happy father's day!

Happy Father's Day to Papa, Bumpa, and Grandpa Wally! And to all the other fathers out there as well.
It was nice yesterday! We played outside for awhile. Isaac is very much more socially attuned now than he was just a few weeks ago. He is always looking for social interaction. We also went to Grocery Outlet and Isaac said "Hi" to several of the ladies shopping there. This morning, he also said "Hi" to several of the ladies and men at church. He does seem to have a preference for saying "Hi" to the ladies though. That little mister.

He is also pretty obsessed with this shovel. It isn't ours, but luckily it belongs to an understanding neighbor who doesn't mind that it moves every time we go outside.

This morning, Isaac's hair parted more or less on its own in his bath, so I went with it. He has been choosing to take a bath in his little bucket instead of the whale bathtub.

I tried to get a good picture of the hair but for some reason it wouldn't show up on camera like I had hoped. The idea was something in between this and this.

Here, at the request of Papa, are some pictures of Isaac at a birthday party he was invited to last weekend. He wasn't as social here, which is part of why I say I've noticed such a change in his social orientation.

Lots of love again to all the Papas!

big shoes to fill: grandes chaussures

Here, I couldn't resist uploading just one more video. Now I feel truly caught up. This is Isaac messing around yesterday. He had a big shoe obsession all day long. He also was into splashing around in buckets of water, but I didn't get that one on video.

I wanted to also write down what words Isaac is using right now. As of today, he says: Mama, Papa, Hi, Bye, Oh-oh, Ba(ll). He used to say dog/cat but now he just growls for them. He understands a lot of things, of course. He can sign "All done" and said "Ah-do" yesterday. I don't know if that was coincidence or an attempt. Some things he understands in French are "Vien ici" (okay, not sure that I spelled it right... I'll wait on Papa to spell check me) and "Regarde" (Come here and Look respectively). He also says something that sounds like "Isaac" in its general intonation, but I'm not really sure what communicative purpose saying your own name serves, unless just to get attention. I guess that's a good communicative purpose though!

a stitch in time

So as some of you may know, Isaac fell off a little tricycle with sunglasses on onto some pavement and got a cut on the bridge of his nose. I should take a picture of the tricycle - it was really small. Papa was with Isaac and Isaac must have just launched himself in a split second of Papa not being as vigilant as he normally is, because I certainly wouldn't have seen the danger inherent in this tricycle either.

Here we are at Urgent Care. It's not the hospital's urgent care, it's the one closer to our house. But, by the time we got back, they said they were closing and if they thought Isaac would take a while to get steady before doing the stitches, we should go to the emergency room instead. Geez guys, could have told us that an hour and a half beforehand. Luckily Isaac was in great spirits right up until they held him down for the stitches. He had a local anesthetic and a lot of people holding that little man down.
The next day, he was back to his usual self, playing soccer outside. This is actually from Monday. I know, it's the same shirt... We were very nervous to change anything that required movement over the stitches for a few days.

It doesn't seem to bother Isaac though.

We went to the doctor's on Wednesday because I thought it was getting a little pink around the stitches. They took a look and told me that was a normal reaction to the stitching material.

Isaac gets his stitches out later today! I think the emergency room doctor did a good job. Isaac kind of scraped some of the scabs off (yesterday was a crazy head bumping day for some reason) and it looks like it is healing really well. I'm sure we'll see what it looks like as time goes by. The doctor said to Isaac Wednesday, "If I'm reading your personality right, these may not be the last stitches you have." Well, Isaac, if you don't mind, I'd prefer you to prove him wrong.

up to speed

Here are a few pictures from between Isaac's birthday and our trip to Wisconsin.

It is beautiful to sit sometimes quietly with your spouse and watch your love play and squeal with delight.

birthday

Here are a few of the pictures from Isaac's birthday. There are more, but they are hard to access (since we ended up having to use three different cameras!). Enjoy! It was a great day and fun to spend time with friends and family. And, although it was raining earlier that day, the sun came out just for Isaac, our little mister sunshine.
With auntie Cecily-

With Papa-

With the cake and a spatula -

We love you little Isaac!

Wisconsin trip

Here are photos from our recent trip to Milwaukee and Madison Wisconsin! You might be asking, okay, where are the pictures from Isaac's birthday party? Come on, Mama, it's been 3 weeks! Well, if you wanted to see those pictures, you are in luck because I have one week of summer coming up this next week before classes, and then clinic start up again, and I intend to get caught up on Isaac's blog if I do nothing else.

Isaac was very good on the plane. He slept on 4/5 flights, a result that pleases us greatly.

We stayed with Papa's good friend Jonas, and got to meet his nice wife Gertrude and cute little daughter Wendy. We ate some delicious food!
Wendy was so sweet to Isaac and they got along really well.

Well, unless Isaac started screaming.

I had a conference I was going to in Madison, so I drove there everyday while the boys stayed in Milwaukee. They went to the beach at Lake Michigan one of the days.

Isaac also hit it off really well with Uncle Jonas. Evidently one day he was intent on following Jonas around everywhere, completely ignoring Papa.

Isaac got some sand on his face and got a little upset. Evidently he was not a huge fan of the waves either.

He warmed up to the beach though.

Isaac, don't point. It's rude.

I eventually caught up with everyone that evening. The guy on the left is Jonas's friend Albert, who is also from Burkina.

More group photos with Jonas.

Tooooo cute :)

We also met up with Henri's friend Pam in Madison one day. The men and kids braved a 1.5 hour drive and Pam braved a 2 hour drive, but we made it happen. If you are wondering why Mama's hair looks worse than usual, it's because the floodgates opened that particular afternoon. If you are a native Oregonian, I think it can be compared to the kind of rain that soaks through all of your clothes in less than a minute.

Pam got this egg thing that came out in just about the hugest crepe I have ever seen.

And here are some pictures from our trip back. We were supposed to get back to Eugene about 2 pm. Instead, due to a bunch of crazy flight delays and rerouting (instead of Milwaukee to Denver to Eugene, we went Milwaukee->Chicago->San Francisco-> Eugene), we returned at 11 am the next day. Good thing Papa took Monday off.

Isaac enjoyed the airports though. He ran around and thoroughly explored every part of them.

And now, we are very glad to finally be home! But hopefully we can travel again sometime soon. I'm pushing for Burkina Faso.