No Diaper Dance!

If She Becomes A Doctor Someday...

this picture will be priceless.

Little Ladybug

The ladybug raincoat, boots and umbrella were supposed to go in Isabelle's Easter basket, but I couldn't resist giving them to her early! She loves pretending it's raining inside and doing her new ladybug jig. She is also still very focused on Anika's birthday.
Isabelle helps us cook all the time, but we've never made cookies together. I decided Easter cookies would be a good place to start. But I realized pretty quickly how unprepared I was to even make a simpe sugar cookie: no butter, no mixer, no rolling pin, no cookie cutters, no cookie sheets. And what about the frosting and sprinkles? I found most of what I needed at Williams Sonoma - including a precious little pink rolling pin and monkey spatula for Isabelle. The rest came from Super Stop & Shop (including--sorry, Briana--the ready-made sugar cookie mix.) Isabelle enjoyed patting, rolling and tasting the dough, but found her greatest joy in shaking and eating the multi-colored sprinkles. We made bunnies and baby chicks -- all unrecognizable shapes by the time they came out of the oven because I'd placed them too close together on the pan and they all melded into one another, creating one massive cookie by the time they were done cooking. Other happenings: When Dennis picked Isbabelle up from Little Kids the other day, he bumped into a mother he'd never met before. "Isabelle. The infamous Isabelle," she said to Dennis. Her new favorite sentences are "That's awesome" and "Here you go" (which sounds remarkably like "tinkle," and, therefore, is cause for some funny misinterpretations). Isabelle insisted on wearing underwear the other night. "No diaper! Underwear!" She loves her Elmo underpants and is totally ready to wear them full time. When she's naked it's amazing - she'll disappear from a room, and we find her sitting on the potty. She just takes herself right into the bathroom. Poops are never an issue - always on the potty - and tinkle is about a 50-75% success rate. We're starting to feel guilty that we're the one who are holding up the underwear process. We started her in them for a couple days a week before we left for Turkey -but stopped because we didn't think it'd be a good idea to have extended travel so soon after. We're pretty committed to officially making the switch when we're back from Easter. We've started playing the Brain Quest games. So much of it is intuitive (the kinds of questions we ask when we're reading), but I still really like them--and the size is great for travel. Some new favorite books: "Ten Little Fingers and Ten Little Toes" (an amazing out-loud read); "Poetry Speaks to Children" accompanying CD has some of the poets reading their own work--including Robert Frost and Langston Hughes); "Do You Do a Didgeridoo?" (rhymes will blow you away); "Where is the Green Sheep." And we are so happy to have a new copy of "My Favorite Things" (Thanks, Grami for replacing our lost one!) Isabelle's right-hand ring fingernail is still healing from getting stuck in the basement closet door two months ago. She is constantly inspecting the nail asking, "What happened here? What happened?" We recieved our first tantrum report from daycare this week. Two in one day! The incidents that caused them: (1) After going potty, Isabelle chose a non-Elmo stamp for her hand. When it was applied, she flipped out that it was not Elmo. (2) She asked for a drink of water, immediately poured it into the trash and was then refused a second.

Congratulations, Daddy!

Daddy is savoring his first political victory! At town meeting this week, a proposed tax on residents who rent out their homes on a short-term basis was indefinitely postponed at the request of selectmen. Selectman had originally favored the tax, but Daddy ran quite an educational campaign against it, and succeeded in winning over a lot of hearts and minds. He was even invited to testify at the State House this week.

As this Falmouth Enterprise columnist said: "Dennis Murphy had it right. This tax could not come at a worse time, when a slumping real estate market, dwindling discretionary dollars, and global economic slowdown have us all feeling the economic jitters. To ask our own citizens to pony up more just isn't fair. I know friends who do, as Selectman Brent Putnam suggested, move out of their houses for a week or a few in the summer and camp out because they rely on the income from renting their house to balance the household budget. They are not getting rich, just getting by. Why don't the Selectmen get that?"

Way to go, Daddy!

Turkish Tea Party

There's a lot of apple tea in our house! That's because we plan to have an apple tea party for Isabelle's second birthday - she so loved the apple tea in Istanbul! And as we found out last night, we love having apple tea parties!



Here's what happens when Isabelle runs out:



President Obama isn't being met with the same welcome in Turkey that we were three weeks ago. They just arrested a Syrian guy living in Turkey who had assassination plans. While we were there we did hear people talking Obama's Turkey "problem" - one of his campaign promises was to classify as genocide the Ottoman Turk slaughter of Armenians a century ago. And even though it isn't officially declared, the mere mention of it has outraged the country.

Day at the Zoo

On our way home from CT, we stopped at the Buttonwood Park Zoo in New Bedford - cute little zoo! Great black bears, elephants and buffalo! Isabelle loved riding the train, and waving to everyone. "Hi, people! Hi, people!"

At dinner at Cucina sul Mare (again, the best meatballs EVER!) she broke out a new phrase: "Thank you, much!"

Happy Birthday, Anika

Dennis and Isabelle met me at the airport, and we headed straight to CT for Anika's second birthday party, singing Happy Birthday the whole way.

It was a combo hat and ladybug party (selected by the birthday girl herself!) and we opted for a Turkish theme--Isabelle as the TurkCell character, Dennis as Sultan and me in an itchy whirling dervish hat. We have to admit, we were quite surprised to walk in and see no one wearing a hat! Could it be because we were hours late? But Diana and Charlie didn't have any trouble getting back into the spirit of things!

The mini lemon cupcakes had fresh flowers, and it was great that all of Anika's grandparents were here (Mary and Tom making the trip from Florida!) When Anika was opening her presents, I shared some additional gifts from Afghanistan - and Elli was resplendent in the traditional (and jingly!) handmade dress, pants and headscarf.

Around 9pm, everyone was fading fast (Anika still fighting some pink eye). Isabelle and I fell asleep in about five minutes (after a quick--and requested--story about the doggy who took a plane to Paris). At 1am, though, I was wide awake, and there's really no future sleep in sight! The next morning Isabelle pointed to the bathroom window (where she had waved goodbye to Bonnie the night before), and said, "More Bonnie! More Bonnie!" More Bonnie, indeed! Auntie Bonnie made quite an impression last weekend letting Isabelle pop bubblegum bubbles and telling stories about a beautiful princess named Isabelle.


Cousin RJ tries (unsuccessfully) to keep little fingers out of the frosting!



Throughout the party Ethan would take my dervish hat and exclaim, "I'm pretending to be Auntie Beth!" I could never capture a picture of it, though.