Not all at once, thankfully… let’s see, we had a really minor earthquake, like almost imperceptible, the other day. (we had one last month, too, but I didn’t even notice)
last night, in the middle of the night, an alarm started going off and I was mostly asleep, so it took a while to register that it had been going off for a long time and wasn’t stopping. It sounded like the same kind of alarm that goes off for the house security, so I started wondering… David decided to investigate, but it was farther away, apparently, so we just waited for it to stop, which it did eventually.
I have forgotten to mention this until now. We were visiting with a lady last month and something that sounded like fireworks went off – she told me that it was bombs and I laughed, thinking she was trying to scare me or something. Then she said, “well, celebration bombs.” Hehe.
David is currently herding something in our living room – he doesn’t want to tell me what it is. And now I hear Vicki and Frank out there, too… and she keeps saying “cuidado! Cuidado!” so, uh, that’s freaking me out a bit. Oh my word. I originally heard it rustling around in here while I was putting Maeve to sleep, so then he cleared us out so he could investigate. I mostly watched the room door, but apparently not enough, cause he found it out there I guess. At least I sure hope it is the same one… oh, now I just got the report that they got it – a mouse – and Frank killed it, in some untold way. No, I do not want to live with a mouse, but at least that is something with which I am somewhat familiar! With David’s refusal to tell me what it was, in the back of my head I was imagining some horribly disgusting thing I had never heard of before…oooooh, and now David just told me that Frank gave us an ultrasonic noisemaker, PTL!!! Leave us alone, vermin!
We do not have any new pictures for you right now, but let me try to relay a little Maeveness. She actually took 7 steps yesterday… and then several more soon after. So I guess she’s slowly getting braver. Usually she only does 3 or 4 and doesn’t want to mess with it anymore. She figured out how to frown sometime in the last two weeks, so now she is able to show when she really means something. Sometimes she will tell us stuff very earnestly with the frown and then change quickly to a big grin. Sometime in the last month she started pointing for whatever she wants. She randomly decided to do that – it’s funny the things that are instinctive. This includes things like her water when we are eating, all the way to pointing in directions she wants you to carry her. She is very good at rolling the ball back and forth to you, but then she was doing that before we left. She does tortillitas (Spanish patty cake), “sings” when you tell her “cante” or “cantemos”, snorts like a pig – which for her is more like breathing in and out through her nose with it all wrinkled up, “barks” when she sees/hears/thinks about dogs (she started doing that the second week we were here), and she calls the dog “Andi”. She adores children and gets sooooo excited when she sees them – like bouncing up and down in my arms and grinning ear to ear, with some squeals thrown in. She loves looking at books, I think almost more by herself than with us. That’s all I can remember right at the moment. There’ll probably be something new tomorrow :-)
sorry, I didn’t realize it had been this long! Does it count that I wrote a post in my head while I was awake in the night a while ago? I forgot it before I could actually make it a reality, sadly.
final update on the unfortunate mouse-beast: David says it was either a really large mouse or a small rat… yay. and it basically got kicked out of this world. by Frank’s foot.
if you click here you will see a picture of our kitchen floor. David valiantly defended us and won, though he said this incredibly disgusting “animal” was FAST. I’m soooooooooo thankful that I did not happen upon it. Even so, we are both quite paranoid now. While I am watching Maeve I keep imagining something crawling out from whatever she is playing with onto her…!!!!!!!!!
It really feels like we’ve started over here this week. The holidays are over and everything is back to life as usual for everyone here. Nati and Dani are both in college now and people are back to work. Thankfully, that includes us! It seems like we’ve gotten as much done in the last three days as in the past month – maybe more. (I wrote this on Wednesday) Yikes. AND we’ve had time for other “little” things like walks, cooking, cleaning, laundry… you know, all that stuff that piles up when you don’t do it. um, except the walks. Walks don’t pile up, as far as I know. Well, and cooking. Does cooking pile up? I guess you could say the food in our fridge that needed to be cooked piled up. We do enjoy cooking, really, it just isn’t generally at the top of our priority list. And when we get invited over for leftovers or go out so often it is hard to stay on top of it. I think we shall have a better time of it now, though.
Every time I sit down to write since we’ve been here I seem to forget what I was going to relay! How frustrating! Oh, here’s a good one. Yesterday as we were walking to the store I felt that my flipflop was going to come apart at any moment. Have you ever worn yours so long that the little toe holder pops through the bottom? I do that with pretty much all my flipflops – they generally last me 1.5-2 years? Or maybe I get a new one every year, I forget. The point is, that’s the main thing I wear for at least 7 months out of the year, so I get some good use out of them. The last pair that I had did that to me when I was in Iowa City. Wow. Not cool. I had to kind of drag my one foot behind me as I walked through the store so that it didn’t fall off. If I tried to walk normally the bottom of the shoe would stay behind as I lifted my foot. These are the $3 Wal-Mart flipflops, in case you were wondering. Anyway, memories of that interesting experience were running through my head as we were walking last night, so when I saw flipflops at the store we went to I felt a bit of relief. I figured out what I wanted to get but unfortunately I was going to have to settle for a bit larger size than would have been ideal. When we were waiting to check out I saw another little display with flipflops, and was so pleased and thankful to find ONE pair there in the size that I needed. Thank you, God!
On Sunday David joined the church soccer team against another church’s team. We won! I lazily took a couple of pictures, which can be found in “costa rica”. “maeve” also has a couple of new ones. Speaking of Maeve, we have even more proof that she’s really our daughter. We already knew she loved bread and pasta, but we got the camera all ready to take a picture of her face when she tried a pickle today. No face.
Great, just what I always wanted, a lizard in our bedroom. I have no idea how David is going to get it out… it’s times like these, few and far between though they are, that there is no doubt in my mind it is better to be a girl. My poor man. This is taking the reasons we stay up too late to new extremes. Well, he can’t find it now. I guess we will just have to pray it does not get us in the night… or jump out of our clothes or shoes later on. Oh ugh. Maeve is definitely not sleeping by herself!
we survived the night and Maeve is taking a really long nap because she is fighting a runny nose/cough/teething. David is also napping right now because he so wonderfully got up with Maeve this morning and let me sleep a while longer. He’s snoring, but I can’t reach him to smack him :-) Maeve actually has two teeth poking through now. They are taking a really long time to get all the way out, though.
Ok, and now it’s the day after that. We haven’t seen the lizard again yet… hopefully it left. Somehow… anyway, I keep forgetting some Maeve stuff. When we were at the volcano hotel last week we discovered to a much greater extent how very friendly Maeve is. She was very intent on turning every which way in her highchair to try to get the attention of as many people as possible. She actually ate a lot, too. You really have to watch her, though. When our waiter was pouring water for us she stuck her hand in his back pocket. He laughed and told her that he didn’t have any money. When we were at the beach on Tuesday, and waiting in line to get back on the boat, she kept trying to steal a guy’s water bottle from his backpack.
yeah, she was not particularly impressed with the ocean or sand. I think the ocean kind of scared her when the tide came rushing in. and I don’t think she liked how the sand stuck to her. She was a little more acclimated to it by the end, but then it was time to go, haha. There are quite a few new pictures of her in the gallery – make sure to check back a few pages. You can also check out “family”, “us”, and “costa rica”.
yay David! :-) check in “stuff we do” (new album: “christmas” cookies), “maeve” has one, “costa rica” several plus new album: “scenes”
