Almost Three: What a year!

Valerie is almost three years old! And holy cow has it ever been a full year for her. I'm going to imagine her telling you about it herself:

May: I had a birthday! Mama got me this lame cake from Red Front but I liked it. Some kids came over, mostly the ones that I allow to play near me. We played in the sandbox.

June: Mama rested on the couch a lot. She has a big tummy and can't pick me up. Dada went on a loooooong trip and Grandma Irma and Grandpa Conrad stayed with us. I spent a lot of time with Miss Rachel and Grammy Dot.

July: We brought home this BABY. I call him Blablirl. I don't like it when he makes noise. Dada says "that's your baby brother." Aunt Anita came with Uncle David and Solana and Lotus and I had to share my toys.

August: We did a lot of fun things! We went saw animals and a circus! [Rockingham County Fair] That BABY was still here.

September: Tia Rosanne came to visit and some stuff went away. We got on an airplane for a long time and I cried a lot. I felt safe in my stroller because we were in a different place and I was scared. The BABY came too.

October: WE WENT TO SEE THE OCEAN!!!!!

We stayed at a hotel and I played in the playground. I ate french fries. It was fun.

November: It rained and rained and rained. Pesh came to help Mama clean the house. Mama played with me a lot. I decided to start talking.

December: Dada put lights in the windows and it was pretty. Some big boxes came and Mama found lots of books and toys that I remember. I was so happy playing with my Noah's Ark!

January: It was cold. Sometimes I stay with Pesh when Mama has to go to the store. Pesh is nice. She holds Blablirl a lot. Mama tried to make me go pee-pee on the potty but I cried for my diaper so she let me keep my diaper on.

February: We went to live in New House. I have a blue bed. I like playing on the balcony. I like turning all the lights off and on. Blabril came too. Pesh still comes here.

March: We saw the Ocean again! I had fun playing in the sand. I fell off the swing and cried. I ate food and the boy shared his cow with me. Blabril came too.

April: I like going to Fun Cafe and playing on the swing and slide and riding the bike. I like to go to Zoo Park to see the animals. I like going on walks with Dada and riding up high on his shoulders. I like playing on the steps and looking at all the yucky [trash]. No step in dog poop! I like playing on the balcony with Mama or Pesh.

May: I am THREE! I can count like this: Një, dy, tre, katër, pesë, gjashtë, shtatë, tetë, nëntë, dhjetë. Everybody claps! I love jumping, climbing, dancing, spinning, playing in the park, and playing on the balcony. I can turn somersaults and climb trees. I like to say letters and read books - not Mama, just Val-Val. I like to go to Fun Cafe and ride up high on Dada's shoulders. I like to take baths with Blablirl and then stay up late after he goes to sleep. I'm thinking about peeing on the potty but I don't like to take off my diaper. I like to play Baby Up and Down and Come Get Me Mama! I have so much fun!

Stories

Just the drama of daily life...

A couple weeks ago, the light burned out in our bathroom and while Terry was trying to change it, the whole fixture came detached from the ceiling into his hands. He didn't have time to work on it so he cut the wires, taped over the hole, and said to call Shpresa's husband, Berti, who is an electrician.

It was great, actually, to have a professional fix everything! He also replaced a light switch in the kitchen that wasn't working. Valerie was totally fascinated by the whole process and has been talking about it ever since: "Xhaxhi [Uncle] Berti fixed the light, went up the ladder, got pieces, made loud noise [the drill], liked watching, good job Xhaxhi Berti!"

Then this week, I was heating water on the stove when the electricity went out in our apartment. I could tell something had shorted it out but couldn't figure out what. I had spilled water on the stove just as the lights went out but I didn't see how the two events could be connected.

The reason I was heating water was for Valerie's bath, since we had turned off our water heater at night to save electricity, and forgot to turn it back on in the morning, so there was no hot water. She was standing in the bathroom crying because I wasn't filling up the bathtub, even though I'd just promised her a bath (my how far we've come! But that's another story!). So I was rushing to heat the water for her and that was why I'd spilled a lot.

I called Terry, and shortly after that two men showed up at the door with a toolbox. They immediately identified the problem: the clicker on the gas stove that ignites the flame - it's an electric clicker, and when I'd spilled water on it, it shorted out. They had to take the whole stove apart, clean it up good, and I don't know what all else, but Gabriel was asleep by the time they'd finished putting it back together. I didn't mind, we had our electricity back and now I know to be more careful when pouring water near the stove.

Once again, Valerie was completely fascinated - plus, now there were two Xhaxhi Bertis fixing the lights! And the stove! :-) Cost of the labor? $10 - great for us, kind of a bummer for the workmen, don't you think?

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So I think the kids are getting sick again - BOOOOO! Gabriel was up every 2 hours and CRANKY. His nose was all stuffy, poor guy. Valerie had a rough night too but slept in a little. She seemed to have a fever this morning so I deceived her into taking some infant tylenol hidden in a spoonful of ice cream. Her face was flushed and her eyes heavy. She perked up a little after that, and went to the grocery store with me, but she was pretty tired around noon and went down for a nap quickly (after a bath - her SECOND today already!). Gabriel has been clingy and sad. I think we're going to postpone our family vacation until June (we were thinking of going next week).

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Elections for mayor of Tirana were last Sunday. Instead of Mother's Day, they celebrate Women's Day here, in March, so it was an ordinary Sunday (other than the elections of course). The results have been too close to call so far and it's making people a little tense and worried, I think, with concerns about corruption.

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Speaking of Mother's Day - I had a whole post planned out with lots of pictures but have not had the time to find and upload all the photos I wanted - so I will say with words instead, that I spent the day thinking of my mom, my mother-in-law, my grandmothers, my sister, my cousins, my sister-in-law, my aunts, and all the important women in my life who have "mothered" me in some way or other in the span of my life. First and foremost my mom, Irma. Love you and miss you - every day.

Typical Day

Even though I've never gone surfing, I think of my days with the kids like riding a wave; some days you catch the wave and glide into shore, other days it lifts you up and slams you into the ocean floor. Maybe that's a bit melodramatic! But I find it helpful to follow my late therapist's advice and "find [their] rhythm." I spend the day riding the ebb and flow of their energy. Sometimes they're in sync with each other, sometimes they're at odds, but usually there is a pattern to our day and it is something like this:

5:00 or 5:30 a.m. Gabriel wakes up

6:00 or 6:30 a.m. Valerie wakes up

Either Terry or I gets to sleep in a little while the other one plays with the kids and gives Gabriel breakfast.

8:00 ish Gabriel goes down for nap, Terry gets in the shower to get ready for work. I make breakfast for me and Valerie while Gabriel is sleeping (sometimes, though, he doesn't go down until 9). It's really nice to have someone here to stay with Valerie while I put Gabriel down for nap; this is probably the hardest 10 minutes of my day when Terry's not here.

8:50 Terry goes to work

sometime between 9 and 10 Gabriel wakes up, I take the kids out somewhere

12:00 lunch at home. Actually, this can be a rough time too if I'm trying to put lunch together while the kids are both hungry and demanding my attention. I usually give them a snack around 10 or 11 and that helps. It also helps to have something I can give them really quickly.

1:00 Valerie's nap time (sometimes not until 2:00)

Depending what time Gabriel woke up from his first nap, the second nap is anytime from 11:30-2:00 and lasts 45-90 minutes. This can be another rough spot if Valerie is tired and wants my attention, but isn't ready for her nap yet at the point in time when Gabriel is, and I have to leave her by herself again. If Shpresa is here, though, she puts Gabriel down and I can focus on Valerie.

3:00 or 4:00 Valerie wakes up, has a snack, then we either play at home or go out somewhere (usually a shorter outing, either to Fun Cafe or grocery shopping)

5:00 Gabriel eats supper, then has bath, then to bed between 6:30 and 7:00 p.m. Lately Valerie has been getting in the bath with him too!

8:00 pm Valerie's bedtime

9:00 Valerie falls asleep and I go to bed. Seriously - I have a night owl and an early bird. I doesn't matter what time I put Valerie to bed she falls asleep at 9. The only exceptions are 1) when she has skipped her afternoon nap, she falls asleep around 8 or 8:30, and 2) when she has taken a late nap (like, waking up around 5) then she'll be awake until 10 or 10:30 which is RIDICULOUS so I have put a moratorium not late naps. If it's 3:00 and she's still awake, there will be no nap that day.

These days Gabriel is waking up around 3 times during the night. I think for awhile he was feeling a lot of teething pain, so I treated it like he was sick and just went in and nursed him every time.

Ten months!

Gabriel is ten months old today! He's growing big and strong, eating lots, pulling himself up to standing and starting to cruise around the furniture. He likes to feed himself as much as possible and is just starting to try out the finger-and-thumb "pincer" grasp. He can handle chunks of soft food like bread and apples, and seems to love bread more than anything else in the world except maybe Mommy. He's got six teeth: four on top, and two below. He adores his sister and loves going out for walks - as soon as he sees me or Shpresa strapping on the Bjorn he gets all excited and holds up his arms to be picked up! He's not very interested in books unless they have parts that move (like googly eyes) or interesting textures. It's so easy to make him laugh! He loves playing in the bath and trying to stick things in my mouth. He likes music, too - when we put on the music channel on TV he waves his arm like a conductor and smiles really big. He's just so stinkin' cute it's impossible not to sweep him up and cover him in kisses and cuddles and hugs at every opportunity. Të dua shumë, Diali im! (I love you very much, my son!)

Potty Training Take Two

Today was our first diaper-less excursion to the park - this was entirely Valerie's idea, and while I wasn't 100% on board with it I decided we might as well give it a go. She lasted about an hour before wetting her pants (I kept telling her she could pee in the grass but she had to tell me so we could take her pants off first. I'm not sure she understood), so I just changed her into dry pants and we kept on playing. It was a gorgeous warm, sunny day and there were daisies and buttercups everywhere. So overall we enjoyed ourselves.

After we got home she had an accident in the living room and then wanted me to put her diaper back on which I did since it was getting close to nap time anyway.

That, however, is when the real drama began. She was tired, rubbing her eyes, and screaming at the tiniest provocation (and I mean TINY), but refused to go to bed, so I finally carried her kicking and screaming into her darkened room and rocked her in my arms standing up while she wailed and wailed. After about five minutes I sat down on the bed with her in my lap while she wailed some more. After some time (not sure how long) she was relaxed enough I could lie down with her. Then I had to wait about 15 minutes before I was able to really put her down and creep away, but by then she was so deeply asleep she didn't even flinch when I kicked a toy in the dark and it made a very loud bang.

This is the first time I can remember, other than the nightmare flight from the States to Europe, that she has really and truly thrown a tantrum. She's almost 3, so I'm actually expecting that they will become more frequent in the coming year. And I can't help but thinking that it's connected to the re-initiation of potty training. I've been very slow to start it up again after our disastrous first attempt in November (was it that long ago???) because it was so emotionally hard on both her and me. But it's time. She's started putting her baby doll on the potty again, and has shown interest in not wearing a diaper herself. I don't think she understands how to control her bladder yet, or how to anticipate the need to pee and all that. I think we're going to have a looooooot more accidents before it clicks for her. But we're heading in that direction, and even though there wasn't really any drama about it this morning - we just took it all in stride - oh yes, you wet your pants, let's get changed, no big deal but next time try to wait until you're sitting on the potty before you pee - but I think it was strange and new enough that it precipitated this afternoon's tantrum in some way.

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On a more fun note, last night when we were putting her to bed I said "good night, Mama loves you," and she said "Val-Val loves you" back! That was a first too, and very sweet.

At the park today she kept saying "so much fun!" which is her latest favorite new phrase. It's nice to see her identifying and verbalizing how she's feeling about things. She's also recently said "Val-Val sad" (I don't remember about what) and in recent months has also identified when she's scared.

She's even had some good moments with Gabriel, playing with his toes, or touching his hands and hair very gently. That's nice to see too.

Oh my gosh, MORE cute pictures!

Goofing off in the Pack-n-Play

He is growing up so fast!!!!!

This is at the "Fun Cafe", $2 for unlimited time with the toys

Swinging at the Fun Cafe

Terry bought these Russian Nesting Dolls en route home from Mongolia. They're a great toddler toy, Valerie loves taking them apart and putting them together in novel ways. She calls the pieces "bowls," and then she'll say the Albanian word - "tas - RIIIIIGHT!" (she always says "RIIIIIGHT!" after she uses a word in Albanian - sometimes that's the only way I know she's talking Shqip!)

Fun with construction paper!

Gabriel pics

Not sure why he was making this face - probably I tried to give him a bite of food he didn't want!
I was bored while we were waiting for Valerie to be done playing on the steps so we could go inside
He's getting the hang of shaking the little rattlers and tapping them with the hammer!
The boy loooooooves bread - he'd eat nothing but bread if I gave him that option. He grabs it and crams as much as he can into his mouth at once! (The booster seat is one we borrowed and since then have passed on to another friend, while we borrowed their high chair - musical kid stuff!)

Wow, it sure is a lot easier to post a bunch of cute pictures than to actually write something of substance.

Valerie pics

Playing on the balcony

Another attempt at an Easter photo: this is the dress she wore to church. I realize that her outfits aren't usually very well coordinated, this is because I let her pick out her own clothes. The pink and purple striped shirt is her favorite. However, I did use some persuasion to get her to wear the dress.

The Tuesday after Easter we did get around to coloring some eggs, sort of. I boiled four eggs and Valerie colored two of them with markers. We didn't really make a very big deal out of it but it was fun and kept her occupied for a quarter of an hour while I made dinner!

More Big Park buttercups - can't get enough!

A bunch of pictures

Again, in lieu of a real post, a bunch of pictures for our family fan club :-) I'm trying to catch up with myself now that Terry is back from Mongolia and Shpresa is back from Greece (family trip over Easter holiday). Just starting to come out of the headachy fog of sleeplessness, and able to use Valerie's nap time for something other than cleaning and cooking. (As these pictures load, I'll be working on sorting out more Albanian noun forms - masculine and feminine, singular and plural, nominative and accusative, definite and indefinite.) More pictures coming soon as I've been taking lots! I also put a bunch of them on Facebook so you can check in there if you're my FB friend!

Family self-portrait in reflective window

Cafe in the park with all the buttercups. Buttercups and a macchiato! Bliss!

Valerie looooooved playing "chase" with this little boy! He didn't try to talk to her or get in her space at all so they got along really well!

We have this booster seat on loan for Gabriel but Valerie likes to sit in it with her Baby. Here she's giving Baby a drink of her water - it was so cute.

I predict he'll be walking by 12 months!

Easter weekend

Oh rare and glorious day - both kids are napping at the same time... and I will use this rare and glorious moment to download some pictures from our picnic in the park today and post them here for you. That's how much I love you, dear readers all!

I had this notion to take Easter pictures of the kids in this meadow of buttercups (a scant 10-15 minute walk from our house - it's near the big artificial lake), but I didn't have the energy to try to wrangle Valerie into a pretty dress. I don't think I'll ever be able to match the over-the-top adorableness of Valerie's first Easter pictures but I'm still glad we went. Valerie was happy just sitting in the grass looking at all the flowers.

Here (above), she wanted me to sing "We Thank You God" (what we usually sing for Grace before meals), adding many more verses thanking God for pretty much everything I could think of - the flower and trees, birds and sunshine, etc. etc. That's why she's clapping, too (she always claps after we sing).

Gabriel kept trying to eat the flowers.

Happy Easter, everybody!

Bits and Pieces

It's spring in Tirana, and the trees have burst forth in lovely shades of bright, pale green. Window sills are filling up with flower pots and the parks with little children.

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Election season is upon us as well, and I saw both major candidates out schmoozing last Monday on my way back from my Shqip lesson. They are both very tall men, and that's about all I could tell you about them.

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The other day I was out with the kids and I very conscientiously threw an empty chips bag into one of those little trash bins that hang up on a stand, but just as I dropped it in I saw that the bottom of the trash can had rusted out and my trash fell on the ground.

Cute toddler detail: Valerie refers to all trash as "yucky." She likes to peer under the stairs next door to our building and admire "all that yucky!" She's also learned to call it "pis" ("yucky" in Albanian).

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After a balloon popped, Valerie said "All pieces fell off balloon."

When I was lying on the couch tossing a ball up into the air and then catching it, she said "Ball fall off hands, ball fall off ceiling."

When she lifted her feet off the floor while sitting in a chair, she said "Feet fall off floor."

::

A couple days ago Valerie dropped a doll over the edge of the balcony, and it fell down to the balcony below which juts out for a good several yards beyond ours. When I saw the neighbor's little girl playing there, I had a brainstorm for getting it back - I lowered a little plastic basket on a long piece of yarn and asked her to put the doll in. She did, and I pulled it up easily! I sent her down an orange, and she sent up a little toy camel (but I think she might want it back). Valerie was thrilled with the whole operation, so now we have the little basket permanently installed on the balcony. I hung the string over a laundry line and we now play "Baby Up and Down" many, many times a day.

::

I've often had people wonder where we're from. One time a woman came up to me and asked "Asia???" Others have thought I'm Turkish. Apparently we don't look like what people think Americans look like!

Oh, and apparently we've been here exactly seven months today. Wow!

a random assortment of photos

Consider it a basket of Easter candy, from me to you.

Valerie update (Updated)

Valerie and Terry enjoying a picnic on the balcony

Speaking of language learning, Valerie has all of a sudden started using a lot of words in Shqip! She likes to play a language-learning computer game Terry got, that uses pictures to teach vocabulary and some basic phrases. I discovered months ago that she could recognize most of the words but it took until now for her to start producing them. So far she's been using:

• domate = tomato
• vezë = eggs
• oriz = rice
• patate = potato
• tas = bowl
• e verdhe = yellow
• thikë = knife
• pirun = fork
• anijë = ship/boat
• and all the numbers to 12 (an interesting tidbit - she doesn't say "seven" in English, whenever she's counting she goes "six, m-mm, eight..." etc. but she can say "shtatë" in Albanian just fine)
• (Updated to add): Bukë = bread
• ujë = water
• qumësht = milk
• pis = yucky

She's turning into a little chatterbox, too! At bedtime she'll spend some 20 minutes or so just talking about the day, and it's fun to hear from her perspective what stood out as important or made an impression. Like one day Gabriel lost his balance while cruising around the coffee table, and fell on his bottom and cried. He pulled a toy Noah's Ark down with him and it made a loud noise. For days afterwards she'd bring it up at random moments - "Blablirl fall down Noah's Ark."

She's a bundle of energy. She has also started skipping her afternoon nap from time to time - for a couple of weeks there, she only napped every other day. Right now she's on a daily-nap streak but I'm not sure how long it will last. The only upside is that she does fall asleep a little earlier on no-nap days.

I can't believe she's almost THREE!!!

Snazzy!

Terry was supposed to go to Mongolia again this week, but due to a mix-up with his booking and ticket he ended up coming back home. It's nice to have him back so quick :-).

I've been wanting to post these pictures for a while now; the suit jacket is one Terry bought in the local market here for a trip to Kosovo. He went to accept an award on behalf of WV for their "Kids for Peace" program there. Doesn't he look snazzy!

I also wanted to brag a bit about his language ability - after visiting here for a month, someone told him he already spoke Shqip better than some expats they knew who'd lived here five years! I don't know where he gets the self-discipline to do so, but he studies for at least a half hour every night before bed, and has been doing so ever since we decided we were going to come here. He has several grammar books and some audio lessons, but lately he's been reading through children's books with a dictionary. His grammar and vocabulary far surpass mine even though I've been taking weekly lessons and he hasn't taken a single formal lesson at all. (My accent is better though!) I'm always impressed by what he can understand and say.

Now I just have to get him to model the pants that match the jacket!

quick

Sorry I haven't really posted anything this week - I'll let Valerie tell you about it:

"Val-Val all wet, throw up in bed, Val-Val so sick. Poor Val-Val. Eat food Mama Dada on couch.* All that yucky."

Four times in ten days.

Terry finally persuaded me to take her to the doctor, who confirmed my suspicion that she has a virus, post-nasal drip --> coughing at night --> triggers throwing up sometimes. All we can do is wait it out and give her herbal tea with honey in it at bedtime (which she rejected last night). However, she went on to sleep soundly for 12 hours! With very little coughing! So that was a huge improvement. Gabriel is sleeping a little better too, after two weeks of waking every 2 hours (give or take an hour) through the night.

I'm just resigned to feeling mind-numbingly tired for, oh, another year or so, probably.

*When she asked for food after the second episode, we gave her bread and water. It was 11 p.m. and we kept the lights low so it made a big impression on her mind.

More Firsts

I'm calling it: Gabriel crawled for real for the first time today! Slowly and painstakingly, but definitely forward movement with a left-right-left rhythm. Also? He's started saying "Mama," and it really seems to be with meaning. Soooooo lovely.

I also forgot to mention in his 9-month post, that he's learning to manipulate his environment. He can shake a rattling toy for the pleasure of hearing the sound, and plays peek-a-boo with the curtain in his room. Also, long gone are the days of easy substitution when I wanted to distract him from something. He's very aware of what toys are around that he can see and knows which ones he wants. He can keep track of what I take away from him and watches where I put it. It's cool to see him learning but sometimes a little inconvenient!

Nine!

Gabriel is nine months old today! Let's see, he's working on crawling, pulling himself up to standing in his crib, and cutting FOUR new teeth at the same time - all across the top front. He's been sick again this week, coughing and stuffy nose had a slight fever on Monday. (I think it's the same thing we all seem to have right now.) So that's made him very slightly cranky.

I haven't done much with introducing new foods, as he proved to have an allergy to teething tablets, and then we found that he throws up every time he eats yoghurt. Egg yolks seem to be a problem too. But he loves potatoes, carrots, avocados, and bread, so that's mostly what he eats, oh yeah, and lots and lots of bananas with some rice cereal thrown in there for good measure. He would love to feed himself if he could, he always wants to hold the spoon and put it in his own mouth. And then he drops it on the floor.

Also, he's still nursing about 4x a day and 3 or more times at night because he's been sick so often.

It seems like he can distinguish Shqip from English and Spanish now - well, I don't know if he can distinguish English from Spanish because I speak both to him, but the other day when I started talking to him in Shqip he kept turning around to look at the door, like he expected Shpresa to walk in! That was cool :-)

I'd write more but I'm really tired.

Oh - p.s. - in the post below, the top picture is Gabriel and the bottom one is Valerie. When I put them side by side they do look quite different to me, and Terry thinks they look nothing alike, but when I first saw that photo of Gabriel I thought "oh, I didn't realize Valerie's walker had the same fabric as the one we have now?" and then realized it WAS the walker we have now, and it was Gabriel, not Valerie! So then I had to pull up the old picture of Valerie to compare the two.

comparisons 6: another double take

Can you tell which one is Valerie and which one is Gabriel?

Durres

A few weeks ago, we had the opportunity to visit Durres with some friends from church and work.

Durres is an old coastal city that was once the capital of Albania; it is now undergoing rampant and somewhat frenetic development as a beach resort town.

Valerie loooooved playing in the sand there although it was too cold for swimming!

In some ways, Durres is still an agricultural community.

And of course, the remnants of the communist era remain: those pink and blue concrete mushrooms are old military bunkers.

We enjoyed a delicious Albanian lunch with the Yzeraij family - this is only a small part of the spread! To the far right you can see little Isaiah - he's about Valerie's age and she appreciated his sharing her toys with her!

Whenever V sees this picture she says "Val-val fun play sand, share cow with you, Val-val fall off swing, Val-val crying, Mama get BIG hug"

Gabriel enjoyed his first time playing in the sand as well!

Our host for the day enjoying the view from the patio of his hostel. They open for business in May and we're thinking it would be a nice place to go with Anita and her family when they come to visit!