fun with letters

one of my favorite games lately is to guess what letter different words start with. it usually starts when we're talking about or playing with something, like a ball. i will suddenly ask ema or daddy, "what does ball (s)tart with?" and then they help me figure it out. first, we make the first sound a bunch of times, like this: "buh buh buh buh." and then they ask me what letter makes that sound. sometimes i just look at them and smile and say "what?" but other times, i remember right away. i'm particularly good with the letters B, P, D, M, N, F and S. when i don't know it right away, we sometimes will think about other words that start with that sound, and after a while, i'll remember what the letter is called.

another related game that i like is to ask ema or daddy to name all the words that start with a certain letter. sometimes it is fun, but other times, it is a little boring, like when i asked them what starts with the letter K. they just spend a bunch of time going, "uhhh..."

scrambled signals

this morning, ema and i had a funny misunderstanding when she asked me what i had for breakfast. she looked at me in shock after i answered her and asked, "creme brulee? where did you get creme brulee?" i asked her "what's that?" so she asked me again what i had. so i repeated myself as patiently as i could: "i had crembuleg!" finally, she understood me. have you?

new subscription service!

you might have noticed that there's a snazzy new box on the side of my blog. if you put your e-mail address in it, you can get an e-mail letting you know every time i post a new entry! make sure you follow all their instructions, including clicking the link on the follow-up subscription e-mail you will get. lots of you have asked me to add this, so i finally got ema to do it for me. happy reading!

big boy bed!

ever since my travel bed arrived, i haven't wanted to sleep in my crib. so ema and daddy got me a big boy bed, and ema took me shopping to pick out my very own sheets. i love it!

4th of july

we had a great bbq with all our friends on the 4th of july. ema forgot her camera, but here are a few shots that our friends shared with us:

here, there, everywhere

it's a good thing ema and daddy bought me a travel bed, because i've slept in it all over the globe! here's a couple of pictures of kiva and i cuddling in it in israel:

kiva and i had a great time hanging out and had loads of great conversations, though we never did come to agreement on the touchy subject on how, exactly, the gate in the garage closes (or even whether or not it does!) eventually, we figured out that kiva likes to wind me up, so if i say "yes!" he'll say, "no!" i took great offense when he claimed that i don't love olives until i figured out he was just teasing, then we both laughed.

we also had lots of fun with our other cousins, dor and the latest edition to the family, baby ariel. when ariel came to spend time with us at the beach, i helped entertain him by singing "twinkle twinkle little (s)tar" to him. here's a picture of all of us in our new generation on the first night we met ariel:


after a great week in israel, ema, daddy and i went to london. i really liked all the double-decker buses and had a great time watching buskers at covent gardens. but i think the highlight for me was the phone booths. it seemed to ema like every time we passed one, i insisted that we make a phone call. sometimes i called kiva and asked him what he was doing, but mostly i called grandmom:


after one night in london, we went down to dover to visit baby lara. unfortunately, ema forgot to take any pictures while we were there, but she has some video that she promised me she'll upload soon. we had two really nice days visiting lara and her parents, fran & montu, even though it rained the entire time. then we went back to london and stayed with john and ana, who i REALLY liked! here's a picture of me wearing john's hat:


from there, we went to visit sally, jason and baby rhino (ryan) in the hague. i had so much fun playing with rhino -- he has the biggest collection of toys i've ever seen (even bigger than hanna's!), we danced all the time, AND we visited a different playground every day! again, ema forgot to take any pictures, but she has some great footage of daddy and jason giving rhino and me a bath that she'll post soon.

after all that fun, we had to fly home. luckily, i found a plane that i could use to fly daddy and me home in:

beach week!

i don't have much time to write because we're heading off to israel today! but i wanted to post a few pictures from our beach week with grandmom, grandpa, michele, steve (grandpa's brother) and lois (steve's wife):

waaaaa-eeeee?

ema told me today that i've entered a new phase. i wasn't sure what she meant by that, but, as usual, i responded by asking "why?" it's my new favorite word. so far, ema and daddy seem to be doing pretty well answering my questions all the time, but every now and then, one of them just looks at me, smiles and mimics the sing-song way i ask: waaaaa-eeeee?

right now we're up in falls church. waaaa-eeee? because, ema tells me, we are celebrating the fact that daddy just sent off an article he's been working on for a long time. daddy tells me we've come here because they have a really cool memorial day parade, complete with shriners driving little cars. waaaaa-eeeee? who knows!

the hot dog store

this morning when ema came to get me out of my crib, i told her that i couldn't get up yet because i was driving the car to the hot dog store. i thought she was going to make a big fuss about how i had to get up right then, but she seemed to understand the importance of my errand and agreed to get in the back of the car (on the floor next to the crib). but even though ema and i had each buckled up, we weren't ready to go yet because daddy wasn't in the car. after we each hollered for him a few times, he finally joined us (i asked him if he was getting ready to go play soccer because his legs were sticking out, but i guess he just hadn't put his pants on over his boxer shorts). once he was buckled in, i drove all of us to the store and got the hot dogs. i told ema that when she gets little, she can sit in my booster seat and eat hot dogs just like me!

there i am!

for a long time now, i've been telling ema and daddy that i'm a kwerrel. for those of you long-time blog readers, you will know that ema is a walrus, daddy is a snowman, grandmom is a monkey and grandpa is a giraffe. the cast of characters has extended to all of my friends at starr's (elephant) house. so, this is nothing new. what's new is that recently, whenever i see a kwerrel, i will shout out, "there i am!" and if there are two kwerrels, i'll say with delight, "there's two of me!"

announcement: comment competition!

i don't know if you know this, but i love it when those of you reading my blog take the time to comment. ema is saving all of these entries and your comments for me to read when i grow up.

to encourage your comments, we've decided to create an award for the best commenter. the winner will be announced on the one-year anniversary of this blog (next month!)

so far, dodo karen is the early front-runner for sheer quantity of commentary. but the award committee will consider creativity of comments as well.

good luck to you all! (and more videos coming soon, i promise!)

reading to snoofy

daddy and i like to watch soccer together. i love to shout GOOOOOAL! whenever they get the ball in the net, but it just doesn't happen very often. so sometimes i get bored when watching soccer with daddy. one day when ema was out and daddy and i were watching soccer, i got bored and decided to go read some books to snoofy. after a while, daddy noticed that i was being very quiet and came looking for me. this is what he saw (click on the picture to see the video):

cw with hanna

yesterday (about a month ago) ema, daddy, lauri, hanna and i had a fun picnic in cw. ema has finally put the video online, so i can show it to you and can tell you all about it. we started with our picnic and after that we played in the hedge maze in the governor's palace gardens. it was so much fun! after that, we continued our stroll through the gardens and went down to the pond to feed the fish. it was such a nice way to spend one of the first warm days of spring. you can see the video if you click on the picture of me sitting in the governor's garden:

Neglect

Ema's been busy preparing a paper for a conference and went away to Cacago (Chicago) for a few days last weekend, so the blog and I have been feeling neglected. But she's back now and all is well in the universe again.
Here's what I've been up to since I last wrote....

I still spend four days a week at Miss Starr's house. On Tuesdays we go to music class with Jocelyn.

Savta came to visit me on St. Patrick's Day weekend. She helped me play with all my toys and read all my books, plus some new ones that she brought for me! Somehow I found time to show her around downtown and the museum.

Snow in April! I was very surprised to wake up one morning a couple of weeks ago to find the ground covered in snow. Daddy helped me make a snowman. He didn't last very long, though (the snowman, that is).
But it was a good thing that the snow melted, because the very next day I went on 2 Easter egg hunts. First at Hannah's house, then at Grandmom and Grandpa's.

puzzle puzzle bo buzzle

hi everyone!

life's been good here in williamsburg. spring is coming, so we've had some nice weather and some deceptively cold & sunny weather, like yesterday. ema, daddy and i went towntown (downtown = colonial williamsburg) to see the manimals, but when we got there, i just wanted to be carried because it was cold! ema and daddy bundled me up as well as they could and tried to get me to walk. it wasn't easy with two pairs of pants on! but i was happy 'cuz i saw lots of horses pulling carriages and we also saw some sheep. they had very curly hair -- even curlier than mine & ema's! ema told me that my wee wools are made from sheep's hair. i thought that was funny.

ema finally got around to editing and posting a video she took of me doing my puzzle. you can get it by clicking here. but you should know that it is pretty long, so it might take a while to download.

i love my puzzle sooo much! i always ask ema and daddy to do it with me. if you watch the video, you'll see that i'm getting pretty good at it, too!

the other thing i'm really into these days is rhyming. i spend a lot of my time making up rhymes that delight me. and i love it when other people make rhymes, too. a simple "okey dokey smokey wokey" is enough to send me into hysterics. so here's a video of me thoroughly enjoying ema's rhyming song, which i call "banana fanna."



the truth is, everyone around here has been making a lot of rhymes lately, but grandpa is the best at it. i don't know what it is about the rhymes he comes up with, but they always make everyone laugh, not just me. for instance, "funky chunky monkey." everyone got a big kick out of that, except for grandmom, a.k.a. "monkey."

pictures from aunt sue

hi again everyone! grandmom just sent me some pictures that aunt sue took when she was here visiting us over new years. i love these pictures, and i thought you would, too!

yorktown vaventure

today ema and daddy took me on a vaventure to yorktown. it was really cold and windy but we had fun anyway, which you can see on the video of the vaventure ema posted. she also posted one of me gettin' down with her while we were waiting for the pancake griddle to heat up this morning. i wanted ema to dance with me, which is why it is a bit shaky. and she thought she'd also post this one of me singing fee-fi-fiddly-i-o along with a book safta and saba gave me. and for you low-tech types, here are a few pictures that ema took of me while we were at yorktown:





daddy thought it was ironic that ema kept saying how peaceful it was at yorktown...

some new videos

hi everyone! ema finally uploaded some new videos for your enjoyment. you can always find links to all the videos she has posted here. but first, let me tell you a bit about the newest ones...

one day, i wanted ema to record me singing my abc's so that i could see it on the tv. to see that video, click here. when we watched it on the tv, i thought it was sooooo funny! i don't know why i sang the song that way, but i really liked it, as you can see in the next video.

the last new video ema posted is of me reading with saba. he thought he was going to read to me, but i wanted to show him how well i can read by myself!

enjoy!

saba's visit

last week, saba came for a visit. we had lots and lots of fun together. he brought me a lot of presents that i love very much. we spent a lot of time reading all of my new books and playing with my new wooden toaster and sliced bread set.



i also helped ema cook pancakes for all of us to eat! saba was very impressed with how well i can help when i stand in my tower.



but my favorite part of saba's visit was when i got to take him to the museum. i love going to the museum because i get to touch lots of animals.

tools, trucks, and thomas

i finally did it. i decided i was ready to wear underwear. ema had been telling me for a while that i was ready, but every morning when she asked me if i wanted to wear a diaper or underwear, i chose a diaper. but the other day, i decided i wanted underwear. my favorite underwear has tools on it, but the pair i wore yesterday had trucks. today, i plan to keep my underwear dry all day again (just like the last two days!) because i want to spend the whole day sitting on thomas the tank engine!