Say Cheese...!

I've been spending my Thursday nights up at the local UW campus in a continuing ed photography class. I'm taking the class with my awesome friend, Shannon, and we're learning how to push all the buttons on our cameras and also enjoying being somewhere without having to help someone go potty or open a juice-box.

These pictures were taken tonight and make me giggle. We were learning about taking multiple photos in rapid fire with one of the settings on our cameras. I'm going to post them even though I'm sure Shannon will find some equally humiliating photos of me (trust me, they exist) and post them somewhere on the world wide web. C'est la vie! Anyone who knows me will fully understand why Shannon and I are friends after seeing these shots.

So needless to say, SHANNON (ahem...) is not the best behaved kid in the class, but I love her lots anyway!

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p.s. Shannon...please don't shoot me, with your fancy camera or a gun!

Linguistics

BRENIN: Luca, you put it on backwards.

LUCA: I know, it’s backward.

BRENIN: No, backwardzzzz.

LUCA: Brenin, I said backward. It’s a word.


This was a conversation I overheard my girls having yesterday, and it put a smile on my face and made me reminisce about a day not long ago when our conversations involved lots of pointing and one word sentences like, “Drink?” or “Potty?” There were websites on my “favorites” list that were devoted to Amharic translation that I could run to when I had to explain that “hit” was “no-no” or find out if she was “all done” at dinner time, and pages of my English-Amharic phrasebook were dog-eared and tabbed for quick reference.

While Luca’s efforts to learn English began immediately upon our meeting, in recent weeks we’ve noticed significant progress in her language development with use of complete sentences and seemingly infinite vocabulary. I’m amazed that after 5 months I’m deleting my Amharic links, have packed the Amharic dictionary away and have a fully communicative, English-speaking child before me!

As you can imagine, an intense amount of mental energy is dedicated to learning a language, especially in the absence of one’s own native language to fall back on. With this rather intense distraction out of our sites, Luca has been free to focus all of herself on bonding and other ordinary child development, and we’ve noticed a beautiful release in her. As if we could have imagined greater happiness, the days grow sweeter and sweeter.

Luca, my love…Ewedishalehu.

Houston, We Have a Problem...

2000 precious children will die today

because of a mosquito.

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That's not okay.

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What did I do?

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I went here: http://donate.worldvision.org/OA_HTML/xxwv2ibeCCtpItmDspRte.jsp?item=1845335 and donated $60 to buy insecticide treated bed nets and associated healthcare for children in Africa.

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Hold on…if you think that’s cool…wait until you read this!

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My $60 was matched by a grant to World Vision and turned into $480 in nets!!! (That’s right folks…my donation was multiplied EIGHT times!!!!)

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I SAVED THE LIVES OF 30 CHILDREN WITHOUT

EVER LEAVING MY CHAIR!!!!!

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Here’s the facts:
Malaria kills more than 1 million people each year.
90% of these deaths occur in Africa.
Malaria kills more people in Africa than HIV/AIDS.
A child dies every 30 seconds from malaria.
Malaria is preventable.
Malaria is treatable.

A survey from Tanzania has shown that if 75% of an entire village sleeps under a treated net, the malaria incidence among

children is reduced by 98% (98%!!!!!!!).

Malaria was once considered endemic in the US, and after a CDC initiative from 1947-1951, it was ERADICATED IN JUST 4 YEARS! Without resources, these countries still struggle.

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Today is World Malaria Day, and today

2000 children will die with malaria.

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What will you do?

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Nobody made a greater mistake than he who did nothing
because he could do only a little.
--Edmond Burke--

We Love That Grammy Girl!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, GRAM!!!!!

Sweet, Sweet Attachment

FIRST: Scroll down to the end of this blog to the song player and hit pause so the music stops.

I usually spend some time with each girl at bedtime in their own beds, singing, laughing, talking, sending them off to dreams with smiles on their faces and blankeys and bears in all the right places.

Tonight after tucking them in, I was about to give the usual speech, "No talking...it's sleepy time...yadda, yadda, yadda" when I suddenly remembered all the bedtimes I spent nose to cheek with my own fantabulous sister, whispering and giggling, making each other sing a song for every letter of the alphabet (okay, that was me...sorry, Kris), and what wonderful bonds were formed in those sweet moments.

So I snuggled Luca in with Brenin while I got ready for bed. A few minutes later, I knew I had to run for the camera when I heard this sweet lullabye dancing from their room...

With a heart so full,

Sweet dreams, my precious girls.