The Energizer Bunny

After a grueling 5 days apart from Leila (and Samy) I have just returned from a business trip in New York. It was so hard to be away from the family and was missing my girl big time. Leila is really into her play time now and really doesn't stop. She always wants to be walking around and has officially entered the toddler stage in my mind. She is all over the place, scatters her toys everywhere, is constantly exploring and getting into things. It is really entertaining to watch her and tiring at the same time to clean up after her! She can pretty much destroy the house in 15 minutes. But hey, she is having fun. It is so wonderful to be back and to see her in person and hold her...sure beats having Samy and our babysitter send me 10 second videos and pictures to my phone, but it did help me get through the week. aswzssecfrqvxrdsDXX (If you couldn't tell, that was Leila's contribution to the blog just now. Not quite sure what it means but I am sure she will tell me later). Home sweet home...time for the Ghezali Girls to do some bonding.

I'm walking...yes indeed I'm walking

June 27th marked the official day of Leila's first real steps on her own. She was dabbling a little bit before this, but wasn't confident to go full throttle. Well, in a day, she just simply took off. In just a few short weeks she is a walking pro. She chases our cat, Hobbes-they go around and around the house in a circle. It is so funny to watch...Hobbes humors her, lets her get close and then moves to the next position out in front. Over and over and over... Leila also loves walking around the house with her little bumble bee. She is quite adept at manoeuvering around the furniture and various obstacles which is quite a feat...city living calls for tight quarters!

Leila is also quite the little dancer. She has this great move where she quickly shakes her booty from side to side and shakes her whole body--gets a laugh out of us every time. She is especially motivated to do that dance move to the South Park theme song and when she is enjoying something she is eating. We have been trying to teach Leila sign language and she just recently started doing the sign for "milk" and "more". It is so cute to see her little hands make the signs and it is a good way to communicate. We are hoping to teach her more, but those were the first ones we started with. A few words too..."doggie" and "kitty" although at times they sound a bit alike and the occasional "daddy" although most times she says that to me, so go figure. She is just a bundle of love and is really starting to become a little person with such personality. It just gets better and better.

June Bug

June has come and gone, and I have been remiss in writing in the blog. It has been a busy month and our darling daughter turned 1 this month. June 8th, 2006...we were busy getting ready for the big celebration (read, Nicole making invites, obsessing over designing and making decorations, finding the perfect 1st birthday cake recipe etc which is my idea of fun). It was a ton of fun getting ready for the party (at least for me, you will have to ask Samy yourself) and then poor little Leila was sick the day of the party with 103 degree fever. We attributed it to her teeth coming in...what can you do? She was a little trooper though, although she was clearly not feeling very well. Nevertheless, we had a great party with tons of friends over and we managed to keep Leila fairly happy...she was burning up all day. Poor little lady! Here are a few pictures of the birthday party. You can definitely tell Leila was not in good form by the pictures...she eventually ate some of the cake, but wasn't a fan at first. She stopped crying when we all sang happy birthday and erupted again when we stopped. I threw in another picture that I couldn't resist sharing. How about that cute little butt!