Owen's 4th Birthday

Happy, Happy!

We are so proud of our little guy.

For Owen's birthday we planned ahead (relatively speaking) and bought cupcakes the night before for him to take to school. He got to have one for breakfast on the big day!

Zoe's 1st Birthday

Zoe celebrated her first birthday on Friday! Her first year of life absolutely flew by. She spent an awful lot of it perched on my left hip while I went about the business of moving us to Portugal, but she seemed to be quite happy about it. She is a fun little thing, always ready for a big celebration or a big adventure.


For her birthday we gave her a baby doll, and she fell in love with it instantly.

Of course, she had to test it out a little first.


We also celebrated her birthday with a cupcake fest at the mall. (Yes, I realize I don't get full Mommy points for this, but not only is she a 2nd child, she also shares a birthday week with her big brother. We do what we can! And the cupcake fest was fun...)

A lazy Saturday morning

You know how before you have kids, you imagine that having them might involve lazy weekend mornings snuggling together in bed? But then it turns out that it doesn't? Well, today it did! And it was nice.

What they're up to

As we start a new year and the Orglets approach their birthdays, we find ourselves reflecting on their recent accomplishments.



Zoe has been very communicative lately. She is starting to make lots of noises that sound like talking. She seems to be saying Mama and Dada discriminately, and lots of other things that may or may not be words in English and/or Portuguese. She understands much of what we say to her. The other day when I was dressing her I asked her to give me her socks, and she did. When I showed obvious pleasure that she understood, it made her so happy that she reached for her shoes and gave those to me, too. Now whenever I dress her she spends the whole time trying to hand me footwear.

She loves it when we sing songs with her, and she makes requests by getting our attention and making the hand movements for particular favorites, while making sweet little sounds that are clearly her attempts at singing them. She also stands by the piano and dances and says "bap bap bap" when she wants us to play music.

Recently Zoe has been enjoying playing with her shape sorter. She's very good at the circle. The other shapes are harder, so she asks for help. She'll try once or twice, then turn to one of us, and give us the shape to put through for her.

Owen and Zoe have some things in common, like a passion for music, and wonderful senses of humor. But they are also quite different. Zoe is a dabbler while Owen tends to be incredibly focused. Owen is (and always has been) very independent, while Zoe seeks constant interaction. Zoe seems to enjoy making the people around her happy as much as Owen enjoys doing math and spelling puzzles on Daddy's phone.

Owen loves letters, number, and patterns of any kind. His independence, ability to focus, and love of music and patterns are put to nearly perfect use at the piano. He is absolutely determined to figure out how to play it. If we ask him to play a song with simple melody that he has never seen played before, he will more often than not be able to work it out. And then a few minutes later he'll play it in a different key. So far we have failed to find a teacher willing to teach piano to a 3 year old, so we have taken to playing simple pieces while he watches, which he then practices on his own. Like this:



(In the clip he's playing the left hand arpeggios and the right hand melody of an Allegretto by Czerny. They're not aligned in time the way the music suggests, but then he's figured it out entirely on his own, without being taught, and without the benefit of being able to read music. And, of course, he's 3.)

Happy New Year!

Sometimes at night when we're putting Owen to bed he helps us tell him the story of his day. On New Year's Eve, I put Owen to bed and told him the story of his year. What a year it was! When 2010 started, he was only 2 years old, and he didn't have a sister. In 2010, Zoe was born, and Owen turned 3. His school in Boston moved into a new, renovated space, and his teachers changed. We packed up all of our things, and moved to a new house in Portugal. Owen started a new school, with new teachers and friends. He learned how to jump, play songs on the piano, read a little, and do a little math. As I went through all of this, he listened VERY carefully. He kept wanting to talk about the part where we packed up all of our things into boxes and put them on the truck. I think he might remember that for a very long time.

This is how we were in 2010:


It was a year full of family, friends, and adventure, and we will all remember it for a very long time.

Fall 2010

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)

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.

First day of school!

Today was Owen's first day at his new school. He was very excited to meet his new friends. He doesn't even seem to mind wearing a uniform.

We are so proud of our big little boy!

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!

No words

This is what Owen was typing on Mike's computer tonight while we ignored him and worked on moving stuff: