Leah's friends

There has been quite a few changes since i last wrote, 2 months ago.

It began with a phone call from the landlord and his wife; the landlord giving us 1 month notice and his wife saying we should stay, and that as she is the legal owner of the apartment we should listen to her. Preferring not to move out, I decided to pick her sides and see what would happen. A number of tense phone calls and text messages later, with both sides, and it ended up with both of them coming over, meeting me downstairs and the wife giving me the message that she was in agreement with her husband and we were to move out. The husband was 10m away and refusing to speak to me - but making sure his wife delivered the message.

So we moved, thankfully to another fantastic place, though a duplex with stairs between the two floors (not great with a recently begun walking child). We did get luck since we managed to bargain the new landlady down very easily by 15%. And it turns out the apartment comes with plenty of friends for Leah, solving the problem I last wrote about. It seems all of our neighbors have kids her age, and one of the neighbors even runs a daycare center of sorts!

Unlike most apartments where you come our of an elevator in the centre of a tower with apartments on all sides of you; our block has elevators on two ends and 10 appartments in a rown between the ends, with the walkway connecting them all on the outside; this means that all these young kids walk around between everyone's apartments and play together on the walkway, particularly outside our door where the walkway is particularly wide. The result is random kids coming into our apartment, our kid wondering into other apartments, and all the kids playing together in front of our front door half the day (we've even put some playmats out for everyone to play on).

Leah's always on the move now; it has been two months of non-stop walking and she'll soon work out how to run and stay with her sister (rather than trying to chase her and falling over) when they play together. She's usually got a coloring pen in her hand too, which is particularly dangerous with the nice walls, and our blackboard/whiteboard combo is covered in all kinds of colors on the wood and the actual boards!

Leah is also very noisy - talking all the time, though nothing understandable yet. She has clear opnions and voices them often, backing them up with her fingers in terms of what she wants or does not want; and is learning what an attitude is. This usually involves food - since she just eats and eats and eats, and then when you take the food away she expresses her opinion very strongly!

Now that Leah's walking and has an attitude, she is very much into playing and that makes life lots of fun, whether it is in the playroom, or in a shopping mall. From throwing balls into skittles to holding dolls. Though she hasn't yet got a favorite doll, we've already had multiple cases when Hannah and Leah both want to play with the same toys, and we've had to defuse things.

Her cough has cleared up thanks to some good old modern medicine and she seems incredibly smart as she decides what to do and then does it, but then I can't remember what Hannah was doing at that age, so it is hard to compare!