Aliyah's April

    One of our favorite parts of parenthood is having the opportunity to watch Aliyah grow and change. She is already so different compared to 5 months ago, when she was born. She is rapidly developing new skills as she explores her little world. It is so fun to watch. :) During the month of April, Aliyah went on an epic streak of "firsts". For the benefit of all of our family and friends who are an ocean away from us...here's what you missed:

April 2
     Following several weeks of incessant, unsuccessful attempts, Aliyah finally managed to overcome the obstacle of her own elbow and rolled over by herself. This achievement brought her so much happiness that it is still all she wants to do when we lay her down.

April 5
    Prior to this date we may have heard Aliyah giggle every now and then; however, this was the first day on which her laugher was lengthy and uncontrollable. Her laughter is now frequent. She gets especially giggly when we kiss her belly.

April 8
     Aliyah met her uncle Steve and "uncle" Justin (Dave's cousin) for the first time. We had a great visit with them, and they seemed to enjoy Aliyah's company on our little road trip. By the end of their visit, they even agreed to babysit Aliyah so that we could go out on a date for the first time since Dave's mom came to visit right after Aliyah was born!!!

April 11
    Aliyah hiked her first mountain! We were so excited to return to the same Berber village that we traveled to in February of 2013. Aliyah only complained once during the 2-hour hike to this self-sustaining village...and it was merely to inform us that we had overdressed her for the hike. We spent the night in a brand new guest house. The next morning, as we feasted on homemade blackberry and cactus fruit jams, we celebrated Aliyah's 5-month birthday on the rooftop terrace where we were surrounded by snowcapped mountains. Beautiful.

April 12
     Aliyah experienced Marrakech for the first time. From her perspective, the highlight of Marrakech was starring at all of the Moroccan lights. From our perspective, the highlight of Marrakech was two days of relaxation and good food.

April 14
     We spent the night in a beautiful riad at the top of the Ouzoud waterfall. While she may have wanted to, Aliyah was not allowed to join Dave, Steve, and Justin in their adventure of jumping off the cliffs at the face of the waterfall. Nevertheless, she did dangerously cross the river in Nicole's arms. She also saw her first Moroccan monkey.

April 18
    We were so ecstatic about Aliyah's imminent mobility that we bought a gigantic carpet to cover the tile on our living room floor. Immediately after placing her on the carpet, Aliyah moved herself entirely across the length of it! Unfortunately, she had only acquired the sudden ability to move backwards...so she was an emotional wreck when she realized that the toy she was working so hard to reach was moving further and further away from her each time she moved. Aliyah has since mastered the backwards "crawl", but she is still visibly and frustratingly in pursuit of the ability to move forward.

April 21
     With Aliyah's recent interest in chewing everything, we knew that she would be getting her teeth soon. Nevertheless, we were shocked that there was no crying or fussing to accompany her bottom right, central incisor tooth cutting through her gums on this date. She was so happy that we may not have even noticed the tooth if her nanny, Chaibia, hadn't told us to check it out! The crying and fever did not come until...

April 24
     ....her second tooth (bottom left, central incisor tooth) sprouted through her gums!!! Aliyah officially has teeth. :)

April 25
     Aliyah has been extremely curious about the things that we put into our mouths for at least a month now. She has been practically begging us to share our food with her! We've known that she has been ready to start solid foods for a while, and our intent was to start them with her much earlier than this... but our doctor asked us to hold off until her excema cleared up a bit. Thankfully, her excema improved significantly following the cutting of her two teeth, so we introduced her to rice cereal. She loves real food!

 -David, Nicole, & Aliyah

Chocolate & Cheese

     When we booked our trip to Amsterdam and Brugge a few months ago, we knew that this trip would be so different from any of our past vacations. It's no longer just the two of us... now there's a third Grudda who communicates frequently through crying tantrums, necessitates more luggage than both of us combined, and mandates food/attention every three hours. We maintained the realistic expectation that any number of disasterous things may happen during our trip (particularly on the flight).

     As it turns out, Aliyah was born to travel the world. While Nicole's ears were painfully popping during take-off and landing times (something she still has not gotten used to), Aliyah was smiling uncontrollably at all of the new faces surrounding her on the plane. Amazingly, she also fell asleep quickly and peacefully for all of her naps regardless of where she was: in Nicole's arms, strapped in the Ergo, lying down in a hotel pack-and-play, or bundled up in the stroller. The cold didn't bother her, and her crying tantrums were almost nonexistent for the entire trip. Aliyah's nonchalant manner allowed us to really enjoy our first family-of-three vacation.

Naturally - the moment that we took out the camera for our "first plane ride" photo happened to be the only moment  during the flight where Aliyah wasn't smiling, eating, or sleeping. We also couldn't get her to look at the camera...

     Our favorite part of Amsterdam was the cheese!! There are cheese stores everywhere, and every single one of them offers free samples. We never knew that cheese came in so many different flavors: pesto, cumin, garlic, arugula, red pepper, herb, mushroom, asparagus, lavender, honey, thyme, olive, walnut, nettle, etc.. They were all so delicious! 

    We also visited the Anne Frank House, where Aliyah's cuteness granted us immediate access in spite of the long line. It was surreal to walk through such a minuscule hiding place, where eight people lived in hiding for two years.

We may or may not have walked around Vondelpark for over an hour looking for this sign...  which, for your information, is not where it is located

On the train en route to Belgium!

     In Brugge, the cheese shops were replaced with chocolate shops! We couldn't find any chocolate samples, but we did make sure to spend every last euro coin we had on delicious chocolate truffles. When we weren't feasting on chocolate...we were wandering around The Minnewater, eating Flemmish rabbit/duck, and complaining that the Belgian waffle "breakfast" restaurant didn't open until 11:00a.m.

A random man in Belgium stopped to tell Nicole that she was "the woman carrying the little grizzly bear"

We made it back to Casablanca in time to celebrate Dave's 29th birthday in warmer weather.  

Ironically, Dave got "chocolate" pie & "cheese"-its for his birthday

-David & Nicole

Five

     It's official: We will be returning to GWA for year five. Dave will be returning to his position as finance manager. He also hopes to commence working toward his masters. Considering Aliyah, Nicole decided to reject her offer to return to a full-time, third-grade position. Instead, she is debating between two different contract options: a 1-year leave of absence (implying our intent to stay even beyond year five) or a part-time elementary P.E. teacher. Since the details for the P.E. position have yet to be finalized Nicole has not signed a contract...but we're coming back regardless!

     For those of you who assume that it was easy for us to commit to longevity here in Morocco due to the fact that life here is luxurious and uncomplicated, you are severely mistaken. This wasn't an easy decision to make, and life here is full of frustrations and challenges. While we love most things about our lives here, we experience plenty of days where we hate it as well. The emotional intensity of this love-hate relationship is precisely what makes living internationally so difficult. Yet, we ultimately believe that our choice to live abroad is the best for our family right now. Our experiences here have changed us, for better or worse; and we are learning to appreciate and respect the challenges associated with adapting to this culture. But it's still hard...

     It is hard to squeeze our lives into suitcases, to expect horrible travel experiences, to be an ocean away from family, to watch the people we love in America move on with their lives without us, to miss out on big events (i.e. weddings, births, and funerals), to be away for the holidays, to not have any good church options, to know that the friends we make here might leave us behind, to say goodbye over and over, to speak and understand French. Living here, it is harder to stick to a schedule, grocery shop, pay bills, depend on businesses, run errands, and drive. We sacrifice so much to live here, and it is difficult to adapt to the many differences between Moroccan and American cultures.
   
So why are we staying? 

     1. George Washington Academy. The benefit to us both working for GWA is that we share all of the same work hours and vacations (and there's a lot of vacations since we work at a school!). Dave isn't a teacher, so if we were to leave it's likely that we will never find positions that are conveniently within the same "company" again. More importantly, we each have jobs at GWA which match our degrees and our interests. There are certainly frustrating aspects of our jobs... but, overall, we love what we do.
     Dave has developed a strong reputation as a GWA soccer coach. He and his co-coach, Dusty, led the middle school soccer team to their championship three years in a row. They were promoted to varsity coaches this year, where they hope to continue their winning streak. Dusty, along with many of our our other co-workers, have become close friends. We have developed more meaningful friendships here than we ever had while living in Maine.
     As a family, GWA is a great place for us as well. There is a creche (child care program) which is conveniently located on the GWA campus. For about $8/day, we will be able to leave Aliyah in the care of three dependable Moroccans. We can walk over to see her at any point during the day. Should we stay long enough for Aliyah to reach school-age, she will be able to attend GWA for free due to the fact that we are both employees of the school. This means that she would get a private, trilingual education at an American accredited school.

     2. Morocco. There are so many things that we love about Morocco. We love that we live so close to the beach (where there's great surfing opportunities for Dave), that living here allows us to travel the world so cheaply, and that life here is always full of adventures and new experiences. Most of all, however, we love the people. Moroccans are the most hospitable people we have ever met, and we cherish every Moroccan friend that we have been blessed with:
      We have made it evident through our blog before how close we are with our landlord and his family. Said literally changed his work schedule three years ago simply so that he could commit to playing soccer with David twice a week. They bring us food incessantly, and they are always looking for ways that they can help us (Said even bought Nicole maxi pads one time, thinking that this was the cause of an emotional "culture shock" day). They consider us to be their family...and we feel very much the same way. To Aliyah, they are "Jiddee" and "Jiddah" (Grandpa and Grandma).
     Even the random Moroccans that we see around Dar Bouazza have become familiar friends, of sorts:

• Our mechanic calls us each year to wish us a Merry Christmas. Also, his wife hand-sewed a beautiful jalaba for Aliyah and a Moroccan tunic for Nicole.
• Our seasonal neighbors commenced a friendship with us the day that they went out of their way to fix the flat tire on our car while we were gone, without telling us.
• The fruit and vegetable guy always greets us and tries to teach Nicole Arabic.
• The guy at the local pharmacy took a moment to pray for our us in order to ask that God would bless us with a healthy baby.
• Our incredibly talented tailor greets us happily every time we walk by his shop.

     George Washington Academy and Morocco are certainly two great reasons for renewing our contracts; however, the primary reason we are choosing not to leave is because we feel a peace about staying. For now, this is where God wants us to be....so this is where we plan to stay.

-David, Nicole, & Aliyah

Parenting

      We have been parents for three months now...and we still have absolutely no idea what we are doing. We've read a handful of great parenting books, but we've discovered that their advice is often contradicting. We are also surrounded by a fantastic support network, yet we have received dozens of different answers to each question we have asked. In the end, we've been forced to rely on our own instincts because parenting is simply not all black and white. God created Aliyah to be a beautifully unique individual, meaning she is never going to perfectly conform to what the books say. Sometimes we feel like we're awesome at parenting or that we've finally figured her out...and other times we feel like we've completely failed. Nevertheless, we feel thoroughly blessed to be able to learn and grow in our new life with Aliyah.

      One challenge that we did not anticipate is how much we would be affected by the tension between Moroccan and American parenting styles. Living directly above a Moroccan family, we been forced to wrestle with this cultural difference more than most:

• We hear "hashouma" (shame on you) each time we take Aliyah near an open refrigerator/window, or when we take her for a walk outside (regardless of how bundled up she seems to be).

• After hearing Aliyah cry for the first time, we received a lecture about how Nicole needed to ensure that she was switching sides when nursing because "one side contains water and the other side contains milk". They were concerned that Aliyah was not getting enough of one or the other. 

• We were told that we needed to put mascara and eye-liner on Aliyah in order to ensure that she grows up with dark features.

• We were encouraged to feed Aliyah over-sweetened mint tea almost immediately after she was born. 

• We received a shocked reaction to the fact that Aliyah sleeps in her own room, by herself. We were advised to let her sleep in bed with us each night instead. 

     We love our Moroccan friends, and we value their experience and wisdom; however, there will always be points of disagreement that they will never fully understand since they lack familiarity with our American culture. We've gotten really good about gracefully accepting their judgements and their well-intended words of advice. We've also tried to find humor in the cultural differences, as opposed to being frustrated by them. And in spite of our contrastive perspectives on parenting, we still consider our Moroccan friends to be "family". They love Aliyah just as much as we do.

     We may have absolutely no idea how to be parents, but we must be doing something right because Aliyah is growing well and has developed quite the personality. At three months old: She can belch and fart louder than most grown men, and she smiles all the time. She loves to stare at bright lights, her giraffe toys, and our Christmas tree (yep, it's still up). She spends the first 30 minutes of her day watching/smiling at Dave as he gets ready for work, and she spends at least 5 minutes "talking" to him when he gets home from work each day. We love her a lot, and we're pretty sure she loves us too. :)

1st time rolling over - caught on camera!

-David, Nicole, & Aliyah