It’s been a busy week for us since we’ve started up with language classes in the evenings again and Diana has been more active in the day. One thing we learned about this week was pronunciation of the letters, and we’re having a bit of trouble with the vowels. A is “aah,” E is “aye,” and I is “eee.” But Y is “yay” so that’s fun, which is nice. It doesn’t really make it any easier though!
Diana may have walked a little too much on Monday night since she slept terribly and didn’t want to walk much the next day. But she’s really loving her books these days and loves “reading” and pulling all of her books off of the bookshelf. She can sit surrounded by books happily reading for quite a while so Em can get dishes done or tidy up a bit. Em and Diana have also started using the backpack for their morning walks around the neighborhood. Diana seems to like being up high and being able to kick her legs and wave her arms more. She’s also been trying more grown-up foods and really loves getting the chance to practice with her spoon. She hasn’t made much progress there, but knows what the spoon is for and tries to scoop things up. She doesn’t seem too disappointed to get an empty spoonful in her mouth, so she’s happy.
Diana might be close to her first words as well. Whenever we give her a cracker or say cracker she parrots “caacaa,” with great enthusiasm. She’s been babbling more and more, and loves to have us help her walk around while “talking” about everything she sees. She’s been sleeping very well lately too. Occasionally the call to prayer will wake her up, and she cries until it stops, but other than that she’s still happily taking two naps and going to bed by 7:00.
The next few weeks will be fun for us all as there’s a bunch going on in town. The Halloween Carnival is next week, and there’s also a big celebration for the Melbourne Cup (Australia’s Kentucky Derby), and a number of other holiday-type things going on that should keep us busy. We’re also going to try to do the hike up the hill from Tembagapura to Hidden Valley this weekend.
A little cross-cultural anecdote: we had our Chilean friends over for dinner and dessert was chocolate chip cookies. They both remarked on how tasty they were, but since chocolate chip cookies are Em’s specialty, so we didn’t really think anything of it. Then Manuel said “…and the chocolate is INSIDE the cookie!” We realized that not only had they never had chocolate chip cookies before, but they had NO IDEA what they were!
