Update!

It's time for an update on Sasha. Lately I've only had time to upload pictures, but now I have a short break from school and will dedicate some time to giving the grandparents (and whoever else reads this!) some details about Sasha.
Yesterday James and I spent some time updating her baby book and realized that she is growing incredibly fast and learning so much EVERY DAY. We wrote down a list of words that she has learned and found that she knows about 70, in English and Spanish.
She is somewhat independent. Although more so with James. If she wants to read a book, for instance, and I'm doing something else, she'll fuss until I come out to read with her. If only James is around, and he's busy with something, he'll say "Sasha, can you sit down and read it by yourself while Daddy does this?" And she'll immediately sit down and happily read her little book.
She pays a lot of attention to details. As you know, all of the front yards are xeriscaped here, and so they all have a ton of rocks. When we go for walks in our neighborhood, Sasha will hold my hand until she sees a rock in the middle of the sidwalk. If there's just one, or if there are twenty, she'll pick them up, one at a time, and put them back in the yard. When we were outside one time, she picked up some trash and tried to put it in her mouth. I explained to her why she should not do that and used the word "sucio" (dirty). Well, now anytime she sees a stain on our shirt, or anything like that, she says "sucio"!
She is very observant. She's very aware of letters wherever she goes. She especially is familiar with the letter "A" and will say "aah" (which is how you pronounce it in Spanish) every time she sees it!
She also loves stacking her blocks, or anything! Whatever she's playing with she will stack. Below are a couple of pictures of that.
Every night we have a prayer session. It's, of course, hard to get her to sit still while we do it. But it's a routine that I'm sure she'll get used to. She sits crossed-legged, puts her hands together and closes her eyes (really intensely and only for a second!) and then we say a short prayer. After, we tell her to say one, and she says "Apiyah" (her way of saying Allah'u'Abha!)
Her bedtime routine consists of rocking her until she goes to sleep. When she wants me to sing to her, she'll touch my mouth and say "ma" (meaning more). And if she doesn't like the song I'm singing, she'll touch my mouth several times repeating "ma, ma, ma" until I sing the one she wants, then she stops. Sometimes I have to start about five different songs before I figure out which one she wants!
And now her new thing, which I started and which I'm addicted to as well, is getting her arm caressed! She'll pull up her sleeve and say "ma". And it puts her right to sleep!
She's learning to count. So far she can count to two and understands the concept. She'll point to one thing and say "uno" and then point to another of the same thing and say "dos". She can also count with her fingers (until two). Just today she learned to say two with her fingers. It was really cute because once she finally got her fingers to stay in that position, she kept them that way for a long time. I also included pictures of her showing that off. : )

That's it for now, but I will try to do this every now and then!






























































notice her stacked letters on the floor to the right!









This is a video of her saying "Allah'u'Abha". She pronounced it really well in this video, and then went back to saying "apiyah" - so cute!