Playing Games

Over the summer when Max was visiting, we realized that maybe it was time to get Rudy some board games. I went out a few weeks later and bought a memory game that matches two parts of an animal. It's very hands on because the animal parts are hidden under egg shells and the animal parts snap together to make the animal when you have a match. Rudy loves this game and we've played it several times. We also got Candyland - a childhood favorite of many. When Rudy first saw Candyland, he decided it was a road for his cars, and that's all we've ever done with Candyland since. When Grandpa was over the other night we pulled out both games, played the memory game and then Rudy and Grandpa played cars with the Candyland board. This morning Rudy told me he wanted to play a game so we went into the basement to get the memory game. He told me "not that one", so I took out Candyland. When we brought it upstairs he left everything in the box except the board and proceeded to create a game that involved an car and a helicopter driving around, flying and trying to escape from the 'bear' (the Chocolate guy on the board - can't remember his name). We even had to hide in another room at one point because the 'bear' was coming. Not shortage of imagination here!

Grandparents' Day

This was our first year celebrating Grandparents' Day - in fact I didn't even think about it until I turned the calendar to September. We invited Rudy's 3 grandparents over for dinner Sunday - two ended up being sick so it was just Grandpa. Rudy painted pictures for them, which we gave to Grandpa (and Gram and Grandmom will get later this week) along with a collage of pictures showing the painting process. The best part is how he's actually looking at the camera when he's holding the paintings - he rarely does that!

Nidia is Coming Home!

If you remember this post from almost 6 months ago, I was asking for prayers for a friend who had been waiting for years to bring her daughter home. Well, Friday night they finally got the good news that the adoption is legal in Guatemala and once the last few steps are completed, Nidia will be joining her family here in the US. As I mentioned before ( here and here ), Damaris was a godsend to us towards the end of our adoption and I am so happy for her, her husband and her son. And I can't wait to meet them all once Nidia is home.
Here are pictures, from a recent visit trip for Nidia's 3rd birthday, of the family of four, Nidia and her parents, and Nidia and her big (by about 4 months) brother.

Language Development

Rudy's language skills are just blowing us away. It's amazing to think that a year ago he knew no english and now he speaks in almost full sentences and has complete thoughts that he can verbalize.
He has become very imaginative. Tonight the couch was an 'ancia' (Ambulancia - anbulance) and we were taking turns driving each other to the 'hos-al' (hospital). He loves to play doctor and we use my mom's stethoscope to listen to each other's heart and lungs. Later he was lying on our bed while I put laundry away and drawing pictures. When I was done I laid down next to him and he said "play me , Mommy", which lately we've been hearing many, many times a day. So we tried to think of what to play. He suggested doctor and I said no because we had just played that. So I suggested patty cake, which he rejected. He thought for a minute, said "Hmmmmm. Jump on bed." That, obviously got rejected too! We ended up playing "I Spy" (or as Rudy was calling it "I Spot"). Not to brag, but our son is very good at this game. We played for about 10 minutes until Paul joined us and we played about 5 more minutes. Rudy was very good with taking turns and finding things in the room that we spied or to spy when it was his turn.
Yesterday we were trying to get him to tell Gram and Grandmom about school. We asked him what he did during the day and his answer was "Nothing"! We see the teen years ahead and it is not pretty! Two other responses lately are "ummmm, maybe" and "Sure!", which pretty much crack us up everytime. Who expects a 2 1/2 year old to say either maybe or sure?!

FFF- Oh, Baby

The theme this week was to post the earliest pictures we have of ourselves and our kids. I don't have any baby pictures of Paul or I scanned into the computer (or even in our house for that matter - I think our parents still have them all!), so here are the very first pictures we received of Rudy. I assume he is only days old at the most since it looks like he's in a hospital.

First Day

Today was Rudy's first day at his new school. He seemed to enjoy himself. We'll see how the second and third days go! Right now he's upstairs making siren noises instead of sleeping.

Here he is trying to wear a backpack that is a little too heavy for him.



He looks like he's going camping - that's his nap mat.

Adios, Pacha!

Rudy's pacha has been attached to him from the beginning. On our first visit trip, we were even told to give him a pacha con cafe in the afternoons (I think we did it once).



When visiting him when he turned one, he would crawl and carry the pacha in his mouth.



And when we visited him at about 18 months, he walked and held the pacha either in his hand or in his mouth almost 24/7. We actually cut back on the number of pachas we gave him because he was eating so much food we didn't think they were necessary - of course he got a little upset stomach as a result.



When we picked Rudy up, his schedule still included several pachas a day - at almost 2 years old. In Guatemala this is very common.



In the almost 11 months since Rudy's been home, we've worked to slowly get rid of the pacha. They became the bane of our existence - they leaked all over the floors and furniture, and all over us. One of the first things we cut out was a pacha of milk at night. He very quickly adjusted to it being agua. Then we cut down the pachas during the day. Unfortunately, the down side is that he doesn't drink nearly as much milk now as he did. We slowly moved to sippy cups rather than pachas for milk and water during the day. But at night, the pacha was still his comfort item and when he was really tired, it was what he would ask for. So we slowly changed the pacha to only having it once he was in bed and going to sleep. He would sometimes drink two whole pachas of agua before falling asleep. We've talked and talked about how and when to be done with the last pacha and decided vacation would be a good time to do it. When we packed for our recent trip, we didn't bring any pachas with us. At night when he asked for one, we gave him a sippy cup with water. Sometimes he would drink it, but often he would just hold it. After the second night, he just asked for agua instead of a pacha. Success! Now almost 2 weeks later, we are officially done with the pachas - when we came home we had to quickly throw out the ones we had left so he didn't see them! There are some nights when I wish we had it because it definitely helps soothe him to sleep (see the night on vacation when he was awake until about 11:30pm) but he seems to have accepted the sippy cups as a reasonable substitute.