The Orglets have been busy...
playing at the local playground
and at home.
We went back to PA for a week for a family wedding
... and merriment
and squeezed in some trick-or-treating
and doughnuts
... and merriment!
And then we came back home to Portugal, bought the largest turkey the checkout girl at the supermarket had ever seen (it was only 16 lbs), and squeezed it into our little European oven for Thanksgiving.
(For more photos of the Orglets, check out our smugmug galleries)
Wednesday, December 8, 2010
Saturday, October 16, 2010
Alive and well in Portugal!
The past month has been an absolute whirlwind. There is so much to say about our new lives in Portugal that I barely know how to begin. We are doing well. After about a month in our new house with no furniture, all 9,000 lbs of our stuff (or should I say, 4,082 kgs) were delivered a few weeks ago. We have unpacked most of the boxes. Going overnight from a 2-BR flat to a 4-story house with a garden has been overwhelming but also very welcome.
Zoe has continued to break new ground at an alarming pace. In the car on the way to the airport to fly here, I felt her very first teeth breaking through. She was a trooper, and after two or three days forgave me for making her suffer through jet lag and teething simultaneously. Also on the plane, she started waving. First, it was only for the flight attendant, but within a few days of arriving in Lisbon (after the teething and jet lag wore off), she was waving at everyone. All. The. Time. She is a happy little thing and tries her best to charm the pants off of everyone she meets. I think her first words will probably be the Portuguese for, "Oh, what a beautiful little doll," which she hears dozens of times a day.
Owen seems very happy here. He loves his new school. He is in the nursery year of an international school that goes from 3-18. It is in English which has eased his transition. We had our first parent-teacher conference this week and his teachers are great and love all the same things about him that we do. He is learning a lot - most notably, football/soccer skills, which judging from his rapid improvement must be an important part of the curriculum! He is enjoying having some outdoor space to play in, and he and Daddy have been very creative at inventing new games:
In general, Owen talks less about Boston than we expected him to - the exception being that he still includes some friends from his old school when listing his classmates. The other day, though, he said he wanted to go to "Boston home." When we explained that we had moved and that meant we weren't going back, he said he was sad about "losing Boston." All we could do was give him a big hug and admit that we were sad about it, too.
Zoe has continued to break new ground at an alarming pace. In the car on the way to the airport to fly here, I felt her very first teeth breaking through. She was a trooper, and after two or three days forgave me for making her suffer through jet lag and teething simultaneously. Also on the plane, she started waving. First, it was only for the flight attendant, but within a few days of arriving in Lisbon (after the teething and jet lag wore off), she was waving at everyone. All. The. Time. She is a happy little thing and tries her best to charm the pants off of everyone she meets. I think her first words will probably be the Portuguese for, "Oh, what a beautiful little doll," which she hears dozens of times a day.
Owen seems very happy here. He loves his new school. He is in the nursery year of an international school that goes from 3-18. It is in English which has eased his transition. We had our first parent-teacher conference this week and his teachers are great and love all the same things about him that we do. He is learning a lot - most notably, football/soccer skills, which judging from his rapid improvement must be an important part of the curriculum! He is enjoying having some outdoor space to play in, and he and Daddy have been very creative at inventing new games:
In general, Owen talks less about Boston than we expected him to - the exception being that he still includes some friends from his old school when listing his classmates. The other day, though, he said he wanted to go to "Boston home." When we explained that we had moved and that meant we weren't going back, he said he was sad about "losing Boston." All we could do was give him a big hug and admit that we were sad about it, too.
Monday, September 6, 2010
First day of school!
Friday, September 3, 2010
On the move!
What an exciting time. After several stops we have all arrived at our new home in Portugal. And, Zoe is crawling. On our very last morning in our old apartment, she took off on her first independent excursion. Where did she go? To see her big brother. She is still crawling on her tummy, commando-style, but she's working very hard at getting up on her hands and knees. Look out, world!
Thursday, August 12, 2010
No words
Wednesday, July 28, 2010
July, 2010
Zoe is 5 months old and is... eating some solid food, sitting up on her own for long stretches before toppling over, rolling over both ways, trying really hard to get up on her hands and knees to crawl, blowing raspberries ALL the time, getting used to people that aren't her mommy, and always ready for a wet sloppy kiss.
In other news, our entire lives have been boxed, wrapped, and shipped to Portugal.
Owen seems to understand and enjoyed checking out the REALLY BIG moving truck.
We are camping out for a while.
In other news, our entire lives have been boxed, wrapped, and shipped to Portugal.
Owen seems to understand and enjoyed checking out the REALLY BIG moving truck.
We are camping out for a while.
Thursday, July 15, 2010
Feed me, Mommy!
Zoe seems to like chewing on a rice cereal-flavored spoon. She's done it two nights in a row now. She took to it immediately, with absolutely no drama. She just opens her mouth for a bite every time the spoon comes near her. So unlike her brother's first attempts! We're hoping that once she starts actually ingesting most of it, she will return to sleeping more than 3 hours at a time before waking for a feeding.
Sunday, July 11, 2010
This week...
Zoe found her feet:
and Owen taught himself to play Kumbaya on the piano.
When we were in England at Granny and Grandpa's we taught Owen to play Ode to Joy. He loved it, and started experimenting with chords. So Mike taught him a few intervals, like major and minor thirds. And Owen experimented some more. A few days later we were shocked to realize that he wasn't playing random notes... he was playing Kumbaya. He had figured it out by ear. We asked him if he was playing Kumbaya and he just beamed at us. Needless to say, we beamed right back at him.
and Owen taught himself to play Kumbaya on the piano.
When we were in England at Granny and Grandpa's we taught Owen to play Ode to Joy. He loved it, and started experimenting with chords. So Mike taught him a few intervals, like major and minor thirds. And Owen experimented some more. A few days later we were shocked to realize that he wasn't playing random notes... he was playing Kumbaya. He had figured it out by ear. We asked him if he was playing Kumbaya and he just beamed at us. Needless to say, we beamed right back at him.
Saturday, July 3, 2010
Sunday, June 13, 2010
Sunday, May 23, 2010
Hard at work
Zoe is working very hard at rolling over. She has gone front-to-back successfully a few times and is really working on back to front.
Her "piggies" and her newfound thumbsucking skills are helping her sleep through the night.
This keeps her generally happy.
Owen, the sweetest big brother in the world, is busy working on numbers - counting backwards from 100, counting by 10's, and addition are his favorite activities these days. So far he's limited in his addition to equations involving two addends, each less than five. So hard to be limited by biology.
Her "piggies" and her newfound thumbsucking skills are helping her sleep through the night.
This keeps her generally happy.
Owen, the sweetest big brother in the world, is busy working on numbers - counting backwards from 100, counting by 10's, and addition are his favorite activities these days. So far he's limited in his addition to equations involving two addends, each less than five. So hard to be limited by biology.
Saturday, May 8, 2010
Sunday, April 25, 2010
I'd like to buy a vowel
Letters are all the rage around here lately. Owen wants to know how to spell EVERYTHING. He can now read and type a few dozen words, and is working on sounding out new ones. Notably, he has quickly learned that vowels are almost completely unreliable in English, and when he tries to spell new words he often does so without any vowels at all. Sometimes he likes to leave out all but the first and last letters, like the other day when he told me (out of the blue) that "D R spells dinner," and then, "D S spells dinners."
Watching Owen learn to read and write provides remarkable insights into how his brain works. For example, he likes to write his name with crayons, and he is great at it. He's not showing a clear handedness yet, and will use both hands to write. But more than once, we've seen him write his name perfectly with his right hand, then put down the crayon, pick it back up with his left hand, and then write his name again - in equally perfect, mirror image.
One of my favorite motherhood moments happened about a month ago. I heard Owen call out from the back seat of the car, "O-P-E-N. It says OPEN," as we drove past a store that did, indeed, have an OPEN sign in the window. This was his first act of spontaneous reading, and I was about to congratulate him on his newfound skill when he added, "and N-E-P-O spells CLOSED." I ended up apologizing to him that the world wasn't as sensible as he was - and wishing that it were.
Zoe, not to be outdone, has recently started saying consonants. She spends a lot of time saying something that sounds like "Hi, cookie!"
Watching Owen learn to read and write provides remarkable insights into how his brain works. For example, he likes to write his name with crayons, and he is great at it. He's not showing a clear handedness yet, and will use both hands to write. But more than once, we've seen him write his name perfectly with his right hand, then put down the crayon, pick it back up with his left hand, and then write his name again - in equally perfect, mirror image.
One of my favorite motherhood moments happened about a month ago. I heard Owen call out from the back seat of the car, "O-P-E-N. It says OPEN," as we drove past a store that did, indeed, have an OPEN sign in the window. This was his first act of spontaneous reading, and I was about to congratulate him on his newfound skill when he added, "and N-E-P-O spells CLOSED." I ended up apologizing to him that the world wasn't as sensible as he was - and wishing that it were.
Zoe, not to be outdone, has recently started saying consonants. She spends a lot of time saying something that sounds like "Hi, cookie!"
Saturday, April 17, 2010
Gross motor skills
I'm constantly amazed at how proud I am of both Owen and Zoe when they do new things. My pride is continuously recalibrated to their level, whether they accomplish new feats ahead of, or even behind, "schedule." Lately both of them have been making great strides in their gross motor skills (not generally a forte in our family!)
Owen has been climbing like crazy at the playground:
and Zoe is getting really good at holding up her head:
Look out world, here come the Orglets!
Owen has been climbing like crazy at the playground:
and Zoe is getting really good at holding up her head:
Look out world, here come the Orglets!
Saturday, April 3, 2010
Tuesday, March 30, 2010
How big are the Orglets?
Wednesday, March 17, 2010
Zoe go bragh!
Tuesday, March 16, 2010
1 month old
Thursday, March 4, 2010
An Orglet by any other name
One of the most fun, but also most weighty, things about pregnancy is choosing your child’s name. We had a relatively easy time with Owen. We first decided to use my last name as a middle name for all of our children - it seemed to be a good way for us to share a name without having to bother with hyphenation. Then, we agreed to go with a first name that started with “O.” We flirted with a few other options before making the final decision, but Owen was always at the top of the list.
With Zoe it was more difficult. This time we wanted a better reason than “we just liked the way it sounded” when people asked us how we picked her name. We considered a few family names, but choosing just one person to be named after felt limiting, and we didn’t want her to have too many names! We also wanted something that was not too girly, and not too trendy, and didn’t end in “a” (this last so as to avoid the introduction of an “r” sound between first and last names – a potential problem for our half-English, half-American offspring). Once we came up with Zoe, we settled on it quickly. We liked the way it sounded and we liked what it meant – it’s Greek for “life.” The last step was to get Owen’s input. Having ruled out his preferred “hyphen,” we gave him the choice of Zoe or one other name, and he instantly smiled and said “Zoe” in the sweetest little voice. That was that - and here she is!
With Zoe it was more difficult. This time we wanted a better reason than “we just liked the way it sounded” when people asked us how we picked her name. We considered a few family names, but choosing just one person to be named after felt limiting, and we didn’t want her to have too many names! We also wanted something that was not too girly, and not too trendy, and didn’t end in “a” (this last so as to avoid the introduction of an “r” sound between first and last names – a potential problem for our half-English, half-American offspring). Once we came up with Zoe, we settled on it quickly. We liked the way it sounded and we liked what it meant – it’s Greek for “life.” The last step was to get Owen’s input. Having ruled out his preferred “hyphen,” we gave him the choice of Zoe or one other name, and he instantly smiled and said “Zoe” in the sweetest little voice. That was that - and here she is!
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