Happy Birthday Aliya!!!

Yup, she's all grown up. Standing by herself, and attempting to walk by herself, which only results in a quick trip to the floor. But she keeps on trying. She's climbing the stairs. She's splashing it up in the pool. She's gleefully obeying the command "Gimme 5!." She gets exponentially cuter each moment. Here are some recent pix. We're postponing birthday cake til tomorrow, when Ava is here, so I'll add those pictures later:


HAPPY FIRST BIRTHDAY, BEAUTIFUL GIRL!!!!!

When does a working mom blog?

Now that everyday is an Aliya Adventure and blogging time gets scarcer by the week, things begin to blur together, and I find myself at a loss for words when faced with the blank screen. Aliya's doing really well, other than some persistent diarrhea that our pediatrician is helping us sort out. It's weird to be on the other side of the "my little one has diarrhea that won't go away" conversations.

Ava has been slowly learning to share her daddy. It has not been an easy transition for her, but she never once has taken out her frustration on little Aliya - which I think is a significant accomplishment. Certainly, the same could not be said of me when ol' Ginger rolled into my life (Ava loves to hear my mom tell the story of how I tried to bang baby Ginger with a hammer). I've actually gotten to have more quality time with Ava, now that Daddy is sometimes occupied with the baby, which has been an unexpected positive development as well.

Each day Aliya becomes more spirited and less reserved. She loves to be outside, and it's finally the time of year where it can be a regular occurrence. She is "walking" by herself now, with the aide of her Pediatric Walker, aka, the thing with beads, wheels and a handle that allows her to propel herself recklessly forward without falling on her face. She gets a big open-mouth grin when using her walker:

The walker grin is not to be confused with the demonic Chucky grin she gets whenever she's doing a mad crawl at Sal or I - which she will inevitably do whenever one of us is foolish enough to lie on the floor in her presence. (Note to self - videotape demonic-Chucky-grin-mad-crawl before she outgrows it!):

Aliya is slowly meeting and getting comfortable with all the neighbors, which is good, because our block is a social place to be, especially with warm weather hovering around the corner. She is beginning to smile when either Sal or I get home from work, recognizing us as we stride through the door.

Returning to work on 2/25 was not as bad as I'd feared. The balance is actually pretty ideal. We have staggered our schedules so that we only need a babysitter 10-hours/week, so that both Sal and I have about 25-hours/week home alone with her. My mom did us the great favor of babysitting the last couple weeks, but our new sitter Gabby will start next week. Aliya took to Gabby right away, which is not her usual M.O. Now we just have to figure out when Sal and I will spend time with each other. This may improve when we figure out how to stay up past 8:30pm.

What else of note? A visit from Aunt Ginger, a visit from the Keisters, and a second visit with Grandma & Paw Mengine. Trips to the grocery store and the dog park. Learning how to feed the dogs crackers (and cereal, and bananas, and apple sauce, and toys, and lint). Here are more pix from the past couple of weeks:

Trading Snow hat for Sun hat

What a beautiful Monday we're having! Aliya has slept through the night for 3 nights in a row, and we're all feeling like new people. And today we lucked out with a break in the cold, dreary February weather - it's 68F and sunny out! Aliya went for her first long outside walk, with bare tootsies and a sun hat. She babbled and kicked her legs the whole time.

Afterward, she enjoyed some refreshing time playing with the grass, mud, moss and twigs in our front yard. Can't wait til this weather kicks in for the season.

Also on today's menu, and extremely messy lunch. Here are the before and after pictures:

This past weekend we enjoyed a nice long visit with Nina & Justin. Aliya took to them with lightening speed. Dexter, however, who has already been battling baby-envy, nearly blew a gasket when Phoenix got to sit at the table during lunch. Poor Dex.

Aliya is pure joy, even when she's fussing and crying (the latter of which is primarily reserved for car rides - she hates 'em!). My heart is so full. As Gia recently predicted to me, mommyhood

has exceeded my expectations.

Happy Valentine's Day

We're winding down from the first week at home. Aliya is all decked out in the Valentine's outfit that Kimmy got her, and she needs a morning siesta, because we're expecting Grandma & Pa Mengine later this afternoon, for their first visit with their 6th grandchild.

The best part of bringing Little A home has been introducing her to the Big A. As we all expected, Ava has proved herself a wonderful, caring big sister. And as I was warned by those who went before me, two is not twice as hard as one - it's 3 times as hard as one. Even when the first is as helpful and obliging as Ava. Incidentally, Ava got to stay home from school with Aliya & me on Monday because a massive baby-diarrhea-all-over-the-bathroom episode combined with a faulty-car-seat-installation episode made us unable to get her there on time. This was Tam's first morning home alone as a mommy. Now let us never speak of that morning again).

Motherhood has proved exhausting, emotional, fun, endearing, silly, exhausting, and also exhausting. The child who slept easily through the night while we were in Kaz has apparently stayed in Kaz. The U.S. Aliya frequently awakens and has forgotten how to soothe herself back to sleep. We have found that keeping her room uber-warm, swaddling her tightly in blankets, and immitating the "ShShShShSh" sound that the baby house caretakers perfected are all helpful in lulling her back to sleep. Unfortunately we're finding it tougher to lull ourselves back to sleep. I'm confident we'll figure it out in time.

Besides the sleep issues, though, it's going really well. She's such a doll. She is obsessed with trying to walk, and we suspect she'l be fully mobile soon (god help us). She's fascinated by the relative vastness and clutteredness of hew new digs. She has consisently pooped on the potty since we got her home, which has been so great for us (other than the aforementioned disaster morning - but, I forgot, I'm never speaking of that again).

Pictures will speak louder than my words, no doubt:

Home Sweet Home

We did it. After 11 of the most roller-coastery months of my life, we are home with our dear baby girl. Aliya is now a U.S. citizen and there were no (major) hitches on the trip home. Aliya is such an amazing baby. She got up at 1AM Friday morning, traveled for 26 hours straight, got to her new house full of new objects, met her new grandparents & the dogs, and she did it all with barely a tear or fuss. She then slept from 7:45PM to 4:30AM last night, which I felt was great given that we are completely reversed from her native time zone. She's taking her first nap in her new home now.

Lots to say, but lots of unpacking to do, so I'll just share some super-cute pix for now.

Our last day in Almaty (with our travel companions, Maryellen, Sabina and the newly adotped Nikita):

At the Frankfurt airport (6 hour layover. Aliya wasn't fussy but I was):

And at home, featuring the beautiful sign we found when we arrived, made by our neighbor Victoria, which we will keep forever. And from this AM, her first meal in a highchair. The dogs have already figured out what an asset she is to have around. (Grandpa John took all the homecoming pictures last night, and I'll post them when I get a copy):