Bye-bye Maftechuk family...

Yesterday we visited one last time our dear friends Minoo, Roger and baby Rumi, and said goodbye to them. They left today and will be settling in Canada. We will miss you guys!
















dinner at home with them and Melissa and Balbir

Enna-Marie talking, talking and talking...

Here are some of the things our dear Enna-Marie is saying these days:

at dinner time
EM: "Enna eating, Mama eating, Papa eating"...
EM: "Lekker!" (delicious!)
EM: "Put it there!" (referring either to her glass, spoon or food)

at breakfast
EM: "Juice please Mama" or "appelsap please Mama"...

inside the car
EM: "Mama sitting, Enna sitting, Papa sitting"...

at the car park just outside the building of our house
Mama: "Saan ang auto ni Papa?" (Where is Papa's auto?)
EM: "There it is...Papa auto!" or she also says "there, auto ni Papa!"...

while visiting baby Ariana, she saw her crib and hanging toys
EM: "Enna's toys" (pointing to the toys)..."Enna's bed" (pointing to the crib)..."baby sleeping"... she also says "bed ni Enna" when she sees her bed at home

the three of us about to go out the house
EM: "Mama coming??"

when she falls or gets hurt
EM: "Enna wawa" (pointing to the wound or the area that got hurt) or "Mama...pain!" or sometimes she says in Tagalog "Enna's sugat" (Enna's wound)

when she needs help from us like her toy got stuck
EM: "Mama..."
Mama: "Yes sweetie..."
EM: "Helpen Mama"...

when we ask her where are her cousins
Papa: "Waar is Minou...Waar is Nadim...??"
EM: "Holland"...

when changing diaper, she says "diaper ni Enna" followed by "pippi" (or "wiwi")...or "poopu!"...she knows that she just did either of these.

when she's asked to count her fingers
EM: "een, twee, drie, vier, vijf"...
Yes, she can count until five in Dutch. She still needs to improve her English and Tagalog counting.

Recently Enna-Marie started saying "my" or "mine", sometimes when we talk about toys she says "mine", meaning those toys are hers, or when we are in the living room at home she would say "mine" to the area where Mama usually sits.

Happy Birthday Rocco, Lillian and Carmel...

Today Rocco and Lillian celebrate their birthdays. Rocco turns two years old in Estonia (we miss you auntie Evelin, uncle Santana and Rocco!!!), while Lillian turns one. She's one of my friends that I see every week in our mother goose class which is now being handled by her mom, auntie Selvi.

Happy Birthday dear friends!!!



















Also, Carmel had her birthday early this month, Happy Birthday again Carmel!

Enna-Marie out and about...

one sunny morning outside our house about to go to a mom's gathering

at Terrace one in Hagefen street, her first visit there

just chillin' out waiting for daddy to finish his haircut at Moris

at the playground doing some acrobats (she loves doing this too at the food centre counter)

visit at the Shrine of the Bab one afternoon after a mom's gathering.

assisting Ate Mona with her shift as a security officer at the Shrine-garden area.

Breakfast in Ahuza

Since Enna-Marie was born, we haven't yet eaten breakfast outside our home as a family, so last Friday we decided to go to one of the restaurants in Ahuza. We meant to eat at Greg's but made a mistake sitting and ordering at the next cafe restaurant (ha..ha..!), this we only realized after ordering our food. We liked the food anyway, it was a simple breakfast: omelette that comes with salad, bread, cheese, jam and two drinks. Enna-Marie enjoyed her bread, salad and orange juice. She was quite happy eating out with us in the morning. So we hope to soon go and check other places as well.

Friendster

Many people these days join a social networking website to catch up and stay in touch with old friends. I also recently joined such a site, and I have found it to be a great and easy way to find many old friends with whom I have not been in contact for a long time, for example, from my college and highschool years. Facebook, MySpace, Flickr and Friendster are but of a few of the more well-known social networking sites worldwide. The site that I've joined is Friendster, mainly because it is very popular at home in the Philippines. Most of my family members have joined this site as well. In fact, according to Wikipedia, some 5.7 million Filipinos are registered users (on a total population of some 88 million).

If you like, you can check out my profile by clicking here, or you can find a permanent link in the section "Our Links..." -> "Menchie's Friendster --new" on the sidebar to the right. Enjoy :)!

More babies...

Five more babies that we know were born in the past months (well actually six but we don't have photos yet of the newborn baby Alexander Amin from parents Shirin and Erik in Holland). Yep these babies are making their parents busy and up all the time, but for sure they are enjoying their time together. So nice to see some pictures in their blog, we get updates and follow their developments...wow, they are growing soo quickly. Congratulations again dear parents! Below are photos of these babies that we took from their parents sites to share here, hope this is just okay with them.

baby Liam Uluru Fojas was born in April

with parents Mark and Mara

baby Naomi Nadimi was also born in April

family photo (parents are Ruben and Mutaleni)

baby Kiyon Maxwell Zebarjadi was born last May

with his parents Nafis and Shirin

baby Ela McKinney-Estevanovich was also born in May

happy parents David and Gianni

and in June baby Norah Carla Nadimi was born

soo cute!

baby Norah with parents Ramin and Cathelijne who accomodated us during our stay at their place in Makati when we were visiting Philippines in Dec-Jan...we miss u guys!

Welcome to Elfida Laroya...

Canan gave birth to a beautiful girl Elfida early morning today. Congratulations to the proud parents. When we looked at baby Elfida, she has similar features as Enna-Marie, well they are both half-Filipinos. We visited them this evening and here are couple of pictures to share with you.

the little princess, sleeping, sleeping, and sleeping

Enna-Marie sits beside her little sister Elfida, while auntie Canan looks on to her little princess

Dinner with Laroya-Alici family

We have few friends of ours who are expecting their babies at the World Centre. Arnold and Canan are having their first baby any time now as Canan is already due a couple of days ago. We had dinner with them last night at Kurt Austria's place. Canan's sisters Cahide and Zubeyde together with their mom are in town and joined with us in the dinner as well. Soon we will post here the newest addition to their family.

Here's a group photo of us.

Visit to Ariana...

Last Friday, our friends Farzana and Neil Songgadan just had a baby girl named Ariana. We visited them two days after at Rambam hospital and we were finally able to meet her. She is such a beautiful girl, another mixture of two cultures, Filipino and Indian.

sleeping angel

Enna-Marie loves to be with little babies, she knows how to be gentle with them

she says "baby" when a baby is around (or "bata" Tagalog word for a child)

happy parents

baby Ariana just woke up

All good things must come to an end...

Two-and-a-half wonderful weeks with our family have come and gone. Very early this morning Jorrit, Molouk, Nadim, Minou and Nushin started on their journey home, and they have in the meantime arrived in the Netherlands. We had such a wonderful time with them. Its amazing to see how Enna-Marie has thrived with the presence of her aunties, uncle, and cousins. She played so well with her cousins. Nadim especially loves her, treats her like a little sister. Also Enna-Marie's speech has greatly developed. She understands most things we ask her in Dutch, and she is now able to construct some simple-but-slowly-growing-more-complex sentences, mostly in English, such as "Enna... tea... drink", "Enna... eating", "Minou... sleep", "Enna... sit auto", or "Enna... toys... pease (please)". Her favorites are "there she is..!", "Peekaboo... I see you..." :). She will say sorry even if something isn't her fault, and is also learning to say please when she asks for something.

Last night we all went for one last visit to the Shrines of the Báb and 'Abdu'l-Bahá. It is so wonderful to see the children pray at the Threshold. Minou said a short prayer out loud in the Shrine of 'Abdu'l-Bahá, and that was just adorable! Also Enna-Marie is beginning to repeat some words of the prayers we say each night: "O God, Guide me...stars...powerful", and "He is God, oh God my God..."

After the Shrine we went to Leggenda in the Merkaz for delicious ice cream. Enna-Marie had her first ice-cream ever and she loved it! After ice-cream we quickly stopped by at the 19th terrace on the top of the mountain to enjoy the panoramic view of the city of Haifa one last time.

Here are some pictures of their last few days with us.

little cookie lovers...

visit at the terraces

playing slide at home

playing at the camel beach

eating lunch after a nice swim

group photo after the Rose Garden children's class

Bahji visit one last time

dinner at Faces

Visit at the Shrines of the Báb and 'Abdu'l-Bahá

enjoying her first ice-cream

want some...?

yummy ice-cream cone too!

Weekend dinner...

This weekend we invited May and Martijn to come over for dinner. It was nice for them to catch up with Jorrit, Molouk and Nushin who are still staying with us until this Friday. We enjoyed some Persian food that we prepared for the evening and had tea, cake and delicious watermelon afterwards.

with the gentlemen sitting in front and ladies at the back (or should it be the other way around so the men can really be called gentlemen..he.he?)

us with Molouk, Nushin and Jorrit

family shot