Words of happiness!

Eila smitten with her Valentine balloon from her papa

Eila in her Valentine shirt and kissy bear from her grandma

We wanted to say congratulations and share the excitement of our friends' accomplishments and monumental moments in life. First, congratulations to Adam and Jane on the engagement and the years of happiness ahead. Adam, you just made the best decision of your life! In addition to the big engagement, Adam has an impressive and important article about his work in the March issue of Men's Health that everyone should read entitled The doctor, the dictator, and the deadly mosquito. Pick up a copy or follow the link to http://www.menshealth.com/slideshows/0803burma.html
Pablo and Margaret, our dear friends working and living in Iquitos, Peru for the last several years, now have a great feature story on NPR today about their work on malaria. Follow the link to listen
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=19276850

As for Eila- she is now speaks six semi-intelligible words including, in order of her learning: ba-ble (bottle), pa-pa (her name for her dad), duc-duc (duck), pub-pe (puppy), ball, tu-tul (turtle). If you didn't notice, mama is not in that list. Oh well, she seems to still love me despite her lack of words for me.

Belated Merry Christmas, Happy Vietnamese New Year, etc!

Eila and her very big picture book!Eila and Daddy celebrating the Year of the Rat!

Christmas shots above and below

The family (several pounds lighter) after Christmas gastroenteritis

Eila opening presents

Go horsie go!

Eila and mommy with Qui celebrating the Chinese/Vietnamese New Year

Eila and cousin Kathy in Dallas

Eila, Lily and Hope at the Dallas zoo

Eila and her granddaddy rocking in the library

Eowyn (Winnie) and Eila being silly

Bob, Erika and Eila by the tree

Eila and her beautiful wooden horse

Eila in dots (thank you Corie!)

Well after the entire extended family was sick with gastroenteritis over Christmas and having been in Texas for a month after the holiday we neglected (again) the regular old picture updates. I thought people might enjoy seeing a few snapshots of Eila over the last couple of months. They are not as exciting as the videos (I'm still in training on the editing), but still worth posting. Before we left for Texas Eila got a visit from Bob and Erika and also had a fun playdate with Eowyn while we got to catch up with her parents Ben and Denise. In Texas, we got to spend time with Eila's grandparents, which she loved and we also got to see Nicole and her kids Lily and Hope, cousin Kathy, and great aunt Lisa (although I am so sad to say we don't have picture of Lisa- I guess we're going to have to come to Albuquerque soon!). Right after getting back to Maryland we went over to celebrate the Chinese (and Vietnamese) New Year of the Rat with Kushang's work colleagues (Qui, Sonja, and Satu) and we had an amazing home cooked Chinese meal! Eila also has been thrilled to be back to her hand-made Swiss rocking horse (Thank you Bob and Erika!), which she rides all the time and her Swiss bigger than life picture book from the Kraehenbuehl's that she also loves!

She's walking, yes indeed!

Eila and I just returned from Texas after my father's bypass surgery, and despite being in the recovery process, he couldn't help but make some more videos of Eila's big moments. She had been progressing toward walking for her entire 9th month, but about a week and a half before she turned 10 months she finally took off practically running suddenly one day. She is unstoppable now and very hard to keep up with! Her grandparents loved watching her make her milestones, but poor daddy missed the big event, so we sent him this video. We're so lucky that her granddad is so talented!