We got a dog!!

At the fair that is. Micah's first pet is 4 times his size and doesn't need diapers. We got him at the church fair for the very fair price of less than a dollar. We were quite amused lugging him through the subway to get back to our house. Once home, Micah took full advantage of his new jungle gym.

Too cute

Micah turns 18 months next week. These photos make me laugh so I am throwing them on the web. I realized that possibly 30% of our photos of Micah are of the eating process. They start to blend together, but they're always cute. Anyway, as he turns 18, here is the latest news:

- Micah has just busted out 3 new teeth this week bringing the total to 15. I don't know how many they get, but this was one painful week. It's nice when they all come together!

- Micah is starting to get some "words" out that we can really understand. "Daw" = dog, "Doo" = shoe, "Dad" = Dad :), "Doose" = juice. "Ah Duh" = all done. These are the most frequent.

- His current favorite activities are hide-n-seek, and doing anything outside. We know he wants to go outside when he points at the back of his bedroom door where his monkey backpack is and then brings us his shoes. If we play dumb, he goes and stands at the door and points until we get the picture.

- His new favorite book is "Dog" by Matthew Van Fleet, photos by Brian Stanton. It's a very cool photo book with lots of tabs to pull to make the "daws" wag their tails and scratch.

- New bedtime ritual: Read 3-4 books. Turn on nightlight and ceiling fan (yeah!!) and then say goodnight to each animal on his wall border. Tiger and elephant get smiles...middle of the room lion gets giggles....and last ones in the room - rhino and monkey - get laughs. Then into the crib with big smiles and arms wrapped around sleep dog and sleep frog. Sweet dreams!

- He's still sweet-talking the other folks on mass transit. Last month he received a brownie, several candy bars, several home-maid muffins, and more. One 12 year old girl on the ferry took his photo on her phone and then e-mailed it to us! This new generation of technology-literate kids will be quite interesting!

- That's all that I can think of in my tired state. Hope you enjoyed the update.

Level 2 Passed!!!

Hooray! Steph passed level 2 of Turkish! What a stressful week preparing for that test! This is a picture of me celebrating with my classmates that we survived another level. Please note there are no men. Actually, we did have one guy in our class, but he didn't come out to lunch with us. All of these wonderful women are married to or dating Turks! They are from all over the world. They have a leg up on speaking the language because of their built-in tutors at home, so we better get a TV so I can catch up. ;-) Most of us will be in the same class again on Monday as we start level 3. We had delicious Chinese food to celebrate! That's one food I'm glad to have here!

First big boy cup

Well, we finally took the time to try a big boy cup....

and amidst some sputtering he loved it! I was grateful to find the last plastic cup in the store and grateful it did not cost an arm and a leg. However, my jaw did drop at a few other unique items...

One plastic cup = $3 good price
One bag of jumbo marshmallows = $10 crazy
One tube of diaper cream = $23 unfathomable

oops I did it again....

Lessons unlearned...

- you cannot pour browned ground beef grease directly down the drain. (It never gets to the drain for those who've never tried it....it just immediately sticks to the sides of your sink until you and a lot of soap scrub it off)

Sunday nights....

The calm before the storm.

A nice relaxing/busy weekend under our belts....and denial of the coming days of language learning.

Friday, I (Steph) went out to lunch with two girls from my language class. We are making this a weekly celebration and it is entertaining to have 'girl talk' with women from around the world. We went to the Pizza Hut buffet. I was delinquent in my sign reading and got stuck with the salad bar buffet instead of the pizza buffet. Oh well, it was good salad!

Saturday, we tempted fate and boarded the ferry to the "Big Island" despite cloudy skies. Happily, Micah befriended several teenagers on the 80 minute journey that kept him busy eating their picnic food and starring in their cell phone photos. Strangely, we ended up on the same boat home and Micah was loved a second time by those great girls. It made Mom & Dad relax a little..... It started pouring as we neared the island. We were not swayed. We paid for two over-priced "in pouring rain" special umbrellas and started exploring the quaint streets. Then we dodged into a nice-looking restaurant for our first kebab meal since we moved here. Yum. Many restaurants here (including dessert places or coffee shops) have multiple floors so people can take advantage of the view. They often have a separate wait staff and display window of treats for each floor despite all belonging to one restaurant. We had the second floor nearly to ourselves which was perfect since Micah was bemoaning the loss of his afternoon nap on this rainy day. After lunch, the rain slowed and we hopped onto a horse carriage ride to St. George's Monastery. Buyuk Ada is much like Mackinaw Island in that there are no cars, just bikes and horse carriages! No fudge, but lots of yummy ice cream. That may have been Micah's favorite part - waffle cone dipped in chocolate with sprinkles with 3 scoops of yummy ice cream.

Today - a friend of our neighbor's came and created a shower curtain rod for our uniquely shaped bath-tub/shower! Hooray!! We will have standing showers now! AND, he installed our toilet paper holder and a ceiling fan. Ah, the little things in life.....the comforts of home. He's coming back tomorrow to put in our other 3 ceiling fans so we'll be ready for the beastly days of summer. PTL!

For one reason I love Michigan

I came across this website while looking for Michigan photos. Wow. I love Michigan. And I need to get better at photography! These photos are awesome!


http://www-personal.umich.edu/~jensenl/visuals/album/2006/pictured/