Christmas in Lugano

Being at home this winter break and not traveling really allowed us some mellow family time.  We we've been able to spend time altogether and really do things as a family, which has been a treat.  On Christmas eve we bought a mini tree to decorate and get into the spirit of the holiday a bit.  I think Liam was really happy about that since he'd asked about all the big Christmas trees outside.  (here they like to decorate the big live trees in certain locations, which is really kind of fun to see and so much better for the environment)!  I asked James for food requests and the Christmas eve menu was: Ham, gratin potatoes (no boxed mixes here, so made from scratch), spinach, and marshmallow cupcakes for dessert for James and me, and lichees and grapes for the littles.

Getting ready to decorate the tree - we each got a special ornament to hang on it too

Our little decorated tree

Eowyn and Liam loved seeing the tree all decorated, and while Liam was old enough this year to not break any ornaments or knock things over, Eowyn was all about trying to grab a small something and get it into her mouth.  We're just lucky she can't stand up yet, because then we'd be in big trouble!

Christmas morning we had belgian waffles with berries and fresh whipped cream.  Everyone approved of that!  Liam was so funny.  He didn't recognize that the wrapped boxes under the tree were presents, so he actually asked what they were there for!  Finally I told him they were presents and then he really got Gesited, as he likes to say!

Waffles for breakfast - look at the berries around Eowyn's mouth!

Ready to open presents

Trying to get to the ornaments - cheeky little girl!

Liam unwrapping his first gift - books

Eowyn gets a stacking toy

We kept things somewhat minimal, but still, I was amazed that even with 3 presents each, it seemed a bit overwhelming to them.  Liam wanted to do/play with each thing, but also wanted to see what else was coming.  It's a bit confusing to me how to negotiate this whole gift giving business.  I feel like a heavy dose of moderation is probably not a bad idea, and small and simple should count for a lot.  Let's see how we go forward.  Liam's gifts were: 2 books, a puzzle box with 4 little puzzles in it, and a play dough machine.  He has read one of the books about 10 times already (no jokes), made the puzzles at least 3 times, and spent about 2 hours yesterday playing with the play dough.  All successes in my books.  

Eowyn got a small elephant puzzle, a stacking toy with rings she likes to put in her mouth!, and a stuffed animal dog.  She's only vaguely interested in all of them, mostly in the same way she's vaguely interested in all toys at this point.  Hopefully in time she'll figure them out better, but she's young still.

So it was a cozy day at home, with yummy food, and lots of family time.  We had a good chance to chat to many other family members on skype in the afternoon and evening, which really made the day!

A Quiet December

We decided to stay put this Christmas break.  After the trip to Olympia (by the way, still waiting on news of that, though at this point we're guessing it's a "no"), we realized we didn't have any strong desire to pack and get going again so soon.  We actually had our first snow fall on the last day of the semester (dec 14th).  It was beautiful, and just made our home seem more like the fairytale location it already is.

Just a cute picture of Eowyn taken the day of our first snow

Before everyone headed to wherever they were going we took a day trip to Lucerne with Josh and Jen to check out the Christmas markets and just get out of town a bit.  Going by train with the kids really makes it so much easier, and with half price cards it totally makes sense.  We could eat and play games and get Eowyn to nap, so it didn't really upset the schedule too much.  We got there around lunch and had some Thai food, followed by a lovely walk around the old town.  We had no agenda so things were relaxed and enjoyable.

James and Liam in front of a hand carved manger scene

Thought this was a funny shot - looks like daddy day care!

Jen and me on a mild winter day

A compulsory Starbucks stop

Back in Lugano it took us a few days to start to unwind and slow down.  Liam remained very "gesited" (excited) about the snow, and so we made numerous excursions outside for him to get in some snow.  You may have noticed our patio has changed.  We had a small landslide a few months back now, and then decided to build out a deck rather than fix the landslide.  The update is that we actually have a railing now, but these photos were taken before it went up.  We also put Eowyn in a snow suit for the first time so she could experience the snow. Unfortunately she could barely move and kept toppling over because of the thickness of the clothing.  She wasn't a huge fan but stuck it out a little bit.  

Eowyn on the patio

Liam and Eowyn enjoying sun and snow

Skeptical Eowyn and daddy

For some strange reason, Liam spent a full day pooping on the potty - I know, you've been waiting to hear about this!  Well it was a major turn of events for us and he was doing it on his own volition after a comment by James about needing to know how to go before he could start school.  Well, he went about 3 times in one day, and that he was done again.  Back to diapers.  So weird, but we're just waiting it out.
And speaking of waiting it out, we can't seem to figure out a way to convince Liam that bed time is bed time.  He has taken to coming out multiple times over a span of anywhere from 40 mins to an hour and half.  It kind of drives me batty because I can't seem to explain to him that he just needs to stay in his room, but thankfully James is slightly cooler about it.  At any rate, we've had to implement some consequences recently as it's getting out of control - "I just have to tell you one thing, if I EVER need to use the potty I can come out", he says to us as he has waltzed into the living room.  This happens about 3 more times with a few other excuses or things he just has to tell us.
Speaking of things he just has to tell us, the other night after bath he put his finger in his ear and said:"
Look mama, my food came out my ear. I ate too much and it come out on my finger!"  Hilarious!

Meanwhile Eowyn is very vocal and continues to shout and indicate with gestures when she wants of needs anything.  She also is slowly figuring out the hall step, which is a good thing as she has fallen down twice now.  In the last few days she has even been engaging her legs more and standing with much support, for a few seconds at a time!

I know she's blurry but they were so sweet and excited to be in a shopping cart together - her first time riding in the seat!

Our Crazy Olympia Adventure

It's hard to believe that this trip even happened since it was over so quickly, but what a ridiculous endeavor that was!  James is a finalist for a Head of School position in Olympia, Washington, and although the whole thing started off with not a whole lot of thought, and his resume was sent in on a whim, by the time we got to this stage it has become a serious consideration that may change all our lives very soon.  The trip came about because they required him to go for his finalist interviews, and the decision was then made that if we are going to be serious about this, we need to see the place as a family to actually get a sense of if we could live there.  So, despite it being a terrible idea to drag two babies half way across the world for 4 days, we did.  Let's be clear, it was exhausting.  But with that as a given, I think all in all we did well.  With 13+ hours flights there and back, plus travel around that, we had two very long days.  Thank goodness we were traveling off prime time and both journeys we had extra seats to spread out on.

Eowyn slept very little on the way over, and but wasn't too grumpy about it.  It just meant that by the time we arrived in Seattle we were all dead on our feet.  Liam was also really well behaved and cried a little a couple of times due to ear aches, but otherwise was quiet and kept himself busy with the ipad for a bit, with the tv screen, and eating and napping.  On the journey home we had 2 full rows of 4 seats so Eowyn slept about 6 hours, which was amazing.  I think we all got a bit of sleep on that flight.

All in all we were just basically exhausted or tired and so jet lag wasn't a real problem.  While we were in Olympia Eowyn did amazingly and slept well through the night.  The rest of us spent a fair amount of time awake in the early morning, but we expected all that.  We were nervous about all being in one room while we were at the hotel, but it turned out to be fine.  Liam was pretty quiet even when he was awake for 2 or 3 hours, (or just from 2am onwards one night!)  We went to bed as early as we could each day, and did the best we could with a busy schedule.

In the few shorts days we were there we had a tour of the school, met a yoga teacher/mom of small kids, met up with Justin and Jane who drove from the military base to visit us, had a real estate agent show us homes for two mornings, meet up with a Baha'i family who took us to an amazing children's hands on museum, checked out the farmers market, ate dinner with the board and search committee for the school, had meetings and interviews for a full day for James and met with two other women with kids for me, did a bit of shopping, and that's about it!  People were so so kind, helpful and just generally nice, which is definitely a plus for the place.  The near constant rain was definitely a minus.  Otherwise it's certainly a sweet enough town, on the water, and nature all around.  Progressive kind of feeling, it seems.  Who knows though!  At any rate, the poor kids did what they could.  Napped where they could, and generally held in there.  Sweet Eowyn almost fell asleep in her high chair at the board dinner.  So cute and sad at the same time.  Liam had bathroom issues due to the scary sound in the airplane, which resulted in some embarrassing moments of him peeing in a garbage can.  Ask James about that!  At any rate, we've had some bathroom struggles since then, but mostly all was ok.

Eowyn and James close to the end of our second flight to Seattle

Meeting up with Justin and Jane - nice to see friendly family faces in the midst of chaos

Dinner at a BBQ place with Justin and Jane

My birthday breakfast at a Budd Bay restaurant

Cheeser from Liam on the day of departure

Birthday photo - breakfast before another long travel day

Waiting at the airport for our flight

Now that all the traveling is over we are just waiting on the final decision.  We have been back and forth about leaving here, so it definitely isn't an easy choice, but we are also aware that our time here is coming to an end sooner rather than later.  Perhaps it will be as soon as the end of this year, and if not, most likely in the next year or two.

Thanksgivings

 This year we kind of ended up with two thanksgiving celebrations, which was rather lovely.  We had a nice dinner with the Miller family on Thursday after school, and despite it being chickens instead of turkey, all was delicious and the company good.  Eowyn managed as usual to start eating before everyone and end after us all.  She's a trooper!  She also somehow scored a piece of chocolate cake and was just shoving it in her mouth when I saw her and exclaimed loudly!

This is just a funny photo of Eowyn wearing a skirt as a hat.  I thought she looked really cute and was also just thinking how different she'll look when she finally grows some hair!

On Saturday of the Thanksgiving weekend we had  a family friendly pot luck thanksgiving hosted by Leigh and Gavin in their new house.  We were quite a crew (10 adults and 8 kids!)  so it was definitely quite a rowdy event.  We all brought various dishes though and had a lovely feast of a meal in the late afternoon and early evening.  The kids had a great time and even enjoyed some time outside on the balcony!  It was good to keep them out there a bit and have the burn off some energy.

Eowyn and James - she got all dressed up for the occasion!

Drake, Liam and Sam tearing it up on rider toys on the balcony!

We even got to sit down for dinner!

Here are just a few pictures from around the same time.  Eowyn is at such a fun and cute age.  She's crawling full speed ahead and chatting away in her nonsense shouts.  She's still ever so fond of food and has the most adorable sniffy snorts to indicate when she doesn't like something.  When she wants something, especially in the food department, she shrieks at you and at what she wants.  It's kind of funny and definitely very LOUD!

Liam has become very brave in water and he will even lean all the way back into the bath and float around for a long time now.  It's quite funny when he starts shouting "can you hear me?!" because his ears are under water and he can't hear properly!

Not the greatest photo but I love how it shows her belly off and their playing together!

Liam playing in the bath

Eowyn's introduction to blackberries!

Fall Days

I can't say why we don't sit and enjoy the calmer times when they finally come.  I have noticed a pattern in our family's life that as soon as things start to feel a bit more comfortable and easy (ier) we tend to shake things up, add to our plates, take on something new.  I guess is keeps us on our toes and checking in to make sure we are where we want to be at any given time.

I notice this a lot with my daily life with the kids.  We have found a good routine with help from Sarah and our other Franklin sitters, and you'd think by now I would be having weekly mani/pedis and enjoying coffee with child-free friends.  I guess that's just not my style, because what I find is that each day that comes I take care of the work/errands that must be done, and then I think of a way to fill the rest of the morning by heading off to a play ground, having people over so Liam can see friends or some combination of the two.  I guess when it comes down to it I don't really want to miss out on what my kids are doing, so despite having someone who could be watching them on their own, I'm almost always in the mix.  But here's the thing, it's tiring and I am not doing great on finding "me" time, but I'm seeing all the nuances of my babies changing and growing, and I'm loving 89% of the time!  (I say 89% because Liam's random outbursts and tantrums certainly wear me down and out when the happen, but his joyfulness and enthusiasm fill be back up).

We have missed out on a lot of posts so these pictures are from way back in October.  I missed taking a bunch of photos with Mims here, but we had lovely sunny days and spent many mornings outside in various parks.  Here are a few from her visit.

Eowyn in our "backyard" - the montagnola square (eating an organix carrot stick snack!)

Mims and Eowyn at the Arasio playground down below our house

Mims and kids and sunshine

We weren't sure we would have a chance to do anything for Halloween as the school organizes something that timing-wise isn't the best for our children.  We also didn't have costumes up until a few days before.  But with a free costume from a friend for Liam we decided it might be fun to join in at least the beginning festivities at school, so we went to the dress up dinner.  Liam was a ghost/skeleton, and Eowyn was our 80's Rockstar girl.  Funny part is that most of the outfit (Except the head band and the tights) was already in her wardrobe thanks to Leigh and Carolyn's eclectic mix.

Eowyn Rockstar Lemmon - legwarmers, fur coat and all 

I couldn't get a good one of just Liam, but here he is at dinner (he was pretty nervous about the other kids in costume!)`

Cassidy's moooo costume

Drake the pirate!

And the whole family!

We've had some big moments in the past month or so too.  Eowyn's two bottom teeth came through, she started crawling forwards a couple of weeks ago, and she's really began to communicate in her own way very clearly.  She does this funny sniffy thing with her nose when she doesn't want something, especially food.  She also can be heard shouting for me sometimes.

Cutey

Fall days at the playground - we are so lucky to be able to go outside for a bit most days, even though it's Nov!

Eowyn crawling forward

Siblings!

A Trip to Vals and Other Stuff

Before I forget, with my last post I had a nagging feeling that I was forgetting one other interesting conversation that Liam and I had.  Well thankfully I remember it and so here's the gist.
We were playing in the grassy area in the square and a young girl with short hair and nondescript jeans and a t-shirt came along.  She interacted with Liam, kicked his ball to him a few times and then was on her way.  When we got home he asked me about the boy in the square.  I said "what boy?" and he proceeded to explain the person I described above.  Only he insisted that she was a he.  I asked him why, because really I find this so curious that there is already such a sense of gender at such a young age.  Of course he doesn't necessarily have the words to fully explain why, but I gathered it had to do with the lack of long hair, pink or other girly accessories, and the neutral clothing.  Interesting indeed.

We have been enjoying our little mom and tots group - amazing that we're all still here 2 plus years on!  We've been getting together as much as possible outside, but when the weather turns south, we head in.  A couple of weeks ago Carolyn, who is due with baby 2 in a couple of weeks, and who has conveniently moved across the street from us, hosted all of us and our crazy kids at her place.  Here are a couple of photos of most of the kids Liam and Eowyn see regularly - of course it was almost impossible to get them to sit still together, but we tried anyway!

Liam, Eowyn, Isla, Cassidy, Sam and a bit of Drake 

And this one with Cassidy about to leap off at least shows all of Drake!

 A couple of weekends ago we decided to take advantage of our long weekend and do an overnight stay in Vals.  This was a little risky as we have never stayed as a family of 4 in the same room, but we figured one night was easy enough to recover from.  We went up on Saturday morning, had the whole afternoon and night, and spent the next morning there.  It's a beautiful valley for sure, and the hotel Rovanada is a decent option that also has an indoor pool.  Our thought was that at least we would be able to swim with the kids if all else failed with the weather.
So after getting there, going for lunch with Josh and Jen (who were also staying there), we tried to settle the kids for nap time.  That was both humorous and frustrating.  It took 45 mins for Liam to finally fall asleep.  Eowyn at least did better.

Our alpine suite

The bathroom area complete with colored lights!

Eowyn and Liam enjoyed rolling around on the fur rugs

 James and I managed to take 1.5 hours to go to the thermal baths there while Jen and Josh took our kids swimming at the hotel.  They managed alright, and we enjoyed the baths and some alone time.  When we got back we got ready for dinner at the hotel restaurant.  We ate early enough so the kids managed ok and since we'd bathed them before we could head right up for bed.  So because we were in one room we knew we'd be going to bed with them, but we didn't realize that the excitement of a new place and sleeping in his bed but in our room would keep Liam bouncing up and down out of bed for another hour!  I guess this is why it was a good experiment.  of course we were nervous about Eowyn waking up with his noise, and then later in the night, when she woke up 3 times talking to herself so loudly, we were worried about her waking him up!  Ah the fun of it all.  Somehow we got some sleep and for one night, it was just fine.  We had a lovely buffet breakfast at the hotel, and took a walk outside to enjoy the scenery during Eowyn's nap.  We managed to squeeze in a good swim in the pool altogether, before heading back home around lunch time.  All in all, it seemed a worthwhile endeavor!

Eowyn munching on a rusk at dinner 

Liam ordered a pasta with salmon and shrimp (which was very tasty, I might add!)  He has good taste!

Sunday morning walk

Eowyn before she fell asleep on the walk

Beautiful views and low lying clouds 

Swiss bliss

We live here?

Some very comical mushrooms that we discovered on our walk

 Last weekend there was a fall festival in downtown Lugano.  We managed to run our errands and still enjoy the morning walking through the piazza, and along the lake, and of coure having lunch at Manor!  It was all in a all a lovely day, though slightly marred by Liam hitting me.  We have definitely been a more trying phase with him lately, and I notice that he is much more quick to melt down, or react in not so great ways.  Of course we are reminding ourselves that this is all age appropriate, but it is also a good reminder of our huge task as parents to help guide and educate our children.  Liam definitely seems ready to take on some more in depth concepts and we are slowly trying to find ways to incorporate virtues into daily life.  I think parent and child alike we have our moments of struggle and joy.

Eowyn is continuing her efforts to move, and with more vim and vigor these days.  She is mobile enough and can scoot backwards pretty swiftly when she wants to.  She comes up on hands and knees a lot more too, but from there she either plops slightly forward or scoots back again.  She's also always excited to get out and see things now, so every time we go outside I either carry her facing out in the bjorn, so she can look around, or I put a blanket down for her to be on the ground and play a bit.  She also loves to see Liam playing.

And speaking of gender stuff - Eowyn naturally is exposed primarily to vehicles and whatever other toys Liam is playing with.  But Liam does have one doll, and the other day, when Eowyn caught sight of it, she let out the most adorable squeal of delight!  I was so surprised and how immediate and absolutely fascinated she was with a doll!  I guess some of these things are really just built in.  We have since given her one very small one so that Liam doesn't feel like his baby doll is being taken away from him.  And quite naturally, he has in turn become really interested in playing with "baby doll" (that's her name), and does a lot of pretend games with her.  Lately he has also been taking her for naps and bed time, and reports to us in the morning about how well she slept.  (last night she didn't cry at all; she slept well but didn't want the blankets!) He has a great imagination when it comes to play, not just with the doll, but all his toys, and his games are always a strange and wonderful mix of thoughts and ideas.

Liam, Eowyn and James and a lively Lugano backdrop!

Liam and I checking out the swans and ducks

Eowyn later in the afternoon at Johannes' birthday party