One year later

Wow, I can't believe over one year has passed. My baby boy walking. He is now 13 months old. He is sleeping trough the night (and has been for a while) and becoming more of a toddler everyday.

Alysia is doing great. She was a handful this past year. She loves her baby brother, but found it hard to share our attention with him. She never took it out on him, just on us. She has calmed down and is doing great. Alysia is now in grade 1 and still loves school. She does not enjoy having to wake up at 6:30 to go to school but she is getting used to it. She is also learning to swim. We have swimming class at the same time.

Poor Jeff has not had a good year. He has been suffering from pain in his arms and has been in fisiotherapy and acupuncture. Nothing is helping. The poor guys had to stop playing all his instruments and can only watch tv now. Even using the computer outside of work is bad. Pray that he may get better soon.

As for myself, I have kept myself busy. I am now the president of the international woman's club of Parana (http://www.iwcpbrasil.com.br/index.htm). It keeps me very busy and I'm glad everyday that I have Olga to help care for my kids. The one thing that has not been good has been my attendence to church. But I'm trying to make sure I take the kids for sabbath school. It's a big church (3000 members) and all in portuguese. We do have an adult english sabbath school but I never go, since I take Aidan to his sabbath school. Also since Aidan is older he just wants to play or walk around and we can't do that at church. The mother's room is not very good for actually listening or seeing the service :(. But he will get older and I hope to start going to church and not just sabbath schoool.

Well hopefully I will write in my blog once a month. It'snice to come back and read what has happened in my past :)

Aidan is Here

Another month later and I have lots to report :). Today September 13 was supposed to be my due date but as most of you know, Aidan Samuel Mercado Robichaud was born on August 19 at 9:05 am. He weighed 7 pounds. It was a quick delivery. I checked into the hospital at 8 am :). He is doing great and is such a good baby. I thank God for that. A few days after he was born I had to return to the hospital to get some blood, since it seems I had lost to much. Everything is good now.
Alysia has been a really good older sister. She loves Aidan and wants to help all the time, which can be annoying sometimes. But she is getting better.
Poor Alysia came down with the chicken pox on Tuesday of this past week. I again thank God that it was mild and that she only had two night that were bad. She kept me up all night. Between her and Aidan I got about 2 hours of sleep each night. Aidan is really good and will sleep 3-4 hours between feeding at night. I ended up getting the chicken pox vaccine, since I was unsure if I had ever had it (my mom did not remember either). This way I protect Aidan also.
Yesterday my friends (the Esso wives club) threw a baby shower for Aidan. He got lots of cute stuff :).

I have to say I have really appreciated having a full time maid ever since Aidan was born. She is really good with both my kids and will care for Alysia while I have to go out (since Alysia was home sick). Life has been going really well for me overall and I thank God for it.

Poor Jeff had his first car accident here in Brazil the day after Aidan was born. He was leaving the gated community and did not look right when he was turning and he hit a man on a bicycle. The man is fine, just a few bruises and everything between him and Jeff has been settled between them. Jeff also celebrated his 33rd birthday yesterday (September 12). I finally made him his chocolate cheesecake. He said it was good, not as good as when I cooked it in Canada, but better than the ones he has tasted here. There are lots of reasons why it was not as good, but I will go into the details :).

I wanted to post a pic of Aidan, but for some reason blogger is not letting me do it.

Take care everyone. May God bless you and keep you all safe.

Lying in bed just like Brian Wilson did...

This song keeps playing in my head since I'm now officially on bedrest. About a week and a half ago I started to get really swollen legs and feet. I did not worry to much. I figured it was part of the pregnancy, since I'm about a month away from my due date. I did mention it to my mother-in-law and she was worried that it could be toxemia (pre-eclampsia/hipertension). After she mentioned it I looked up more info on it, just in case :). Thanks to her I was able to notice other symptoms that came along a few days later, like a headache, rapid weight gain and a pressure in my head. I went to the doctor and had the nurse take my blood pressure. It was 160/100. My normal all through the pregnancy has been 100/60. The doctor put me on bedrest, had me do another ultrasound and gave me pills to control the high blood pressure. He had told me that it looks like Aidan will be coming sooner than we though, but luckely for me I'm about 34-35 weeks along. This means that Aidan is mature enough to survive just fine outside the womb. He checked me yesterday and is figuring that I might go into labour over the weekend. If I don't then I have another appointment with him on Monday. So far everything is fine and my blood pressure is 120/70. But it is very boring staying in bed most of the day. I don't have cable tv to entertain myself :), and I have read all my interesting books already.
I have told Aidan that if he can wait till we get the baby shipment I would appreciate it. My baby shipment (all the stuff I bought in Canada, since it's twice as expensive if not more to buy it here) is in Brazil already. They were supposed to inspect it yesterday and I'm hoping that this means I will be getting it Monday or Tuesday.

Alysia is doing great. She is back in school and loving it. She has already been invited to 2 birthday parties and and will be starting her afterschool activities this week (soccer and Kidsfit). She will restart her piano in September.
Life is going on as usual and it's a good thing I have a full time, live in maid to help out. She does go home for the weekends :).

Take care everyone and may God bless you all. Happy Sabbath.

Back in Brazil

It was has been over 2 months since I last blogged. But I think it was better that way. The month before I went back to Canada was not my best and I would only have been complaining in my post.

We came back from our trip to Canada on July 14. We spent almost 3 weeks back in Canada. We all really enjoyed our vacation. I was more relaxed and at peace and it made it easier to come back to Brazil. We are slowly settling into our rutines again. Alysia does not go back to school till Aug 6, so I have to find things to keep us busy. This is my first day that I have not left the house and have just been sitting doing nothing. Alysia is next door playing with her friend.
The weather is beautiful right now. It's winter here, but for some reason the temperature is in the 20's. It has been sunny everyday since we got back.
I have been making a new friend. Another family moved down from Texas. The husband works for Exxon, like Jeff. They have a 5 year old daughter who is becoming friends with Alysia. They will probably be in the same class once school starts. The esso wives club is growing, I think we are a total of 9 now. I try to make friends with the new ladies and help them out in any way I can. I can understand portuguese pretty well (my speaking still needs work, but it's better than most) and I have a car, so I do try to help out when I can.
I am now 7 months along. We have chosen the Baby's name. It will be Aidan Samuel Mercado Robichaud (the Mercado is a 3rd name, like Alysia's). Jeff says he still has not agreed to this, but this was the only name he did not say an outright no to. So I have been telling everyone and even Alysia is calling the baby Aidan.

I'm hoping to maybe update my website this month. Jeff has done his part, I now have to do my part. It's been over a year since we last updated it (we were having troubles with it). We have changed the colors and tried to make it easier to navigate.

Well take care everyone and hope all is well with all of you. May God bless you and take care of you.

COLD, COLD CURITIBA

Hello everyone. Hope life is treating you all good. My life here has now settled into a routine and I'm keeping myself busy.
We are now into fall here in Curitiba. It gets really cold at night and in the mornings. It warms up and will go up to 2o degrees or more but in can go down into the single digits. Houses here are not built with heaters in them, so they are cold once winter comes. Most people buy electric heaters and heated blankets. I have one and still have to buy the blanket. We only have 2 heaters and that keeps Alysia's room and my room warm at night.
Some of the things I have been doing to keep myself busy are
1. Portuguese class twice a week.
2.Piano class once a week.
3.Teaching english to my portuguese teacher (she also speaks spanish).
4.Taking Alysia to her portuguese class twice a week.
5. Taking Alysia to her piano class once a week.
6. Doing all my usual errands (paying bill, grocery shopping and doing all the other errands my hubby asks me to do).

It does not seem like a lot, but they do take up my time. I have to wake up every morning and get Alysia ready for school and try to make sure to be home in the afternoon when she gets home (if I can't make it, the maid is here and will care for her). I also have doctor appointments for me and Alysia and just all the things that come up on a day to day basis.

Alysia is loving school. She does not like waking up to go to school but once she is there she likes it. She is doing great in her piano classes and in her portuguese class. All of us still have a long way to go, but we can at least understand and make ourselves understood most of the time :).
The baby is doing great and still keeping me sick most of the time. It has started moving a lot more now and even Jeff can feel him move. We have not even started looking for names. After people find out what sex the baby is, the next question they ask is if we have chossen a name. The baby is a boy.
This morning Jeff is out golfing. He has found some golfing buddies among the other expatriats. They have memberships at the golf club, so if Jeff goes with them he only pays half price (which is still a lot more expensive than Canada).

We are really looking forward to our trip to Toronto in June. I have made my lists for shopping :). I have a list for the baby stuff I have to buy. A list for Alysia and a list for me. I also will be starting a list of all the food I'm craving so that I make sure to eat them when I'm there :). Jeff also has his lists.

Well thats all for now, I have to go, Alysia is demanding food and the baby is making me sick again. Take care and may God bless you.

A Day for Venting

If you ever decide to move to a third world country it would be a good idea to remind yourself of that fact for at least a month before you move, this will help you deal with some frustrations and make for a more happier move. This way when someone tells you that something will be ready in a month, you can tell yourself 6 months and when you get it in 3 months you will be happily surprised. Here is my vent list.
1. All my stuff from Canada is still in customs, and should have been coming to me on March 31. But the inspectors went on strike on the exact day that my stuff was supposed to be inspected.
2. My cell phone company has blocked all calls from my phone because I have not paid my bills. Bills I never recieved (their mail system sucks). I even went to them last month to complain that I had not recieved a bill (they did not want to tell me anything since the phone is in Jeff's name and he forgot to put me on the account also). They told me not to worry that I was fine and that I would recieve the bill sometime soon. Never did and I forgot. Jeff has now spoken with them (with his portuguese teacher's help) and once I pay the bills (which they printed) it will still take 2 day to get my phone working again. Jeff and his teacher tried calling the number I was giving so that they could resolve this problem, but they kept hanging up on him. So they had to go to an actual TIM store. We can't even yell at them since we don't know enough portuguese to make our frustration understood. My mantra now is I LIVE IN THIRD WORLD COUNTRY, I LIVE IN A THIRD WORLD COUNTRY. This is the only way to keep my sanity and not demand to return to Canada right away. I'm sure we have these problems there also, but at least I can speak the language and can complain to someone.

I had a lot more things to complain about but just venting those two things seems to have helped me feel more calm. So I will stop venting and say thank you for reading my vents. Maybe another day I can talk about some of the good stuff here (just not today).

To end on a positive note. My friends Olivia and Jerry Smith have a new little girl in their lives. I just want to congratulate them wish them lots of joy and happiness with their new bundle of joy.

Hello Again

I am now 12 weeks pregnant. I still feel sick and will continue to do so till a few weeks before the baby is born. Jeff kept trying to remind me of how sick I felt when I was preggo with Alysia to try and convince me that I did not want a second child :). So far the baby is doing fine. Alysia is also fine. Missing her friends in Canada, but making new ones here. She has more dificulty communicating with her friends at church, but she will soon be getting a portuguese teacher. This past weekend we went on our fist tourist trip outside of Curitiba. We took a train to another city. We actually bought a full day package that included the train trip through the mountains, lunch, a van ride back to Curitiba with a stop at another city and an english guide for it all. It was nice. Jeff has some pictures of our trip up on facebook. Our website is still down and will not be fixed till we get desktop computer. So I can't put up any pictures there.
I can now drive a manual car. I just can't seem to drive my car. The car my teacher used is a small little car and I had no problem driving it all over the city. I never once stalled it. Can't say the same for the jeep. But luckely for me I get my automatic car this friday. Life is getting so much better for me this friday :).
Take care everyone and may God bless you.