Veddy veddy sho much!

Yikealo's command of English grows stronger every day. He uses very little Amharic any more, which makes me very sad, and yet it's fun to hear him pick up more of our language too. There are a few things that he says that just make us laugh though - like the way that he pronounces "sleeper" ("a-city-peu") - and the way that he turns his verbs and nouns around (like when he tells me that he needs to "potty go!") My personal favorite "Yikealo-ism" is when he squeezes me tightly around the neck, kisses my cheek and says in a fervent voice, "Veddy, veddy sho much!" That's his way of repeating what he's heard us say: "I love you so very, very much." I somehow think that we might still be saying "veddy veddy sho much" twenty years from now - just one of those embarrassing family sayings that bring you strange looks from anyone else!

I went back to work this week - just two days a week - and I'm amazed at how smoothly it went. I've been dreading even the thought of work for months, and I've said repeatedly that if it weren't for the fact that I work for the family business, I wouldn't have even considered it. I'm the buyer/showroom designer for the Maibach family's furniture store, and I actually had a lot of fun hanging pictures and moving furniture around again. Yikealo had a lot of fun at his Aunt Susan's house, hanging out with his cousins and playing in the leaves. We'll see how it goes over the next few weeks, but so far, it's been much better than expected. He still uses the Amharic word for work - "sarra" - and he informed me the other day that Ababa went to sarra, Mama went to a different sarra, and Yikealo went to sarra at Susan's house. Hmmmm....I somehow doubt that Susan would agree with that assessment of his time at her house!

Now for a few pictures for everybody: I finally got a new camera this week to replace my old one which has been having some issues ever since we went to Ethiopia - it just got grabbed out of my hands and smashed around a few too many times by all of the little darlings at HH! Anyway, so far I've been loving the new one, although Yikealo is highly uncooperative when it comes to me taking his picture. If I ask him to smile, I generally get something like this:



















Attractive, isn't it? Of course, I usually get a similar reaction from his father, so I shouldn't be surprised by this type of behavior. I have managed to get a couple of cute ones though, so here they are!