I'm sitting here in my parents lake house, while Luke naps with some free time and wanted to see the last time I wrote something here and was shocked as usual to discover it has been more than six months! :O
Luke is changing overnight in every way! He is still quite the chatterbox with people he is familiar. He can use 6 word sentences in English and Portuguese and even remembers what language to speak to different people in his life! It's incredible. I don't see him struggle to switch language when Joel asks something in Portuguese and then a minute later I ask something different in English. Some people would tell us that when Luke started to speak he would be confused with two languages but that is completely inaccurate. He doesn't miss a beat. You definitely learn what you (the parent) say a lot when your child is learning to speak. For a long time he was using "How about...?" all the time. (How about the green car? How about a banana? etc) Recently he's caught on to "oh my goodness" and it's the cutest thing. He can say things that he likes. In a video I sent to Joel while he was on a business trip in June, I was thinking he would say something like Hi papa, I love you. Instead his script went something like this. "Hi Papa. Good morning. I like pretzels, clementinas (clementines), chicken nuggets, and cottage cheese. Push the red button".
Luke loves to steal everybody's noses and switch them with his. He recently figured out how to jump off of two feet, and is slowly started to become more interested in climbing up on things, though he is still quite cautious with his movements. (Cue to mommy nervousness!) HE loves to sing and dance to ring around the rosie and make everyone fall down, and only recently started falling down himself, as well. He can learn the words to simple kids songs so quickly like itsy bitsy spider. Or this little piggy went to market, sometimes all of his toes go to market but it's adorable. He is counting now in both languages to 10, usually accurately, once in a while he skips a few letters or numbers. In English his F sounds like S and it's the cutest. Instead of fish it sounds like "sish" or five "sive", etc. His teachers at school still say he is so shy but he would play with toys all day if they let him. When he falls down and gets hurt, he will go over what happened and usually stop crying quickly. He has phases of not wanting to leave mommy (strangely not for school) but for grammy or avos. Usually he seems to get over it quickly, once he is distracted. He LOVES opening presents and singing the happy birthday song. His likes and dislikes with food are changing constantly. Loves bread and the next day won't touch it, same with fruits/veggies. He loves to pretend to be on the phone with someone, or better yet he asks to call people who he wants to talk to. Sometimes they are in another time zone and sleeping but when we can we do try to make a lot of calls for him to say hello. :) He adores animals and making animal sounds, driving his race car around the house, running around the house holding hands with mom/dad. Lately he is really starting to enjoy playing with Mel. Climbing under her legs, throwing her toys, petting her, brushing her, etc. It is the cutest to see them forming their friendship. He LOVES playing in the water at the beach. He also loves to play in the sand. We recently discovered a park, not too far from our house which has sand and we can ride our bikes there and take Mel. It opened recently and he loves to play in the sand there.
Ok, now let me go through my photos to remember what we have done since January.
I talk about Luke having a babysitter in our previous post, she was very unreliable and I ended up finding a few different people to come until that covid started to calm down again. We found a lovely high school neighbor to come in the afternoons and a great and extremely professional and caring babysitter to come the other times. A few times Joel also worked from home with Luke in a bind. Then we sent him back to school in time for Carnval or the middle of February. He had another set of Hand Foot and Mouth Disease not long after he got back which was so frustrating, but at least we knew exactly what was going on since he had it in October and knew what was coming.
In late March, my parents came to celebrate Luke's birthday and spend nearly 6 weeks with us! We did a short trip to the Douro Region and stayed in an "adventure house" there. The house was a previous wine storage area and located on a small family winery. On our way there we explored the town of Peso da Regua, crossing the beautiful bridge over the Douro, enjoyed the park, and walkway along the river. Driving through some of the narrow villages to get to the adventure house in the Douro was quite stressful for me, but I was very grateful my car has a feature that doesn't let the car rollback if I'm starting in first gear. That was very helpful. My kia rio isn't very big at all (especially for American standards :P ) but I can't imagine taking a car any bigger than mine and navigating those turns and corners. We did make it without any new scratches or bumps on the car. We did a winery tour of Quinta da Pachecha, which is all over social media for their super size wine barrels that you can sleep in! The winery tour was great and Luke did a good job listening and not disturbing the crowd. He made great friends with the winery dog.
The next day was Luke's Second Birthday Party! We had a small celebration in our backyard with some close friends and all of Luke's grandparents together. I baked a cake, and Joel did an awesome job sculpting and creating a Lightning Mcqueen cake. He was so excited to open presents and play with his new toys. We made stuffed mushrooms, had a charcuterie board, deviled eggs, guacamole, and other snacks.
Luke also had a cute celebration of his birthday at school where they took the sweetest pictures of him holding up one finger on each hand, and in the video they sent where they are singing him happy birthday, he looks so excited to hear everyone singing and looking at him.
Luke enjoyed his first ever "Feira do Março" or in the US what we would call the county fair. He loved going on the rides, and he didn't ever want them to end. Luckily he was totally happy just sitting in them even without them running. We went on a weekday, during the day time so it was empty so he had the place to himself.
My parents did a side trip to Toulouse to see our friends there. Then came back and we all headed to the Algarve for Easter week and for Cristina & Ricardo's wedding. It was so nice to have some beautiful days in the sunshine and see the family! We enjoyed taking my parents to Lagos and hiking around the beautiful cliffs there and Luke was crazy, I mean CRAZY about swimming in the water. Even though it was a little chilly, that boy didn't want to get out!
My parents went from Algarve to spend a few days in Sevilla Spain. Joel was able to work from "home" for a day in Algarve, so it was nice to spend a little more time there than our usual trips. Especially considering the price of fuel (plus tolls) to get there. Luke did so well on the drives to and from Algarve! Which was perfect since he had some long road trips coming up for his trip to the US!
My parents came back just in time for the Aveiro Marathon. Joel ran the half marathon and I ran a 10k race. I was super pleased with my result and it has me thinking maybe I should put a little more effort into my trainings and see where it leads me. Leading up to the race I would run twice a week, once was a 5k run, and the other was an interval run. (running a challenging pace for a certain time, recovering, and back to the challenging pace). Joel had me try this kind of run, and I honestly thought I was going to die the first time I tried it. Well they never got easy, but they did get easier, and we were able to change my challenging pace to a faster one. The weather for the race was perfect, a little bit cloudy but not raining. I always found some people I could try and catch and went on my merry way! I hadn't done a race since 2012 in Pohang South Korea, when I dont' think I trained at all and don't even remember my time? The 10k race course was not actually 10k according to everyone's watch, but I think if it was a 10k my time would be under 51 minutes.
After we showered and changed, we headed straight to Soito for the famous Senora da Granja festival. The weather was supposed to be raining and we even considered not going as it would not be so much fun for Luke trying to keep him under the rain tent and keep him dry and warm, but the weather worked out and we had a great time. He had some fun time with his cousin and my parents always enjoy their Soito visits.
The day after we got home from Soito, they headed back home. Not long after they headed back, we seemed to pass around some viruses from daycare for over a month between the three of us. We had a public holiday on a Thursday and Joel worked from Soito on Friday and then Joel and I spend the weekend in Serra da Estrela. Unfortunately this was the start of our sicknesses and we both were in a lot of pain with the altitude gain we didn't get to enjoy it as much as we hoped to. But it did allow us to get some nice rest while Joel's parents got up with Luke all night long.
In early June a good family friend, Jean came to visit us before her group tour of Spain. We had so much fun showing her around and being a tourist in our own city.
We also got to enjoy several different activities for Children's Day including a lovely festival the city hall arranged, and a baby yoga class. It's so much fun to bring Luke to these events now that they are actually happening and having a great time at them.
We headed to the US on June 16th and our first stop was a couple of days in Chicago. We had a connection in Amsterdam and then the long flight to Chicago. Luke did really well on the plane. He didn't sleep very much, but he was totally fine being in his seat, doing different activities, eating snacks, etc. He never cried or disrupted anyone.
Chicago was a city that had cheap ish flights and not too many stops from Portugal, and we were both curious to visit. I had visited Chicago when I was in 9th grade I believe. I don't remember too much except going on the architectural boat tour and it was soooo steamy hot, I fell asleep for most of it. So I didn't have any expectations for it and Joel and I found it to be a really lovely city. Luke woke up around 330am the first morning, so we got to enjoy a sunrise over Lake Michigan. At 5 something am, it felt like the city was already so alive. There were a few groups of people ending their night out on the beach with some music playing and dancing. There was a beach cleaning tractor which Luke obviously was in love with watching. The water was quite calm, and not as cold as I was expecting. We dipped our toes in for a few minutes. There were lots of runners and cyclists as well. We started all of our days with morning runs and beach visits, luckily the wake up time slowly improved over the next few days. We were also crashing really early so weren't completely exhausted with Luke's early wake ups.
There was an incredible park near the hotel that had sooo many creative features. It was fun to see Luke exploring everything. That park was also next to the Chicago water tower and a fire station which kept their garage door open. When we were checking out the trucks, they came out and invited us in and offered to let us look around, then had to answer a call. The look on Luke's face was so magical watching them hop in the truck and the sirens starting. We also headed down to the navy pier and then to have the Chicago famous deep dish pizza. In the afternoon we had a boat tour, and I was happy to catch more of the interesting facts this time around. :P Luckily there was also a covered area so we could stay in the shade.
The next day we visited the famous Chicago Bean and Millenium park as well as Maggie Daley park, which is absolutely mind blowing park! In the afternoon, our friends from Portugal came to pick us up and take us to Greek Food! Luke wasn't so stoked on the greek food and only ate ice cream, but I thought it was really delicious.
The final (or what we thought was going to be the final) day, we headed to the free Lincoln Park Zoo. Luke loved seeing the animals and kept asking to go back to see the lions over and over again. One of the lions was laying on the glass and you could walk underneath it. We headed to the airport, where unfortunately our flight kept getting more and more delayed and we would miss our connection in Denver. Luckily we were given a room at an airport hotel in Chicago but our packed bags were headed off without us. It was already around 8pm by the time we arrived to the airport hotel and we would have to be up around 2am to catch our 5am flight, and this time we had an even longer flight to Las Vegas, then onto Bozeman. We were also offered 600$ worth of travel voucher for Southwest good for the next year, but as we won't be able to use it had to sell it.
While that was frustrating to miss out on a day in Big Sky and with my parents, I'm sure it could have been much worse. We arrived in Bozeman and the bags had also arrived and everything was smooth sailing. Luke was so happy to see his grandparents and we made our way to Big Sky. The original plan was to visit Yellowstone but just a few days before Yellowstone had some crazy flooding and many parts of the park were closed, so we decided to head a different direction. I loved Big Sky. The Montana mountains are beautiful. The mountains still had snow caps the rivers were so full. We did a hike each day, enjoyed yard games and swimming at the airbnb's pool.
After 2 nights in Big Sky it was time to head to Billings for the family reunion. We had a night in the big Airbnb house before my brothers arrived with their crews. It was sooo much fun to spend time with everyone in the immediate family before we went to the events of the family reunion. Luke was pretty shy meeting people in the first few moments but slowly started warming up to a few people. On Friday, they had a story telling session, and they went through each of my Grandpa's 15 siblings and people around the room would tell stories about them. It was so cool to hear the stories and begin to imagine what it would be like to be a part of their family. My dad told the story of my parents wedding day and how my grandpa told my dad that my mom had run away just as it was getting close to the ceremony time and how my grandpa always knew how to catch you off guard yet make you laugh and smile at the same time. We played golf on Saturday and my mom, grandma and some other cousins came over to help mom watch all of the kiddos. In the afternoon we headed to the picnic but it was so rushed for us, we were late because of nap time and then we arrived and before we could eat anything had to play bean bags, then auction, then some interesting characters started appearing at the park so the party ended early and everyone scattered. We didn't get to take a big picture of all our extended family together. That was definitely a big bummer, but we still had lots of fun catching up with so many family members. There weren't any events on Sunday morning and we were busy dropping off the AZ kiddos at the airport and then cleaning and packing up at the airbnb.
Then we were off on a 14 hour driving extravaganza to Wisconsin! Luke read books and hung out in the car for a bit before he fell asleep for a glorious 3 hour nap! Those straight shoot highways and white noise in the car, plus his seat that is in a very laid down position made for his best car nap ever. After he woke up he was in pretty good spirits. He continued to look out the window, play and sing with mom and I. We stopped for dinner at Mcdonalds hoping he would be able to play in the playground only to find out that the playplace closes at 7pm. :O Bummer but he didn't seem to mind. He hopped back in the car, we continued and he fell asleep again after the sunset and slept until we arrived to my parents house around 2 or 3am! It was so nice to have lots of drivers to switch out if needed so we could do that drive in one day. Cause no one really wanted to unpack that car and repack again! There were lots of deer and wild life along the way but none that we crashed into. YAY.
Lake house days were full of stand up paddle boarding, swimming, library events, boat rides, and new to Luke toys. Cody and Alexis arrived on July 1st to enjoy dad's birthday and the fourth of July with us! We enjoyed a round of golf for dad's birthday and Joel and I made him an oreo cheesecake. Then on the 3rd of July we went across the lake to a bar/campground with live music for dinner. Luke had so much fun dancing and going in the water with his boots on! He was also playing hard to get with a little girl who wanted to play with him, then suddenly he changed his mind and wanted to high five her but then she was playing hard to get. :P On the fourth we watched a hot dog eating contest live on youtube in surprise and shock! Then headed to a fourth of July parade in a nearby small town called Cable. Luke had so much fun gathering all the candy. He was the only little kid nearby so he had a ton! He had never eaten a lollipop before and he had never had so much fun eating so much candy. Then we went to a bbq at a park nearby and the adults had brats, german potatoes, and corn on the cob. Luke was running around petting dogs, and making friends with old people around us.
Cody, Alexis and Joel had their flights on July 5th. Luke got to attend another parade the following week for a rodeo in another nearby small town. This parade was much bigger but he had some candy grabbing competition! There were kids all ready to grab candy and load up their candy bags! There was still plenty to go around though. We went on more bike rides, played with cousin Ruby and had so much fun just relaxing in the lake house with grammy and grandpa. Oh and how can I forget, his first fishing experience!
It is always so hard to say goodbye! Luke was a very good boy in the airport and on our journey back. He was helpful and followed directions in all the right moments. Going through security with a little one is so funny because all of your bags get flagged, then they test all the liquids and you can take everything. But seems like they are always curious if a person so small could eat so much! :P On the plane we were in the center part of the plane where there are 4 seats but the older couple (originally from Croatia, but have been residing in Canada since the 70s) next to us were so great and helped entertain Luke often. He didn't sleep much until the very end. I let everyone else get off the plane before us, the cabin crew was waiting for me, but Luke was still completely zonked out. So it was very hard to grab everything and sleeping Luke. When I got the stroller a nice couple helped me assemble the stroller and Luke got right in and continued sleeping. A few months before our trip, our flights were changed so instead of a 3 hour layover we had more than 6 hours. We did have a long way to cross the airport in Paris but I found a quiet place and let Luke sleep a few more hours. Then we passed through security again he woke up. There were people playing a piano and he loved dancing to the music. He also made friends with some dogs in the airport. Once we got on our next flight it wasn't long until Luke was sleeping again. This time he woke up as we left the plane and it was there that I struggled because usually your stroller is delivered to you just as you leave the airplane but for some reason I needed to collect it in the baggage claim.. So I had so many things to carry, and Luke who was a zombie and wouldn't walk. I thought my arms would fall off. Then when we arrived at the baggage claim I couldn't find the stroller and got a luggage cart because our checked bag would also be arriving and there was no way I could carry everything. Yet Luke still refused to walk or sit in the cart, and in order for the cart to move you need to push down the handle and walk at the same time. Eventually I had to leave the bags in one place to walk around to find the stroller. I couldnt' see any staff working, or the one person working in the lost luggage area had a huge line of people they were helping. Luckily Joel was on the other side and could get some help to tell me where to go. Eventually we got everything, Luke sat down and we went on our merry way home.
Luke woke up a few nights at midnight asking to play. The first night I got up with him because I also was kind of awake. But over the next few nights we were able to convince him after a drink that it was time to go back to sleep. Overall he was a trooper on the long flights.
He wasn't very happy for his first day back at daycare, but once he arrived there he went right in and had no problems. He will have a break from daycare in August and start again in September.
Meanwhile back in Portugal there has been lots of excessive heat and wild fires. Luckily not many people injured but lots of land and things burned. There were even burnt leaves in our backyard. Scary stuff, but things seem to be calming down a little bit now.
Sending lots of love and hugs to everyone around the world.
Nicole, Joel,Luke & Mel.
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| Library meet up |
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| First cotton candy |
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| Outside his school |
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