some favorite pictures from our trip overall

noah on seesaw at ecopark we went to with meredith

salzman family in neighboring town
- notice cool tesselated ground

naptime

door to bedroom - josh has to duck

our lovely kitchen

downstairs doorknob

backyard

pile of kids - shira, chaya, noah

beeba

so she's one year old. she can do these things.

she clicks her tongue. when i do it back at her, she smiles or laughs.

she is the proud owner of two little teeth. she won't let us feel them but she WILL let noah feel them.

sometimes she wants to stand, with our help, and she'll kind of walk as we hold her hands.

she is capable of sleeping from 7:30 at night until 6 am. 

she can say "ducka ducka ducka ducka."

she's very cute. 

we're having a birthday party for her next week. this is the invitation:

Hi all,

It has become somewhat of a tradition in our house to hold a historical re-enactment of Yona giving birth in the hallway. 

To help get in the spirit, we ask that you wear clothes appropriate to the historical time period (2014). Yona suggested there might be an audience participation component this year. 

Key information:

Date: Feb 1st

Time: 10 am - 1pm

Location: Josh's parents house, 1953 Napa Ave, Berkeley

Please RSVP here: 

http://goo.gl/forms/Saa1Do7PNd

Josh, Yona, Noah, and, the star of the show Aviva

we're back and noah's back(butt)

we're mostly unpacked and back in berkeley. 

at school every morning we're either sitting with noah on the potty or trying to. pants down and diaper off. we're also sitting him on the potty at home every evening. nothing productive yet, but he's resisting it less and hopefully it's becoming a normal thing. 

tomorrow we're flying back home. we are in tuxtla guitierez now, arrived today from the beach, and flying tomorrow. today we took a boat from our beach bungalow thing to our rented car and then drove. this place feels like a big happening city. it's weird.

i'll write more later but the beach was very idilic and beachy and lovely. i mean, it WOULD be idylic and peaceful if there were no kids. instead, it was occasionally calm as the kids played in the sand, and that was awesome. we got a coconut to eat and drink, laid in a hammock, and read, which was really nice. this morning we woke up in our bungalow, moved the mosquito nets away, went to the lagoon beach and then went to the beachy beach. the water was nice and noah liked it too. i'll attach some pictures and then write more later.

noah + mango

it's a good thing

each of the kids can sleep right through the other one having a temper tantrum. or just plain crying. she sleeps through his fits and he sleeps through hers. there are many, each night. he got sick the other night and then last night it was her turn. josh and i the other night. and it's very very cold in our house. we decided enough is enough and we're going to the beach. so we're going on saturday for a few days, and we'll leave from there to go to the airport to return to the states on tuesday. here's where we're going:

http://www.lunachiapas.com.mx/actividades.html

should be nice. we're looking forward to warmth. 

noah said some interesting things yesterday. he's been talking so much and it's different from 6 months ago when we couldn't understand a lot of what he said and it wasn't very complex or detailed. but yesterday he told us:

• a kingfisher is a bird very far away. 
• dorian told him about this at a dinner in a restaurant, a long time ago
• a lion is outside and broke his neck
• the lion also broke aviva's neck
• girgir (his stuffed giraffe that he sleeps with) is on an airplane
• he's going to take a boat to thailand

no, a lot of this doesn't make sense. but he insisted and articulated it. he said it very seriously. he also talks a lot in the night, either in his sleep or he wakes up from a dream and says it, and then goes back to sleep. the other night he talked about orzos and challah. and another night he kept insisting he wanted to try again in the kitchen. "one more time! try again! in kitchen!"

attached are pictures of the floors in our house and also daniela, our babysitter.

aviva this morning

highlights, so far

so these have been some great parts, so far, of this trip.

• meredith and david and miriam visiting, and hanging out at coffeeshops and just around. 
• seeing the orchid garden area called mochivoa or something, with lots and lots of epiphytes and bromeliads as well as orchids. we also saw lots and lots of epiphytes and bromeliads on the hike we did into the cloud forest. the steps on the hike were really nice. 
• on that hike, we got to a rest stop and sat down and a whole nest of butterflies fluttered away from us and past us. it was such a surprise that shira screamed, but it was really really amazing and cool
• hanging out with elana et al and seeing noah and chaya holding hands and playing together and also with shira
• eating dinners together at our house with dorian and elana's family, and afterwards, cleaning up while elana played guitar and sang, while wearing aviva on her back
• buying groceries and food things at the crowded marketplace, which noah calls "the silly market."
• chillequilles at the yik restaurant
• having a fire in the fireplace at our house; josh making the fire sometimes with the kids' help
• seeing a very happy aviva crawl on our restaurant table before the food came, back and forth and back and forth, to noah salzman and back to me and back to noah
• counting oldschool vw beetles with shira salzman. we counted more than 20 each day
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

teeth! and a hurty butt

finally! she has teeth! one is almost a millimeter long and i saw another coming this morning, just breaking the skin. she's almost a year old, so it's about time. she DOES NOT like us feeling them or even looking at them; she doesn't like having her face wiped or touched or cleaned, and her mouth is no exception.

also, today we were out walking and had to change noah's diaper. we were out and about and so we stopped on the side of the sidewalk to change it. he had a red butt because he didn't tell us right away he was dirty, and a passerby who was a mom apparently noticed his red butt. she came up to us with a tube of diaper cream and told us to smear some on him. a lot. she said it's a bad rash and we should put a lot of cream. that was pretty funny.

daniela, our sitter, playing with the kids in the backyard

more fur skirts

josh buying some food for dinner

chickens, live, for sale