A few notable Firsts

In honor of Aliza's new walking skills I thought I would list out a few more memorable firsts that have taken place this past week...

- Baby Monitor. While we have certainly enjoyed sharing a room with Aliza, we used a baby monitor for the first time this week during one of her naps. This experience made us look forward to the day when she gets her own room. (Maybe in September when we get a flat in the ME?) We were astonished...listening to the static fuzzing away and knew that we had been missing out on the wonderful world of baby monitors.

- Falafel. A delicious vegetarian option at any Mediterranean restaurant. We ate at such a restaurant on Saturday night and Aliza had her first bites of falafel. She liked to mush it into a ball and then stuff it into her mouth. Unconventional, but it worked.

- Sunburn/tan. Being 7,000 feet closer to the sun can really affect you. Aliza's little nose is chapped a bit and she got some pink on her nose and cheeks this weekend. The pink is fading into a tan, and I think I can see some freckles, too!

Language learning is an Olympic feat

We've woken up to snow twice already-- it melts around lunchtime, but it sure is pretty while it lasts.

One of the tools we're learning that will help us learn Arabic is how to work "self-directed" with a language helper. A native Hindi speaker has met with our small group multiple times already and teaches us Hindi while we use these flashcards. It's amazing how much you can learn when you are "playing" a game! We've learned how to string together sentences as complex as "They were working in the garage last Sunday at 2pm." We spend a few hours each day going over the phonetic alphabet, spending extra time on learning how to make sounds that are "non-English." It is a big boost in confidence knowing that our "English mouths" really can learn to make Arabic sounds, which will greatly reduce our accent later on.

The little kids even have a curriculum they are working through, and Aliza's class (2's and 3's) is learning how to say Hello in other languages. (She's by far the youngest in her class, but it's either this class or the non-crawling babies!) Aliza works with flashcards, too, but hers are much fancier than ours. :-)

Walking!

We've had a full weekend-- some of us who work for the same company went to an Indian restaurant (recommendation courtesy of our language helper) to celebrate David's birthday on Friday. Yesterday we walked the Garden of the Gods, tried to snoop around the Navigator's headquarters, visited the Air Force Academy, and saw the Olympic Training Center. While we were at the OTC I filled Aliza's sippy cup with water from their water fountain. So maybe she'll walk faster and crawl better? This is her smooching one of the Beijing 2008 mascots. We didn't see many athletes besides swimmers, but Aliza bumped into an Olympic wrestler (literally). The heavyweight said to our 18-pounder "Oh! Excuse me!" as he stumbled back to regain his footing!

This little piggy went to Colorado

We made it! One thousand miles and 3 days later we rolled up to the training center here in Colorado Springs. Thank you for your thoughts and prayers for us as we traveled-- there was no bad weather, and I only had to drive for about 2 hours after dark. (Random fact: The pupil in my injured eye is 20% bigger than the other so it lets in 20% more light, so that makes driving at night with oncoming headlights kind of an adventure.) David is still recovering well despite being cramped in the backseat with Aliza for 18+ hours on the road. They amused each other with David's new version of "This little piggy" with lessons in values and morality. My two favorites were: This little piggy went to the store and bought a box of Oreos, but should she eat them all? and This little piggy went to the race track and bet lots of money, but was that good?

The training center is gorgeous, set in the countryside surrounded by mountains and snow-capped Rockies in the background. I'll try to get some pictures posted soon when we have breaks between training sessions. It's snowing right now, so maybe we'll get a picture of us in the snow.