"new" address for december

Well, the moving company is coming to pack and load tomorrow. Then we fly to Phoenix on Friday. Our apartment won't be ready until Dec 16th so we'll be living in a hotel for a while. The boys are I are headed to Ohio Dec 12th so we won't even see the apt until after new years.
For those ambitious enough to send Christmas cards, feel free to send them to my parents' house since we don't have an address as of now and will be there most of the month anyhow. Anyhow, we are doing well enough. Alejandro kept threatening to cancel his birthday party because he has a Peter Pan complex and doesn't want to grow up. Dante has morphed into a book worm. His first sentence was "Read that book now." Demanding little fellow. Stories about flushing training pants and our trip our Mount St. Helen's (I got to fly the plane!) will have to wait for another day because I need to finishing packing.

Love always,
debi

moving sometime somewhere i think maybe

I'd been trying to wait until we knew what our plans were before sending an update. After three weeks of waiting to get some resolution from Intel, I decided to just send a message. We won't be going to Israel until at least April. Supposedly we'll be moving to Phoenix but we aren't exactly sure when that will happen (sometime between next week and April.) Hopefully we'll still be able to go to Ohio for Christmas but there are no guarantees of anything besides the certainty that Intel will change the schedule again.
Anyhow, we are doing well in Oregon. After three weeks of rain (when we had company), the weather has been gorgeous the last few weeks. A bit cool, but blue skies and sunshine. The boys are both doing their best to keep life interesting. After Alejandro mastered the rock wall at the park, he attempted to climb "Mount Dresser" during his nap time which toppled over and pinned his legs. I heard the crash and was up the stairs before the shock and pain had a chance to set in. Of course in the few milliseconds of silence before the tears, I had presumed the worst and six hairs turned white. Since then he just empties his dresser to make a mountain out of his clothes. Alejandro wanted to carve an anatomically correct pumpkin because he insisted everyone needed to know it was a boy pumpkin, not a girl one. He really enjoyed trick-or-treating and thought we could go again on November 1st because some people still might have candy. He's become very independent and needs to do everything by himself. He helped himself to a blackberry milkshake as you can see below. Apparently. Alfonso's English still needs some work because when I said "Quick! Bring a towel!" he came running with the camera.
Dante's vocab has really taken off the past couple weeks. He points to and says all the parts of the face by name (all in English, a few in Spanish) but it is a bit hazardous when he gets to eyes. I honestly believe he's trying to pop mine out of their sockets. He's learning to share and take turns and follows Alejandro around trying to give him things. It's really quite sweet. He hasn't quite mastered Alejandro's name so he calls him "brother" instead. He loves to play chase and I'm exhausted way before he ever gets bored. But his new favorite game is flipping on and off the lights now that he can reach the switches. Dante is also climbing and jumping/falling/rolling/sliding off of the couch/bed/table/toy box. Anyone want to take a guess on how many trips to the emergency room I'll be making in the next ten years?
love always,
debi

starting to rain again :(

Dante started sleeping through the night, so we stuck him in his own room which happens to be the same place the computer calls home. So the only time when I'm free to use the computer (when Dante is sleeping) the room is occupied. Such is life. Anyhow, we have company now and the boys have been sharing a room the past few nights. They wake each other up at the crack of dawn but otherwise it's going well enough.
Time just flies by these days. Dante's birthday came and went. The baby days are long gone. He's signing like crazy and he climbs up, over and into everything! He's very astute and puts his powers of observations to good use by finding what buttons to press to drive people crazy. When he's not too happy with his brother, Dante will go and get Alejandro's most cherished stuffed duck, wave it in Alejandro's face and take off running. With me, he just spits and then smiles at me. The boys go between fighting over toys and beating on each other to giggling and hugging and kissing within a blink of the eye. I try to ignore as much as I can unless someone's life or limb is in peril.
Alejandro has turned into quite the little person with his own opinions, reasoning and observations. "I know it wasn't nice to hit Elijah, but he hit me first and that wasn't nice either." "I'm not tired yet but how about I watch a movie and then I'll go to bed. Okay? Good." He loves to help. But you have to be careful when letting him help you put produce away because he likes to try a bite of all the fruits to see which one he really wants. It's really sweet to watch him read stories to Dante though. He uses different voices for different characters and everything. He loves to re-enact incidents, especially when he was getting in trouble but he makes them these big dramatic experiences. Some friends watched the kiddos one night and the next morning Alejandro tells me "When we were brushing teeth, Mister Jay said 'No, no, no. You stick that tongue back in your mouth.' And then Miss Hettie said 'No, no, no. You be quiet because your brother is trying to sleep.'" Apparently everyone waves their finger when they says 'No, no, no' which is funny because I don't know anyone that has ever done that to him.
As a family, we finally started going on more trips now that the summer is nearing an end. Visited friends from college in Seattle, went to Mount St Helen's and Crater Lake. Tentatively, we are still headed to Israel after Christmas but Friday they announced the schedule was pushed out another 10 weeks, so we may end up here until March. Who knows?
Love always,
debi

"really really much"

Well, the only one in the household left on their hands and knees is me (scrubbing the floors) -- Dante is through with crawling. While he looks like someone slipped some tequila left over from our wedding into his sippy cup, walking is his preferred mode of transit. He weaves and wobbles around and still falls down frequently, but he just gets right back up. Alejandro is now the victim of not-so-random drive-bys. Dante sets his sights on his target, runs in at full speed, swipes a toy while still on the run, turns and takes off knowing retaliation is not far behind. We've had some minor altercations thus far but the stage has been set for some serious turf/toy wars. It's all okay though because Alejandro says "I love my brother really really much." Dante keeps Alejandro company in the corner when Alejandro is in trouble (usually for picking on Dante.) Dante is also aspiring to be the next Lebron, I found him trying to shoot hoops. He's figured out how a lot of the toys' pieces and parts go together by watching his big brother. But the imitation is not one sided as Alejandro mimics Dante's stagger and gibberish.
Our trip to Ohio helped me notice some of Alejandro's personality quirks to which I had become immune. He prefers broccoli over french fries and you can bribe him to do just about anything for a slice of watermelon. When he's in a hurry to finish eating, he always stuffs as much food as he can in his mouth. He recently discovered another food receptacle. After he completed his own impression of a chipmunk, Alejandro decided to shove the remaining slices of carrots and cucumbers into Dante's mouth (who was more than happy to comply.) We have to keep a constant vigil at meal time as Alejandro tries to feed Dante unattended baby food as well. (If you know how messy a baby eats, and how messy a two year old eats -- just imagine the combination of the two year old feeding the baby. Did you think I was kidding about scrubbing the floors?)

Anyhow, not a whole lot else is going on. The summer here is almost beautiful enough to make one forget how miserable it was when we first arrived (almost -- but not quite!) Our move date to Israel is currently the end of December but that will probably change again by the time I finish typing this sentence. Short term we are looking forward to some company, both visitors and other families on temporary assignments for Intel.

Love always,
debi

"My, what big teeth you have..."

"The better to bite my brother's toes!" says Dante.

This last month has been a bit challenging. Dante has four teeth (with another two not far behind) and firmly believes that toes make the best teething rings. He can stand on his own and has taken a few steps. He signs "milk" and said "mama" for the first time while reaching up for me (I think he was trying to make up for waking me at 5 in the morning.) He loves being mobile and is pretty content to venture around the room playing with toys. He also manages to find every microscopic scrap he can find to put in his mouth. Alejandro is on constant patrol and comes to tell me "Dante is eating stuff again." On one occasion, I found Alejandro trying to fish a sticker out of Dante's mouth on his own. But Dante bit him so now he just reports the incidents. Dante's personality is really coming out as well. He can work up some mean crocodile tears if you tell him "no." You'd think the world had come to an end. But he's a tough little cookie. He holds on to the the back handle of Alejandro's riding toy. Alejandro pushes himself along, so Dante is trying like crazy to follow behind. Sometime he can't keep up, so his feet go out from beneath him but he won't let go. So he gets drug along for a while until he manages to get back up on his feet and keep going.
Alejandro has become quite creative. He makes trees, people and mountains out of his legos and they actually resemble his desired object. He loves his Mr. Potato head and puts an arm in the nose spot and calls him an elephant. He can get himself dressed but most days he changes his shirt three times before he decides what to wear. (His concern about fashion definitely comes from his father, not me!) He's been going swimming all the time in the pool here at our complex. We had to get him a life vest because he has no fear of the water. He's started giving us problems at bedtime and it takes an hour or two to get him to stay in his bed and then he gets up in the middle of the night and wakes the whole house. So everyone is tired and grouchy the next day. This has been going on for about a week now, which is six more days than I can handle. I prayed it would pass, and that didn't happen. So I prayed for patience with mixed results. Now I'm praying my mom and dad can figure out what to do with him when we go to Ohio next weekend!
Not a whole lot else is new.
Love always,
debi

and he's off!

Dante has been crawling for a few weeks now as well as pulling himself up. He's starting to walk around on the furniture. He cut his first tooth yesterday and another one today. He also climbed up three steps yesterday. We thought the house was pretty much baby proof because of Alejandro, only to realize that Alejandro has just learned to stay out of a lot of things. Dante's had a few fussy days (when he was teething) but he's generally a very content little guy.
It really changed Alejandro's world to have Dante mobile. Gone are the days when he could just scoot back to get away from Dante's prying fingers. But he's handled the adjustment really well. Dante will crawl into his lap and use Alejandro as a crutch to pull himself up. Alejandro is very patient and will hold still for a while so Dante doesn't fall. Eventually he gets bored and will try to wiggle away from Dante's death grip. I've only had to break up one fight so far over a sippy cup. Alejandro's vocab is still growing by leaps and bounds. He developed a bit of a stutter so off we went to the speech therapist. His type of "speech disfluency" usually goes away by 3 and 1/2 but we were given a list of other speech patterns to watch for that would indicate a more lasting issue. He's become quite the little daredevil and we've had to establish lists of rules for different activities which he recites for Dante.
Alfonso has become fully integrated at work -- which translates into crazy busy! We are both taking Hebrew classes at the community college (but on different nights.) Hebrew is just like English except that there's a different set of characters for the alphabet, different sounds, different grammar, is written right to left and they leave out the symbols for the vowels in printed text. So basically what they have in common is the lack of consistent rules and a bunch of words that aren't pronounced phonetically. Alfonso has to go for training in Austin for a couple weeks, so the boys and I will be headed to Ohio during that time. Alfonso will come for a week as well. Anyhow, our flights are setup June 16 through July 7.
We enjoyed our visit with Alfonso's mother and hit a few of the tourist spots in Oregon -- Multnomah Falls, the tulip festival and the beach. We'll have to hit the rest on her next visit.

Love always,
debi

it's still raining

Well, we are all settled in here and will be for a while longer -- they just moved Alfonso's start date in Israel to January. Alfonso had been working on a compressed shift. He had nice long 3-4 day weekends but on they days he worked he would leave before the kids got up and return after they were in bed. But he finished that part of his training and goes back to a normal shift next week. We had a nice visit with mom. Dante is especially sad she left because he got held by grandma any time he made a peep.


Alejandro got his first tricycle. (Someone threw a brand new tricycle in the dumpster. It hadn't even been assembled. It was in the box, which was in pretty sorry shape, but the parts were still in bubble wrap. What's even more ironic is that the day before we had looked at the same model at the bike shop but decided to wait until it was a warmer until we bought a bike.) Anyhow, he loves it and just sits there and rings the bell. The first night we wouldn't even get off the bike to read stories at bedtime. He's talking so much and you can actually have a conversation with him. He's a riot. Some things he obviously has been told -- he constantly says "I'm too much!" Other things - he comes up with all on his own. For instance, he sneezed and when I asked if he needed a tissue, he tells me "No, mommy. I'll just use your pants." He think I'm a walking napkin. (I gave him a tissue just in case you were wondering.)
Dante gets up on all fours and rocks back and forth. He'll be crawling any day now. Right now as he pushes himself up, he scoots backwards. So while he's trying to get the toys in front of him, he keeps getting farther away and gets really frustrated. He'll figure it out soon though. He's super fast at rolling though. When Alejandro turns his back on a toy that Dante wants, Dante does the stop-drop-and-roll and crosses the room to swipe the toy. It's hysterical to watch. He's discovered his voice as well. He babbles and says "da-da" a lot. Alejandro laughs and tells him "No, Dante. Say mama!"
Not much else is new. We finally finished taxes. While I'm sure that's not very interesting news -- I'm very excited. Especially since Alfonso had to go back to Albuquerque and go through boxes in storage since the movers stored documents (and a bunch of other stuff) that were supposed to come here. Life would be dull if everything went as planned though! Well, we'll be in touch. Happy Easter!

Love always, debi

the great northwest

We arrived in Portland on Friday afternoon and it's been raining ever since. Our townhouse is nice. The moving truck is supposed to arrive Thursday -- so once we fill this place with all our junk it will feel more like home. We have a three story house but Alfonso put up gates so I'm less paranoid about Alejandro taking a tumble. (Well, from the stairs anyhow -- he likes to stand on the coffee table.) We live really close to just about everything we need. Less than 2 miles from Intel, there are groceries stores, restaurants, shopping plazas and parks within walking distance. We found a new church we like. It's on the other side of the railroad tracks. Literally and figuratively! Across the street from our complex there's Banana Republic and Gap and the like but when you cross the railroad tracks you see signs for tattoo parlors, payday loans, pawn shops and the carniceria/taqueria. (We bought some carnitas at the carniceria after mass. Yum!)
Alejandro is adjusting surprisingly well. He keeps asking to play with his friend Julianah but he's excited about the new house. He prays for both of them every night. His latest accomplishment is brushing his teeth. He finally figured out the brushing technique (instead of just sucking off the toothpaste.) He's sleeping in a twin bed without rails (since they are on the truck still) and hasn't fallen out of bed. Talks a mile a minute and sings at the top of his lungs. His favorite song these days is "If you are happy and you know it..."
Dante is rolling all over. He's starting to sit up. He's learning to steal toys back from Alejandro. Still a sweetheart and very easy going. He has gotten up on all fours once and will be crawling before we know it. Life goes way too fast!
Alfonso had his first day of work today. He has orientation this week so he only has to work half days. But Intel will get their pound of flesh later when he's working 14 hour days. He's excited and seems pretty happy about his coworkers so that's a good thing.

Love always,

debi

moving (a couple times)

Well, Alfonso received an assignment with Intel in Israel. (He applied for the position -- it wasn't forced!) First he has to complete training in Portland, Oregon. So we are moving to Portland the week of Feb 19th. Our move to Israel is tentatively scheduled for October. But Intel is still building the facility, so the date might get pushed out a few months. The assignment there is two years, so we should return by the end of 2009.

For those interested in the details, we'll be renting our house out in the meantime. Intel will fly us back to the states twice a year -- so tentatively the plan is we'll head once to El Paso and once to Ohio. The town where Intel is located is between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv but further south so we'll probably live in one of the two. Anyone who's up for the trip is welcome! We'll be living in an apartment in Portland but will have a house in Israel.
Anyhow, we are all doing well. Have lots to do in the next couple weeks but somehow it will all work out. Dante is almost five months. He's a sweetheart -- very happy little guy. He laughs a lot. He's rolling over and trying desperately to sit up (with mixed results.) Alejandro's vocab has really taken off in the last few weeks. He uses his new language skills to boss his brother around. "No pulling hair, Dante! It's not nice!" "Drop the toy! It's my turn!" But he's very concerned about hygiene. Today he came in the bathroom and ran off with Alfonso's deodorant. I found him applying to his armpits (with his shirt on but he had the right idea.) It's never boring with him around.

Love always,
debi