Feb 22, 2024
Life is still flying by, way too quickly for me to even process! The days are wild and fun, and the nights are getting better. The boys love for one another is just growing and growing like crazy.
Grammy Beth and Grandpa Scott arrived for their yearly visit a few days ago, a few months earlier than their usual visit because we will be going to the US for the wedding of Uncle Cody and Aunt Alexis in June, so we will have some space between our visits.Hence, my extra time to try and write a little bit.
Let's go back to October where I last left you guys. It was another rainy October. Another mom and I organized a trunk or treat Halloween event for the kids as Halloween isn't much of a things here yet, (though it is growing). However, the weather was really windy and heavy rain. Luckily Annie, the hostess with the mostess, was able to have us in her in laws place. We played our planned Halloween games there, and then when there was a short break in the rain, went outside for our trunk or treating. Luke wanted to dress with Oliver and Thing One and Thing two from Dr Seuss, The Cat in the hat book. Joel was the cat in the hat. We dressed up our car as cookie monster. Despite the change in locations, the event was a lot of fun and there were 11 families in attendance. Luke loved it.
The very next morning we took off for our first airplane trip as a family of four! We traveled to Agadir Morocco. The boys did so great at the airport, on the plane, and navigating to our hotel in the rental car. We checked one big luggage and checked the car seats so we didn't have to bring much through the airport, so that made things easy. I was quite panicked about the idea of getting everything but it was fine, especially since it is cheaper to pay for valet airport parking than the low price airport parking. So someone meets us at the terminal, and drives the car back to their lot, and same when we arrived. I never realized my whole life how convenient it was to live 15 minutes from a major airport. Joel and I were a bit nervous to be all sleeping in one big room in case Ollie woke up Luke during the night. But it never happened once. And Ollie actually slept pretty well while we were there.
We stayed in an all inclusive resort there. So after spending one day at the beach by the hotel and the pool in the afternoon, we went on a morning adventure after breakfast each day, and then spent the afternoon by the pool. It was the perfect mix of "adventure" and relaxation while traveling with two little ones. One morning we visited the medina of Agadir which felt a bit fake, as it was empty and all reconstructed just for tourists, and of course you had to pay to enter. But it was still beautiful and made for some great pictures and had an awesome playground. That same morning we visited the Croco Park, which housed tons of crocodiles and a few other fun activities like digging for dinosaur bones, and iguana garden and some other things. Luke loved it, even though he was so hot at 11am.
Another adventure day we went to the top of the hill in Agadir and the boys and I took the cable car to the bottom of the mountain and up again to the top. The next day was a trip to Taghazout, a surfers paradise which was lovely. If we go back to Agadir, I think we will stay further up the coast near there as the water was prisitne, warm, and it was less of a resort town. I forgot to mention earlier, the water color and the beach flags, seem to indicate some pollution in the water. There were people on the beach but no one was swimming. and we assumed a black flag by the lifeguard chair didn't mean good things.
Another morning we visited the largest market in Africa. We were surprised to find that people there weren't really haggling or begging us to buy things, when we said no thank you, they moved on. Luke got some cars, we got some fresh squeezed pomegranate juice, some spices for cooking, and Joel's long awaited mint crystals. You put one of these crystals into a cup of boiling water and it clears your nose up in an instant. You can even smell the thing in the entire room. Joel has lots of crazy sinus issues in the moist climate we live in, so he was really happy to find these again.
The final full day of our trip was my birthday! Wow 35. I remember turning 21 and thinking my 30s were so far away and boom half way through my 30s. That morning, Joel stole some cakes from the dinner buffet and saved them for my morning birthday cake, then after breakfast I went for a Moroccan spa experience and massage. The hamam (spa) apparently wasn't exactly authentic as my Moroccan friend said it was way too expensive and I should have been in the spa area with other people. But my google search I couldn't really find anything different. Oh, and Luke got to come with me for a few minutes. So first you enter the room, kind of like a turkish bath but not as warm. First she did Luke. You have a place to lay down on a bench of this room. The lady dumps these huge buckets of warm water on top of you. Then shampoos your hair, and then does a body scrub. Luke's was just a mini scrub, but I was impressed he was being so brave with the water, he hates water on his head and his ears, But he kept his brave face. Then when he finished, a lady helped him get dressed and go back down to meet Joel and Oliver. Anyways after my spa, I had a great relaxing massage. The experience reminded me a lot of jjimjilbangs in Korea.
The resort had an "animation" team. They would come and ask if we wanted to participate in activities, dance, had fun music playing by the pool. They always joked with Luke saying that Oliver was their baby, and he replied, no he's my baby! There was a kids club but we had to go with Luke as he wasn't old enough to stay there himself. The food in the restaurant was lovely and I was really impressed how much variety there was from day to day. It was far better than the food we had in our Cape Verde all inclusive resort. My favorite dinner theme of the week was Moroccan night, they had fresh Moroccan mint tea, the fresh bread being made with a stone oven, etc. The flavors and spices in the Moroccan food were delicious. In between meal times there were always snacks and special drinks for Luke which he loved. He also loved dancing to the music by the pool and really started enjoying swimming time.
Driving in Agadir wasn't too bad, there were a few roundabouts where we were a bit nervous. Oh and arriving at night and making our way to the hotel with offline directions and map was a bit wild but we got there. Sometimes there would be a donkey carriage on the road, lots of scooters, and lots of Dacia's. Our rental car was a Dacia as well so we blended right in. We were really surprised that almost everyone we interacted with spoke English. It was very very affordable, and there was a direct flight from Porto. We said it was the Algarve of Morocco. Most of the roads were quite new, and there was a bike lane and huge sidewalk . Luke says it is his favorite place still to this day. :P
November brought some more viruses for Luke, the AgroVouga festival. (Agricultural show with tons of animals horse jumping competitions, cattle raising contests, etc). We started sending Luke to school only 3 days a week in November in hopes to reduce the amount of viruses he brought We took a trip to Lisbon to get Oliver's American Citizenship. Our Airbnb was terrible and we ended up coming home a day earlier than planned because no one slept, but we did sneak in a trip to the zoo, brunch with friends, and some delicious Korean food. The zoo was great, it was nearly empty on a Saturday. They have this ride for free around the zoo, like a ski lift, but you stand up in the cars and can see all the animals below, it was amazing except as we turned the corner of the big square, it got very windy and started pouring! Luckily we weren't too far from the end so we got off only a bit wet. We waited under cover for the storm to pass and continued exploring. The sun came out again and dried most of our wet stuff so we weren't uncomfortable for too long. Luke also started private swimming lessons. Swimming classes here are always full and have a waiting list to enter, so we just gave up and are starting with private classes for now, and hopefully he can join in a group class later on. Anyways it has been amazing to see him progress from being a little afraid of the water and never wanting to get his head wet, to jumping into the water now!
December brought lots of Christmas events! We had Luke stay home from school for the entire month because Oliver had his first major illness. He had a fever for several days but after day 4 or so, the fever got really high (39.6) and he was just sleeping on me day and night. Luke never was sick as a baby as we were in covid lockdown so it felt so much harder (and scarier) for a young baby to be so sick. Anyways after Oliver recovered, we were all healthy the rest of the month as Luke didn't bring us any germs from school so we could enjoy the holiday season, illness free.
We met Santa several times. We made a paper chain and cut off a chain link each morning to count how many days until Santa would arrive. Luke would ask google each morning, "how many days until Christmas? And then count the chains himself and use his little scissors to cut off the link. He also had two advent calendars, one with chocolate, another with dinosaur games and activities. We met Santa in the play museum in Vagos and enjoyed some picnics in the sunshine when we had it. He performed in his first school Christmas show which was adorable. We aren't really sure how many of the songs he got to learn as he was home the two weeks before hand, but he smiled and danced like he knew every word anyways. It was so cute, but whoa we were a bit surprised by the pre school party. There was a performance for the kids, which was around an hour, and then all the classes sang songs, and then the graduating class had a short skit. There were kids in Luke's class sleeping during the shows.:P It was a long show for pre schoolers but Luke did awesome. We were sitting just a few rows behind him as he was with his classmates and he behaved very well and kept looking back to be sure we were still there.
Luke had fun helping me decorate and bake cookies. He also loved cutting pictures from a toy store ad to tell Santa what he wanted. (every single toy in the book :P)
Christmas morning was so fun and magical as Luke was so excited. It's so funny how expectations of your childs favorite gift can be so far from reality. Luke's big present was a big bicycle with pedals. He was excited but pretty much moved it out of the way and was so excited to open everything else. Then I think his favorite thing was his car carrier. It is a semi truck with tons of little boxes to put each hot wheels car, then a plastic cover on top so he can transport those cars. He also got a huge fire truck from Tata which he loves. Grammy and Grampa got him his first set of legos, as he is already a professional building things with duplos. Ollie was able to rip some paper on his presents and enjoyed his singing bear and singing book and a remote control toy. He still is obsessed with playing with the real remote and anyones mobile phone. He can even turn on the TV himself and start a show somehow.. not even Luke has figured that one out yet.
For New Years we had a big adventure planned to stay in a cozy airbnb in Cabeceiras do Basto in the ... middle of nowhere... the closest big city is Braga but it was still 50 minutes from there. Anyways unfortunately one of the families was very sick and couldn't join us so it was just us and one other family. They have a little boy the same age as Luke and a 1 year old girl. Luke and Alfred played so well together. Luke got to practice sharing his toys finally. This is a skill we are still working on, slowly we are seeing some progress but Luke better be ready for the day Ollie starts crawling! Iwona and I divided the meals to prepare and it was so lovely to have some home cooked food from someone besides myself! For New Years eve dinner, she did a home made pesto pasta and then we made some dips , cheese, etc for the side. They also made us some delicious whisky sours. We didn't actually celebrate at midnight together but our dinner was nice. The two boys had fun cheers-ing with their special cocktails and blowing confetti all over. When we were driving home on the morning of the first, we saw man dressed as a saint carrying a huge cross climbing up the hilly road! It was quite a sight, we had to turn around and see him twice.
The first week of January Joel had off work because he had so many days leftover from not taking enough days in 2023 as Oliver was born but we only went to Morocco. We went to Porto one day to visit the aquarium, but mostly hung around the house. Joel also completed a little house project, and closed one of the doors to enter our open space. Then made that door into a wall so we could put shelving on the other side and have a coffee area. The rest of January included lots of park play dates and adventures with friends. The weather was really nice for most of the month so we had to take advantage of that!The end of the month brought some sickness to both little boys. Luke caught tonsillitis for the first time and it was pretty rough, he couldn't really sleep as he was crying in his sleep in so much pain. His mouth was full of red blisters. We are always so thankful for the service our insurance provides which sends a doctor to your house for ten euros! She came and we were able to get his antibiotics started right away.
Luke chose not to participate in his schools carnaval party this year, we weren't sure why he was so persistent that he didn't want to go, even when the parade was canceled (due to torrential rain and wind) and it would just be a party inside of his school. Anyways we did try to go to another nearby city with a parade but there were so many people it was really chaotic and hard to see much. A very big milestone in Luke's life happened in February, which was his first ever poop on the potty! He has been diaper free during the day since August 2022 but he would always poop in his overnight diaper first thing in the morning, or if there was an emergency he would ask us to put on a diaper for his poop. He finally caved in with the help of some bribary of chocolate cake from the bakery and buying him lots more cars. Maybe letting Joel take him to the toy store was a mistake because 46 new cars might have been a bit excessive but whatever! haha he did it and we are so happy to be done with cleaning huge toddler poos.
At the end of Feb, Grammy and Grandpa arrived and both boys have been having so much fun with them. Luke got to go with them on his first ever train trip to Guimares. They had some fun exploring and packing their bags but I think Luke's favorite part was the train journey! We will have to do it more often, but the convenience of having a car with kids, makes it hard to take away that freedom of traveling when and where you want in your own car. Grammy and Grandpa got to see the awesome-ness of the doctor at home. Thank goodness because Luke had tonsilitis and needed antibiotics ASAP!
Oliver started crawling about two weeks ago (somewhere around March 10) and even though I should have been ready for it, I was not. It's so much different with him being mobile and having so much more to watch out for with Luke's toys all over the place. Oliver still loves his babbles and is very vocal sometimes you can hear him from the other side of the supermarket. He still says dada and what sounds like nana which we think is for food from banana possibly. Banana is his absolute favorite food. He devours them when given the chance! He also says uh oh, and what sounds like Ola. He loves casserole grains, like a bulgur tomato casserole with ricotta cheese and spinach, he likes quinoa salad, soups, pancakes, oatmeal, strawberries, and grapes. He does get some little rashes on his chin when he eats anything too acidic and we let it roll down his chin into his neck. He is also pretty keen to eat purees, which we didn't do much with Luke but I just find sometimes it's easier as Luke loves soup and it's a quick and easy dinner. He loves to play with his singing bear and he shakes his little bum all around to the music, it's so cute! He still loves going on walks and being outside of the house. He pretty much refuses to sleep out of the house though, so we need to be at home twice a day for naps around 9am and 2pm. His naps are still pretty good, usually he naps between 2-3.5 hours per day. If I need to wake him up early to do something from the morning nap, he will usually make up for it in the afternoon. He is still waking up quite often at night unfortunately. He consistently goes to bed at 7pm and puts himself to sleep, however his first wake up of the night is often around 1030pm. I would say a good night means I need to go there and feed him twice, (between 7pm-6am) and a bad night is going there 4 times. Sometimes he does sleep in until 7 or even 730am which Luke didn't do often, and to this day Luke is still an early riser. Ollie has learned how to zoom cars around from big brother. His brother also taught him how to clap last week and now he loves to clap for everything. Oh and waving, he is amazing at waving when someone arrives, leaves or even when he wants brothers attention, he will give him a wave. Their goodnight hugs to one another are the cutest and Ollie smiles the biggest when whatever he is doing involves his brother.
Oops it is now March 30th, and maybe the 10th "session" I've opened my computer to try and finish this post and write about everything I want to remember.
Anyways continuing on! Let's talk more about Mr. Luke. He had his fourth birthday yesterday! Wow, crazy how fast the time flies! His birthday fell on Good Friday this year so he didn't get to have a school birthday this year. However he enjoyed a small early birthday picnic with some friends and Grammy and Grandpa. It was a perfect warm morning without much wind, we had a picnic table this year and yummy brunchy treats like deviled eggs, veggie muffins, a Folar (Easter bread in Portugal) , pancakes, fruit pizza, and Luke requested a jeep cake and Joel, Grammy and I delivered. We were a little worried as the Jeep got a little bit tall but it turned out well. At first Luke only wanted to invite "Big People" adults like his Uncles. Then I reminded him he might also want to play with his little people friends, so we invited his three favorite little people. Then on his real birthday, which was super confusing to him as to why for 4 days after his party and blowing out the candles and having cake he wasn't 4 yet. On his birthday he had special chocolate chip oatmeal for breakfast and enjoyed opening his presents, especially his hot wheels garage. He spent a few hours playing with it, racing his cars down the track and finding the most perfect parking place for each hot wheels car. Luke obviously is crazy about cars. He knows many of the different car brands. As we are out driving or walking he will tell me what kind of car we pass. He gets a bit angry when a car is parked on the white lines or on the sidewalk. When he plays with his cars, he usually makes some sort of a trajectory for every single one of his cars to go through the trajectory. It could start above the fireplace crossing his ramp, then down the couch, and then pushes them as fast as he can to see how far they can go. Can you imagine a dining room full of cars spread everywhere? Hehe that is what happens most days. He has mastered using scissors and loved to cut a paper chain link from our Christmas count down after asking google how many days until christmas. His drawing skills and abilities have improved so much. He sometimes draws little families with big round heads, and stick legs and arms. He still loves to draw little rainbows. He completed an entire workbook in December full of letter tracing, cutting the objects, gluing, and circling items starting with a certain letter. He is getting really good and thinking of different words that start with different letters. He writes his own name and it's the cutest. Usually he writes from Left to right, and his letters are pretty good but letter K is a tough one and we sometimes help him make the diagonal lines for that. Luke is a super helper with Ollie, and often grabs diapers or the binky or whatever we ask for, if he is in the right mood. Speaking of the right mood... hheheh he has definitely entered his tantrum era. He gets quite frustrated and angry when something breaks or a lego doens't go how he wants it to go, or the dog messes up his car line up. He put on some especially great tantrums in front of grammy and grandpa but I think it is to be expected with so much attention and play time when he is used to a great deal of time playing alone. Luke loves to go to the library and do the puzzles and read books there and choose which ones we will take home. He loves to help with cooking and most of the time wlll bring his tower to the counter top and find a way to help me, like getting the pasta noodles out, adding things to his smoothies, or mixing cakes. His favorite thing to watch on TV is still cars, these shows on youtube where a guy brings a bucket and has to find a certain car and then washes it, and a part of the Cars movie plays after he finds that particular character. He also loves Paw Patrol. He has become so independent and started dressing himself, going to the real toilet by himself and putting on his shoes himself. Sometimes he likes to pick his clothes but he usually still lets me choose. I had his first parent -teacher conference and apparently he is doing great at school, integrating into his preschool class, which is mixed ages between 3-6 year olds. He definitely has picked up some annoying habits from the big kids at school (like saying Just because when you ask why. Or using a very loud voice!) but I'm sure he is also learning great skills from them as well. He adores his dance class at school and we have almost nightly dance parties at home. He also will workout with us upstairs from time to time and loves to add some extra weight to our workout! He is getting really excited for our next airplane trip to America this summer! It's the greatest thing to watch him grow and learn stuff constantly. He is bilingual and doesn't miss a beat going between English and Portuguese.
What am I up to?! Hmm Besides mommy duties, I've been trying to do some runs and will participate in a 10k race at the end of April. I try to meet with friends once in a while. We have sadly had a lot of great friends move away in the past year and miss them dearly. I hope I can also get back into Ultimate Frisbee this year.
Joel is doing an awesome job at daddying to two kiddos. He's really amazing with the boys and is also really helpful around the house and does whatever is needed. He's my running coach and always encouraging me.
We bought a piece of land and a pre approved house plan. I think this is called Latch Key in English? Hm anyways things move very very slowly around here. We signed the first contract to buy the land in January and are still waiting for the city hall to approve some items for the builder to be issued a building license. It feels like this process could literally take forever! But we shall see!
Sending all our love to you wherever you are! :)
xoxo
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