Possum, Popcorn and Monkeys

Our dog Negra got out of our fence the other night and it was pretty late. Not enough time to get her back in because she has to do her laps up and down the street. If you call her, she runs faster and it's even more of a game. Unfortunately, she just had to spend the night out there and that was that. In the morning, upon unlocking the gate, there was a dead possum out there and two guilty looking dogs named Negra and Cochi (our neighbor's dog/my dog since I take better care of her than they do).  For some reason, there always seems to be a possum taunting these dogs and Negra will bark for hours at one in our backyard while it plays "dead" trying to get Negra to go away. Usually, it's me that has to go out there even in the middle of the night to try and scare it away or tie up Negra until it "comes back to life" and goes away. If, somehow it ends up dead, we bury it in our compost area where we bury all our organics and let it compost away. This time was no different but I wanted to wait until Dani got home to "take care" of it. Matthew saw it outside the gate and asked what it was. I told him it was a dead possum. Then I told him Negra and Cochi killed it last night. He asked me what it's name was. I was shocked by this question so I quickly said, "uhhhhhh, Possy!", yeah, that's it, Possy. He didn't buy it and said that wasn't the name so I told him it was Snickers and he seemed to buy that......hmmmmmm what are these three year olds thinking?????

A couple of weeks ago after my sister in law Carolina had been in town and left, Matthew asked me for some popcorn. Now, when Carolina was in town, she had bought two bags of microwave popcorn. They ate one and the other one got put in the cabinet. Dani and I were out of munchy stuff a couple of nights later so I was like, "Oh! We have that bag of popcorn from Carolina"....so we ate it. A couple of days after that, Matthew said he wanted popcorn. I said, "oh, I'm sorry, we don't have any." He said, "Mama! I KNOW you have popcorn, tia Ina (Carolina) buy popcorn and bring it here.  I know you have it. Get it!" I was in shock that he was so sure about that and remembered everything. Then I had to explain that his dad and I ate it. He was not happy.

It is so interesting watching Matthew learn Spanish and English simultaneously. I mean, sometimes, he tells his grandmother something in Spanish and then he tells me what he told her in English. He changes so easily and naturally. Last week we were outside playing and he went outside the fence to get something but didn't want to come back the traditional way. He wanted to climb the fence from outside and me to pull him over (it's a little higher than my head) back inside the fence. I was like, OK. So the grandmother who lives across the street was on her front porch watching all this and she made a concerning comment about him falling possibly by climbing the fence as she watched him start going up. I assured her that he was good at this kind of thing and it wouldn't be a problem (hoping I was right!). So I pull him over and then I yelled across he street in Spanish, "See, he's like a monkey, he loves to climb everywhere." Then a couple of minutes later Matthew says to me, "Mama, I mad at you!" and I was like, "why?" and he said, "because you tell her that I monkey and I not monkey, I Matthew!" It was so cute because I had said that in Spanish and called him a "mono" but when he told me why he was mad, he said it in English. Not only was the language translation interesting but he also really thought I was calling him a monkey, so of course, I had to explain that it was "like" a monkey since monkeys climb things so well and he did too. He wasn't mad anymore after that when I said what a great climber he was, lol!

Guanacaste Independence Day

All this week has been a celebration of our province of Guanacaste being independent from Nicaragua and staying with Costa Rica. We have had celebrations in the schools as well as parties in the central park of Nicoya (including the first female president's visit on the 25th). Matthew participated in the "reinado del maiz" which was basically crowning the king and queen of corn at the different schools. Corn is very important in Guanacaste and many foods are made from it including, delicious corn bread, homemade fresh corn tortillas, choreadas (like corn based pancakes), baby corn (that's what I call it but don't know the real name in English), cornmeal and of course....corn on th cob. The children who want to participate dress up in a traditional indian costume from Guanacaste back in the old days. Matthew won at his school last year and got to ride on a float (aka pickup truck.....see picture on main blog page on the right hand side) so we participated this year too. Didn't win this year but I had fun making the costume as usual and Matthew didn't have fun wearing it as usual. He's not keen on dressing up in costumes or wearing any type of head pieces. This year I got him to wear the indian feather headdress though and last year I couldn't make him.  I guess we're making progress.

We went to the celebrations in the park a couple of days ago and then again  today to play on the trampolines and kids' mechanical cars, eat some yummy typical food and hear some typical music, etc.

 

House Construction

We have been building a house for 4 years now. Yep, that's right, 4 years! With half a year of rainy season every year, construction costs going through the roof, spending approximately a total of a year in the USA during a two year period on leave without pay, we're just taking our time. We also don't want to be paying on this house for 30 years so we're doing much of it out of pocket whenever we have the money. There's no rush really, we have a perfectly good house we're living in right here on the same property. It will be three story but the third story will only be about a third of the house, the rest is two story. Five carports and about 4,000 sq. feet, it's going to be amazing with amazing views.  I can't wait till it's done but I try not to dream about that too much since it'll still be a year or so (or more, who knows?) till it's finished. By request, here are some pictures.

From the living room looking into the entrance on far right, dining room
in the middle and kitchen on the left.

Looking from the kitchen into the living room with the dining room
on the left next to the kitchen.

 View from third floor, overlooking second floor roof. Third floor
doesn't have roof yet.

View from other side of the third floor.

Living room with big sliding glass doors/windows to be able to
open up and have it completely open air. There was going to be a
balcony there but now there will just be a railing to save living room space.
There will still be a balcony on the second half of the house outside the bedrooms.

Matthew Spends the Night Away

Before I get to Matthew spending the night away, I have some sad news. My mother in law has the beginning stages of rectal cancer and will be going under the knife tomorrow in San Jose. She has already had a bout with colon cancer a few years back, had surgery and it was taken care of. She needs to get a colonoscopy every so often still to check and this time, the colon seems to be ok but the rectum is not. The outcome looks good but none the less, she's been hospitalized for a week in San Jose (4 hours away from where we live) and has had many tests done and tomorrow she will have surgery. I'm still not sure what the end result was on which kind of surgery she'll have, whether or not they'll have to open her up to do it or non invasive but either way.....not fun.

So Dani and his father were going to San Jose this afternoon and will be there until Tuesday (Dani's father is going to another town on the way to visit family there). Just a couple of hours before leaving today Matthew all of the sudden said he wanted to go see his grandmother, aunt and cousin in San Jose. I told him that I would not be able to go and I would stay here but if he still wanted to go, he could. This is a boy who even though he can go to the bathroom by himself still wants mommy to do it for him no matter how many other people are around that can help him too. It's ALWAYS mommy and not daddy that he wants to do things for him and it's quite tiring actually. I love him to death though, so I usually give in. The only time we've ever spent a night away from him was ONE night in his whole 3 1/2 little years right around the time he turned 3 years old. Well, since then, I left him to go have his baby brother but he was still in his own house and surrounded by tons of family. I can't believe he just hopped in a car, went 4 hours away and he VOLUNTEERED to do it. I'm very proud of him but I miss him. Wow, just 7 hours without him and I feel almost like I have nothing to do, lol! Kinda boring without my little guy here. Julian keeps me busy, but just goes with the flow with whatever I want to do.

Matthew and I were watching this cartoon last night and this little girl kissed this boy on the cheek and of course his face turned red, he started floating and little hearts started popping out of his eyes. Matthew kind of laughed at that so I asked him if any girls had ever kissed him like that (thinking maybe one of these cute little girls at his school or something) and he said yes! I was like, "who"? And he said, "Mama" and he was totally serious. It was so cute. I just love him so much.

Here are a couple of pictures from his class party right before vacation. He's supposed to be back at school tomorrow but we let him go to San Jose for two days instead.

His teacher Kembly is this tiny little thing and
probably had to choose pre-school because all
other grades would have kids much bigger than her.
We think she's GREAT!

Teeth!

Ever since Julian was two months old, I've thought we were about to have teeth, lol! At that age, there was actually a small little chip of a tooth that had broken through (or had never been beneath) the gum but it was a little behind where it should have been. Shortly after that, within a month, I couldn't find it anymore and it seemed that the gum had grown over it. Then, at 3 or so months, he was drooling, eating his hands and making all kinds of weird movements with his mouth and lips as if his gums were itching or bothering him. It seems that now at 6 1/2 months, we have TWO bottom teeth that have just broken the surface of the gums. It's official, we have teeth!

Other news to share is that he's been eating solids for about a week but he doesn't totally have the hang of it. I get it down (mostly I'm just giving him rice cereal but will start oatmeal cereal tomorrow) but it takes a few tries. Occasionally he swallows it the first time but usually it comes out, then I spoon it back in, out again and in again and it's just a game until it goes down. He still has the pushing out with the tongue reflex which should be going away soon.

What a Week!

Matthew started his Winter break (yes, Winter is in July in Costa Rica) this week so it'll be this week and next week. Whenever he's on vacation, it just seems like all normal routines (which I like and really think the kids do too), normal eating habits, etc, just go right out the window. I'm exhausted, hahahahaha. That might be also in part due to the fact that Dani has been on vacation for a couple of weeks and just started back this week, our housekeeper asked off for Monday and oh yes......BOTH boys had strep throat! It was bound to happen and will happen over and over again I'm sure. The funny thing is that Julian brought it to Matthew and not the other way around, lol. I think he got it from his cousin Emma when we went to the beach with them and no one knew she had anything until the last day. A couple of days later, bam! Julian had it and a couple of days after that, bam! Matthew had it. Luckily I only had a sore throat for one day, congestion for another and I was done....at least as far as I know.

I cannot believe what happened tonight. Matthew actually served his own dinner (basically) and was eating it at the table by the time I got done with Julian's bath tonight. I was in shock. I had left some rice and chicken in one of his bowls on top of the coffee maker (ants are rampant in CR) with a spoon in it and had steamed some fresh broccoli and left it in a tupperware container on the counter before I took Julian to the bath. When I came out, I went in the kitchen and if we had an inside dog, I would swear that the dog had eaten 3/4 of the broccoli so I was like, who ate the broccoli? Then I look in the living room at Matthew and he had used his stepstool to be able to reach the prepared bowl on top of the counter and coffee maker, served him a BUNCH (because I had made extra for a couple more servings) of broccoli and took it to the living room to eat. I was in SHOCK! All the food was room temperature which may be ok for the broccoli and chicken but the rice? Yuck. He didn't want me heating it up for him either, he was happy. I was so proud of my little man. I don't know how he knew there was anything good in that bowl on top of the coffee maker much less, his dinner but he found it and he was eating. What a little independent guy. Nope, he won't be one of those kind that has to wait on his woman to get him some dinner, no sireeeee!

Matthew and Julian "almost" the same age. It's within a month, I think. I have one with Matthew under the hooded towel but I can't locate it right this second.