Ben Zo...

This guy must live somewhere around us. It's the second time we've seen him on the road.

 

bumps!

 

Teething?

yea, yea, we've been saying "maybe she's teething" for five months now, but there's definitely a bump now on her lower gum!

Ella and saba Oddi in the car

Ella's food

here's a list of Ella's foods. the number next to each item is its score on a scale of 1 to 5.

fruits and vegetables (mashed):
* bananas 5
* prunes 5
* plums 4
* mango 4
* sweet potatoes 2
* potatoes 2
* butternut squash 2
* pears 3
* apricots 4
* peaches 4
* applesauce 3
* carrots (but may be causing constipation?) 2
* peas 2

other:

* mashed chicken/beef/turkey (gerber jar) -1
* rice cereal/oatmeal 2
* whole-wheat crackers 5
* rice cakes 1
* MultiGrain cheerios 5
* various Gerber veggie puffs (star shaped) 5
* "crunchies" (whole grain puffed corn) 5
* "wagon wheels" (puffed grains) 5

* ice cream 8

Short Coffy update

I'm blogging so hard for Coffy that i forget to update here.
Coffy and his parents are at the Dominican republic. we got some bad news on Sunday: his mother isn't doing well, she is very ill. Now Coffy is trying to find medical help for her, and possibly find a way to bring them back home with him as a last resort. Yakini has asked our help in wording an appeal to the governor or senator to help them grant Coffy's parents temporary visas to fly them to Chicago. She's also looking for doctors who will treat Coffy's mom 'pro bono'.

look at this video that i just uploaded. it's pretty crazy. coffy is so positive, so optimistic. you gotta love this person.

There's so much to this story... it's overwhelming. i stay up at night (like now) and think about it. i hope that everything comes to a happy ending.

I am also having a warm fuzzy feeling inside, because of all the support and donations that Yakini tells me that she gets from our side. from our friends. the other day she said "we even got a donation from Germany!"... and I know who that is!
i'm flabbergasted by the response and the generosity of our friends, family and acquaintances who reached out and reached DEEP. i just want to hug so many people.

Happy birthday Ben!

We love you

Good news - Coffy found his parents!

i just got a confirmation from Yakini this morning, that Coffy found his parents and they are OK!
i don't have many details right now, i will know more later when she sends me his notes etc.

she said that Coffy's mom and dad were waiting in their back yard, living on a pack of crackers. they thought they were left there to die. they only survived because their roof wasn't concrete. when Coffy showed up his mom thought she was dreaming, and asked to smell him so she knows he was real... she couldn't believe that he came for them.

Please Help Coffy

there's still no word from Coffy's family in Haiti, but we hope that "no news is good news".

we set up a website and blog to help Coffy and Yakini raise funds. In the short term, the money will go to helping Coffy locate and transition his family. In the long term, they hope to start a non-profit organization to help Haiti.

if you're looking for places to put your money, please help Coffy. You will know that your money is going directly to helping a family in need.

Follow this link to the website,
or this link to donate (credit card - through PayPal)


...and you'll helping our family too -- Ella misses her teacher and so do all the other kids at daycare, and we want him to come back soon with good news.

Haiti update

We just got a message from Coffy, Ella's teacher. He left on a flight to Santo Domingo (in the Dominican Republic, on the same island as Haiti) and he's trying to reach Port au Prince by buss. We all keep our fingers crossed that he finds his parents and five brothers.

They are going to raise funds to help the people with needed supplies etc. -- we'll keep you updated.

links:
an ad that Coffy published in order to find the location of his parents. (No responses yet).

a newspaper article from the tribune. Yakini and Coffy were featured briefly, and the experience that helped him make the decision to go to Haiti. (last 3 paragraphs)

Continued...

I can only attach one pic at a time from ben's phone

Weekend

hanging out at bww after spending the afternoon at the aquarium. It's MLK day, no school. We're getting used to planning around school vacations :)

[sent from ben's phone]

Messy eater

every once in a while we let Ella "help" with the soft food. this is what happens.
(the brown stuff is prunes).
she expanded her menu to overlap with ours, and had some of our beef stew for dinner (i'm so flattered that she liked it!) and i just finished food-processing some of our chicken soup into a chicken puree for tonight.

The Israeli aisle

Thanks to Nicole(!), we discovered a Jewel-Osco supermarket that has a phenomenal Israeli aisle. yayy!

Haiti

the world is shocked by the magnitude of the disaster that hit Haiti this week.

personally, we share the pain of the two people we've come to trust with our most precious thing on earth: Ella.
Ella's daycare is run buy a couple from Haiti. Her teacher Coffy was raised there, and they both lived there with their kids for 6 years.
as of yesterday, they couldn't get in touch with his parents and brothers in Haiti. Yakini tells us that Coffy is broken (in fact, we didn't see him at all since the earthquake), doesn't sleep at night, and is thinking of ways to fly out there and look for his family in the rubles. it breaks my heart, and puts our daily troubles (e.g. Ella's sniffles that keep her up at night) in perspective.

we hope that everything is ok with Coffy's family and that once cell phones operate again they'll receive some good news.

big tub

look at me, i'm playing in the big tub!

splash! splash! splash!

Ella's Booties

i must document the pattern for these booties, because they are such a hit.
this is a modification of Granny's Love Baby Booties. i usually don't use crochet patterns, most of the stuff i've made was pretty simple. so i learned new things like hdc decreases.
i had to modify the pattern because the first pair that i made according to the pattern was too small for Ella's long feet :)


Ella's Booties

CA - purple; CB - lilach; MC - main color - grey; CD - black.
CA - white; CB - pink; MC - Grey; CD - black.

the top of the bootie is a Granny Square. i think you can make anything pretty as the first round (i'm thinking floral for the next pair). i used scrap yarn, the very thin yarn i used doubled so that it becomes as bulky as the bulky yarn.

== Option #1: Granny square ==
With CA: Ch 5, join to form a ring. Ch 3, 2 dc into ring, Ch 2, (3 dc into ring, Ch 2) three times, join to top of Ch3, finish off. Weave in ends.

With CB: Attach CB in any stitch and Ch 3 (counts as first dc). Dc in each dc around. Work (dc, Ch3, dc) in each Ch2 space around. Join to top of Ch3, finish off. Weave in ends.

== Option #2: flower Granny square ==

With CA: Ch 5, join to form a ring.
Ch1. 8 Sc, join
[Ch3 dc3tog Ch3 in next SC]x4 join. (see dc3tog below)


join next color in same space.
[Ch4 SC in the SC from previous row]x4. join.


Ch3, [(dc 2hdc 2sc 2hdc dc) in the ch4 loop, dc in dc from previous row]x4 join.

this completes the Granny square, 8x8 stitches.


== Ankle ribbing ==
here is where i modified to make the foot longer:

turn the square so you face the wrong side. attache MC yarn to a corner, ch3, Dc in each stitch, (9 total).

With MC: Ch 21. Attach to first ch3, being careful not to twist chain. This forms the foundation for the ankle ring.


Row 1: Ch 3, dc in each chain space around. Dc in each of the 9 dc stitches, join to top of Ch3. Count your dc stitches and make sure you have an even number. If not, adjust accordingly. This is the row for weaving ribbon through. (i didn't use ribbon -- ella would have pulled it out anyway...)

Row 2: Ch3 (counts as first Back Post dc), (Front Post dc in next dc, Back Post dc in next dc) around. Join to top of Ch3. [[see here for a front/back post dc tutorial]]

Rows 3-4: Repeat Row 2 for each of rows 3, 4. Finish off. Weave in ends.

== Foot of bootie ==


Row 1: Turn bootie upside down. Attach MC to free loop from the foundation chain of any stitch along side of bootie and Ch 1. Using the free loop from the foundation chain, hdc in same stitch and hdc in each stitch around. 2 hdc in Ch2 spaces of Granny Square instep. Hdc in each dc of Granny Square instep. Join.

Row 2: Ch 1, hdc in same stitch, hdc in each stitch around. increase 2 in the ankle. Join.

Row 3: hdc in each stitch around.


Row 4: turn bootie over, and make one round of sc in each hdc. join and finish off. i used CB to accent.

Row 5: turn bootie back to the right side. Fold bootie in half lengthwise and mark extreme ends of toe and heel with a pin or scrap of yarn. join the sole color, Ch 1, hdc in each stitch around to 6 stitches before toe or heel. [hdc decrease, hdc] 4 times. Continue hdc around. Join. See below for explanation of hdc decrease.

Rows 6-7: Repeat Row 4 for rows 5 and 6. in the last row, instead of the decrease when you get to 3 stitches from the marker join at the marker stitch, ch2, skip 2 and continue hdc around. Finish off, leaving an 8-inch tail.

== Finishing ==

Turn bootie inside out and weave sole seam together using yarn tail. Hold right sides of seam together and weave yarn through adjacent loops. Be sure not to weave too tightly. The sole of the bootie should be flat when finished. Secure and weave in ends.



Weave 1/8 or 1/4 inch ribbon through foundation row of double crochet around ankle. Tie in a bow. Make 2 booties.

dc3tog: *Work Double Crochet in next stitch omitting the last step* (2 loops on hook). Repeat from * to * twice. (4 loops on hook.) Yarn over and pull through all 4 loops on hook.

* Hdc decrease:
Yarn over hook, insert hook into next stitch and pull up a loop. Insert hook into second stitch and pull up a loop. Yarn over and pull through all four loops on hook.

Shhhh! i'm on the phone

(this is what our living room looks like after a couple of days of not putting things away. luckily ben came back from his meeting in DC, and order is back in our home)

Snow

 

it's not uncommon for us to have that much snow, but i would like to complain about it nonetheless.
the drive to work this morning was a big mess. it was fine going down to Ella's daycare (phew!) but once i got to Hyde Park the roads resembled a ski slope (luckily it's flat here) and the drivers seemed to not know anything about driving on snowy roads. no plows to speak of, and the roads were not saulted. i drove very slowly and still felt the car sliding around a couple of times. i'm glad it was after dropping Ella off at school!

 

the road in this picture is one of the better ones - it's not plowed, just enough cars went through it to paint the snow brown.

[enter ben's complaint about Hyde Park below.]

Sleepless

This is mostly for the record, just so we can look back and (maybe) laugh some day.

Ella is 8 months old today (Happy Birthday!), but the last few nights she goes to sleep about 9 pm, then wakes up almost every hour between 12am-6am. At 6am she wakes up for good. It would seem that ever since we started with solid food, she's been more restless at night, and we know for a fact she's been a little 'backed-up' a few times. Otherwise during the day she's pretty happy!

Keren does most of the pacifier-replacing and bottle-feeding at night, and I get up with Ella at 6 or 5:30am to play with Ella and to get all of her stuff ready for the day. That way, Keren can sleep a little later. Needless to say, we're friggin-tired, and I'm a little afraid to leave for a couple of days to go to a conference for fear of what new punishment Ella will mete out to poor Imma while I'm gone.

CLAPPING!

we were playing with ella, admiring how she puts a ball through a hole, and encouraging her by saying "yayy!" and clapping every time she put the ball in the hole.

then suddenly she put her two hands together... and she put her two hands together again... and before we knew it she was clapping with us!
WOW!!

that was the fastest i've ever seen her to learn a new skill.

after repeating that for a few minutes (ella takes ball -- puts ball in the hole -- we say yayy and clap -- ella claps with us) we remembered to turn the camera on. i'm so excited!

Shedd Aquarium

Jan 3, 2009

It's always fun to go to the aquarium, and now it's even more so when we see things through the eyes of little ones. This sunday we met the Naozim and Nicole and Peter at Shedd -- FUN!!!
Ori was extremely excited to see all the fish and called at them "GIM! GIM! GIM!!!" (shord for "dagim" = fish). Peter seemed like an old pro at the aquarium, and ella couldn't figure out what's more interesting: the fish tanks, the explanation posters, or all the little kids running around her.
i think we're gonna get our membership's worth this winter :)

photoshoot

it's probably not the first time that i mention what a great photographer our friend Karin is. here are a few photos she took of Ella when we visited them this weekend.

Happy New Year!

Dec 31, 2009
we celebrated with Nicole, Dan and Peter.
it was a children-oriented party, the countdown was at 8pm and noise was not frowned upon.
after dinner we went back home, and tried to get a good night of sleep. ('tried' being the key word).

Nicole, Dan and Peter with traditional miso soup, crab rangoon, and an extra-dirty, extra-olive martini.

you can't even tell from the pictures that ella had just banged her head in the table... she sneezed and hit the table. poor thing. she didn't know what hit her, literally! she looked at us for a few seconds, very confused ('wait, what was that? sneezing is supposed to be fun!') and then started to cry, and then got distracted by something, and all was forgotten.


ella loved her party hat.


ima had to try the hat on too...

and of course, the best use of such a hat is as a musical instrument.




the three of us having a drink for the new year (at 8pm): champagne - formula - champagne.

party girls!