More news of Mark

A new post already! Wow, this must be a record! :-)

This is just a short post to let you know that Mark has joined the world of the walking. Or at least, he has started to. On Tuesday of last week, Mark took his first tentative steps. Since then, it has been a hit or miss situation whether he will try to walk or get down and "crawl". He is still not too sure he likes it a lot, but he is walking a little bit more. Here are two short clips of him walking last Friday (and I do mean short- he isn't into marathons yet!)



Hope you like the videos. More next time.

Semana Santa

Semana Santa means Holy Week. It is celebrated the week before Easter. The Catholic churches hold a variety of activities this week to commemorate the events surrounding the death of Christ. We went to the local procession on the day before Easter. They used to have a man who acted out the role of Christ but now they just use a life-sized statue of Christ in our area. First, the statue of Christ came down the street from the main Catholic church and met up with a statue of Mary which came from a local chapel. At their encounter, the priest gave a speech about how painful this encounter must have been and how the Church is a representation of Mary and it is pained when it's members do not reverence her (the Church) as they should. Then the processional went back toward the main Catholic church and they made several stops along the way to "talk" to various people such as the "woman at the well" and "Veronica" (who supposedly wiped Jesus' bloody face and received an imprint of his face on the cloth). We didn't stay for the entire procession because for one thing we arrived an hour early (oops!) and for another, Steve had a headache and wanted to rest a little before we went to have lunch with our neighbors. Our neighbors kindly invited us into their home to share "paella" with them. Of course I would have accepted their invitation anyway, but had I known what "paella" was I would not have accepted it so excitedly. I should have remembered the fact that Catholics don't eat any meat but fish during Semana Santa and that should have sent up some warning flags, but I forgot that part. Anyway, paella is seafood over rice. As you may be aware, of all things I despise to eat, seafood is way up there (Steve isn't a big fan of it either). Also, some friends of ours had recently eaten the same dish and shown us some pictures of it - tentacles dangling all over the place!!! When I found out what it was, I lost a little of my desire to go, but we went nevertheless, claiming the "missionary prayer" (God, I'll get it down if you'll keep it down!). Thankfully, Mark is a great distraction. Between feeding him and my natural slowness at eating, everyone else finished and had all the seconds they wanted long before I had cleaned my plate. Since they were all moving on to the dessert, I felt justified in leaving my meal unfinished. But I survived!!! Oh, it was also nice that everything was cut up into fairly unidentifiable pieces (except for the shrimp, but at least they were miniature and I tried not to look at them :).

Some new news...

Not really a lot to report. Language training is going well. But, I still make some mistakes...ok, more mistakes than correct sentences. :-( This week, I made a mistake while talking to the teacher. She had made a mistake in a sentence she had given us. She explained the mistake and then said she was sorry. I, being very bright and knowing a TON of Spanish, decided I should reply. So, I told her "Nosotros la perdemos". Very bright and grammatically correct. However, the wrong word! I should have said "Nosotros la perdonamos". Ok, for those that don't know Spanish, instead of saying "We forgive you" I said "We loose you"! Oops! So much for being bright and smart!

In other news, we made a day trip to Los Chorros a week or two ago. This is a park where they have a couple of waterfalls and some trails you can hike. It is beautiful. Here are a couple of pictures:

Don't worry about the date. The camera got reset but I can't change the date or get rid of it since the LCD broke and I can't see anything on it.

And now, news of Mark. :-) Mark is still cruising around using chairs to hold onto. However, each day his balance is just a little better. He can now stand for a couple of seconds without holding onto anything. And, yesterday, he stood up by himself without holding onto anything! He did it again today so it wasn't a fluke! Also, he has started to kind of crawl. He doesn't go into the classic crawling position but rather sits and kind of scoots on one foot and the other knee. Again, I'll have to get some video at some point. Soon, we will be in real trouble as he gains more mobility. At least with the bars on the doors, he can't wander too far and the house is only one story so there aren't many steps he can fall down inside. However, with the tile floors, it hurts him whenever he falls. He now has a couple of bruises on his face from falling. :-(

Growing soooooooo fast!

Well, how quickly things change! Today, Mark decided that he has had enough of immobility. This morning, Miriam changed his diaper and then had to go and wash her hands. While she was gone, Mark climbed off the bed (we don't know how) and ended up standing next to it, holding on to the bed and a box next to it. He greeted us with a big smile! :-)

Then, Mark decided to conquer his bed. After his nap, when Miriam went in to get him, she watched him grab the side of the crib and sit up (another first). Then, he handed her his little doggy that he had in his hand. Once that was done, he grabbed the side of the bed and stood up! We are in trouble now!!!

So, then this afternoon we were eating lunch and put Mark in his little plastic house to play while we ate. He started off crying but quickly stopped. He grabbed the door of the house and stood up. So, I pushed some chairs near to the house. He used them to walk over to the table where we were! Right now, he is walking all around the plastic house, holding on with one hand and checking everything out. He is also picking up anything he finds interesting on the floor. What a bright kid! I'll have to put up video of it later. Mark is tired now and doesn't want to perform. But, here is a short video of Mark and Miriam pulling weeds:

Inch by inch

Well, Mark is not yet crawling or walking, but he is making progress. Last week I decided to intentionally work on his crawling. At first I put him face down on our little rug and he would just scream and cry and scream some more and he wouldn't even TRY to move. But I finally found something to motivate him: my keys! At first he would just move a fraction of an inch and I tried to encourage him with that, but yesterday when I put him down to show off for Steve he barely complained and he went a good distance, too. At first he would muster up all his little leg strength and try to force his top half to go somewhere. Now, Steve describes his actions as more of an "army crawl" . . . it definitely looks more coordinated. Mark also loves to stand up and take little steps while carefully holding onto something (and he'd better be careful since we have hard floors!). I have been working on him pulling himself up in his little plastic play yard/fort thing that our landlord loaned us. He is able to do it by himself, but so far he hasn't done it unless I am right there encouraging him. His balance gets better every day and he loves dropping things on the ground and leaning over to pick them up. He can also hold an object and stand unsupported for about a second. Second by second, inch by inch he goes out to conquer the world!

Happy Groundhog day!!

Ok, Ok! Miriam yelled at me for not posting and others hinted, so I thought I would try again. :-)

A lot has happened since my last post but I will just give a few highlights. In December, we were able to take a four day vacation to Manuel Antonio. This was quite fun. In our side bar are pictures from the trip. We were able to see monkeys, sloths, lizards, hermit crabs, and more monkeys. We also spent some time just relaxing on the beach.

In January, we started our language learning. Miriam, because of her vast Spanish vocabulary and speaking ability, only needs to be in class for two hours a day. She is enjoying the class though. It is a translation class and she is learning to translate almost everything, from medical documents to bail and bond documents.

I, on the other hand, am in four hours of classes daily. I am glad for the constant exposure and training but wish that my classes were a little more difficult. However, I can definitely see my ability to speak Spanish growing. I am beginning to believe that I will leave here able to speak! :-)

Mark has really started changing also. He still doesn't crawl but he loves to stand up. This is how he greeted me when I returned from classes one day:
His balance is getting better day by day but I think it will be a while before he takes his first steps without assistance. Also, the ceramic floors make it hard because it really hurts when he falls. This scares him and so he doesn't try to do too much. For us, this is good because it means that he can't get into anything yet. :-)

Well, I guess this is long enough for now....Oh, I almost forgot! Did the groundhog see his shadow? Are you going to have another 6 weeks of winter? I wonder what that equates to for us. We are in summer here in Costa Rica. Does the groundhog seeing his shadow or not change anything for us? Hmmm, I'll have to ask around. :-)

Little Chipmunk

Ok, so we obviously aren't good bloggers and I'm sure our fan club has dispersed. Sorry, everyone! I (Miriam . . . amazing, no?) tried to remind Steve to get back to his blogging duties but apparently my efforts have failed and I am left to write one on my own.

Unfortunately a cry from Mark's room has let me know that this had better be quick. So I will just give you a quick story about Mark and then I'll have to go. So . . . Mark used to like carrots. They were one of his favorite things to eat. But then we decided he was a big boy and could eat them in little chunks (cooked, of course!) . Not so! - he replied. Though I had great difficulty trying to get him to eat the carrot chunks, it seemed to me that they were having less difficulty at the daycare so I sent him with the carrots two days in a row. Apparently the last time I sent him he decided to try passive aggressiveness. They said he ate them just fine, but when he came home we realized he had been hoarding them in his mouth like a little chipmunk! :) There were at least four little chunks of carrot in his mouth and we finally decided to just dig them out! "You can make a baby eat carrots, but you can't make him swallow them!"