Birthday Celebration

We had a party the Saturday after Ethan and Sienna’s birthday (which is the same day).  It was a pretty eclectic party.  I had a tablecloth that had different colors all over it, Winnie the Pooh plates and napkins,  I used the same Thomas the Train birthday hats that we used last year for Ethan’s birthday, and I made a clownfish cake.  Thankfully, at this age they don’t care if anything matches. :-)I tried to do the easiest cake I could do that would work for a boy and girl.   Seven of their friends came over to celebrate.  Sadly, Seth was sick so he couldn’t make it.  Zsuzsi seemed to have a good time despite only speaking Hungarian, and Kata was too young to know the difference.I didn’t want to put a Thomas the Train hat on Sienna, but didn’t have time to cover it somehow, so she just didn’t wear a hat.  We put a 3 on the cake and sang Happy Birthday to Ethan, and then we took it off and put a 1 on the cake and sang Happy Birthday to Sienna.All of the kids either ate the cake and frosting or just the frosting except Ethan (and Sienna, who had lunch instead of cake).  Ethan said that he didn’t like the “orange stuff” (which was the frosting).  It was too sweet for him.  I was very excited about that since we’ve been trying not to give him sweets in hopes that he wouldn’t crave them and like real sweet stuff.  So I cut the frosting off, and he ate the cake.  I was one happy mother!

We asked people who came to the party not to bring any gifts.  I think the kids are so young, they don’t know a difference at this point, and right now I don’t want them growing up thinking all that happens at a birthday party is that they get a bunch of stuff.  Plus, it’s so hard on parents to always have to be buying gifts for someone’s birthday party.  We planned to give them gifts from us and our families, which is plenty at this age.  At some point we will do parties with gifts, but Ethan is so social, just having a party with kids was a great gift for him.  He talked about this party for months and wanted everyone to come!So far we have given the kids one gift from us for their birthdays and one gift for Christmases.  However, we did 2 this time.  We got Ethan this little basketball to use with this small hoop that we got at a school rummage sale.  He had been throwing other little balls in it and wanting to play with my regular basketball in the house (which we don’t let him do).  So he loved having this small basketball.We gave Sienna these little plastic things that have bells inside of them.  They were actually toys of Ethan that we took out of a box.  When Ethan saw them, he said that he hadn’t seen them in a long time.  We didn’t expect him to remember them.The other gift that we were so excited about was this kitchen set.  I have asked around trying to buy a used one for over a year.  I finally decided to ask a family again who told me no a year ago, and this time they said yes!  Not only did they say yes, but they said that they had a shopping cart and lots of food, etc. to go with it, AND that we could have it all for free!It’s still a bit too big for Sienna, but Ethan enjoys playing with it.  We put it in our kitchen, so the kids can cook while I am cooking.  Ethan likes to keep all of the pots, pans, food, etc. in the shopping cart when he’s not playing with it.

One Year Old

I wrote this entry and the “Birthday Celebration” a few weeks ago but just never posted them.

We both dressed in red for Valentine’s Day.  Hard to believe that I went into labor with her just one year earlier.  I hear so many parents talk about how they grow up before you know it.  I can already feel that (though Gary thinks that age 2 lasted forever with Ethan).

She is in the 5th percentile for body weight compared to other girls her age.  This really surprises us because she eats a lot of food.  So far she has eaten everything we give her (except cantaloupe).  She has finally started feeding herself!  Hooray!  Right now, I’m not grinding any food at all.  She has been able to eat all different kinds of meat, so that is nice.  She’s using the “more” sign now, but does it with her hands straight like Ethan did.

She just had her 3rd tooth pop in (2 weeks after her birthday).  So now she has her 2 bottom teeth and one on the top.

She tends to be quiet, but once she starts talking, then she really does.  She doesn’t seem to be as extroverted as Ethan, but she enjoys being around people.I told you that she began crawling at 11.5 months.  On her 12 month birthday she crawled up the 3 steps from our living room to our dining room.  She plays with the xylophone much more than Ethan ever did.  I don’t even think he played with it at this age (of course, he does now since his sister does).  She enjoys the toys that have music and loves a little keyboard that Gary’s parents got for Ethan.  When she hits a button that plays music she bounces up and down.   She tends to sit on one knee like in this picture above.We think she is a total cutie!

Three Years Old

Ethan turned three 2 weeks ago.  We had a party for him and Sienna the following Saturday, but I’ll talk about that in another post.  For now, I’ll put some stuff on here that the family and a few others may be interested in reading/seeing.

We took the kids for their check-up on their actual birthday.  Ethan is around the 50% for weight and around the 25% for height compared to other boys his age.  We don’t think that Ethan is fat, but we are surprised that he doesn’t weigh more as much as he eats.  His typical breakfast each morning consists of one banana, either oatmeal or 2 scrambled eggs, then granola, and sometimes Corn Flakes and Special K without milk.  I recently fixed pancakes for him, and he ate 6 of them, granola, and then an apple for breakfast.  An hour later, he wanted more food so he ate dried apricots and dried cherries.  Then he had lunch about an hour later, and he ate a bowl of soup then yogurt with granola.  All of this was eaten in a 4 hour time frame! 

I made about 7 different soups to freeze in January.  Ethan doesn’t like milk or cheese, but he loves soup, so it’s a great way to get some dairy in him if it’s a soup that I can put cream in.  He tends not to like white sauces, and he doesn’t like any casserole that has any kind of cream of mushroom, chicken, etc. soup in it.

He seems to be understanding the concept of “favorite.” In January he said that this was his favorite car.  His uncle Bret got it for him a little over a year ago.  In the picture he is “fixing it” (nothing was wrong with it… he just likes to “fix” things).  His “favorite” toy seems to change pretty regularly, but he is really into cars now, so it’s usually one of his cars. He loves using tools, especially real tools.  Otherwise, he makes due with his toy tools or something that isn’t a tool, but looks like one.  Here he is “fixing” the stairs to the attic; he absolutely loves going up and down the stairs and walking around the attic.  (For those of you concerned about that… I think many attics in the US have woods boards to walk on, but if you step off, you step through soft stuff.  Over here it’s all wood.)

In January Ethan asked if we were going anywhere the next day. I told him that I didn’t know. He said, “We need to make a plan.” I told Gary, and Gary said that he is his mother’s child. He has gotten into wanting to go through the schedule of the day and often asks what we will do after such and such.He is all boy and loves to wrestle, run around, and play with balls and cars.  He is very active, and doesn’t tend to play with one thing for very long. Ethan enjoys lining up his cars (actually, I should say different modes of transportation) in a row and is very proud to show us what he has done.The Friday after his birthday was a big day for the Rickard household.  Ethan threw his boppies (pacifiers) in the trash.  This picture looks like he is crying.  He actually isn’t; he is smiling.  We have talked about this for a long time, and he was all ready and willing to throw them away.  He loves the garbage truck and helps Gary empty the trash cans every Friday morning, so I think he was excited to be able to put them in the trash and for the garbage truck to take them away.  So, in this picture he is carrying the trash can that has his boppies.  Even now, 2 weeks later, he asks for his boppies when going down for a nap or bedtime.  We ask him where they are, and he responds, “In the garbage truck.”  I’ve also talked to him about how they are bad for his teeth now that he is older, so he mentions that.  We’ve tried to get him to hold onto a stuffed animal or something (which he is doing), but sadly, he is still having a hard time going to sleep without his boppies.  I wish that we would have done this when he was one (I read that it’s best to do it at 12 months or before).  We tried to do it a year ago, but after he went at least a week of not taking any afternoon naps, struggling to go to sleep each night, and getting up hours before normal each morning, we decided that it was not a good time to get rid of them.  For the first week he kept asking us what he could put in his mouth.  His boppies were the only type of “lovie” that he ever had, so it may be more difficult for him than for many children.  Things are going better than they did last year when we did this, but it’s still taking longer than I anticipated. Every time it has snowed this year, the snow has been too dry to build a snowman, but finally it was wet enough.  So Ethan recently built his first snowman (or shall I say observed Gary do it).

Tickets from the Police

Gary got home from Croatia on Saturday night and was going to lead the communion time during church service on Sunday morning.  Normally, he drives to church, but he asked me to so he could continue to work on it on the way there.  One of our team members called Gary’s phone while we were driving and asked if we saw our e-mail (which we hadn’t).  Someone from the CCC office sent an e-mail out on Saturday saying that the mayor had declared a smog alert for Budapest starting on Sunday.  This meant that cars with red or black environmental stickers cannot enter or drive around Budapest between 6am-10pm daily until the alert is rescinded.  Violators can be fined up to $500.   Red or black environmental stickers are most commonly found on older cars.  Our colleague called us because he knew that we had an old car, that Gary was just getting in Saturday night, and that our internet wasn’t working.  Since we were on our way to church it was too late to do anything about it, so we continued. 

A few minutes later a police car pulled out in front of me and then got into a turn only lane and sat there while cars passed by.  He pulled back out behind the car behind us.  As we turned, so did he.  Then all of a sudden he was right up on my bumper, so I knew I was getting pulled over.  He turned his lights on and I pulled over.  The normal procedure with getting pulled over is to give the police your car papers (like you would in the States… except you don’t keep them in your glove compartment because if someone steals the papers, they can “own” your car so to speak).  He looked at the papers and said that they had expired a month ago.  Basically they have to be renewed about every two years, and it is up to the owner of the car to remember to do it.  The policeman continued to go back and forth between our car and his and talking on his radio to someone.  I think they didn’t really know what to do with us (us being foreigners and not with all of the needed papers).  At some point Gary started calling people at church to tell them what was happening so they could move the communion time later in the service and to be prepared if he didn’t show up at all.  As time went on, the policeman told us that we would both be fined for the car papers being expired.  Gary would be fined because the car is in his name and the papers are expired, and I would be fined because I was driving the car with the papers expired.  He said that we would receive the ticket in the mail from the post office, and that it would probably be at least $150.  My mouth just dropped open.  I know that this may not seem like much to some of you in the States where tickets are high, but this is a lot for us.  During this process they asked each of us if we had a Hungarian driver’s license.  Thankfully they did not fine us or do anything since we don’t, but they did tell us that we have to get one. I won’t go into all of the stuff with a Hungarian driver’s license, but it’s difficult to get one and very expensive, so we’ve avoided doing it all of these years (as have many other Americans living here).  Originally the policeman told us that we would have to leave from that spot and drive the car somewhere and just leave it until a mechanic could inspect it.  We explained that Gary was speaking to a church nearby, and they said that we could drive there and then home.  Thankfully we made it to church in a reasonable amount of time.  The communion time was moved to right before the message, so Gary did it about 2 minutes after we arrived.  Once we got home we looked at the color of the stickers on our license plate, and sure enough, one was red.  I was thankful that they didn’t say anything about the smog alert or fine us for that, but then when I saw e-mail, I saw that another one had gone out saying that they lifted the alert on Sunday morning.  I’m soooo thankful that they lifted the alert, otherwise, we could have gotten a fine that was much higher.

A couple of days later someone came over to our house and gave us the equivalent of about $100 to go toward paying for the fine.  Wow!  I was so shocked.  It was so thoughtful and encouraging for them to do that.  And, such a blessing!  I always love to see how God provides in such unexpected ways.

When Husbands are Gone

Well, it often seems that things go wrong when Gary is gone.  It’s that way for another family on our team as well.  I mentioned that we did not have internet when we returned from Prague.  Our company was bought out and changed hands while we were gone.  When we returned to no internet, they told us that we needed to change the username and password on our modem.  Since the modem came with the house, we didn’t know the username or password and had difficulty trying to get help from the company.  We finally had to pay a person to work on stuff with it.  After the username and password thing got figured out, it still didn’t work.  So, then they were told that we needed to buy a new modem.  They came over last Monday and tried out two different modems just to make sure we didn’t go out and buy one and then it not work.  Sure enough, neither of the modems worked.  He called the company, and they said that there had been an administrative error and they had cancelled our service.  He asked if they could just turn it back on, and they said no, that we would have to sign a new contract.  After spending over a week of trying to deal with this new company and having nothing but problems with them, we decided to look for a different internet provider.  Come to find out, there weren’t really many other options of companies.  In Hungary the internet companies don’t really compete with one another, so if there are already one or two companies who service an area, other companies don’t give service to that same area.  At least that is what one of the Hungarians said that I spoke to about this.  The new company says that we should have internet service in about a week and a half or two weeks.

The night before Gary left I dropped my cell phone by accident, and the screen went blank.  I could still receive a call and dial a number, so that was good.  A few days later the screen came back on, but was upside down and backwards.  Strange!  An upside down and backward screen, however, it is better than no screen!

At some point during the week our landline telephone also stopped working. 

And then on Friday morning, I was so excited because someone had invited us over to their house for the kids to play and to have lunch together.  With Ethan and me both having a large need for social interaction, we were looking forward to this.  I got the pack ‘n play loaded in the car for Sienna to take a nap, got some bags in, Ethan buckled in, and went to start the car while I scraped the ice off the windshield, but the car battery was dead.  So, sadly, we weren’t able to go out.  But I was so thankful that this didn’t happen before I needed to go to the Body & Soul exercise class that I lead the day before.  I don’t know what I would have done in that case. 

I don’t dare ask what else can happen before Gary comes back, because I know that more stuff can happen. :-)

Well, I wrote this post before Gary returned, but he is home now.  However, he missed his train in Croatia, so had to come home the next day.  And, then the train was several hours late (due to snow) the next morning, so he didn’t arrive until the next evening (verses the afternoon).

Snow

We had a good amount of snow the day before Gary left for Croatia, and then it continued to snow for the next day or two.  We never got snow boots for Ethan while we were in the States, and hadn’t found any decently priced ones here, but thankfully a friend had some in Ethan’s size that her youngest son wore last winter.  So, she gave them to us just 3 days before it snowed!Ethan enjoyed trying to shovel our walkway. But, he had more fun off of the walkway, especially once the snow was deeper.The weather was around 18 degrees the beginning of the week, but it did warm up some toward the end, so we finally made it out for a walk.  This was our only walk while Gary was gone (unlike when he went to Slovakia, and we had nice, sunny weather).

Loving Guitars

I’ve mentioned before that Ethan can look at a guitar and tell you if it’s an electric, bass, or acoustic.  He enjoys trying to play Gary’s guitar as well as his toy guitar.  (If you notice, he is also into wearing only one sock around the house.) Gary took a little break from studying to play a song with Ethan.It looks like Little Sister may end up liking the guitar as well.  Time will tell.