Congrats to New Parents, Maxwell and Niaz!

We sending our warmest congratulations to dear Maxwell and Niaz

on the birth of their handsome son, Shoghi.

Much love to you all!

Nap

Fazal taking a nap at home:

Then we should explain why this is newsworthy. As long as I can remember now, Fazal has acted totally uninterested in taking naps. After getting up in the morning, he just goes and goes and goes, until at night he is finally tired and boom, is tired enough and sleeps pretty well through the night. Which was all fine and good for a while, but recently it has been a bit hard for all of us - we all need a little rest. Then we learned that at school, he DOES nap, which made us wonder....to make a long story short, this past weekend, while visiting at koko's house, around 1pm Fazal seemed to walk over to the couch and tug on a blanket. Koko said, hey, maybe we wants to lie down. So we threw the blanket on the rug, and sure enough, Fazal lay down on it. We put another blanket over him and voila! He slept like that for two hours! The next day, Sunday, we were at home and his grandpa came for a visit. They were active for a while, reading, then tossing a ball, then doing this and that, and Fazal was all wound up, laughing and shouting loudly. So remembering the previous day, I threw a blanket on the floor and said to Fazal, okay whenever you are ready for your nap, here's a blanket. Without even hesitating, he ran over to the blanket, lay down, and slept for TWO AND A HALF HOURS. I actually sat down and read a real live newspaper...ahhhhhhhh So this is big news in our household. As Jafred said, we just have to really get to know our kids and try to understand them as individuals, espicially before they can tell us clearly what they want and need.

The Painting

Our thanks goes to Bob Koonz who thoughtfully sent us the painting you see in the photo below. Fazal thinks it is GREAT, all with a bulldozer, car and truck on it! He gets to enjoy it every time we're in the kitchen. So thank you!!!

This is Fazal's Ferrari...seriously, he loves this little bike and it was a very well spent 50 cents.

Coming Soon...

Just a few more weeks...so please keep baby, mama, daddy and big brother in your prayers.

News On The Language Front

Just over the last two days, we discovered that Fazal can now identify his head, nose, ears, mouth, eyes, hands, belly and feet, in both English and Luyhia!! We are so excited. We just asked him - Fazal, where is your nose? etc etc and time and again, in either language, he pointed to them correctly. Obviously, this is very exciting for his parents!!!

A Busy Meal

Sometimes Fazal is a real multi-tasker

One of his new favorite foods is yogurt. So after eating lots of it and getting it everywhere, we wanted to show him what he looked like! By the way, one of his teachers at "school" told us he is very good at using a spoon. Where there's a will, there's a way!

Okay, I am finished, get me down!

Visit with Mia

We were so excited that our good friends Perrin and Shane, and their daughter Mia, who is 2 years old, were able to stop by for a short visit recently on their way home to Maine. Thanks for coming, and remember, we agreed on quarterly visits!!!!

Good Morning!

Just having woken up, Fazal put on his daddy's hat. Here are some of our morning expressions. He is quite animated/expressive/moody these days, with many opinions and feelings he wants to get across to us. We do our best to understand!

Christmas Eve and Morning - The Allure of Gifts

This was Fazal's second Christmas, but the first where he was aware of the the GIFTS. The gift wrap, the shiny paper, the noise of tearing open boxes...his relatives are always plenty generous with him, so there were seemingly endless things for him to work on. Here are some much delayed photos of Christmas Eve and morning spent with koko.

A truck!
Sitting back and admiring all the things we were given.

"Whoa!"

Koko helping Fazal detach a toy from it's packaging.

It was a very nice time, very relaxed, and great to spend time with family outside the usual confines of a few hours on the weekends.

Winter

We try as much as possible to be positive about the winter here in New England, but we admit, it's hard. Israel's weather suited us just fine, even those days when you sweat in the shower. Alas, this part of the world also has it's charms. One of them is the beauty of the snow - once it is on the ground and has stopped AND you don't have to go anywhere. I took these photos of our first big snow on the back deck. You can see how much there was. It has snowed several times since then. But hey, it's already the middle of January, and before we know it, it will be April and the flowers will grow............