Christmas Tree!

We ventured to Middleburg to chop down a Christmas tree.  It seems that it was an off-year for the tree farm as the trees were so small that I actually considered getting two tiny trees - one for Diego and one for Charlie.  Sorry Sofia.  In the end we settled on a medium sized tree.  Despite the small size, the kids were so worried about getting hit by a falling tree that they stood back probably 25 feet.  Aunt Mary came to meet us and we put her to work as you can see...

 

We had a few of Charlie's friends over to decorate gingerbread houses this weekend. The kids were super excited and had lots of fun decorating....and sneaking a few candies.  Cici was the only girl and was subjected to a boy-centric comments, lots of talk about poo and wrestling.  Having her juxtaposed against the boys' behavior was really shocking. I had no idea how civilized girls were compared to boys!!  I am also shocked at the level of anti-girl talk floating around 5 year old boys.  Charlie doesn't criticize girls, but he does interpret and then generalize what he sees in a way that frustrates me: girls don't play baseball, or football, he is faster than girls, girls don't like kickball.....

The gingerbread decorating was fun and Charlie and Cici (and Diego) spent 9 straight hours playing nicely (and quietly) together (once the other boys left).  I promised Diego he could choose his own friends to have over too so we are planning another gathering.  I've been trying to spend more time dedicated to Diego. He is super sweet when he gets our undivided attention.  He is also quite amorous with his classmates - he wants to hug everyone and then gets sad if they don't want a hug.  Given how tough he is, I find the hug thing weird.

Sofia loves to try to walk around.  She nearly runs.  I think she may start walking around the same time as Charlie - 10 months.  She waves hello and seems to have full conversations with her high-pitched squeals.  Saturday afternoon Carlos took the boys so I got to spend a lot of time alone with Sofia and it was so precious.  She is a total delight - she smiles a lot and can spend an hour unpacking the food-truck fabric food that my mom made a few years ago.  She examines each piece, tastes it for awhile, flings it out of her way and then is on to the next piece.  She has really taken to the pickle in particular! 

New York and Thanksgiving

The weekend before Thanksgiving we all went up to New York to celebrate Wallis' 6th birthday.  Despite his aversion to New York, Carlos did okay and the kids had a lot of fun playing with Wallis and Eli.  Everyone braved the cold to go scooting/biking and play soccer.  From there they went to the lego store and then braved the snow to go to Soogy's favorite restaurant - Benihana!  So funny.  The kids did love the chef, but the food was, well....Benihana food...

We got to see some of my highschool and college friends while we were there which made me happy.  Seeing them always reminds me how much I appreciate old friends and how I don't do a good enough job staying in touch.

On Wednesday we headed up to Philadelphia for Thanksgiving at my mom's house.  It was so nice for the kids to be with their cousins and uncles/aunts.  My vision of a family Turkey day trot didn't really materialize, but we did go to the track to run around and play soccer before the big feast.  Charlie tried to keep up with his uncles running around the track, but at 6:30 mile pace, it was a bit tough for him.....Tio Seth ran with him afterwards around the track once at 2:13.  Diego played soccer with me (with sofia attached) and my mom but then told us he wanted "a fast guy to play with him."  Guess I'm going to have to score more goals on him....The day after Thanksgiving we trekked down to the Franklin Institute.  The Pompeii reenactment film made Diego cry, but the cool digger, skybike and actual train made up for it.  

Thanksgiving dinner was an insane amount of good food.  The kids started off with presents on their plates which was a good appetizer!

Sofia slept next to me all weekend and when she is close by she spends the whole night nursing.  I guess she smells the milk and can't resist.  She is so cozy that I don't really mind except that getting back on our normal routine is hard.  She cried like crazy when I put her to bed without me.  It could also be the fact that her first tooth is finally coming in!!  

During the week Charlie's class had a publishing party which was super cute.  They wrote a book and illustrated it.  Charlie's story contemplated why tigers and bees have black stripes. Very deep.  My favorite part was the back cover which read: "if you want to learn more about tigers and bees read this book."  Here he is reading it....

Despite my best efforts as room-parent I seem to get on Charlie's teacher's bad side.  My latest stick-my-foot-in-my-mouth episode was that I told her I thought the report cards were silly.  That didn't go over well. I appreciate that they don't grade just random subjects, but the social studies section feels like they are grading them on being patriotic capitalists!  He got a "B" for basic for the American symbol one - seems our son is not very patriotic....Luckily the teacher seems to like Carlos so we might at least be in neutral territory.

What charlie is graded against

Panic!

Diego enjoying the fall Colors

Charlie enjoying a bolivian saltena! 

Last week was comical (read: bad) and reflective of how forgetful I am these days.  I had planned to go to Chicago for work on Thursday – I had asked Sandra to work late, warned Carlos that he would be on duty and told everyone at school/work that I would be out on Thursday.  Tuesday night at 6pm I got a random email asking if I could meet for breakfast before the Chicago meeting on WEDNESDAY. WEDNESDAY?!?!?  Turns out the work trip was scheduled for the next day, not Thursday.  Diego, who takes every inopportune moment to poo publicly, decided at that very moment he needed to poo.  So there I was - waiting for Charlie’s piano class to finish, wiping poo and trying to soothe a grumpy baby all while panicking about a 6am flight from BWI.  I got up at 3:45am the next day to nurse Sofia, pump and get out the door by 4:20am.  Somewhere between DC and Chicago my breast pump BROKE.  I bought new batteries at an airport shop which cost a small fortune….but it still didn’t work.  The prospect of no breastpump for an entire day just about push me over the edge.  I used my phone to buy a handpump from a walmart close by and then talked someone who was local into going to pick it up at the store for me.  It goes without say that my flight back was exceedingly delayed so I didn't get home until midnight.  Just about the only thing that went right during the course of the day was the fact that I arrived on time to the meeting.  Had it not been for that random email I would have slept until 7:30 and totally missed the meeting...

Fortunately we did have a good past weekend.  Charlie had his first pseudo piano recital.  Here he is playing twinkle twinkle little star....a little slow, but not bad...http://youtu.be/QrXR_BaACCE  

Sofia and I went up to Philadelphia for my mom’s birthday and store holiday open house.  The store looks awesome and it was really fun to see people at the opening.  Soogy made up for us slacking by cooking up a feast afterwards. 

 

Sofia continues to be a total joy  (until 5pm rolls around and she is hungry and tired); Diego continues to have fits of seemingly middle child syndrome; Charlie continues to be doing well, but he is starting to prefer that I leave him be with his friends L.  I went to watch his soccer practice and he told me to leave and come back when it was over.  I almost cried. The other day he spent the entire day at his friend's house.  When Wade's mom asked if he wanted to go home for dinner, Charlie said no, so she had us all come over for dinner.  I really like Wade - hard to find 5 year old boys who are sweet, but Wade is definitely one of them.  When I arrived, they were reading books together.

Charlie has taken up capoeria!

Winter :(

Winter just began and I am already ready for spring! With the kids it is tough to be stuck inside and have it get dark so early.  So far I've just been in denial and let the kids continue to play outside.  Yesterday after school it was so cold that Sofia and I sat in the car watching Charlie and Diego through the fence play kickball on the blacktop.  Needless to say, everyone has a runny nose around here.

Fortunately this past weekend was super nice. We did the usual sports on Saturday and on Sunday Carlos took care of ALL of the kids so I could run a 10k.  Everyone survived.  Carlos wasn't in a great mood when I got home, but in much less of a bad mood than I expected so I'm already planning the next one.



Diego and I went to run around the gardens at the Hillwood Estate while Charlie went on his first movie date with Cici.

By Sunday afternoon Diego was so tired and grumpy that when we got home from a bike ride, he went upstairs and crashed on the bed with his helmet and shoes on.  Poor kid.  He slept from 5:45pm to 7am!  I did manage to take off the helmet and shoes.

Sofia still doesn't have any teeth, but she wants to be a big kid and catch up with her brothers!  She loves to try to walk around, but shows no interest in crawling.   She is super sweet and is slowly getting back to her normal routine of waking up once a night.  For the last few weeks she has been getting up a lot during the night.  Here she is laughing when I tickle her. 

Halloween and Work trip

Despite my best efforts to come up with interesting costume ideas, the boys just wanted to be batman and superman.  They didn't even want anything home-made (I guess my kermit pants really traumatized charlie last year) - just plain superhero costumes from the store.  Although disappointed, I was still sad to miss out on my favorite holiday.  Luckily we did get dressed up to go trick-or-treating at the zoo before my work trip.  It was fun, but a bit strange.  Charlie wanted to hit every possible stand to collect goodies, but Diego was mainly just interested in the stand giving out cheddar cheese and the merry-go-round.

Ry's birthday included live animals AND a fire truck!!

Carlos said they loved Halloween. East Capitol didn't disappoint and then they came home to give out candy.  Charlie said he liked giving out candy even more than trick-or-treating.   I guess they stayed up until 9:45pm giving out candy to whoever was random enough to come over here - usually teenagers with little to no costume.

The week seemed to be pretty long for Carlos, Sandra and my mom - who came in to help out.  The first night Sofia had a fever and didn't sleep much, Diego woke up with nightmares and Charlie wet the bed.   Monday I got a call from Diego's teacher saying that he had a major accident during naptime.....It seemed to only get marginally better from there.  On my end the trip was okay, but the way back felt like an eternity...when I got off the plane in Dulles I almost cried when I had to wait in that crappy tram and then I really almost cried when the passport line was longer than anyone had ever seen (took 1.5 hrs to get through) and then I REALLY almost lost it when some girl puked in the passport line so we waited while vomit fumes filled the air and then I literally starting to lose it when the customs line wrapped around various baggage claim areas.  I hate Dulles airport.

Actually the whole trip felt really long.  I had to leave on Sunday evening and didn't get back until Friday night.  I got to walk around Prague on Monday afternoon and see a friend I haven't seen in almost 20 years!  Crazy.  Despite the fact that the year and two summers I spent in the Czech Republic were formative experiences, I wasn't really nostalgic being there.  When I was in the Czech Republic 5 years after the velvet revolution, the Charles Bridge was lined with Czech teenagers strumming Beatles songs and desperately trying to conjure up the 1960s; the expats were all trying to "find" themselves by writing their first novel.  Nowadays, the hippies are gone; the Bridge is lined with tourist trap souvenir stands and the sea of tourists overwhelms any sign of a probably huge expat community.  oh well.  Tuesday-Thursday was in Plzen at a meeting hosted at the brewery where Pilsner Urquell is made.  The brewery complex is pretty cool - especially the fact that there are 9 kilometers of hand-dug tunnels which were used to keep the beer cool!  We were treated to dinner in a private dining space in the tunnels.  The fact that only a large pig was served was the least of my concerns - I'm so claustrophobic that spending 2+ hours in a deep underground cavern was almost more than I could handle.  Even the huge copper containers filled with beer couldn't help.  The highlight of the trip for me was spending my last evening back in Prague with one of my host sisters from when I was an exchange student in Olomouc.  I went to her wedding 8 years ago, but haven't seen her since.  It was so nice to meet her kids, spend time with her and skype with her parents!    However, spending time with Sylva and her family made me really happy.  She has a daughter, Amalka, the same age as Charlie and I hope that they will become friends and that she will come spend time with us here.

the beer tunnels

ahhh! beer and czech food!

my host sister and her two kids!