A Letter to a Princess

Dear Kayla,

My beautiful daughter, I love you so much you might not know how much. I don't always have the patience I should, I might fight more than I should, but I love you more than words or actions can express.

You're seven now, you look adorable with two teeth missing, you're growing so fast, I can't make time slow down, I try to cherish all the moments, all the expressions, all the words coming out your mouth, all the memories from the time you were in my belly... The happy, the sad, the frustrating, the amazingly good moments you've shared with us.

I hope so much for you, I hope you get to do the many things you dream of and more. Things I dreamed and never did because I was scared and shy.

I try to teach you the important things in life, to think for yourself and not just accept what others are telling you. To accept people for who they are and not easily upset by how they are. To care for others. To defend yourself. To be you and never who someone else wants you to be, not even who I want you to be, but yourself!

You're such a wonderful person already, you have lots of love in your heart.

If I have ever hurt you, I'm sorry. I'm sorry if I will hurt you in future. If I ever dissapoint you, I'm sorry. I'm not always the good example, but I really do my best for you, I'm not always right, but I'm doing what I can.

If you ever read this, know that I love you and always will. Know that anything I did in my life with you was for you and your brother, my two angels.

I love you with all my heart and can't imagine my life without you ♥

3 and going strong

Andrew is 3 now, in six months he'll be 4.

No, he's not our little baby anymore, as difficult that is to admit. I think every parent would say that you don't really feel or see how fast time goes by until you see your children growing up.

He's doing well at school, his vocabulary is growing everyday and he has a sense of humour, he's a funny little guy. His Portuguese is still behind what we would want, but I think he speaks more than we know, since we speak mostly English at home. He does have his moments when he only wants to speak Portuguese, but it's not as evolved as his English, which doesn't worry us too much, because we know he's learning and teaching a child to be bilingual isn't an easy task! He's a very smart boy, but also a bit more spoiled than Kayla was and can has his little fits, we're trying to fix that.

We're still not sure if he's left-handed or right-handed, maybe he's both, whichever it is we're fine with of course, but curious to find out.

He still gets sick often, but lately hasn't gotten too bad, maybe it's because of Summer, maybe because of the dehumidifier we got. He was tested for allergies and the result was that he has no allergies, so doctor said it's asthma brought on by dust, polen, etc. We've considered moving out of Madeira in hopes of him not getting sick so often, that and other reasons, but no decision finalized yet. Kayla also has some reaction to polen, dust and the usual, not as bad as Andrew though.

I love my little boy, couldn't imagine my life without him ♥

Nearly two

Andrew is nearly two years old! Time flies!

He's talking quite a bit and is a little parrot, repeating everything he hears.

Though we thought he was taking longer than Kayla to start talking, we know he is ahead of the majority of Portuguese children, I think it is due to him being bilingual.

When he was 18 months old, we took him for his development test and the nurse was surprised at his language skills. She showed him a picture and wanted him to point at the animals and objects on the picture that we would tell him, but he was so interested in looking at the picture he want's reacting, so I told her he knows the things if we show them to him, so she said ok. I asked him what's this...what's that and he would say the names. She was surprised he was already saying two word sentances (though he was already saying 3 word sentances, but we only started thinking about that afterwards). We gave him directions to see if he would follow them "feed the baby", etc. She said he was above Portuguese average. This we had to do all in English, because he communicated only in English at the time.

Now he says quite a lot in Portuguese, but most of what he speaks is English, I think he's doing really well in.

He still has the allergy problem, every once in a while he gets sick - runny nose, coughing, etc. We give him his anti-allergy medicine twice a day and when he's sick we have to give him another one. I'm not too happy about him having to take medication at such a young age and we don't know for how long, but it's something we have to do, I just hope it doesn't turn into Asthma.

In the beginning of December he got sick and Orlando took him to the health centre to see the doctor, she asked why we hadn't taken him to get the type A flu vaccine, Orlando said that we hadn't decided whether to give it or not. He asked why a lot of people - doctors and nurses - didn't want to take the vaccine themselves, she told him something and told us that if he doesn't take the vaccine we have to sign a term of responsibilty form, so in a way we were forced to get it. I'm still so worried about side affects which they say will only show in a few years, but every little thing I see different in him I start thinking about the vaccine, I still think we shouldn't have taken him to get it.

Other than that he's an energetic little boy, a typical boy. He knows how to bug his sister, although he loves her to bits! When she's spent the night at her grandma and comes home he grabs on to her and doesn't want to leave her. They sleep together at night, but lately he's been waking up most nights and coming to our bed, he wants to be with mommy. He still likes sleeping holding on to someone's hair (preferably mine), hehe!

He has to start school in September, he needs a lot of attention now and it's very difficult to do anything when he's around. We don't know yet where to put him, but maybe Kayla's old school until he's out of nappies, then he can start school where Kayla is now. Thinking of encouraging him out his nappies this Summer, during the warm weather.

He's not taking off his clothes by himself, like Kayla used to (not that it matters that he's not at the same level of Kayla at that age, but something to remember in a few years).

He's starting his phase of sticking things in holes, typical boy, like I said.

Andrew and Kayla are so different in so many ways, but they're both very sweet, loving children. They love hugs and kisses and being close to us.

Although he's taking longer than Kayla to start talking, we know that every child has his/her own development and boys are said to do things later than girls, which we aren't worried about, he's not stuck in one place, we see him evolving.

He's running along now and he usually doesn't want anyone to hold his hand, but he knows (some) of his limitations, when he has to go up a bigger step or down one, he searches for a hand to grab on or he goes down on hands and knees to get over that mountain, but like most adventurous kids, he tries to do things on his own. In the blink of an eye his standing up on the sofa or on the kiddy chair we have for them to eat at the kiddy table, not very high, but wouldn't be a very nice fall.

He took a while to say "papai", but now that he's learnt that word it's non stop, papai here and papai there, and the adorable way he says it! No, he still says mamãe, but less often, though he seems to like mamma's arms than daddy's, or maybe it's the hair he prefers. He still grabs on my hair at every opportunity, especially when he's tired.

He sleeps in his bed basically every night, rarely comes to our bed and unlike Kayla at that age, he falls asleep by his self, which I think is us to blame, or just not enough experience... maybe it's just that every child is different.

He usually says the beginning letters of words, but he is starting to finish them off more and more, bird used to be bi "as in bird", but now he's saying the whole word. Butterfly is "bu", ball is "ba" (as is ball) and other words only we can know what he's saying. He does say bus, car (South African accent), etc. He knows animals and their sounds and tries to imitate. He tries to sing, especially "yeah yeah yeah yeah" from the Koala Brothers and sings something when happy birthday comes on the Panda channel.

Here's another leader, he knows what he wants and doesn't want and shows it, he's going to be a tough one, especially because he doesn't have that communication skill yet. I don't know how it's going to be between him and Kayla, they both think they're the boss of eachother, it's going to be rough! We can only take one moment at a time.

He, like Kayla, loves the water, loves baths and loved the swimming pool today, which he called a bath (bass - "ba" as in bath).

He's got quite a few teeth coming out now, he seems to be grumpier than usualy and has had more dirty nappies as usualy too (because of the teeth? Maybe, possibly, not sure).

He suffers from allergies, or so the doctor said (not a pedeatrician), so we give him medication in the morning and at night, I hope we don't have to give him medication forever, of course we will if we have to, but I am aware that some doctors have "happy pen fingers", writing out prescriptios left to right, I hope this isn't the case, but I wished we could afford a pedeactrician, when we see he is very sick that is our option, for both kids.

He is such an adorable child, huggy huggy child (again, like I wrote for Kayla, is most probably evedence of the life we're giving them.

I don't think we're perfect parents, I know there are areas we could definately do better, but I don't think we're doing a bad job, our kids are polite, obedient (within their capabilities due to their age), so I hope in the long run, things will turn out, of course you never know what will happen in life, so one moment at a time.

The Little Boy

I've decided to create a blog just for Andrew, so I can write about him in a seperate place than Kayla, hopefully I will make a plan to write a little on both everytime...

Andrew is now 13 months old, the cutie pie! He's not walking totally on his own yet, but he adventures out a little, more and more every time. He walked from the TV to the sofa the other day, the furthest I've seen him walk on his own until now. He says a few words, I think only we know what he's saying when he says it:
Flower - can't spell how he says it, but it's so cute, he even called his boy thing flower the other day, lol; there - dê; that - dat, what's that - az dat; all gone - gô gô; mama (which he uses instead of papai too, sweetie!); banana - nana - which he calls the magnets on the fridge because his grandmother has a banana magnet; etc

He loves animals, he gets very happy when he sees one and when it's a dog or something nearby he wants to go to it, when it's a stuffed toy he hugs it and kisses it.

He eats well, I make a mix - pumpkin, potato, sweet potato, greens, rice, etc - he gobbles it all up, then again, I wonder what he doesn't it...

He doesn't cry much, he a very well behaved baby, doesn't obey "no" yet though.

In the beginning he would fall asleep by himself, then we put him in the habit to fall asleep while we help him and walked up and down with him, then he got sick and we kept him in our bed, so he got the habit of staying in our bed, I would hardly sleep because he would be moving and our bed doesn't have a headboard, so I was always worried he would fall down to the floor and he would always want to grab my hear and hold it... I decided that was it, the end, one night at bed time, I put him in his bed and left the room, everytime he cried I would go back in and hig him, lay him down, talk calmly and go out, I repeated this a few time, this was the first night. The second night was better, we would pick him up for a hug and lay him down again, he eventually got the hang of it and now if he wakes up at night we pick him up for a hug, then lay him down and he sleeps. I thought it would be more difficult than it was, thanks be to god for our lovely son (and lovely daughter).

My mom is looking after him while we work, I would like it to go on until he's 3 so he can go straight to the Adventist school, they take them from 3, though seeing as his birthday is in February he will only be able to start school when he's nearly 4, we'll see how things go, if she can't look after him for 3 year, then we'll see our other options.

He's a lovely, happy little boy.