the little accomplishments

i spend my days solving the problems of the universe, but it's these earthly accomplishments that make me most proud of myself:

1. i finally scheduled doctor appointments for both of us, so that we have a doctor in case we're ill. that's right, we've lived here for that many years and we still don't have a family doctor...

2. we purchased airline tickets for our visit to israel! an annoying task that we always put off as much as possible.



speaking of flights: this will be the last time we can get away with not buying ella an almost-fully-priced ticket. she will be sitting in our lap. it's going to be a rough flight... if you have any suggestions (preferably from first-hand experience) for traveling with babies/toddlers, please dispense!

we got it!

we discovered what "YA! di-di-di-di-di-" means! (like in this movie)

it means "Yayy, you did it!" (or "yayy i did it!")

we guessed it was so and confirmed today with coffy, that's what they say at school!

argh!

we've lived in this building for a few years now. since we got here we moved twice (each time to a larger apartment), the last time was more than a year ago.
it was mostly fine, not great, but fine, but this summer gave us the very last straw.
cockroaches.
small, gross, annoying, impossible to get rid of, cockroaches.

we've never seen them in our former apartments, and i don't recall seeing them in this one last summer. it's definitely never been so bad.

the building management provides "pest control" treatment every once in a while. in the note they leave under our door prior to each treatment, they state that they use biodegradable pesticide, that's odorless and safe for pets and people. unfortunately it's safe for roaches, too.


we told the management and they sent someone to spray. after two days it only got worse: we were killing a few of them each day, there's a roach running away every time you turn on the light. apparently they don't get exterminated, they just move from one apartment to the other. probably through the walls. so two days after spraying us, they sprayed some other floor, and the roaches were on the move. argh! it's an entire building infestation.

so we took matters to our own hands. a couple of weeks ago we emptied out the kitchen, got some bug spray that's NOT biodegradable nor safe, and sprayed the hell out of the kitchen. we tried to get into every hole and crack - and there's lots of them - to block their entry ways. a few came out running that day, and since then we still see some roaches - though not as many - but we think it's just because they have less places to hide in.

today we finally decided to put things back where they belong, but to our great frustration it seems like the roaches are back, bigger, stronger and faster.

where are the men in black when you need them???

our last resort is to get some stuff that's super poisonous that the roaches carry back to their nest. or maybe something from this website but i doubt that would work either, since even if we kill one nest the neighbors' roaches will just come visit us.


and a final note:
i'm glad these are not the Tel-Aviv cockroaches. but i'm still very grossed out and very frustrated. yuck.

real or fake?

a photographer took this photo during the crazy thunderstorm yesterday:



...and Karin took this one right after:


check out this one too.

puzzle

just took this little awesome video. we moved on to differential equations after that :D

lost and found videos

i guess i didn't download anything from the little camera that we use for videos in a while. here are some good ones

1. May 16: pretty good at walking


2. May 29: fun with Abba and Veeto


3. May 30: (memorial day weekend) driving Liam's car


4. June 2: dinner time, Ella is amused by Abba's language while watching an almost perfect game.


5. June 2: mastering the "walk, pick up a toy, turn around and walk back"


6. June 2: testing Abba's patience


7. June 2: this is how we feed scrooge treats

hellow tooth #6!

and as of 2-3 weeks ago, we're completely over baby food. Ella's eating "people's" food exclusively. at school she eats pizza, chili, pasta and broccoli, baked beans, chicken fingers and more, with the big kids. at home her favorite is Ima's spinach and broccoli pie ([recipe] [demo]), strawberries, and PBJ, all of which she eats with her little fork. and sometimes with her hands.
we're also completely off of formula and on to whole milk, which Ella drinks from a sippy cup -- all bottles are stowed away. the transition was very smooth and she never complained about not having the bottles.

oh my, she's a big girl now! when did she turn into a toddler?!?

other skills - in an arbitrary order: walking has improved, she walks long distances on her own, can turn without falling, bend over to pick up stuff and go back to standing. that said, she still prefers a finger to hold on to, it's more fun that way. she can crawl and get to anything (i still think it's funny that she started crawling only after she could walk). she really likes climbing up and down stairs (she needs our help for that) and then she sits on the last step.
Coffy says that Ella calls some of the other kids by their names. she calls scrooge ("cooge"), and occasionally she also calls a dogs "scrooge". she understands her boundaries and knows she's not allowed to do some things (like putting crayons and keys in her mouth) but she keeps testing us. she "reads" some books, for example, we have a book with a train in it and she would open it and say "too too toooo".
she woofs like a dog when ben asks her "eych osse kelavlav" (what does a doggie say). today she colored with her crayons with Peter, picked up the blue, drew some and said "BLUE". she likes taking her Pooh bear for a ride on her lion. she's very good at opening and closing all kinds of boxes, jars and bottles, and she's working on strap clips (fortunately she didn't get those figured out! we'd be in real trouble!). elevator buttons. anything with buttons. stacking blocks, rings. she knows what to do with a tooth brush and a hair brush. she plays "catch", by throwing a ball to us we throw it back to her. she paints with her crayons (did i say that?)


we recently got Ella her birthday present - a portable DVD player for the car. she LOVES watching safta dalia in the car, and we LOVE the quiet passenger in the back :)

Note

this month has been a bit hectic, and with 624 pictures in my "May 2010" folder (not to mention videos), it's taken me a while to catch up on blogging. while i'm not there just yet (still have some catching up to do), most of May is blogged, almost in chronological order. so why don't you scroll down and check it out!
almost everything after Ella's birthday party post was entered out of order so you may have missed it.

dinner time

june 4, 2010

mmmmmm spinach pie

here, scroogie

May 31, 2010

(Ella giving treats to Black Scrooge. in return he lets her pet him sometimes. she's getting better at petting - as apposed to slapping - and they seek her company a little more than before. she's also getting better at not trying to put the treats in HER mouth)

ABC

June 6, 2010

yesterday Ella was singing the ABC song!
you're probably saying to yourself "no way" and think that we're smoking crack.
but she did.
it sounds more like A-D-D-D and then it sort of trails off. yes it's far from perfect, but hey, she got two of the letters right!



later yesterday (after Ella enjoyed shoe shopping - she needed sandals), she walked around the produce section at Meijer, got to a fruit stand, pointed at a huge pile of red apples, got terribly excited and said "APPLE!!"
then she picked one and threw it on the floor.
(note to self: need to emphasize the difference between "apple" and "ball")

superstitions

i like to think of myself as someone who is very connected to logic. and even though i accept people's right to hold different views, i sometimes have to hold myself back to not make fun at their beliefs (in, e.g., astrology, psychics, palm reading, numerology...). i laugh inside about how some people run their lives according to what they read in the astrology page in the newspaper, and move on.

but i do admit to one superstitious behavior: i never store away my notebooks before i get the results of the exam.
or as it applies to my current life (of no more exams!), i hold on to clearing data from my hard drive until the paper gets accepted.

this leads to fatal diskspace crises and error messages of "no space left on device", which could be easily solved if i had just moved the 92G of my recently finished project to a storage drive. i just can't bring myself to do that.

that is also why i don't edit new movies and don't upload them to the blog. sigh.

May 29-31 - Memorial Day weekend

after being here for a few years now, i no longer find it outrageous that Memorial Day in the USA is not a day of sad stories about soldiers who died, sad music on the radio and memorial services.
(what do people do on memorial days then? shopping, of course. well
every holiday is an excuse for shopping and special sales, including birthdays of former presidents etc, but this one always seemed out of place to me.)

i guess memorial day is so different in America because there's never really an immediate threat to the country's existence; it's not in constant state of war. american soldiers fight elsewhere. and not everybody takes part in protecting the country.
in Israel, unfortunately, everybody used to know someone who died while serving the country. Be that an uncle, a classmate, or someone you did your basic military training with. so memorial becomes a lot more personal.
nevertheless, over the years i've come to the understanding that there are different ways to remember, and i respect that. america has its own way.

May 28 - welcome tooth #5

5 teeth! yayy!

May 27 - Ella's welcome to school song today went something like this:

i know a girl, her name is Ella
she's wearing a beautiful
polka
dot
shirt
she has orange dots
and green dots
and pink dots
she has brown pants on today

Thanks Peter and Nicole for the pretty dress!