fall off the spoon en route to your mouth!

We enjoyed many meals together. We adults enjoyed the conversation. Elizabeth loved the extra company and having a bigger singing choir to direct (as seen in the video). Oma and Opa taught her a popular French kid’s song. She loved it! And she continues to ask for this song, often at the dinner table, by waving her hands at us. She practically jumps out of her chair with joy when we oblige and sing the song! It’s a catchy tune and it has required me to work on a developing a respectable French accent :)

Fun pictures of our sweet girl

How we celebrated Christmas

We enjoyed having J’s parents visit us for Elizabeth’s birthday and the Christmas holiday. It was a relaxed week and thankfully the weather was a lot nicer than when they visited last year just after Elizabeth was born. Elizabeth enjoyed being under their care the days I needed to work. And I am certain they equally enjoyed their days with her!

I took off work Christmas Day (it is not an official holiday in Israel, of course), and the day after. Because I worked on Christmas Eve, I was not able to join them at the festivities in Nativity Square in Bethlehem. Thousands of tourists come to “Oh Little Town of Bethlehem” to experience Christmas here. It is nothing like the peaceful, pastoral scene the song brings to mind! During the day there is a parade. J, Elizabeth and Oma & Opa enjoyed the festive music and festive spirit of the event. The festivities continue all the way up until the midnight mass at the Catholic Nativity church. But with a little one in the house, we opted to spend our evening relaxing in the quiet of our home.

Christmas Day we went to Jericho. Located near the Dead Sea, Jericho is warm and balmy in winter and hot and humid in summer. We enjoyed an outdoor Christmas lunch. While it is always nice to have a white Christmas…an outdoor luncheon is also a nice way to spend a Christmas Day!

Elizabeth enjoyed the kid playground located in the center of the restaurant garden area.

After lunch we then rode the cable car up to the Mount of Temptation monastery. Inhabited by monks since the 6th century, this is a site that commemorates Jesus’ 40 days of temptation. It is one of the few monasteries in the country that allows women to enter. I appreciated the opportunity to see inside.

After the cable car, there remained a steep little walk up to the monastery that is perched on the side of a cliff.

Stopping for a breather…

 

 

 

 

Entering the inner part of the monastery.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A balcony with a view. One should not look down if scared of heights. The balcony was literally hanging over a cliff!

 

 

 

 

Christmas night Elizabeth opened her Christmas gifts. Grandma and Grandpa were able to watch via skype! 

Even a gift from a friend from our church!

Enjoying her new book from Aunt Teresa.

Christmas Preparations and Sinterklaas

I found this blog post in my unposted file, which explains its delay in showing up on my blog. Christmas preparations and Sinterklaas are practically distant memories now!

Helping Papa put up our Christmas Tree. I suspect that next year she will want to be more actively involved and no longer willing to be a passive but curious observer :)

Taking a reading break between setting up the tree and opening up Sinterklaas gifts. I really like this picture!

What is Sinterklaas, you ask? The Dutch celebrate the birthday of Saint Nicholas (Sinterklaas) on December 6. Presents are exchanged on the evening of December 5 (but not on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day). If you want to know more about the traditions, click on the link. In future years, once Elizabeth is older, we will need to do better with meeting more of the traditions of the evening. But for this year, we skipped the special wrapping of the gifts, the personalized poem to accompany each gift, and the putting the shoes outside the door and having someone come and ring the doorbell and place gifts outside the door while pretending to be Sinterklaas. There is always next year. We both agree that we don’t want to teach Elizabeth that Sinterklaas really gives the gifts, but the traditions are still fun to keep!

Opening her gift (thanks to her PA birthday celebration, she was expert in unwrapping gifts)…

…only to discover there is more to unwrap!

All one needs for a tea party…
a teapot, 2 tea cups and some sweet treats!

Would you like a cup of tea? Yes, please!