Pool Party!

Elizabeth and I spent an enjoyable morning and lunch with friends. The kiddos played in a pool while the adults supervised and enjoyed the chance to converse and enjoy the company of each other. Elizabeth loved playing with the water! We definitely plan to buy her a pool to use on our roof.

Elizabeth and her friend Josa. The 7-week age difference between them is “shrinking” as they get older. It is fun to see them begin to interact more and more with each other.

I am often amazed at Elizabeth’s ability to focus on one activity for extended periods of time. Granted, I don’t have other children with whom to compare her, so maybe her focus is par for the course for a 17 month old. And she has many moments when she goes quickly from one activity to the next. But in general, when she is happy and having fun, she can settle in and play with one thing for a long time. Today it was this shape sorter. She found it endlessly fun to put the shapes through the holes, watch them drop/splash into the water, pick them up and repeat.

Swinging

Elizabeth’s fun, new toy…installed on our covered roof.

Thanking her papa for hanging up her new swing.

A fun day in the kitchen

I had so much fun with my daughter today! She was in a very happy mood and spent the morning with me in the kitchen. I needed to bake muffins to take to a party, and recently she has been less happy to entertain herself while I am busy in the kitchen. So I decided to include her in the action. I set up her little table in chairs in the kitchen and provided her with plastic bowls, measuring cups and spoons. She loved it and played happily for a very long time.

I had first put a little flour in the bowl…but realized that was not such a good idea when it was soon everywhere as a result of her trying to dump it into the measuring cups. I then decided to give her some animal crackers to play with as an alternative. She spent a long time moving the crackers around from measuring cup to bowl to little holes in the table.

Uh-oh! A cracker fell on the floor!

I am looking forward to the day when she is old enough to really help me in the kitchen! It will be fun to teach her to bake and cook.

Snapshots from our day

Child labor at its finest! Elizabeth loves to help with the laundry. She pushes the basket to/from the drying rack and hands the wet laundry for me to hang it up. Needless to say, her help is less useful when I am folding laundry. Somehow it doesn’t stay folded very nicely!

But today the child labor was rewarded with a ride in the laundry basket. She loved it and did not want to get out!

This afternoon, Elizabeth’s friend V came over for a visit. V is just a few months older than Elizabeth. While they are still needing to work out the finer details of “sharing”, it has been fun to watch them start to interact more and more with each other in their play when they are together. Today Elizabeth introduced V to one of her new favorite activities…coloring.

And the afternoon play ended with a fun, shared ride in the laundry basket. It has become one of Elizabeth’ most preferred activities! Later this evening, she sat and played (very happily) in the laundry basket while I prepared dinner. However, we needed to work through a difference of opinion about when it was time to get out. Mama…and dinner…”won”!

Our Busy Little Girl

This video has so many highlights of Elizabeth’s developments, I just could not find any part to edit out. It’s a bit long…but enjoy!

A few last pictures

This is just a random assortment of some additional favorite pictures taken during the visit of David, Janneke, Noi and Liselot. These pictures tell no story, other than the story of family enjoying time together.

Dining out with three 1-year olds. It was a genuinely positive and enjoyable experience!

Elizabeth really loved Tante Janneke’s magazine. She spent a lot of focused time looking at the pictures and would often walk around carrying it while saying “book, book”.

 

The three girls posing for a picture when visiting Elizabeth’s nanny.

And we spent lots of time on our roof enjoying the outdoors and fresh air. There was some disagreement as to how warm it really was. The residents of Holland (D&J) felt it was practically summer! The local residents (J&K) felt it was still borderline winter weather!

We enjoyed the views…

…and snacks

…and drinks

…and laughing together.

We were the main attraction!

Everyone loves babies, and our local neighbors are no exception. In fact, we have learned that babies are very beloved in this community. All of the local shopkeepers love Elizabeth and enthusiastically greet her. She receives treats from the grocer, gets to play with the fruit vendor’s pet turtle, and everyone knows her name. But our experience of this enthusiasm about babies went to a whole new level during the visit of David, Janneke, Noï and Liselot! We had crowds of people around us on several occasions.

When visiting The Church of the Nativity, we were surrounded by a group of school girls from the northern West Bank also on tour of the church.

Initially, they just moved in with their mobile phone cameras to take pictures and talked among themselves. But soon they were eager, but also a bit shy, to practice their English with us. They wanted to know if the babies were boys or girls. In this culture, baby girls get their ears pierced within the first weeks…so babies without earrings who look feminine are a bit confusing!

On another occasion, while walking around the Bethlehem market, Liselot received a kiss from an adoring stranger. The lipstick traces on her cheek were left behind!

One day we stopped to have lunch in a local park. This peaceful scene…

…was soon replaced by this! We felt a bit like we were the main attraction at a zoo, with them hovering over us and staring openly at us (as kids do so well).

Kids are the same everywhere in the world. Soon they were posing for the camera and then became bored (mostly because we did not allow them to take our children with them to other areas of the park).