J&M got Maui'd!

So for the past couple of months Elsy has been repeating certain phrases over and over again, usually accompanied with some sort of hand gesture. Her first one was "Oh no!" with he hands gripping the top of her head. Another is "Elsy crying!" any time she is sad. This is usually accompanied by tears. A fairly recent addition is "Hi City!" whenever we open our blinds. She waves out the window. The complement to which is "Bye City!" which is a spiny wave followed by shutting of the blinds. Her most memorable one is "Garbage truck. Cold!" where she clenches both fists and shivers. Still not sure how that ended up being associated with being cold in general, but the first time this happened, the garbage truck was outside and either Maggie or my mom was pointing out that it was the garbage truck, and that it was cold outside. Now my parents are saying that phrase regularly now. I gotta record it for posterity.

So our condo window saga should be nearly over soon. The windows were replaced in a day. But repairs to the ceiling and drywall took another week to complete. The blinds were installed a week later, and cleaning is now scheduled for next Monday, so given a day or so to move furniture back to place, we should be back in our own place in less than a week. So we should be back after a month of waiting, which is four times longer than we had anticipated.

Since we have been hiding out in my parents' place during our window replacement, Elsy has been sleeping in my bed for most of this period. She has pretty much gotten used to sleeping on this mattress and we pretty much have a routine down pat now: Bath, milk, sleep, wake up in middle of night asking for more milk, she sits on chair, daddy gets milk, she drinks milk, daddy washes bottle, she climbs back into mattress, and daddy goes back to sleep until the sun rises. The early morning feeding is new - she started getting hungry in the wee hours of the morning soon after we started staying over and instead of listening to her crying out "Nai nai!" for who knows how long, I give her a bottle to drink. Worked out pretty well actually as she is still pretty hungry when she wakes up after sunrise and the dream feed knocks her out for the rest of the night. Mind you, she may do the same thing at our place, but since she's in her separate room, we never hear her. In any

I've had this nagging cough for about a week now. I got it from Elsy, who had a runny nose and cough for a couple of weeks starting the week before. Part of the reason why I got whatever she got is because we're currently staying at my parents' place and I sleep in Elsy's room. However, she has gotten to the age where she does not want to sleep in the crib, so we have let her sleep in the bed thinking that our stay at my parents' place was temporary (days). We are now at two weeks and it looks like we will be here for another week. But that is a story for another time. What I wanted to talk about in this post was the time I came home from the condo after measuring and picking up new blinds for Elsy's room. I made no announcement of my arrival, but my persistent cough did follow my entry into the house. Each time I coughed, I could hear Elsy cry out "Daddy!" from upstairs. My coughs continued and her cries got louder and louder as she worked her way

We've all been commended in our lifetimes. Either we did well on a test or some task or whatever. I usually take any complements in stride, especially now that I am older. But complements do still pull those pride strings that we all have deep within us (or on our shoulder). But when someone complements our child, it's a whole different ball of wax. There is a different kind of pride that issues forth. A pride that only a parent can have, a feeling that "yes, I have done a good job". It is ultimately, pride for oneself even though the praise was directed at someone else, but it is only natural to fell like you have contributed to this person's merits and to take part of the credit. It does not even have to be a parent that feels pride, teachers, peers, or even supporters can feel pride whether reasonable or not when their student, classmate, team, or whatever is acknowledged in a positive manner. When one person succeeds, we can all succeed with this person.

Elsy has been babbling pretty much non stop for weeks. She mostly keeps asking for things that she wants, like "bao bao" or "choo choo" or "book" or "nai nai". When she does not get what she wants, she would stomp her feet in frustration, verbally express her displeasure, and then start asking for something else. Her enunciation is surprisingly good. Multi-syllabic words are still out of her scope, but she is definitely getting there. She has also been sick for the past couple of weeks. Last week she was not eating much. This week everything she eats comes right out the other end as quickly as it goes in. She still seems pretty happy, so we're just monitoring her for now.

So now that Elsy is more than eighteen months (and got her last immunization for the next couple of years) she has been quite active. She keeps wanted to walk and run all over the place, which is good, because I condone a healthy active lifestyle. However, there are drawbacks for the caretakers. Still, a bit of running around after a toddler can be good exercise..

Elsy's ability to comprehend and reply to our inquires has been growing pretty quickly of late. She is still responding with single word replies but she is starting to have a better sense of saying what she means rather than saying "yes" to everything. She has not been growing all that much in the past few months either. After the explosive growth in the first six months and the big gains in the second half of her first year, she has been growing slowly ever since. I think part of the reason is because of the multiple sicknesses that she (and the rest of us) have had this year that may have stunted her growth. After visiting other families with kids who are of similar/younger age, we realized how much smaller she was to the other children. I am not too worried myself, as long as she ends up being smart in the end. She is transitioning from the infant room to the toddler room and should be complete by this week. I think she'll have more fun with the toys and activi

Elsy has been pretty proactive when it comes to feeding herself. She grabbed her own bottle last month and she has been attempting many times to use utensils to eat, but to no avail. Today she grabbed the spoon I was using to feed her yogurt and was able to shove the right end into her mouth fairly consistently. I made sure that I was the one scooping the food, but she was the one shoving it into her mouth. Well done kid.

Maggie wanted to go outside to enjoy the weather so we went for a short walk near our place and found a restaurant to have dinner at. While we were waiting for our food, I took Elsy out to explore the area. One of the patios nearby had half a dozen or so small birds fluttering about, with a raven in the mix. Elsy is always interested in looking at animals, birds especially so we wandered over and noticed that there was a bit of a commotion. The raven was pecking at one of the smaller birds that was lying on the ground. The other small birds were making a racket and eventually drove the raven away, but the poor creature still laid on the hard concrete. Elsy was pointing at the bird and we got closer to see. One of the restaurant patrons put the bird on a napkin and brought it over to the side of the patio away from traffic, and serendipitously right in front of us. We could see that the bird was having difficulty breathing. Elsy put her index finger to her mouth and made the shushing no

We have a couple of gates in the apartment to keep Elsy out of areas we do not want her to go into; namely the kitchen and dining area. Ever since Elsy was able to walk, she was able to figure out that she was unable to get past the gates, and we have taught her to ask for assistance if she needed to open the gate. Each time we opened the gate for her, she observed our actions and studied the gate. She can easily close the gate on her own, but is still uncertain how we are able to open the gates while she is unable to. It is interesting observing her while she is watching us open the gate mechanism, as I can see the gears turning in her head. She knows what actions are required, but is unable to perform them. We know this is because she doesn't have the strength and leverage to open the locking mechanism, but she still tries. This past month she has been attempting to unlock the gate herself, and then only asking for help after about a minute of trying. I would like her to keep

Elsy has been slowly getting the hang of walking around on her own two feet. She still is not very steady and prefers to hang on to things but last week while I was cooking in the kitchen (or cleaning in her room I really don't remember) she walked up to me and gave my legs a hug. She hasn't done it since so I am not sure if it was a purposeful hug or if she just needed something to hang on to.

Last Thursday when I woke up Elsy in the morning to feed her, she grabbed the bottle from my hand and shoved the nipple into her mouth! Whoa! Way to go girl! We knew that she was getting a handle of drinking from sippy cups and bottles with those side handles, and she even started holding a bottle by herself at my parents' place but this was the first time she proactively fed herself with one of these bottles. She drank the whole thing too. I think the hardest thing for her was to lift the bottle so that the liquid would come out. She would flip her head back in an exaggerated manner because it worked the first time and that was what she was used to. Now she does it all the time. Ah well, one less thing for me to do..

So Elsy finally took her first steps today. I was there when I saw this sudden look of determination on her face as she stood up and tried to shuffle her feet forward without any aids. She has been cruising pretty confidently for the past week and had been walking while holding onto our hands (or hand) so this day was expected to come soon. I wanted Maggie to grab a camera, but she was out of reach so I relished in being the first and only person to witness her new skill. Mind you, she did fall down after a couple of steps, but with encouragement, we were able to get her to attempt it again, and again, and again this evening (with a camera this time) until she got tired of falling down so often. She leveled up! New skill: Walking!

Elsy was suffering some constipation last weekend. Normally she has 2-3 poops a day, but on Thursday she had none and Friday she had none so we fed her some prune juice Saturday night. She really liked it. She did not like the feeling an hour later when she started to pass a stool. I think her system was pretty gummed up with skipping oatmeal for a couple of days. After several minutes of crying she left a present in her diaper: a large stone. If I had to poop something like that I would have been in quite a bit of pain too. We figured the worse was over. There was nothing more the next morning but I was not too worried. After breakfast, she insisted on being put down on the ground so I put her down and she immediately pulled herself upright and started lifting and jiggling one or the other leg, like she was trying to shake something out of her pants. She was not wearing pants. After a few minutes of that, she calmed down and I went to check her diaper. She had laid a few more stones

We finally got to sleep in our own bed on our own mattress in our own place on Saturday after being away for six weeks. Maggie's last minute trip to India and our mattress replacement added a couple more weeks to our vacation from home than we had planned, and kept Elsy away from her usually scheduled life. That was more than 12% of her life! Well, now we are back and trying to get her back into a manageable schedule, which will not include keeping her up until midnight each day. Hopefully she will get back on track within the week. Of course life always throws a wrench into things. The heaters for ventilation system is not working. We have been forced to wear sweaters to stay warm during the day. Elsy seems to be taking it in stride.

The flight back to Toronto was during the daytime, so we figured that it would be easier on us, and Elsy, as none of us would be trying to fight sleep for at least the first part of the flight. Gina also drove us to the airport in the morning on her way to work, which helped us a lot. We also decided to get a porter move our luggage as my shoulder and legs were still injured. The flight ended up delayed an hour for takeoff. As the plane pushed back from the gate, the auxiliary power did not kick in, and we had to sit while the technicians tried to find out what was wrong with the plane. Maggie and Elsy about to board the plane. When we finally did take off, Elsy was so wired, and had so much practice crawling and climbing stairs in Dubai, that she had a lot of trouble sitting still in the bassinet. In fact, she tried crawling into the adjacent bassinet that had a much younger, smaller, and quieter baby. We had to restrain her a number of times. The fact that Elsy was so mu

Maggie and I had been looking for some authentic Emirati food for quite some time and I came across a food tour that was highly rated (and also highly expensive) that we waffled on attending. Getting ready to enjoy some tasty Palestinian food. By the time we decided to we did want to take the tour, the only spots left available was the night before we left Dubai. Since our flight was in the morning, a late night out stuffing ourselves silly with food sounds like a excursion of madness, but this is what happens when you decide last-ish minute. Me and Maggie at the back of the Palestinian restaurant ready to try some kunafa. We spent the day packing and preparing for our trip back home and cleaning up the room. I got my post cards written but had no easy way to mail out the post cards. I decided to leave it to the locals to do it for me. Sitting down to enjoy some Emirati food. (Notice lack of utensils.) We ended up getting out to the meeting point an hour early, so we

Maggie, Elsy and I ended up having high tea with Gina, and the kids (sans Max) at Hanaaya Restaurant at the Jumeirah Mina A'Salam hotel. The venue was really nice, and there was so much food! It was mostly sweets, which was overwhelming after a while. I would've traded in some of the fondue for another scone, but I would not have been able to finish another scone, as I was stuffed! Picking up the kids from school before heading to high tea. We had kind of seen the place when we visited the Souk Madinat Jumeirah on Saturday. After tea, we got dropped off at the Mall of the Emirates to do some shopping as Maggie wanted to buy some more baby clothes.

We had to get up a little early for our VIP Abu Dhabi tour. Apparently the vehicle was going to be a mini-van but we were allowed to bring a car seat so that we could bring Elsy along with us. There were three other travelers with us making it a full vehicle. Elsy and Maggie at the Grand Mosque in Abu Dhabi. The driver was nice in helping us, but we were a little surprised that all he did was drive us around to the various sightseeing spots but there was no explanation as to what each location was about. Elsy and Maggie at Ferrari World. So this was actually worse than the Dubai city tour as we got to go to places, but had no idea what was going on really. We weren't even able to get into the presidential palace grounds either, although it probably was not that much of a miss.

Today I had to get up around four-thirty in the morning to get ready to go dirt biking in the desert. This was definitely something you cannot do in Canada, at least not to the extent that one can here. The main drawbacks were cost and convenience, but the experience would be worth it. For the most part. I supposed to go with Kendrick, but he bailed a couple of days earlier so I went on my own. I was able to borrow his GoPro though so I could document the entire ordeal. I had booked the beginner two hour package and decided to pay for pickup as the meeting point was somewhere in the middle of the desert. I was the first passenger, and the driver ended up picking up a couple of other riders. I found out during the drive that the two other riders had booked a four hour tour, which meant that they ended up going on the trails with a guide, while I was left alone with the beginner instructor. This was probably a good thing, because I kept stalling the bike, or falling off the bike, o

Maggie, Elsy and I spent the afternoon exploring the Marina before our Sunset Cruise dinner with Xclusive. It was quite a tasty meal, although with my condition I was not able to consume as much of the meal as I would have liked to. Maggie and Elsy at the Marina. The views of the shoreline during the day and evening were quite nice, and I would recommend anyone with the cash to at least try this once while you were down here. Elsy and I on the cruise ship in front of part of the Dubai skyline.

We spent the afternoon at Sofitel the Palm for a bit of afternoon tea. It was just Maggie, Elsy and I, and we enjoyed the view of the beach and the warm weather while we dined on some delectable treats and savory snacks while sipping our tea. Elsy and I posing in front of Sofitel the Palm.

Elsy and I started coughing this morning so I ended up sleeping until the early afternoon. We took the day to rest and spent the early evening traveling to the Dubai Mall via Metro to watch a couple of the fountain shows. The food over here is pretty expensive, especially at the mall. Sitting on the balcony overlooking the Dubai Fountains.

We got up relatively early this morning so that we could get downtown for the pickup for our Dubai city tour. The entire thing was pretty much a farce, as we weren't given a specific pick up location, we did not know how much it cost, the guy didn't know what the coupon code was, etc. However, the bus was mostly empty and I ended up staying on the bus for some of the drop offs so that Elsy (and I) could sleep. Now, some of those stops were farces as well: 20 minutes at a museum (which was really the only thing of value for this tour), 5 minutes to take a picture of a mosque, 15 minutes at a beach, 15 minutes for a bathroom break where they were selling wares, and 5 minutes at a parking lot next to a mall. Me and Elsy on the beach in front of Burj Al Arab Jumeirah. Ah well, we did end up taking the metro back to the villa - which gave us quite a nice view of the city. Perhaps the best (and cheapest) tour yet!

Had a long night again with the baby and ended up sleeping through most of the morning. Spent the rest of the afternoon trying to book a few events for the rest of the week but only got around to booking a Dubai city tour and the desert motorcycling on the weekend. We had the desert safari that night and our pickup was at 1530. Originally we were to take Elsy with us but later on decided to leave her at the house. That was our best decision of the night. The second best was taking jackets along with us. It got pretty cold pretty quick once the sun began to set, and the winds picked up as we left the compound and we ended up driving into the desert in the middle of a sand storm. First up was a quick pit stop at some store in the middle of nowhere. The vendors were hawking scarves for way more than they were worth, but we both realized that with the winds picking up we needed something to protect our faces from the flying sand. Next was a quick photo shoot when we entered the dunes.

Elsy had trouble staying asleep at night so I ended up waking up every hour from 0300 until 0600 with a couple of two hour naps book ending that duration. I have not gotten a lot of good sleep since we got here. Maggie and I on the staircase connecting the two observation decks. We did end up getting out to the Mall of the Emirates to take a look at what Ski Dubai was like. (We may go back to check it out - but not at regular price.) Then Maggie and I went up the Burj Khalifa to take a look from the 125th floor and watch the sunset. Unfortunately, it took so long for us to get up on the elevator that we missed out on the sunset. In fact, there were lineups everywhere we went: going up the building, going down the building, waiting for a taxi. Next time, we will go to tourist destinations during the week days, not the weekends!

I spent part of the night staying up with Elsy again. We got up early and watched the kids go out to school. I ended up going back to bed late in the morning and did not get back up until after noon. Me and Maggie having dinner at the Fairmount on the Palm. At night, Kendrick and Gina took us out to the Fairmount on the Palm for dinner. The food was really good!

Elsy was having trouble staying asleep and kept us up for a good part of the night. I ended up watching her while she kept herself entertained. As such, I ended up sleeping in the late morning and did not get up until early afternoon. Elsy was checking out the playground swing. We decided that we should at least get outside for a bit while the sun was up so we spent an hour or so walking around the villa checking out what was available. The playground was a decent size, but was busy and the pool was empty - although we were not prepared to go swimming.

We knew that the flight in would be hard on Elsy, and in turn on us. We did have a lot of help from the staff and was able to get a little bit of sleep in here and there. Elsy was not a fan of the bassinet. It was generally too bright due to the monitor hanging on the wall over her as well as the various lights that were in the cabin; one that was pointed directly into her bassinet. She was generally well behaved though, and was ambivalent enough not to cry when passengers and stewards alike were waving at her, poking her hands, or pinching her cheeks. I really should get her a shirt that says "These cheeks bring all the boys to the yard." Maggie did end up engineering a makeshift scaffolding over her bassinet by using the flight pillow and her sleeper to create a tent that blocked out the light. That combined with her tiredness and my dad's technique to put her down, we were finally able to get her to fall asleep in the bassinet. Just before we hit turbulence. Once

We had a non-stop red-eye flight to Dubai today. Maggie had just gotten back from India on a multi-stop flight and was glad we were not putting Elsy through that kind of ordeal. The plan though was to get dropped off by my dad, and to leave all of our winter stuff with him so that we did not have to carry extra stuff on the plane. We had no trouble with security or getting our boarding passes. We did have Elsy in the Baby Bjorn and got a lot of comments about her cheeks. A LOT of comments. Since we had an infant, we were ushered through the family line for security which was nice because it was a really short line. Unfortunately it was also extremely slow. I guess you win some, you lose some. It all balances out in the end. Keeping Elsy entertained at the airport was not too hard. There was so much for her to see and interact with so she was occupied during our two hour wait (we probably did not have to arrive that early to the airport). We were considered priority boarders due to

So Elsy got her two bottom teeth to come out for Christmas time. A several days later I could hear her grinding her teeth in her sleep - which meant that her top teeth were erupting too. In addition, she learned how to crawl up a step, which means that barriers will need to be a bit higher now to prevent her from going to places where she is not supposed to go. My parents' house is now pretty much open to her - at least per floor. She's also been spending a lot of time with my parents and she is getting much more comfortable with them, even though she prefers parental attention. It's funny how much pride one feels to see your spawn reaching these milestones. Living vicariously through our kids I say! Also, Maggie and I got sick again. For some reason Elsy is going gang busters.