Snowmans with Hats!

I asked Avery to put the bowls I had just washed on the towel to dry. She put them like this and said “Look Mom! It’s snowmans with hats!”

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Evelyn – 9 Months

Every night I put Evelyn’s pajamas on her and usually I bite and tickle her tummy while I do it. But first I have to get her arms out of the way so that I have clear access to her little ticklish sides and armpits, so I always grab her arms and pin them above her head. This week I kept noticing Evelyn doing this weird jerking and grinning at me while I put her pajamas on and realized she was throwing her own arms above her head and trying to get me to tickle her. It’s the funniest thing ever. She jerks her arms up above her head and arches her back so her little ribcage sticks out. So, naturally, I tickled it.

Evelyn has another favorite game. She’s been playing it for almost a month, now. She likes to pull herself up on my knees until she’s standing on the couch. Then she lets go and we all see how long she can stand up on her own. When she finally falls down on her bottom she looks up at me and claps for herself. I’ve only been able to get her to do it twice on the floor, though. She only does it on the couch. She’s no dummy.

Evelyn likes her tongue. She sticks it out and likes to make “th” sounds with it. Today while I was putting her to sleep she kept alternating between “th” and “la la la” as she sang herself to sleep. Her tongue is picky, though – she still refuses almost all solid food. She will eat crackers. That’s about it. And some days not even that. After about six hours straight of not nursing yesterday I got her to eat some apples and raspberries, but even that was not much. I’m kind of afraid I’m going to have to wean her just to get her to eat anything other than breast milk.

Evelyn’s favorite things right now are turning on and off the lights, being swung upside down, crawling across the floor to me so I can pick her up and Avery’s blocks. She really likes the long cylindrical blocks in Avery’s set and she has one in one or each hand almost as often as not.

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Bigger than a Bread Box?

Since we are now in possession of a bread box, and since many people don’t know how large a bread box is, we have decided to help the 20-questions playing community by posting this picture of a bread box, complete with some a spoon and cup for reference.
The fancy triangular bread is one that we hadn’t tried before and is called tönkölyös kenyér in case you were wondering.

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Istanbul – Days 3 and 4

Before I get started, can I just say that we loved our hotel? It might have been because it was off season, but it was relatively inexpensive and was really wonderful. The staff were fabulous and the rooms were pretty and clean. The breakfast was really good too, and was served on the roof where you could see the sea of Marmara. The name was Hotel Niles if anyone is thinking of going, we’d recommend it highly.

The Blue Mosque at Night

Anyway, after our lovely breakfast, complete with olives and apple tea, we headed for the Blue Mosque on Saturday morning. The Blue Mosque is very pretty and very big. It’s called the Blue Mosque because of the blue Iznik tiles on the walls inside. They’re a famous part of the history of that area and can be found in a lot of the historical buildings. I think the designs on the walls were my favorite part of the Blue Mosque. That and the fact that it was free :)

Inside the Blue Mosque

After the Blue Mosque we hit the Grand Bazaar, which is this huge indoor market where you can buy all sorts of Turkish things. There were tea sets (they’re a little distinctive in Turkey), clothes, shoes, silver, rugs, and scarves. We found a map of Turkey for my Dad and a pretty blue scarf for me with the Sultan’s seal design in the middle. It’s super soft. The one rule at the Grand Bazaar is that you haggle for everything. We had to practice a little, but it was kind of fun. Ivan picked up some cuff links at a silver shop.

In the afternoon we took a guided tour that included a boat ride on the Bosporus. We started at the Rüstem Paşa Mosque, which has more of the blue Iznik tiles and was built by the famous architect Sinan for the wife of the Grand Vizier at the time who also happened to be the Sultan’s daughter. It was a brightly lit and pretty, if smaller mosque. I even wore my new head scarf over my head.

One of the many Iznik tile designs in the Rüstem Pasha Mosque

After the mosque we went on the cruise on the Bosporus, which was also really fun, if a little chilly. My only complaint is that it didn’t let us off on the Asian side of Istanbul, so we still can’t say we’ve been to Asia. We saw a lot of palaces, hotels and towers along the water. The islands are supposed to be very nice and we saw one of those as well.

Leander's Tower in the middle of the Bosporus

After the cruise on the Bosporus we went to the spice market, which was really fun. We only had about a half an hour there, though, so we didn’t really take pictures. We bought some Linden tea, some Turkish delight and some dried apricots with nuts stuffed inside. We should have bought some saffron or something, but didn’t feel like it I guess.

We found another cheap little place in a back street to eat at and wondered at how cheap the little back places really are. Ivan wanted to find the Armenian Patriarchy, so we wandered around for a while until we found that as well, although we couldn’t really go in. There are a lot of patriarchies in Istanbul apparently. We didn’t make it to at least two others.

The outside of the Church of St. Savior in Chora

On Sunday we got ourselves lost trying to find the Church of St. Savior in Chora. We finally got there and it was worth it. The mosaics there are quite stunning and very beautiful. Unfortunately it’s nearly impossible to take pictures of them that actually turn out, so you have to make due with a picture of the outside of the building. If you like mosaics, this seems to be the place to go. I liked them better than the mosaics in the Aya Sofya by quite a bit.

So there it is. We made it back to the airport on public transportation and picked up Avery, who was pretty excited to see us, and headed home. All of the sites were really fun, but just being in Turkey was really half the fun I think. It reminded me a little of Mexico where it just seems like a totally different place and is a totally different experience. I really liked the Basilica Cistern and the Church in Chora and shopping was really fun. The baklava was delicious, although I confess to not being so crazy about the Turkish delight. Ivan really liked it. I wish we’d had a little more time to spend at the spice bazaar. It was really fun, though, and I think Ivan might get to go back for a conference this Summer. I’m pretty jealous.

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Happy

These made me happy yesterday.I know they’re likely to die next week when the weather returns to freezing and Winter takes back January, but they’re lovely none the less. So I took a picture with Evelyn too.

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Vader is my cheerleader

The little things mean so much, don’t they?  I just read a blog post about playing a “happy sound” for successful git commits. Since I use mercurial more than git, I added it to my hgrc instead.  I thought clapping was a little cheesy, so I have a Dalek saying, “Exterminate, Annihilate, Destroy!” whenever I fix a bug (based on commit message), and Vader saying, “Don’t be too proud of this technological terror you’ve created,” for new features.

The best part is that when I committed the changes to my hgrc and Vader spoke to me, I was startled—I had forgotten what I had just committed!  It made me giggle maniacally as my wife can attest.  As she noted though, I didn’t quite follow Vader’s admonition.  The next time I’m the leader of a software team, I’m going to make this mandatory.

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Istanbul – Days 1 and 2

We left Avery with a couple friends last weekend and Ivan, Evelyn and I went to Istanbul for a few days. It’s crazy, but Istanbul is only a 2 hour flight from Budapest. It was only a little longer than flying from Salt Lake to L.A.  and shorter than my flight from Dallas to L.A. last spring. Anyway it was a whirlwind trip and way too much fun.

We got to Istanbul at about 3:30 and took public transportation to our hotel. We got to our hotel just at the first call to evening prayer at about 5:30. I really liked the calls to prayer and they were one of the things I was saddest about leaving when we left. I don’t know how to describe them. All the mosques call at roughly the same time. One will start and within a couple minutes you can hear probably four or five of them all singing in Arabic. There are mosques EVERYWHERE. Our hotel was right next to one. It’s like Mormon church houses in Provo. You can’t escape them, and they all have megaphones on their minarets. Anyway, I loved the calls to prayer.

 

Aya Sofya at night

That night we ventured out and took pictures of the Aya Sofya and the Blue Mosque at night as it was already dark by the time we were settled in enough to leave again. We walked down the street leading to the sites and were quickly made aware that Turks LOVE babies. Over the course of our trip we got free turkish delight, postcards, and I don’t think I ate a single meal with Evelyn on my lap. Everyone wanted to hold her.

Inside the Aya Sofya

On Friday we started at the Aya Sofya. The place is huge. It was built by the Romans in the fifth and sixth centuries (I think) and was the largest enclosed space for a thousand years. It’s now a museum, but it’s a neat place because it was originally a Christian church and was converted into a mosque under Ottoman rule, so it has artwork and signs of both religions. It was really an impressive place and has some nice mosaics upstairs. Apparently the mosaics were made to be seen by candle light and the pieces were placed at slightly different angles which created a neat effect in flickering candle light. Unfortunately they’re only seen in natural or electrical light now.

Center Ceiling Dome in the Aya Sofya

After the Aya Sofya we went down underground to the basilica sistern where water was stored for a nearby palace. It’s a huge underground room with lines and lines of columns holding up the ceiling. It was a really neat place and one of my favorite places we went I think. For any architecture nerds out there, the  columns were kind of interesting. Most were standard doric or ionic (mixed with no apparent pattern. I kind of want to know why…) but there were a couple special columns. One had peacock eyes shaped like tears both to protect against the evil eye and to commemorate all the slaves that died building the sistern, and two others had heads of medusa (don’t worry she was upside down and sideways so she wouldn’t turn you to stone) that were apparently a kind of protection for underground structures.

Medusa in the Basilica Sistern

 

After the sistern we went to Topkapi Palace where the Ottoman rulers lived during their rule. If you like big jewels or fancy thrones this is the place to go. It’s really a huge palace and the treasury is impressive. Unfortunately we didn’t have time for the harem section, but we did see the relics of the prophets, including a hair of Mohamed and the staff of Abraham. There were also some very nice examples of the famous Iznik tiles there and some very nice views of the rest of the city and the Golden Horn.

Topkapi Palace from the Gate

After that we were a little late to go see the Blue Mosque so we headed down South of our hotel to see the small Aya Sofya, which was pretty from the outside, but we didn’t go in. We found a nice little place to eat on the way back (if you ever go, do not eat on the main tourist streets. You can find little Turkish places a few streets back that will charge you a third or a fourth the price for the same food.) and called it a night.

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Avery – 31 Months

Avery is learning opposites. Hungarian sausage is called Kolbasz (pronounced like cole and then boss) and we eat it on toasted sandwiches with cheese. One day Avery said she liked her “hot”basz sandwich.

Some other funny things she says:

“Long loodles” or “skabetti” for  spaghetti

“babulous” for fabulous

Avery calls everyone “honey.” She comes up to me and says “Can you eat your sandwich honey?” with this very sweet little voice. She does this with Evelyn too. “Can you share, honey?” She also calls everyone and everything “amazing.” It comes from Monsters vs. Aliens.

She’s also a little cuddle bug. We like to cuddle and read books together at nap time (we’ve re-instituted nap time lately). But she doesn’t stick with Mommy cuddles, anyone is good. When we go to rhyme time she typically finds the first person that looks nice and puts her arms up to say she wants to be held.

She has been sleeping better at night, but her fourth two year molar still hasn’t seen fit to pop through, so I’m sure we’ll have another month or two of wakeful nights before we’re totally done. Do kids get three year molars? If so I’m declaring her next Birthday a second second Birthday because I need a year of sleep before this kid teethes again.

Avery likes her sister a lot. So much that she likes to help her do everything. Unfortunately sometimes this translates into helping Evelyn stand by pulling her up by the head. Evelyn protests, of course, but Avery doesn’t mind. Avery thinks it’s really neat that Evelyn gets praise when she stands up by herself, so Avery will come right next to her and stand up while looking at me with a grin on her face. So we clap for Avery standing up all by herself too. Evelyn doesn’t seem to mind sharing the limelight, so it’s all good.

Avery stayed at her friend Scarlet’s house while we went to Istanbul this month. It was the first time we’d left her and she did great. Scarlet’s parents say she didn’t talk for two days and she was pretty hyper and excited to see us when we came back, but she didn’t cry much. I was pretty proud of her. She’s really a pretty independent kid most of the time.

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Salzburg

Here, finally, are the highlights of our couple days in Salzburg.

We saw both Mozart’s Wohnhaus (the house he lived in) and his Geburtshaus (the house he was born in).  Both had museums and both were good, but I think I liked the museum in the Wohnhaus better. It was smaller, but was better organized and more interesting in my opinion, but it might just be because we saw it first. Both museums have interesting letters and other correspondences from Mozart and his family, but the Wohnhaus had a little more about Mozart’s family by individual, which I thought was interesting.

One thing I thought was really interesting was that Mozart’s sister, Maria Anna (they called her Nannerl) was actually also quite talented musically and Mozart’s father took both children touring when they were young to show them off in courts and for various political leaders. Unfortunately Nannerl was fairly completely overshadowed by Mozart’s career and few people know about her or her talents. A little sad to me.

We also had some of the famous Mozartkugeln chocolate balls. They’re layers of chocolate with a pistachio center. They’re good, but I think they might be a little overrated. Still, they’re a fun experience.

On Sunday morning we went to church and went to the Hohensalzburg fortress in the afternoon before rushing to catch our train. The fortress was pretty neat. There are some nice views. Apparently there’s a “Prince’s room” upstairs that we didn’t see. We were a little hurried. It was pretty neat, though and worth seeing. We also got to ride a funicular for the first time. We bought a Salzburg card that gave us free public transportation for a day and free entrance to a lot of the museums and it included the funicular ride up to the hohensalzburg. It was kind of a cool experience and I kind of want to try Budapest’s funicular up to castle hill, now, but since it’s not free, we might have to wait for a special occasion or something.

Salzburg is kind of a cute town and I liked the river running through it. It’s much smaller than Budapest’s Danube which is kind of nice. The bridges give a nice view of the buildings along the sides of the river and it’s just kind of a nice city. Here’s a picture of the city from the fortress.

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Picture of the Day Finalists

My year of taking a picture every day is done. Overall I think I did alright. I only ended up with 225 pictures instead of 365, but considering I had a baby and moved three times in that year, I’m okay with that. I picked my ten favorites. Since I took a lot of pictures of the kids, they’re divided into two sets: my favorite 5 kid photos, and my favorite 5 other photos. They’re in chronological order. I hope.

Other:

End of the Trail Statue

 

Summer Peach

 

Budapest Chain Bridge

 

Winter Activities - Colored Pencil Shavings

 

Salzburg Christmas Market Ornaments

Kids

 

Avery's Cowboy Hat

 

We Love The Beach!

 

Blessing Day

 

AAAAHHHHH!

 

Happy Girls

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