Thanksgiving..a few weeks late

We had a great time at my parent's house for Thanksgiving. Wyatt loved being with his cousins!

Nothing beats raking leaves with a plastic golf club.
My sister's youngest, Brody, is 2 years old and the closest in age to Wyatt. It was really fun watching them play together. I can imagine the conversation going on in the next pics.

Brody: "I need a ride to the other side of the yard."
Wyatt: "Come on in!"
Brody: "Wow..this may be a tight fit. What happened to the back seat of this thing? Will this affect your driving capability?"
Brody: "Don't cry, Wyatt. Your first car is always a little small..but maybe when you get a job..you can get one with a little more leg room."
Hugs make everything better.
A few random pics.

A few things that he is doing lately:
- trying to say any word that involves any object with a motor. Case in point..his first clear words were spoken this week and were "Bus" and "Tractor". He loves this magazine that has motorcycles in it..and is always shoving it in front of our faces and then will sit eagerly next to us as if he is awaiting a great story. Our job is to point out every motorcycle..while he seriously nods and interjects his opinion every now and then.
- likes dancing..particularly to the tunes of Marvin Gaye and Otis Redding. I looked up and noticed Wyatt running up to the speakers and then turning around in circles. He then will bounce up and down with his knees and then when the song is over, he'll give a standing ovation.
- LOVES the Christmas tree. He attempts to add to the decor by putting his own toy balls on the lower branches, which has caused the demise of a few ornaments. Mental note - Next year, I will buy ONLY shatter free ornaments.
- Anyone else find eating out impossible with a 1 year old? Seriously, we take turns walking Wyatt around the restaurant and we always end up waving a white flag and taking our food To Go. I guess we think that this time, he'll be calm....but it's never the case.
- I'm FINALLY getting non-coerced hugs from Wyatt. It's the best! Now if only I could get a kiss or two....

1st Birthday and Halloween

I know...I haven't improved any on my frequency of postings. But...I think I can still use the excuse of the fact that we are still settling into things here in Socorro. Not to mention that we are still living out of suitcases and our household goods shipment is going to take 2 months to get here from Chile (!). That's right...we'll be sleeping on an air mattress till..say..January. Nice.

So...for Wyatt's birthday, we just had a casual affair at the park with some of his friends. There was no way that I could manage a fancy soiree with us moving out of the country in a matter of days. He hadn't had a nap that day due to the constant ringing of the doorbell from realtors showing people the house. Result: a ton of 1st b-day photos with red eyes and a short temper. Poor guy.

You can see a little arm hard at work in tearing into his birthday presents.
Swinging with his friend, Amalia.

Wyatt's birthday cake. I wasn't even going to post it at first due to the amazing cakes I see out there that my friends do for their kids...but I thought maybe my horrible cake decorating skills would make someone else realize that they aren't so bad after all. My nana even looked at it and told me.."Oh well, it's your first time." I was OK till I had to draw the monkey's hands. One hand is huge with 3 fingers while the other has apparently atrophied and withered in some sad accident. And...I'm not quite sure why I thought his foot needed to be red. I will admit..it tasted MUCH better than it looked.
Wyatt wasn't really interested in the cake..but having lots of fun making a mess of it.
One of his gifts was a baby tee from Chile..so he will have a memento of where he was born. I made some great friends in Santiago and Wyatt will be missing his play dates with his friends.

Wyatt loved all the boxes from moving day! It would have been impossible to get anything done if our nana, Luccy, hadn't been there to keep the little man entertained. She is one special lady!


In the States!!
Lately, Wyatt can't seem to get enough cuddle time with his puppies. The other night, he would not stop hugging Major. We were watching for signs of him to get bored and try to use Major as a jungle gym..but he was just content with standing..hugging...and watching Nick Jr. of course.
Went to a farm outside of Albuquerque to pick out a pumpkin. Wyatt was excited that they also had a petting zoo with goats that were just his size.



Unrelated..but ....Wyatt has had 7 (!) haircuts in 13 months and it has a tendency to get out of control really fast. After this nap, his hair refused to stay down. Disregard the remnants of lunch on his face and shirt.
This little penguin had a great time for his 1st Halloween.!

We have a walker!

I know..I still need to post pics of Wyatt's 1st birthday. I'll be getting to that next week.

In the meantime...I have to post the pics of Wyatt's first steps..that he took tonight! Umm..please excuse the mess in the video. We are living in a small rental place while we are looking for a house here in Socorro and are still living out of suitcases. Our 2 dogs just arrived tonight, too...so things are about to get extra crowded.

Completely unrelated, but I had to share an episode that we had at our first visit to the bank here while we were trying to exchange Chilean pesos in for US dollars. The amount of pesos was a couple thousand dollars in USD, but the girl across the counter at the bank added on a couple of extra zeros when she did her math and so she wrote a sum on a piece of paper and asked us if this was the correct amount that needed to be deposited into our account. She had written..$456,000. (!!!!) We had to tell her of her mistake..and she realized then that she had done some computation wrong on her end..but Matt and I couldn't believe that she was going to put almost half a million dollars into our account. I like this state already!!

Moving, 1st birthdays...what else?

So..for those of you that don't know..we're moving back to the States next Thursday. It's a really quick move..(4 weeks !!)..and I have a really active 1 yr old on top of that. Speaking of our 1 yr old, birthday pics will follow in about a week or so when we get back to the US and I have some stability in my life again.
We're moving to Socorro,NM. Matt will be working on the Very Large Array observatory there...(for reference much of the footage of the movie Contact with Jodie Foster was shot there).
It'll be great to be closer to family and not have to deal with a 10 hr flight to see them.

In the meantime...I'm still down here in Chile, trying to deal with all of the details, paperwork, movers, etc.
That being said, last week, we had a small birthday party with Wyatt and some his friends at the park. Although there were no air castles or pony rides, Wyatt enjoyed it just the same and I even managed to create my first birthday cake. It was a monkey shaped cake and even though I wanted to buy a cake really bad...I felt I had to earn my mom badge by making the cake. I guess the art of decorating is one that gets better over time..b/c I started at 10:30 the night before..and finished at 4 am in the morning..! Hopefully by party #2, I will have a better grasp of it all.
Fast forward to today..and I'll just take a quick snapshot of what days are like around here..And no, I'm not making any of this up to evoke sympathy.
- I'm in Santiago alone with Wyatt..(Matt is still working up north)..and so I am dealing with a lot of the bureaucratic details on my own...closing accounts, dealing with the house, etc. On top of that, Wyatt has been cranky lately b/c he hasn't been taking the usual naps due to the house being shown constantly to potential tenants.
Today, my nerves were already raw b/c I had to say goodbye to some dear friends who were with me in the crazy time of being a new mom in a new country. Our kids were all born around the same time, we all experienced a massive earthquake together...(you know..it's a unique situation).
I then had to try to go purchase a document for the car..(which I was told would be a simple process)..all while Wyatt was throwing a fit complete with arched back and crying. This is coupled with my mediocre (horrible) Spanish and a woman behind the desk looking annoyed and telling me that my documents that I am presenting to her..are incorrect. I go back to my husband's company and they tell me that the other woman is incorrect and that I have what I need. Keep in mind, that we are flying out of the country next week (!) and we still have not sold our car..and we can't do it without this document that I can't get. I ended up bursting into tears and demanding that someone go with me to the other location and sort it out with me. This is all going on with Wyatt still on my hip. A woman from my husband's company goes, and in the end...I did in fact have incorrect documents and would have never been able to get what I needed without someone's intervention. What a pain!
Our moving company came to the house later to go over customs documents and so I have to put Wyatt down to play while I concentrate on what's going on. I forgot to shut the bathroom door, and caught him just as we were going over Custom Form 3699, trying to eat toilet paper. I needed to retrieve a vet certificate for them for our dogs..(yes, our 90 lb dogs are coming back with us of course...FYI..it's so much more difficult getting the dogs out of the country with their size. They have to go as cargo)...while I was going downstairs with Wyatt on hip, I realized that he had a dirty diaper...SO, while the people were waiting upstairs on me, I changed Wyatt super quick and as soon as the diaper came off, I didn't get a hold of his hands in time..and he reached and got poo all over his fingers...(!)...
Later, as I'm still talking to the movers, I see Wyatt take off every book on the lower shelf of the bookshelf..and then he tries to crawl into the lap of one of the women that is sitting at the table.
(The nana mentioned that out of all of the children of the families that she has worked with in 17 yrs..Wyatt is the most active). Great.

Tomorrow..there are more goodbyes to say and a trip to the notary...with Wyatt. Any place where you have to take a number and sit in a tiny lobby and try to understand and speak Spanish is a recipe for disaster. Wish me luck!

Yes...I do exist.

So...I realize that I rarely have any pics of myself with Wyatt b/c I am always on the other side of the camera. Seriously..in the course of a year, I only have a handful of pictures with just the two of us. This already puts me in the horrible mother category, right? Darn..I thought there was some way I could avoid that. Oh well...for year #2, I have a goal of taking tons more pics. Can I redeem myself?
This was taken the other day after bath time...What a cutie!

My feelings exactly...

So..life down here in Chile always has its share of surprises and I'm sure my mouth has dropped open just like Wyatt's on a few of them. Here's just a few.

1. We JUST got Dr. Pepper in grocery stores...last week!!..! Now, I was a Diet Dr. Pepper fiend in the States and craved it so bad during my pregnancy here..but could only taste the high fructose corn syrup in my dreams. We only have the real DP down here, but I will happily settle for the extra sugar to have the all too familiar maroon can around. I might have been so excited when I saw it on the shelves last week, that I may have happened to have caught the eyes of the nearest stockboy and blurted out "Dr. Pepper!" in a giddy school girl voice. He replied with a bored "Si"...I have the feeling that I wasn't the only expat with the same reaction. I might have even pointed out the cans to Wyatt as if they were a caged animal at the zoo.

2. Another incident at the grocery store....(I'm there alot)....but "Every Rose Has a Thorn" was playing on the speakers...and the elegant white haired Chilean woman buying nutmeg next to me..knew EVERY word. I find that happens a lot..80's soft rock lyrics are easily quoted..but most people that I encounter don't speak English.

3. Let me set the stage...Apparently this is the coldest winter in Santiago in 98 (!) yrs...but it is pretty mild with what I've experienced before in Texas. Last week, I was walking Wyatt to a park nearby and it was a beautiful sunny day. It was probably in the upper 60s/low 70s..and so I wasn't wearing a jacket...just a long sleeved T. Anyways...as I was walking, I came across a guy walking up the sidewalk toward me selling balloons. When he got closer, he said something to me that I couldn't understand. (Note: Chileans say that they are the worst Spanish speakers in South America. They use a lot of slang and talk VERY fast.) I assumed that he was asking if I wanted a balloon..so I told him "No tengo dinero." He repeated himself again..and after he repeated himself..and much slower...I realized that he was telling me that I needed a jacket. I must have smiled or something..and so he said...(in Spanish of course).."Seriously, you need a jacket...it's really cold outside." (!) I guess my parents will be happy to know that even in another hemisphere..people are still checking on me.

Long time...no blog

I can't believe it's been almost 2 months since I've updated. We spent a month back in the States to see family and friends and it was great!
Wyatt is so much fun these days and is wanting to walk so bad! He wants to climb on everything and is all over the place. He started really cruising while we were on vacation.
Disclaimer...these are all of Wyatt..but I promise to show pics of the rest of the fam in the next entry.

Nothing feels more like Sunday than going to church...and of course a favorite wooden mallet in hand. Combine the two and there may be a joyful noise(s) coming from a certain 9 month old on the very back row of Santiago Community. Don't judge that I couldn't find any brown socks that day.

Wyatt had swimming lessons with several other babies from 3 months - 1 year of age and one of the requirements was that all of the babies had to wear swim caps..(!). You can tell that Wyatt is ecstatic with the idea.
This pic was taken from our neighborhood the day before we left for vacation in the States. It had just snowed in the mountains here and I was realizing that I was about to face a month of hot Texas summer. I was also trying to take in some deep breaths before I faced the 10 hr flight with Wyatt the next day.

Much happier without a swim cap. He enjoyed some pooltime with cousins at my sister's house.
One of 8 flights that we took in 4 weeks. He was always trying to get people in the seat behind us to give him some attention. Most people said that he was cute...but I don't know if that was code word for "annoying"..but at least we avoided a meltdown on board.
Water does taste better out of the hose. Is it weird that I am deeply considering getting Wyatt a hose of some sort for his 1st birthday? He LOVES them.
Even though he was born in Chile, he still has a lot of Texas in his genes.
"My crystal ball tells me....that Yes....my parents won't get any sleep on this next flight, whereas I will sleep like a baby. Life is good."
I sure do love my two boys!