Looking forward to Australia

A while back Natalia had planted the seed of heading out to Australia and New Zealand before we departed from the Asian region. With the arrival of Irini the New Zealand component of that dream seems a little more distant but with Natalia's good friend Chechi getting married to an Aussie and moving to Sydney prompted us to start packing. Our friends Jim and Jay are also living in Sydney so the setting is set for a great vacation. It couldn't come at a better time as the high energy of the first semester is a distant memory now. Irini, of course, continues to grow by leaps and bounds and happily roams the house, moving from place to place. Outside she does more of the same and essentially gets passed from lap to lap wherever she goes. Her smile is broader than ever, and her molars (all four of them) are in various extents of arrival. We head out to Australia on Wednesday night (arriving in Sydney on Thursday morning), stay in Sydey and meet up with our friends and will return to KL on April 3rd, just in time to be visited by our friend Cami. It promises to be a fun-filled, action packed, travel intense experience. Just what the doctor ordered!

Stress, Dance & Kisses

The weekend came with stress but, joyfully, departed with Natalia and Laurence both in better moods and enjoying the time with family and friends.

Laurence had been pulled in every which direction, behind in assignments to be graded, assignments not yet completed (for his online course on Making Environmental Education Relevant to Diverse Audiences), confusion as to what the online assignments really were, and a computer system at home and at school that is slow and frustrating to work with.

Natalia finished the week and, with it, the second trimester of the school year. That meant having to finalize all the grades and entering comments for all her students. The problem? The school's automatic grading system decided that, because the trimester was officially over, it would shut down access to all grades and replace them with a blank sheet in anticipation of the coming trimester.

Little Irini was oblivious to all this, of course. As daddy and mommy took turns taking care of her, and as the other one rushed out of the house to head to school where the computer system is, at least, faster, she happily walked about and roamed the house with a smile on her face and a variety of tools and toys in her hands. As the stress-producing tasks were slowly finished, Irini became more and more the center of attention.

She has now started doing a few things that have increased the 'adorable meter' rating by a couple notches. She is able to change the intonation of her voice as she speaks (to self and others), giving us glimpses of what her words will sound like when she works out the intricacies of Greek, Spanish and English. She can sing a little now, albeit with that babble of hers that steals our breath away. The argument, of course, continues as we determine what language, exactly, she is singing in. She can also dance, and learned just yesterday to dance on a sheet of newspaper, making music with her feet as her body swayed to her own beat! Finally, and most cutely, she has learned to respond to her parents' whispering requests for a "besito" or a "filaki". In each case she turns her head ever so slightly, moving her head just a bit toward our face, and smiles a broad smile. We kiss her happily as she continues to steal our heart away. Not quite the kiss we had planned for but, surprisingly, ever more adorable and loving.

The weekend ended with a trip to a local vegetable and fruit market where, as tradition dictates, Irini chose two fruits at the first stall, and carried them all over the market. She, and we, are happy as can be.