Happy 4th

This past weekend we celebrated the Fourth of July and also Katarina turning 4 months old. These pictures were all taken on the 4th of July. As my baby is growing so fast, I thought I ought to skip ahead and post some recent pictures rather than continuing on my quest to chronical our life a month behind. It's now July, and I haven't shared any pictures from June (and, in fact, haven't even finished all of May).

Katarina smiles and laughs often now, especially at her big sisters. She smiles with her whole face, including her tongue. I just love little baby tongues! Her giggles began just recently and are very cute. She also exercises her voice with adorable coos.

We went to the church 4th of July cookout and fireworks show with Lolo and Lola. We saw Ninong, Ninang, Cousin Steven, and many other friends there as well.

These pictures are of Kätchen watching the lights and toys on her playgym. While toys are very interesting, people (chiefly Mommy and big sisters) bring out all her smiles and giggles. You can see in these pictures that she usually brings her hands to midline, and she will entertain herself for several minutes just examining (and tasting, and talking to) her fingers. She is almost constantly drooling and gnawing on her clothes these days, too. Ah, teething!

Katarina has always been very alert, and she developed neck muscles months ago to hold her head and turn it so she can look around. In her efforts to observe the world, Katarina has also been doing crunches, which are gradually turning into sit-ups. What a strong baby!

Riverfest - Memorial Day Weekend

Little Rock hosts Riverfest downtown every Memorial Day Weekend. We look forward to this weekend each year, and we had a blast even though we were sad that Trout Fishing did not perform this year.

The kids' favorite performance, by far, was Monster Shop Bump'n, a show based on 1990's dance music with hip-hop and break-dancing, including impersonations of Vanilla Ice and MC Hammer. We watched Monster Shop three or four times that weekend. Gabi still occasionally sings "All the Single Ladies," and both girls love to do the "handshakes" they learned at the show (especially "high five... turkey!" - you'll have to ask them). At the end of each performance, the they invited the kids on stage and led them through various old-school dance moves. Gabi loved dancing on stage!

We also frequented the International stage, where we saw the Irish dancers again plus new acts such as Mexican folk dances. Bella was especially enthralled by the Kenya Safari Acrobats; she excitedly told me that they do gymnastics like she does! When the acrobats invited the kids to do the limbo, Bella was the first kid on stage and happily mingled in the growing crowd... until they pulled her to the front of the line and asked her to go under the limbo pole first, at which point she was overwhelmed and froze. Maybe next year she can try it again.

Brian and Terri Kinder, a local children's music artist, was also high on the list of shows the girls' wanted to see repeatedly. During one performance, they invited the kids to bring their grandmothers on stage with them, and the grandmothers got to show the kids how to do dance moves such as the Twist and the Egyptian.

Bella and Gabi enjoyed the drum tent, too, although it was a bit loud for the baby.

Of course, no trip downtown on a hot day would be complete without a run through the fountain!

The kids also made art projects (which, consequentially, resulted in Bella covered in glitter).

We enjoyed tasty carnival food.

We watched many music, dance, and acrobatic performances with friends.

The kids even saw some animals at the Heifer International booth.

And at the conclusion of the festival, we watched fireworks over the river. What a fun weekend!

Gabi's drawing

Since I'm behind on sorting pictures, I'll post a few of Gabi's drawings that I scanned. I love her shading on this ball!

Also, Gabi used this scrap piece of cardboard to write a letter to Daddy. Can you see the boxes that she drew? I'm impressed with her perspective, though the yellow is hard to see.

Greek Food Fest

And after much delay, I have returned to bring you pictures and videos from the Greek Food Fest at the local Orthodox church the fourth weekend in May.

While I do look forward to the yummy gyros, lamb, souvlaki k-bobs, and baklava, the dancing entertainment is probably the highlight of this festival for our family. The Micro (pronounced "mee-crow") Greek dancers were adorable:

Bella danced along with the Greek circle-dances:

Gabi especially liked the Dabkeh (Middle Eastern) dancers (which she called the "duckie dancers"). I don't think I took a still photo of the Dabkeh dancers, but you can see a short clip at the beginning of the first video below. Here she posed with a young Indian dancer:

Of course, we loved the Irish dancing!

Even Katarina enjoyed the costumes, music, and dancing:

The kids wanted to go back all three hot days to see more dancing! They were hoping to get to dance in the free style dance at the end of the third day, but the official dancers were too exhausted to lead the free style and concluded early.

For your enjoyment, here are a few videos of the dancing that we saw. The first is a compilation of various Greek, Indian, and Middle-Eastern (Turkish, etc.) dances. I have more footage of these dances, but for some reason I put this together before copying all the clips from the new video camera.



The second video is a soft-shoe Irish dance, and the final one is a hard-shoe Irish dance.