At home on a Tuesday morning

I snapped a few pictures of the kids at home this morning. I hope they bring a little pre-New Year's cheer! Topi looks so brooding and thoughtful. Must be because he wanted to watch Cars for the umpteenth time and I said no. :)

Lina has been lifting herself up for two months, now. Even looking at these photos just a month ago (Nov 08) she seems so big. While home in the US she started making attempts at crawling, which sent her backwards. I'll post photos of our trip soon!

October 1, 2008

Lina can lift her head!

Pink Sweater

Lina in her pretty pink sweater from Auntie/Cousin Barbara.

Devrim and Lina

September 12, 2008

2 months old

Little Lina Joan is now 2 months old!

Lina has started to smile! It's hard to get a wiggly baby to stop moving to capture it, though, so we did the best we could. It is so exciting to see her take in her world more and more each day.


And here she is enjoying her orange towel after a bath. It seems just like yesterday that she was born, and now she's just about two months old on the 13th!

Recent videos

Here are a couple recent videos of Topi and Lina. One is from our trip to Kerpe a couple weeks ago where he chased a bottle cap around in the water. The other is of Lina at 10 days old.

Kerpe

After posting about Christmas in Germany, here are some pictures from our week in Kerpe on the Black Sea. It's only an hour away from home, and though we stayed a week, we'd recommend day trips or staying at the Nicomedia hotel. We weren't happy with our rental apartments (two because we left the first one after a night). But we weren't there to sleep, we were there to beach! And Topi had the most fun, though Lina was a close second who slept through it all. The rest are on Flickr.

Wishful thinking

A little late, but these photos from our trip to Germany during Christmas are so cute that I have to post them now. Hard for me to believe Topi was that small just a few months ago! He's all legs and arms, now! Clara took us on a tour of her 'backyard', which was crystallized with ice. Sounds fabulous right now in this August heat.

3 weeks

Today on a scorching hot day I'm posting pictures of Lina at 3 weeks. She's now 35 days old, and weighed in this morning at 5.5 kg (12.125 lbs) and 57 cm (22.44"). We enjoyed a visit from our friends Karrie and Burcak, who took these photos of us. More photos coming of Topi and Lina "hugging"... stay tuned.

Lina Joan's Birth Announcement

I want to have it printed - need to check out foto.com's options for printing and shipping - and then will try to mail out copies!

Topi hugging Lina

(In a rare moment when he's not trying to grab her feet or whap her on the head. Sigh.)

Lina Joan

On Sunday, July 13, 2008 we welcomed Lina Joan into the world. She weighed 4.25 kg (9.3lbs), and was 54cm (21 1/4") long. I am happy to say I had another natural delivery in Turkey, and labored at home before going to the hospital. I wouldn't say the second one was easier, but I did have more focus and patience, and less stress because I stayed home as long as I could. By the time we got to the hospital (5 minutes away), I delivered Lina Joan within an hour of checking in. Happy daddy Devrim was able to attend the birth again, and I had the angelic assistance of Damaris at the end while I was in transition and tolerating hospital protocol. So now there are two TWO babies we can call our own -- Evren Toprak is 21 months and transitioning into being a big brother really well... he is fascinated by Lina Joan.

Lina's name comes from two places. The first is from a dream I had when I was 3 months pregnant and the baby told me her name, Ina. Inspired by the name and the significance of being spoken to in the dream, I wrote a story called Ina is Born. After working on the story, I felt I couldn't name the baby Ina because I had created a character that took on a life of its own. After some thought, Lina became our name of choice because of its simplicity, and relation to the dream. Lina, according to several sources, comes from Spanish, Italian, and Arabic, where in Arabic it means tender and light. Joan was my mother's first name, and I feel so proud that I can name my daughter after her. I appreciate my family being open to the use of her name -- it is very special to me and I wouldn't have named her that if I felt anyone would be uncomfortable by it. It is just one of many ways to pass on family history, especially because as a baby girl, she has roots in Christianity, Judaism, and Islam.

Thanks to everyone for the nice email -- hopefully I'll be able to reply to everyone soon!

new haircut

{Before}

{After}

After months of not doing anything with it, I chopped my hair off today, courtesy of the first female hairstylist I've been to in Turkey. I tried not to express my surprise that the woman who did my brows was also cutting my hair, but in Turkey it is so so rare to have a female hairstylist. For reasons I can't understand, they are not trusted and reputably bad here. Regardless of what Turkish people think, I liked having her because we TALKED about my haircut as she was doing it... she asked my opinion and allowed me to look in the mirror several times to see the back and sides as she was cutting. Rather than the machismo male hairdresser who hardly looks at the hair he is cutting, ensuring that nearly all women have the same haircut everywhere, she was chatty and great. This was my treat pre-baby, to have my hair cut, and with less than a month to go, I went to the nearest salon in the neighborhood. Lucky me to also get a haircut I like! Good thing I brought a picture, though... when you tell a hairdresser here you want short hair, you never know what you might get. I kept getting asked if I was sure I wanted it that short. Yes, indeed. Thank you very much.

Erdek

The Deniz family escaped for a long weekend to Erdek, a seaside town about two hours away from Bursa. It was quiet, not crowded, and warm. Topi got his first taste of the sea (his first dip into water was Lake Michigan), and was able to run around freely because there was very limited car traffic. We came back very relaxed, and just in time for Devrim to go to Koln, Germany for three weeks starting next Tuesday. Let's hope Topi's little sister doesn't want to show up early! The little girl with Topi is Lal, the daughter of our friends Koksal and Semra, and after some encouragement, they became friends. :)

the stare

hugging curious george (sort of) below!

Sunday afternoon

Our friends Koksal and Semra came from Istanbul a few weeks ago and we went out for a barbecue, where they took some pictures of Topi. I can't believe he's 19 months old!