A Birthday Party Fan

Elisa loves birthday parties. Yesterday I took her to the birthday party of 2 little girls we know. Bia (4) and Luiza (5) are sisters that have birthdays one week apart. Before the party we had to go and pick up a present. Up until that point it still hadn't sunk it what exactly we were going to do. Then I explained, "we are going to a party! We are going to sing 'happy birthday' and play with friends and eat cake!" When I said those magic words "eat cake" her little eyes just lit up!

We were the seconds guests to arrive (and we were 30 minutes late). It was raining and traffic was horrible. It was good that we were some of the first ones there. Elisa needs a few minutes to get warmed up to new people. It really didn't take her that long this time though.

Bia and Luiza's party was a Princess theme. They had Snow White, Sleeping Beauty and Cinderella cut outs all over the place. Bia and Luiza were even dressed up like princesses! Elisa loved that!

She played and played with the other kids for a couple of hours before we had to catch a cab and head home. I know she loved every minute of the party - especially that one bite of cake she had!

After we got home I got Elisa ready for bed. As we were saying our prayer she thanked God that "we sing happy birthday and thank you for the princesses". What a sweety.

These are our friends Milton and Julianna and their children: Luiza, Bia and Marcelo (this photo was taken in March of 2008).

The Date Is Set

Well, there is still an incredible amount to do as far as our move back to the States is concerned. We are planning to have a massive garage sell (which is not a typical thing in Brazil) on November 29th and will spend the month of December packing the rest of our stuff.

We still don't know what city will be our final destination. We do know that we will have a period of up to 6 months with our sponsoring congregation in Colorado Springs while I look for a job. Most likely, we will end up in Texas.

One important bit of information that we do know is our departure date. We will board a plane and leave Porto Alegre, Brazil on January 27, 2009. If ever there was a "bitter-sweet" this is it. We are happy to have the date, but leaving what we now know as home will be difficult.

We won't actually land on U.S. soil until February 4th. From January 27th until February 3rd we will be on a "transition/debrief" vacation. Continent of Great Cities and Mission Resource Network highly recommend a time for missionaries to go on a vacation before they get back into the American life. This will be a good time for our family to relax and reflect upon our time as missionaries to Brazil.

Like I said, we still have an incredible amount to do. We will do our best to keep you updated as things progress. Until then, tchau!

Boogey Check

Today, Elisa asked me, "Daddy, do you have a boogey in your nose?"

I didn't. But, it is good to know that she is looking out for me.

"Elisa Sing It!"

Thoughts on Potty Training

It is hard. Simply put: it is a difficult psychological warfare that you MUST win. It doesn't matter what the child wants, but what he/she needs - to be out of diapers.

We started potty training Elisa on Monday of this week and it did not start off on the right foot. Jennifer had read a book that was passed down from her mom to give some pointers and techniques. I am grateful that Jennifer read it because it gave us a lot of good practices to implement. However, I will say that in my opinion we almost gave up after just one day because the book is so stinking misleading. In the book, the example child is completely potty trained in approximately 4 hours. That can get a reader's expectations up. When Elisa was having accidents Monday afternoon the white flag was about to start waving.

Fortunately, we had a couple of "people who care" that gave us great encouragement. Tuesday continued and ended up being about the same as Monday. The only difference was that I was the trainer instead of Jennifer. Wednesday improved with more successes than accidents. Today has been awesome! Elisa has had 6 successful deposits (if you will) with only one accident that happened in her bed during nap time. She is getting better as we continue to stick to the training process.

It has taken quite a bit of endurance and a lot more time than we anticipated. I realize that all children are different, some may take longer than Elisa while others may take only a few hours like the cheater example kid in the book (punk!). I seriously don't know how most parents pull this off. I don't know how we would have pulled this week off if we weren't already not doing full-time work here. We went on a walk a little while ago for 30 minutes and it was the first time that I had left the house since Monday! How do 2 full-time working parents do this? Do they take time off work or just wait until the kid says, "I'm sick of diapers! Can I have the keys to the car so I can pick some underwear at Target?" Seriously!

Anyway, as the successes come we all get encouraged. Elisa just needs to stop holding her pee as long as possible. "Just relax and let it go" is what we tell her. Hopefully, we will be completely in the clear by the weekend.

Last thought: I am so pumped about not purchasing or changing diapers that I can't even explain it!

The Beast Within

You might be asking yourself, "'The beast within'? What is this post about?" Well, as a parent I feel that it is my duty to use this blog to document the ups and downs of Elisa.

I mainly talk about the ups: how cute she is; the funny things that she says and does. This post, however, is about one of the downs.

Now, I will say that this cute little girl to the left has Jennifer and me saying daily how much fun she is and how lucky we are to have her. Truthfully, 95% of the time she is great!

But, there are those moments that make you say "what is happening here? Where did the cute and precious little Elisa go?"

The purpose of this post isn't to embarrass Elisa later on down the road. I love her and would never want to do that. It is to show that all children are capable of "the breakdown". Today was one of those days.


Let me begin by saying that she has struggled to sleep during nap time lately. For one reason or another she will just lay in her bed talking, singing or kicking the wall for a couple of hours. Sometimes we go in and try to get her to go to sleep and sometimes we decide to ignore it, hoping she will give up and wind down into "Sleepyland".

So, because she hasn't been sleeping we decided that we would take advantage today and go to the mall for the afternoon. Our thought was, "if she isn't going to sleep, then we should just go out and do what we want. Why should we let her manipulate our schedule if she won't even do what she is supposed to?" This line of thinking may have been a ticking bomb we detonated without knowing it.

We left for the mall around noon today. Today was rainy and there were a lot of other people that wanted to go out too. Luckily, the mall is about 30 seconds away by car. We went to a restaurant to grab some lunch, did a little light shopping for Children's Day tomorrow, walked around a bit and ended our time with a nice coffee/expresso.

By the time we were having coffee it was getting close to 4pm. Elisa was showing that she was on her last leg. I thought that she would get that 2nd wind any minute. It is usually pretty consistent if she misses her nap. We left the mall for home soon after and decided to let her play a little before trying to feed her an early supper. Due to skipping a nap and the fact that her 2nd wind never arrived we also decided to put her down for the night around 6 (bedtime is usually around 7).

Jennifer, Elisa and I started playing with blocks and her dollhouse and anything else she was interested in. However, when she is super tired like she was at this point, nothing holds her attention for too long - maybe 15 to 20 seconds at a time. Then, at around 5 pm it happened. That ticking bomb that we had set, you know "the beast within", decided to make an entrance!

Elisa transformed just as fast as Bruce Banner changing into the Hulk. It happened when I simply put her sippy cup upright after noticing that it had fallen over. Elisa came over and said, "No. I don't." Then she knocked it down. I put it upright again. Then, she slammed it down! Very calmly I said, "No mam. Let's not do that." Suddenly, Elisa's lower lip dropped. She began to get teary-eyed. Then.... "WWAAAAAAAAAAAA!" It was just like Bruce Banner warning the bad guy "Don't make me angry. You won't like me when I'm angry." Knowing how tired and fragile she was I should have listened to the "No. I don't." line. But, honestly, it would have happened if I set the red block on the pile instead of the green block. She was at the breaking point.

Now you need to understand. Just like the Hulk destroying buildings and cars and anything else in the way, Elisa can do damage too. When she gets really worked up her super power leaves a mark that only the washing machine can redeem. She vomits. Big time. We know when it is coming because of the preemptive burp. I know it is gross, but that is what happens. I heard the burp, picked her up and got her off the rug and on the tile just in time. She let loose too. This was the worse vomiting episode so far (and we have had a few!). The poor child threw up all the way to the bathroom and then got so upset that she was throwing up that she threw up even more. It was bad. Really bad.

It took about an hour, but we finally got her calmed down, fed and in bed. It was lights out for Bruce, the Hulk, Elisa and the Vomiting Beast by 6:15pm. There wasn't a lot of damage - you know, nothing that a roll of paper towels and some Lysol can't cure.

I know this makes Elisa sound like a terror. She really isn't. She is the funniest, smartest and most precious child ever. However, like I said earlier, all children are capable of a "breakdown". Children aren't perfect and neither are parents. This is real life with real child rearing challenges. Hopefully, no one reading this post has a child who vomits uncontrollably when they are upset. Maybe this post was even encouraging to someone. I really just wanted to paint a more accurate picture for our faithful readers of what life can be like on the "off" days. Everybody has them - even the perfect "Little Missy".

The Question Phase

Elisa is officially in the "question phase" of her young life. She doesn't do the "why?" thing yet, but I'm sure it is just around the corner. No, she is into knowing more about particular words. She is really trying to understand what it is to love and to have. Of course, she asks many other types of questions too, but these are the ones that stick out to me. The simplicity and preciousness of her questions make being patient really easy. Let me give you some lines of questions we have heard over the last few days.

Elisa: "Do you have toes, Daddy?"
Daddy: "Yes. I have toes, Elisa."

Elisa: "Do you love Raquel, Mommy?
Mommy: "Yes, Elisa. Mommy loves Raquel."

Elisa: "Do you love bananas, Daddy? MMMMMM!"
Daddy: "Yes. Daddy does love bananas."

Elisa: "Do you love buses, Mommy?"
Mommy: "No. Mommy doesn't really love buses."

Elisa: "Do you have shoes, Daddy?" (as she points to the shoes I am wearing)
Daddy: "Yes, I have shoes. Does Elisa have shoes?" (no reply)

Elisa: "Mommy, do you love boots?"
Mommy: "Yes! Mommy loves boots!"

Elisa: "Daddy, do you have a beard, Daddy?"
Daddy: "Yes. Daddy has a beard."

These are just a few of the many examples I could give. I think that she knows the answers to these questions (or most of them at least), but really wants to work some things out. She keeps showing us how smart she is by retaining a lot of what we tell her. Being 2 years old is tough, I'm sure, but she is doing a great job!

"A Banjo on My Knee"

Just look at this little girl! Cuteness! The other day the Blumes loaned Elisa a little keyboard. She plays and plays with it. One of the features is to turn on the "demo" songs. When you do this you can hear a different song each time you strike a key. For instance, you may hear "Mary had a little lamb", "Happy Birthday to you", "Oh, Susanna", etc.

Jennifer and I started singing the songs along with the tune the keyboard was playing. When we got to "Oh, Susanna" Elisa went to the kitchen and got this Leap Frog toy (you can see a video of this toy here) off the refrigerator. At first we couldn't figure out what she was doing. Then it hit us...

"Oh, Susanna! Oh, don't you cry for me. Cause I come from Alabama with a banjo on my knee." When you hit the little frog on this toy he says, "Hi, I'm Farmer Tad! Listen to my banjo!" Elisa was walking around holding her banjo on her knee! Hilarious!

Cell Phone Pictures

We don't have the right cord to get pictures off our cell phone, but one of our friends does. We were recently able to get the following pictures off our cell phone to share with you. Enjoy!

5 at 5

For the last 2 and a half weeks our family has been going on a 5k walk at 5pm. It has been a great time for us to get out of the house and enjoy the Porto Alegre Spring weather. Lately it has been really nice. We walk from our house to the mall that is nearby, around the mall twice and then back home. It is a pretty good walk, lasting around an hour. Elisa just hangs out in her stroller eating whatever snack we brought along and requesting for us to pick her the occasional flower.

There is a nice path around the mall that is marked every 100 meters. We see a lot of the same people walking or running nearly everyday.

Interesting thing happened yesterday: As we were walking along the main street across from the mall we suddenly heard a police siren. A car stopped right in front of us and then a Brigada Militar (like the Military Police) truck stopped suddenly. The officers jumped out of their vehicle with guns drawn (sidearm and shotgun) and yelled to the car "slowly step away from the car with your hands up!" It took me a second to register what was happening, but not Jennifer. She was pushing Elisa in the stroller at warp speed! We got out of there as quickly as possible. In a situation like that you never know what will happen and we didn't want to find out.

Anyway, family walks are fun and typically uneventful. They have become part of the routine and are a great way for me and Jennifer to bounce ideas off each other about our upcoming move to the states.