Shhhhh.

Everyone here is asleep, except for me. Karla and Eileen turned in about 8:30, and I stayed up to read a bit before bed. I've been working through a Christmas gift, It's the Crude, Dude by Linda McQuaig. It's a collection of history and theories that all point to her claim that the recent war in Iraq is all about the oil there and not about weapons or democracy. She makes the geological case that Iraq's oil is the last unclaimed patch of easy oil. Also that Cheney and Rumsfeld have had their eyes on it for years and have been planning on taking it since long before the 9/11 attacks. But even they get off relatively easily compared to the role of the big oil companies have had in meddling with the world. She's even a comfortable read. I'm so impressed, I'm even going to link toan article of hers - she writes for the Toronto Star.

My parents and sister and Dave are in Panama right now, only two days away from their long awaited arrival. The beer is already in the fridge and tomorrow I've got to set up the bed (priorities, eh). Eileen heads home tomorrow. The week has flown by. It's been a quiet week with lots of time spent playing with Aysha. Karla still doesn't feel ready to use the video camera yet, so there are no more movies in the works right now.

Speaking of movies, the other day I was waiting for Karla to finishe getting ready and I popped in our copy of the Triplettes of Belleville (which I was wathcing again as a possiblility for my film studies class at school). There is a series of scenes where the family dog barks at the trains as they pass by the house. Aysha could recognize that the tv was showing a dog, and would make her dog sign. (Actually, she was making the dog sign, which is her animal/excitement sign. Often the horses that pull carriages on the streets here get the dog sign and sometimes even birds do.) But she could recognize, by the picture and the barking sounds that it was a dog.

Aysha's walking is coming along. She is still careful, taking tiny steps as she moves along, but she is more confident now, needing to hold onto things less. Still not much in the way of words though. We met a mother and her son who was one day older than Aysha. He wasn't walking, but knew a few more words that our baby girl. The mom was a graduate of our school and spoke English well, but I suspect that at home, her son only hears Spanish. I'm sure once Aysha gets a little older, she'll get her Spanish and English figured out and be talking up a storm. She's never in a restaurant for more than a few minutes before she is scouting around the room looking for people to smile and wave at.