Family

Zoë Saw Her First New Year’s Eve Fireworks!

January 4, 2010 by Brian

Unlike on Christmas Eve, the fireworks woke Zoë up on New Year’s Eve. Daddy bundled her up and we took her out on the front and back balconies so she could see everything that was going on.

The fireworks were amazing, but there were fewer and they didn’t last quite as long as they did on Christmas. Here’s a taste of what she got to see:

One more box of gifts arrived from family in the States last week. Zoë got a new Tinker Bell blanket from Leslie, Ted, Jennifer and Joe. She loved it and insisted on curling up in it on the couch as soon as she opened it.

We’ve been going to quite a few BBQs now that it’s summer, and it has been a lot of fun for Zoë getting to play with other kids.

And of course, she’s adding more new words to her vocabulary every day. A few of the words she has started using in the last week are “ice,” “gracias,” “kay-ee” (Kaylee, while she’s patting mommy’s belly), “ow-ee” and “chau baby.”

A Request for Family and Friends who are Planning to Visit…

December 30, 2009 by Brian

We’ve talked to most of our family and friends over the past week and have a favor to ask all of you who are planning to visit after Kaylee gets here.

Please buy and listen to these CDs before you come:
Michel Thomas Speak Spanish Get Started Kit: 2-CD Starter Program

It’s just two CDs, a couple of hours of Spanish lessons, but it will be immensely helpful if you don’t know Spanish. It will enable you to ask basic questions and have enough comprehension of the language to go to the market on your own, or order some coffee and a snack at the café.

Having the ability to do these things on your own while you’re visiting will be very helpful to not only you, but to us. We love you guys, but we don’t want to have to chaperon you the entire time you are here.

And it will help you with filling out the paperwork on the airplane when you are getting ready to arrive in Uruguay… that we can’t help you with.

So please, if you don’t know Spanish (and very few of you do), please get these CDs and listen to them so you can have the very basics down before your visit.

One other part of the Spanish language you’ll want to have an understanding of is numbers. This won’t be taught in the 2 CDs, so we made this web page for you guys. It’s all numbers.

Listen to the CDs to get an understanding of how the language is pronounced, and then come back to Spanish Numbers Page over and over again until you get these numbers down…

We also made this web page with the days of the week in Spanish, which will also be helpful for you to learn.

A big thanks to everyone in advance to for doing this for us!

Our First Christmas in Uruguay

December 28, 2009 by Brian

We had a wonderful week celebrating our first Christmas in Uruguay.

We started off the week by finally letting Zoë ride a pony at the park. Every time we go, she always wants to look at them, but we weren’t sure if she was big enough to ride them yet. She absolutely loved riding the pony so much that she screamed when it was time to get off. We’ll have to let her ride one again soon. It only costs UY$ 25 (U$S 1.28) if you’re in Montevideo and want to check out the ponies at the Villa Biarritz park.

On Wednesday, we took Zoë to Punta Carretas Shopping hoping that she could sit on Santa’s lap and get her picture taken. We were disappointed that there was no Santa! What we thought was Santa’s house was actually Mickey’s Christmas House. So, we walked around and let her look at it, but no Santa pictures this year. Zoë did thoroughly enjoy Mickey & Minnie’s Christmas area, and that’s what matters.

We had heard that Christmas Eve in Uruguay was a big celebration, but we had no idea the surprise we were in for. At about 5 minutes until midnight, fireworks started going off and didn’t stop until after 1 am. Surprisingly Zoë slept through the entire thing!

It was the most amazing display of fireworks we have ever seen. Everywhere you looked, the sky was lit up. Some of them were public fireworks displays, but the majority of them were fireworks set off from peoples’ homes. Pictures could never do it justice, but here are a few to give you an idea of what it was like. We highly recommend spending Christmas Eve in Montevideo.

Christmas morning we woke up and headed out to the living room. Zoë wanted to eat before opening presents so, as a special Christmas treat, we let her have cookies for breakfast ☺

Then she started opening presents. It took her a little bit to get into it, but once she did, there was no stopping her. She had an absolutely wonderful morning opening presents and spent the rest of the day playing with all of her gifts.

You can’t tell from these pictures, but Santa brought her an entire stocking full of candy. She ate almost all of it on Christmas, so she never took a nap on Christmas. Luckily she fell asleep early and got a good night’s sleep.

We know she still has a lot of Christmas gifts on the way from family in the States, so we’ll be posting pictures of her opening her gifts as they arrive each week.

Our Little Chatterbox

December 21, 2009 by Brian

Zoë has really started to become a little chatterbox. Not everything she says makes sense, but that doesn’t stop her from talking your ear off. She also loves making up her own little gibberish songs and singing her little heart out.

But not everything she says is gibberish – her vocabulary is still expanding every day. The funniest thing she started saying this week is “Mommy’s” and “Daddy’s.” If she knows it’s something she’s not supposed to touch (like our computers), she points and tells us to whom it belongs – mommy or daddy.

She also said "please" for the first time this week. Instead of her normal demand of, “cuppy!” she said, “cuppy please.” We’ve been working on this one for a while, so this was a happy moment for us.

Her other favorite word of the week is "pretty." She’s been saying "pretty" for quite some time now, but ever since we put up the Christmas tree, she’s been saying "pretty" a lot more.

We’ve mentioned before how much she loves her babies. We set up her beach tent in her room this week and it has given her a chance to spend a lot more quality time with all of her babies:

And, here’s one last picture of Zoë for the week, of Daddy putting Zoë down for a nap. I think she got up and ran out into the living room laughing a few minutes after this picture was taken because she put Daddy down for a nap instead of him putting her down for a nap:

Zoe’s New Friend

December 14, 2009 by Brian

This weekend, we were invited to a BBQ hosted by a family we’ve gotten to know from New Zealand. They have two young boys and live out in Carrasco, so we knew Zoë was going to have a great time.

First, she got dressed up all pretty, packed her baby and some toys in a bag and was ready to go play:

Her and Billy really hit it off (he’s about 5 months older than her). They climbed up on one of the tables to enjoy some snacks together.

They played together in the tunnel and took turns going down the slide:

They played together in the pop up tents:

And when it was time for us to go home, Zoë gave Billy two giant hugs – if only I’d had the camera ready for that! It was quite sweet.

Zoe’s Big Week of Firsts

December 7, 2009 by Brian

Zoë had a really great week. She started saying a few new words: “mommy” (instead of mama), “grandma,” “happy,” “yummy,” “tasty” and “cheers” (as she knocks her water cup against ours) are the most memorable ones.

She also decided she has her first favorite pair of shoes, which used to belong to her cousin Dayla. Every morning when she wakes up, she brings them out to us to put them on her. It doesn’t matter whether she’s dressed or not, she loves to wear her shoes:

Her weekend was also filled with fun and exciting firsts. Friday night she got her first rose, compliments of Daddy… She only put it down when she went to sleep on the couch and we could take it out of her hands:

Saturday afternoon, she went to her first country music festival. We found out that she likes punk music more than country… again compliments of daddy:

Then Sunday, we finally made it out to another Expat Meeting at Fellini. Zoë had a great time digging into her first taste of chocolate mousse. She sure does love chocolate, taking after her daddy!

By the time we got home, she was so exhausted that she passed out on the couch watching Tinker Bell and the Lost Treasure:

Zoë is a wonderful joy… We’re excited to see how she acts when Kaylee gets here in 9 weeks. Zoë is VERY jealous when we hug, because it’s her mommy, and daddy is not allowed to hug her mommy. But, on the other hand, she is fascinated with babies (both real babies and baby dolls)… When she’s sees a picture of herself she says “baby” then points to the picture and back to herself repeatedly with a huge grin on her face.

As Zoë would say, “Chau chau!”

Just Try and Find Me…

November 30, 2009 by Brian

Recently, Zoë has taken to hiding from us. At first, it was just hiding behind the curtains in the living room, waiting to see how long it would take us to notice that she was gone (even though we were sitting right there).

One day I was out for a bit, I think maybe at a doctor’s appointment and Brian was home alone with Zoë. Well, she gave him the fright of his life. He went to check on her and she was nowhere to be found.

Not in her room. Not in the living room. Not in our room. Not in the kitchen. Or the bathrooms. And, nope, not on one of the balconies either. Where was she?

Hiding in her stroller, underneath her Kelty Kids Carrier
(which, by the way, is a necessity for us here). This, is her new favorite hiding spot ☺

Happy Thanksgiving!

November 26, 2009 by Brian

We want to wish everyone a Happy and Safe Thanksgiving from Uruguay!

Brian, Chrystal and Zoë

Our Little Helper

November 23, 2009 by Brian

Zoë has really become quite a little helper. No matter what it is we’re doing, she finds some way to help out.

She loves helping Daddy sweep the floor:

And she’s always excited to clean up water she spilled:

She’s also constantly picking up trash and throwing it away and she loves bringing dishes to us in the kitchen while we’re doing the dishes (which does mean a broken glass here and there).

Over the past couple of months, Zoë has definitely become our little helper. Hopefully she’s just as excited to help us with her little sister when she joins our family in just over two months!

Zoë Likes to Scream

November 16, 2009 by Brian

We’ll be doing our weekly update on Zoë every Monday, which means that we’ll be moving our recipe of the week to Fridays.

Last week we mentioned that Zoë is very into dressing up these days. We wanted to share a few pictures.

This is Zoë’s beach attire. She loves to wear her hat and sunglasses everywhere. Of course when we get to the beach they have to come off so she’s free to play.

Lately Zoë has started walking around the house with one of her hooded towels on her head. Our little super hero.

And best of all, she loves to dress up in our clothes whenever she gets a chance. Pretty cute, huh?

But she is still your normal toddler testing her limits. Brian had some errands to run on Friday, so Zoë and I went to the grocery store. Normally she is very well behaved… not this time!

She decided it was funny to scream at the top of her lungs (she has a very loud, high-pitched scream) and run away from me. She didn’t want to be in her stroller and she didn’t want to be held. She wanted to be able to run all over and take things off the shelf.

I thought we were going to have to leave, but she finally sat still in the stroller after being bribed with a small stuffed dog (or “woof woof” as she would call it) so I could grab a few final things. I know this is just a phase that Zoë is going through, so I’m trying to appreciate every minute of it.

Zoë had a very fun weekend. Saturday we met up with a very nice family from New Zealand at Parque Rodo to play.