Peru, Here We Come!

It looks like we'll be heading to Peru for 7 days at the end of September! Wow, I never thought I'd be taking an almost 4 year old and a 9 month old to Peru! There was a REALLY great offer and I mean really great. How can you pass up an offer of $58 roundtrip from Costa Rica to Peru? We had to do it no matter how hard it might be with these two kids. It's a 3 hour flight from Costa Rica to Mexico and then from Mexico to Peru will be 6 hours. I see lots of dramamine in our future, lol. There will be a total of 10 of us, with 3 kids included. Matthew and Julian's cousin Emma will be there too. I really can't believe we signed up for this but we're headed to Machu Picchu, yippee!

Here are some sleeping pictures :)

Julian has started sucking his fingers....

Yes, Matthew really did fall asleep this way, on the table with a pen in his hand, lol!

Matthew Daniel

Matthew is really into how his name is Matthew Daniel these days. So, sometimes when he pretends that he's writing (well, doesn't pretend, he really is, you just can't read it) he says that he wrote Matthew Daniel. Then he says the next lines say "Mama Daniel, Julian Daniel, Papa Daniel, Sara Daniel, Emma Daniel" and so on. It's really cute. I think he thinks that everyone's name is their name plus "Daniel", hahahahaha!

When I picked Matthew up from pre-K today, his teacher told me that Matthew chose the topic for next week's lesson. This teacher does a lot of child-led learning and she lets the kids choose what they're going to learn about from week to week. Matthew chose PIZZA, lol. So, they will be doing pizza activities next week. I think he gets this fascination about pizza because I've started making homemade pizza (got a GREAT recipe for pizza dough, thanks Brookie!). Now, whenever Matthew is playing like he's cooking something for me, it's always pizza. It used to be scrambled eggs when he used to like to watch me make that but now it's pizza. I'm surprised it's not chocolate chip cookies since I make those all the time although now that I think about it, he has served me "cookies" before. I didn't know if I should apologize to the teacher for him picking pizza or just say that that sounded great. They have a microwave in the room so I'm sure they'll make some kind of individual microwave pizzas or something.

Julian and His Feet

Julian is all about grabbing his feet. I'm just waiting until he gets them high enough to suck on them because it's not gonna be long now! Oh yeah, and sticking out his tongue. I do it back to him so now he just does it all the time....

Matthew has been going to the sports complex with us a few afternoons a week to walk/run and ride his bicycle around the track. Today it was actually raining (looks like the rainy season is upon us) and we were planning to go thinking it would stop by 5pm. Matthew looked at me and said "I need to do exercise Mama". It was so cute. He really likes it. He goes around that track really well on his bike with training wheels and everyone thinks he's so cute as he goes by. We also play soccer with him there and he's getting pretty good. He's really getting the hang of it.

Bottle Feeding

Julian is going to be 4 months old in 10 days but he hasn't successfully drank from a bottle yet. He kinda did it one time with my mother in law but that was about a month or so ago and we haven't tried it since until yesterday. I had a baby shower to go to and I knew it would be about 3 hours so I left her with a bottle of my milk (AKA Liquid Gold) and when I came home, he looked like he was in a trance and my MIL said he wouldn't take the bottle. So I had two different bottle nipples to try but neither one did the trick. Then I kept trying every once in a while, little by little to see if he could get used to it. Then, I had to throw away the liquid gold and start again today since I don't think you can put it in the fridge again after heating it up only to heat it up again later. I tried again today and it's a no go. Dani made a good point....it's just a few months before he starts on a sippy cup and it's not like I'm really going to leave him for that long anyway, I may as well just skip the bottle and go right to the sippy. I mean, why bottle train him when it may be 3 times at the MOST (if that) that I would even need it in the next few months. Matthew never took a bottle and he started using a sippy cup around the 6 month mark. He was playing around with it and drinking a little even at 5 1/2 months.  I think we're just going to leave it at that.

On another note, Julian slept until 7am this morning and Matthew until almost 8am, yay!

In their matching "brother" shirts. Same shirt, just different sizes and colors.

Matthew feeding his friend Jesus some pizza. Thought he might be hungry after being dead for 3 days. Dani painted this picture when he was in his early teens.

A shot of mango season at the Vargas house.

Holy Week Terrors

Dani did a great job teaching Matthew about the crucifixion and the resurrection but I think he went a little overboard. Luckily a few days have passed and some of the images that Matthew had in his head have diminished. Unfortunately, way too many details were mentioned about the crucifixion. Matthew was telling me about the blood and the pain and poor Jesus was crying, etc, etc. It was my idea to look for some children's bible stories on YouTube to help him understand the story but even some of those animated ones are NOT for children and were quite violent.  I didn't think it would go that far but it did and Matthew saw them and he was like a deer in headlights. Before he went to bed on Easter night, he mentioned that he was dying too. He was a bit scared to say the least. He still talks about Jesus a lot but luckily most of it is saying he loves Jesus and Jesus is his friend. That's just too cute to hear when he says all that. Dani did a painting of Jesus when he was a kid and it has Jesus with rays of light coming from him and a mountain with three crosses in the background. Matthew loves this painting and has kissed it many times and says he likes Jesus and he's not dead.  He explains that Jesus was nailed to the middle cross and that two bad guys were on either side of him on other crosses. He says that those two guys are still dead but Jesus is alive and he doesn't have more blood or injuries. The morbidity has subsided, thank goodness.

On a lighter note, Julian is looking at his hands all the time. He has just discovered them and the fact that he can move them around in front of his face and make them do different things. He's also "talking" up a storm....so cute! He just goes on and on oooohing and ahhhhhhing. He's really having a conversation even if no one is in the room, lol.

A Couple of Days at the Beach

We spent a couple of days at the beach (although I never actually went to the beach, stayed at the hotel at the pool) and Julian got his first taste of the pool (literally because when Dani was holding him, he kept getting water in his mouth). He seemed to like it, he didn't cry, but didn't smile that much either. He was just taking it all in.

I thought we might actually go home after the first night since we were pretty much up since 3:30am, with only about a 40 minute nap from 5:30am until 6:15am and then up for good. Ugh.....started off with Matthew waking at 3:30am and wanting to go outside. Yes, go OUTSIDE at that hour and he wasn't kidding! So, as I'm arguing with him in my best whisper voice about this, Julian wakes up at about 4am for his regular feeding and then he's usually off to sleep after that. With all that was going on and all four of us in one room, that just wasn't going to happen. So, both kids were back asleep by 5:30am until Matthew got up for good at 6:15am. I was pretty much over it by that point and ready to pack it up, hahahaha. Needless to say, we tried it one more time and the next night was better, not great, but more of a normal night for us anyway. 

 

I love how we have one boy with my skin color and the other with Dani's. They are just both so adorable in their own way. I keep thinking when holding Julian and cuddling him, is this really the last one? Of course it is, because Dani wouldn't go for it and I really don't want three children but it's so hard to believe that this is the last. It's such a joy, even after the sleepless nights at the beach just last week. The sleepless nights and stressful moments are nothing compared to the love and joy we have for these two sweetie pies. We couldn't ask for anything better :)