Cruz's 19 Month Update

Cruz turned 19 months old on the 26th.  With each passing month he just gets more and more fun.  He keeps us well entertained and busy all day long.

WHAT HAS HE BEEN UP TO LATELY?

*   He weighs around 26 pounds

*   He wears 18-24 month clothes, size 4 diapers, and size 5 shoe

*   He eats everything.   We are very thankful that he is not a picky eater and he will eat whatever is fed to

     him.  Recently he has started holding his food in his mouth and won't chew or swallow.  It drives us nuts.

     A few of his favorites are peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, McDonald's cheeseburgers, and any fruit. 

     He loves mandarin oranges and for some reason calls them "dooney".  We have no idea where that word

     came from but we hear him ask for it often. 

*   He likes to sleep with a burp cloth that he calls his towel.

*   We love that he can now follow simple commands like "bring me your shoes", "put that in the garbage

     can", "pick up your toys", etc. 

*   He loves to help us around the house.  He likes to hand us the clothes out of the basket when we are

     loading the washer.  He likes to sweep and mop (or at least try to).  He loves to get a wet wipe and go

     around dusting things.  He is a big helper!  I think he gets that cleaning from his daddy, haha.

*  He has a great vocabulary and seems to learn new words everyday.  He repeats many of the words he

    hears us say.  He loves to read books and say the words after us.  He has a pretty good pronunciation

    as well.  He spends time daily next door at our neighbors house so he is learning a lot of Spanish words

    too. 

*   He loves to curl his tongue under and bite it. 

*   He LOVES music.  As soon as he hears music playing he starts dancing.  We have always sang to him

     since he was born.  Many times I have sung hymns and praise choruses to him.  His new favorite song to

     sing I am not sure of the title but the chorus goes Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, sweetest name I know.  Fills my every longing.  Keeps me singing as I go.  Well he loves to sing the Jesus, Jesus, Jesus part and sings it all 

    day long and especially when he goes to sleep.  It melts our hearts to hear him!  He also likes the "Love 

    My Lips" song from Veggie Tales. 

*   He loves shoes and wants to change into a different pair several times throughout the day.  He also loves

     to wear things on his head.

*   He has learned to say many of our neighbors names.  It makes them very happy that he can say their

     name.  His favorites to say are Hans and Yuli.  He calls our neighbor Glenda- Glenny.  He also knows

     the names of their dogs- Shakira, Tookie, and Spikey.

*   He has started telling us when he has pooped. 

*   He is learning to have temper tantrums and testing our limits often.

*   We are trying to change him from two naps a day to one long afternoon nap.  It works well most days

      but there are days that he just cannot make it until after lunch.  He still goes to bed between 7:30- 8:00

      and most days wakes up around 6:30 a.m. 

*    He has learned to crawl out of his bed and that makes trying to get him to go to sleep at night very hard. 

*   He has started giving us kisses.  He especially likes to kiss us when he wakes up in the morning. 

     He can be so sweet at times!

He is as active as any little boy can be.  He is rough, rowdy, and just simply all boy.  We love his personality and watching him grow and develop. Of course we think he is very smart (doesn't every parent).  He is a happy child that seems to adjust well to any and all circumstances. 

Happy 19 month birthday baby boy!

We look forward to seeing what these little hands and feet are going to get in to next.

Christmas Day 2011

Our Christmas Day began with Cruz waking up at 5:00 a.m. despite the fact that he went to bed way later than normal!  We put him in our bed and he tossed and turned for about an hour before falling back to sleep.  Once he did, he slept until around 8:00. We then all got up and walked into the living room so he could see his gifts.

his gifts waiting for him to open

He went right to his new car and as you can see from the look on his face he loved it.  He was not interested in opening anything else, only riding in his new "cah".

He would stop playing to open one or two gifts at a time and then go back to his car.  It took him a while but he finally got them all opened.  In addition to his car he got a bean bag, several movies, books, and puzzles, some play tools, a see 'n say, a Love to Play Puppy, a pillowcase, and a DVD player for the car (which we gave him a little early).

He loves his new pillowcase.  Once David put a pillow in it Cruz put it on the couch, grabbed his towel he likes to sleep with, and layed down on it.  We have it in his bed at night and it is funny listening to him talk to the characters.

He likes playing with the puppy but he prefered to pretend the box was a chair and sit in it.  He sat in that box many times on Christmas Day. 

For Christmas morning breakfast it is our family tradition to eat a typical Guatemalan breakfast.  That includes scrambled eggs with cheese, black beans, and fried platanos.  We ate toast instead of tortillas because we did not want to go out to buy some.

For lunch we ate American style.  I cooked a turkey, green bean casserole, sweet potato casserole, deviled eggs, pecan pie, and sweet tea.  It was delicious!  We invited Ms. Barbara Stoltzfus over to eat with us.  After lunch and visiting it was naptime, and a much needed one I must say.

We spent the rest of the afternoon playing, watching his new videos, working his new puzzles, reading his new books, and dodging him in his new car, haha. 

Cruz turning the t.v. on so he could watch a movie.

reading and playing

We ended the day by reading the Christmas story and having a family prayer.

Although we missed being with our families terribly bad, we did enjoy our day.  It was quiet, peaceful, and relaxing.  We hope all of you had a wonderful Christmas as well.

Christmas Eve 2011

Our Christmas Eve morning began with our tradition of eating French toast.  Afterwards we all got dressed and we drove north to Santa Elena.  We ate lunch at Pizza Hut and then did a little walking around in the strip mall next to it.  We let Cruz play on the playground and ride several of the coin rides they have there.   He loves to ride these rides and since they are inexpensive we always let him ride several times. 

  He loves the motions, the lights, the sounds, and especially pushing all of the buttons.

Cruz and I sitting in Santa's chair at the mall.

We returned home mid-afternoon and I did some early cooking for our Christmas day lunch.  We have been exchanging food all week with our neighbors.  They are so kind to us!   We have received a lot of good food.  A tradition here on Christmas Eve is to eat tamales and we got several of them delivered to our house.  I was looking forward to it because tamales are one of the things I have craved with this pregnancy.  I enjoyed eating some before we headed next door to have supper with our landlord and his family. 

It might not look appealing from this photo, but they are DELICIOUS!

A quick family photo before we walked next door.

me and my silly boy

For the second year in a row our landlord has invited us to eat with his family for Christmas Eve supper.  They always fix a delicious meal and we always enjoy the fellowship.  This year they had tamales, smoked turkey, a fruit and veggie salad, a jello salad, apples, and grapes (grapes are popular here for Christmas).  Many people drink ponche, a hot fruit drink similar to a cider, with their meal but we had Guatemalan hot chocolate.  It was good.  This is a photo of a few of us eating.  We gathered at our landlords restaurant that is next to us.

Cruz had a blast playing with all of the grandkids.  They seemed to enjoy him as well.  At one point they took him into the kitchen, wet his head, and fixed his hair like a shark.  They thought he was styling and loved it, haha.

Cruz with the kids

After eating and visiting for a while we returned home to get Cruz ready for bed.  We gave him his bath and put him in his pj's.  We then had our birthday cake for Jesus.  I have been baking cakes and taking them to our neighbors this week and almost every time we delivered one Cruz would cry because he wanted it.  I tried to explain to him that we would have one later but he is not old enough to understand.  When he realized that we were about to eat cake he was really excited. 

I fixed it on our celebration plate that we eat on for our birthdays.  I thought it would be good to keep the tradition even at Christmas.

Look at that sweet grin! 

This was his face as he listened to us sing "Happy Birthday".  He loves singing.

I took a few more photos of him in front of the tree before he headed to bed. 

I call this one his "I know I have been bad but PLEASE get me some presents" face. haha

and one final grin.

Another Guatemalan tradition is to shoot fireworks at midnight.  We were not sure if we wanted to wake Cruz up or not and decided to just let him sleep (and we were very glad the noise did not wake him).  We had planned to turn on our a/c in the bedroom to help drown out some of the noise (and because it has been warm)  but there was not enough power to run it.  Usually in our area things die down after dark but on Christmas Eve people are up until way after midnight.  With everyone using electricity we just did not have enough to run the air.  Instead we opened the windows and ran the fans.  It was VERY loud at midnight.  I got up and went outside to watch and loved every minute of it.  Cruz slept soundly.  Because of our windows being opened our house filled with smoke from all of the fireworks and that was not fun.  It is such an exciting time seeing and hearing all of them being shot at once.  It literally sounds like a warzone. 

Christmas Eve was a fun filled day.  We enjoyed some time together as a family and also enjoyed some time having fellowship with our neighbors.  We like being able to participate in some of the Guatemalan traditions as well as make family traditions of our own.

Mission Christmas Party 2011

Last Saturday we attended our mission Christmas party in Guatemala City.  It is held at the Hardeman's home each year.  We enjoy a potluck lunch and a lot of fellowship together.

Each year the MK's take a group photo.  I am glad we are now able to make a contribution.

We also play games.  This year a few brave "volunteers" had to put a piece of ribbon with a cotton ball attached to it in their mouth.  They then had to dip it in a spoon of vaseline and try to get it to stick to their noses- without using their hands.  It was funny to watch. 

they were all good sports

The MK's draw names at Thanksgiving and get each other gifts.  The adults bring "white elephant" gifts and play a game swapping them. 

Cruz getting his gift

Last year I took a photo of Cruz in front of the Hardeman's beautiful tree.  I decided to do that again this year and make it a yearly tradition.  Here he is looking a little naughty and a little nice. 

  Last year's photo. 

He's grown and changed so much! 

Our family 

It is hard to believe that next year we will have another little person in our photo!

Giddy Up!

If you follow us much you know that our little boy has a new obsession with horses.  He likes to pretend that things are horses and then tries to ride them.  So you can imagine his joy when he finally got to ride the real thing this past Saturday.  We had just attended our mission Christmas party in Guatemala City and another missionary told us about horse and pony rides in the park close to his house.  We stopped by there on our way home and let Cruz ride.  He loved it!  We thought he might be a little scared of a real horse but no way.  David put him on there and it was like he had been riding for years.  No fear!  He talked and made horse sounds all around the block.  It made us so happy to see him so happy.  The cost for this simple fun- Q10.  That's about $1.25 for a trip around the block.  Well worth it! 

Of course his joy did not last long.  He cried as soon as we took him off.  He cried himself to sleep in the car on the way home, and then cried as soon as he woke up from his nap.  He cried off and on the rest of the day wanting to ride the horse again.  We will definitely have to take him back there another day.