18 Months of Wild & Crazy

Lily turned 18 months old on Friday. I tried to get a cute picture of her to add to her baby book, but she was not interested at all. Then, I told her I would give her a cookie if she would stand in front of the door and she came running! It is amazing that at 18 months old she understood exactly what I said and made the decision to cooperate. She stood at the door for one picture while saying cookie over and over so I went ahead and let her have the cookie while I took the rest of the pictures.




Although she has been testing us lately and asserting her independence, she is still just the sweetest little nugget around. At 18 months Lily says about 40 different words, likes to pretend to talk on the phone, loves all animals and flowers, drags her bunny and gorilla stuffed animals around the house with her, loves to read books in our laps, wants to sing "row, row, row your boat" all day long, loves having after dinner dance parties and has been to 3 different countries on 3 different continents. She is such a JOY to us!

"I love her best when she is asleep and better still when she is awake."

Saving Sunday

Today was not the relaxing Sunday I was hoping for. Lily was a ticking time bomb today and things went down hill fast right after breakfast. She whined, cried, pouted, and threw herself on the floor the majority of the morning.

Nap time FINALLY came, but instead of her normal 3 hour nap she only slept for 1.5 hours and woke up crying, of course. I felt especially bad about Lily's grumpy mood today because it was Danny's only day off of work this week and I know he would have rather hung out with a happy baby.

We had to salvage our day somehow, so we loaded up the stroller to head to the beach and had the best time! Lily was a little angel and had a blast rolling around in the sand and trying to cover me with as much sand as her little hands could hold. The camels were out at the beach so Lily got to sit on one and pet it for a while which totally made her day. We spent almost 2 hours just sitting at the beach watching Lily play and it was so calm and peaceful. Just what we needed after the not so peaceful morning we had.






I am so glad we have these fun pictures of our day to look back on. I know in a couple of months when I look at them I won't remember the rough morning that led up to pictures. I will just remember Lily's
sandy little face and how happy we all were spending the afternoon at the beach.

Road Trip to Casablanca

Wednesday afternoon we set out on a 5 hour road trip to Casablanca. Danny had an appointment at the American Consulate to get his resident permit on Thursday morning, so Lily and I decided to go with him and see the Moroccan country side.

Lily is normally pretty good on road trips, but now that I sit in the backseat with her when we are all together she is a little stinker! She slept for the first hour and half of our trip but then woke up and the only thing that would keep her happy was cheerios. For the last 2 hours of the drive I had to hand her cheerios one by one. The same thing happened on the drive back to Agadir the next day.




We got to Casablanca around 5 pm so we hit rush hour traffic. Moroccan drivers are so crazy. Lanes, stoplights, pedestrians, mean nothing to them. To top it all off, there aren't posted street signs with street names and no one uses addresses so finding where you are going is really hard even when you are using GPS.


An hour later, we made it to the hotel. Another fun fact about Moroccans is that they LOVE babies. In the 10 minutes we were waiting in the lobby for Danny to check us in, Lily got kisses from 2 people, held by the concierge guys and got 4 chocolate chip muffins and 2 strawberries from the guy who was giving Moroccan tea and muffins to guests in the lobby.

We had dinner at the hotel because I did not want to get back in the car and deal with the craziness anymore (by craziness, I mean Lily and the other cars on the road). After dinner, Lily did a little dancing in the lobby.

The next morning Danny and Ahmed went to the consulate while Lily and I slept in and then went downstairs to have breakfast. Again, Lily got kisses and held by the ladies who were working that morning.



Danny and Ahmed got back to the hotel to pick us up around 9:30 and we headed out to do a little exploring before driving back to Agadir.

The first place we went was the Hassan II Mosque. This is the 3rd largest mosque in the world and the only one in Morocco that allows non Muslims to come inside. This place was so amazing! It took 6 years to build and everything was locally sourced. All the marble, granite, wood, metal, plaster came from Morocco and was hand carved by Moroccan artisans. The mosque can hold 25,000 people at one time and it has a retractable roof. Everything inside was just gorgeous!

After the mosque, we headed to the mall. It claims to be the largest mall in Africa and I love a good mall. It was actually really nice. It reminded me a lot of the Galleria or Northpark. Super fancy stores like Gucci and Prada but also normal stuff like Zara, Gap, etc. We didn't need anything so all I ended up buying were two pairs of shorts at Gap, a bib and spoons for Lily and some french macaroons.

Ater a quick lunch in the food court, we headed back to Agadir. It was a short trip and tough being in the car so long with Lily, but I am glad we got to check out Casablanca. It probably isn't a place I would want to go back to, but it was fun for a day!

Beach Babe

We took advantage of the beautiful weather this morning and made the 10 minute walk from our house to the beach to play. It is still cool here in the mornings and evenings so the water was too cold, but the sand was perfect. Lily had the best time playing in the sand and digging for rocks.

The First Week

We are one week into our Moroccan life and so far, so good! Danny went back to work on Monday. I am not really super comfortable going out and about alone yet so Lily and I really didn't do much during the week besides play outside in the garden.





We have a driver (Ahmed) and a house helper (Omar) who are really great. Ahmed speaks really great english, so he is able to translate everything for us. He doesn't think his english is good enough so he wants me to teach him english and he will teach me french. I feel like we have already learned so much french just in the one week we have been here. It is so nice to be able to learn from him! Omar doesn't speak much english so we mostly communicate with hand signals. He is at the house all day with Lily and I and takes care of the pool and all the other outside stuff. He is such a nice guy. At 5 pm he washes up and puts all his tools away and picks flowers for Lily and walks around the garden with her. She has him wrapped around her little finger! Also, between 4-5 everyday, two guys riding camels walk down our street on the way to the beach. Lily and I were outside on Tuesday when we saw it for the first time and then Danny and I saw them again today. They try and make it down to the beach so tourists can ride the camels at sunset like Danny and I did on our first trip here. I love seeing them walk down our street! I will try and get some pictures of them soon.







Danny stayed home from work on Friday morning so we could go to the souk (the outdoor market) on a weekday when it isn't so busy. The first place we stopped was to look at rugs. We just wanted to look and see what they had but those Moroccans like to make a deal so we ended up walking out with a new rug for our bedroom! They probably pulled out 20 rugs for me to look at and once I found the one I liked best they haggled with Danny for at least 20 minutes. Situations like that literally make me start sweating but Danny did a great job and talked them down to a reasonable price. We have been assured that Moroccans like to haggle and they aren't offended when you try and negotiate the price down. At the end of the purchase, they even threw in a little carpet square for Lily, haha! Hopefully they will remember us the next time we go look for a rug and just give us a low price right off the bat.



Today Ahmed came to pick us up and took us up in the mountains to a village called Immouzer where there is a little waterfall and a place to eat lunch. While we were there, an old Berber man who works for tips at the waterfall decided to show off for us by jumping from a rock into the freezing cold water.






We stayed to have a lamb tagine for lunch at the waterfall restaurant. A tagine is a Moroccan clay pot that you put either chicken, lamb, or goat and vegetables in and then cook it over coals. It is what Moroccans typically cook their meals in.




 We got back home around 3pm and had some moroccan tea out on the patio and enjoyed the perfect weather here. I am pretty sure we are going to be spending a lot of our time at home out on the patio. Lily wakes up from her afternoon nap, goes to sliding door and says,  "side, peas", which translates to outside, please.



She seems pretty happy here!