» Son and Daughter

My Daughter’s School Trip

Laura — Thu, 15 Dec 2011 11:36:08 +0000

Today my daughter went to Lisbon in a school trip. Although she has participated in other field trips, it is always with great emotion that I wave her goodbye when the bus leaves the departure place.

Since pre-school that the school organizes a trip to a certain place before Christmas holidays.

Today she is going to visit the Oceanário and the Pavilhão do Conhecimento. Although she has already visited the Oceanário with us, she was quite excited to visit it again with her school friends.

The return is expected at 18:30pm but as usual on this kind of trips they will be probably late.

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Why is it So Hard to Let my Son Grow Up?

Laura — Mon, 04 Oct 2010 11:19:40 +0000

Image by daftgirly via Flickr

My son entered to the 6th grade and he thinks we can trust him has a responsible boy.

The school he attends had a id card system used as information about what the children are authorized to do or not. They use a id badge printer to print out an ID card to all the children. If the parents authorize the child to leave alone from school the card is green, if the child is not authorized to leave school without one adult, the card is red.

We decided to trust him and we authorized the green card, however he has to call us each time he leaves school. Now he is able to leave school at lunch time to go for a walk with his friends and go to the store to buy a gum.

I must confess that I worry each time he goes out of school, however I trust him and I think we owe him that trust. School is also a 15 minutes walk from our home and, having the green card allows him to go home alone if something unexpected happens and we are not able to pick him up. Of course he know he can only do this on a very special and authorized situation but in a couple of years he will be able to walk to without any problem.

It would be great to be able to use HID proximity cards and keep control of his moves, but that would look like surveillance and he needs to feel that we trust him. I know that kids his age want to be independent, but the fear of kidnaps and abuse are vivid in my head and I want to protect him as much as I can. I guess at the age of 25 I will be able to let him go.

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First Day Officially Alone With The Kids

Laura — Mon, 28 Jun 2010 22:40:23 +0000

Today it was the first day of Summer Holidays for the kids. They stayed at home last week with my husband due to my father’s funeral but now he is back to work and I’m jobless therefore at home.

The kids woke up at 11am and although everything was just fine at first, they soon become very active and screaming at each other. Oh boy!! I must take some rules around here otherwise I’m going nuts in no time. They keep messing with each other all the time.

I have no brothers or sisters so I don’t know how it is to have them but what other parents is that it’s common, natural that siblings compete with each other. I read an article from Kids Health that says:

About Sibling Rivalry

While many kids are lucky enough to become the best of friends with their siblings, it’s common for brothers and sisters to fight. (It’s also common for them to swing back and forth between adoring and detesting one other!)

Well, this paragraph says everything about my kids. One minute they love each other on the other minute they detest each other. I only say something when I start to see some martial arts being performed and I’m afraid they might hurt each other. Other times I just shout at them to see if they stop but usually it just works on that minute and then they start all over again.

But not everything is bad, I love to see them hugging, watching television together, helping each other, jumping and laughing together.

I’m sure the sibling rivalry is going to continue throughout adolescence, maybe it will get worse, maybe not. I just wish they can be friends for life and they support each other in good and bad times.

So, let’s see how the next days will be!

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Weekend: Relaxed Day and Camping … Again

Laura — Sun, 27 Jun 2010 22:48:37 +0000

One week ago my father died and today my mother came to my house to have lunch with us and spend the afternoon. Although very emotive when she meets someone that gives her condolences, but I’m sure soon she will overcome it.

At lunch time I had the visit of my ex-coworker, his wife and daughter. They were on holidays for the past two weeks but as soon as they knew about my father’s they told me they would visit me as soon as they get back home.

Although we had a foggy day, the sun made its appearance and the kids were able to enjoy the pool. Now, we are waiting for rain and thunder as it happened last night in the interior of the country where the rain caused floods and the lightning caused several fires. This reminds me of the fire extinguishers I have at home and the need to check their due date.

We went for a walk with my mother, drank a coffee and came back home for a relaxed afternoon.

I think I’m going to have a quite noisy night. The kids are camping again in my room, this time with inflated mattresses, one of them made of plastic, so you can imagine the noise it makes each time they move on top of them. They like to pretend they are camping. We did it two years ago, we stayed in a bungalow, and they enjoyed it very much. This year, as I’m jobless, holidays will be spent at home, so they are enjoying camping in my room. I think they find it an interesting experience once they are not sleeping on their own bed.

You might think, where is the husband? Well, he sleeps in the sofa. No, we are not mad at each other but once the kids are on holidays and stay up a little longer he prefers to sleep in the sofa. We manage to meet from time to time.

Do your kids like to camp inside the house or they prefer the outdoors?

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Kids are Camping…In My Room

Laura — Sat, 26 Jun 2010 21:13:59 +0000

Today my kids decided to go camping…in my dressing room.

Blankets, sleeping bags, pillows…everything on the floor. No tent but they have video games to play. It’s going to be an interesting night.

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Carnaval (Carnival) Costumes

Laura — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 21:06:36 +0000

What the hell is that? It is what you are thinking, isn’t it?

Well, in Portugal it is Carnival (Carnaval for us. Last Friday children went with their costumes to school and this photo shows my kids costumes.

Usually from Friday to Tuesday the kids and adults put on their costumes and go to the streets or local parties. This year, specially in the district where we live, the weather ruined most of the schedule parades but at least Friday children were happy on their costumes. For the record: my daughter was a Spanish girl and my son was…at least he said…he was a Rock Star.

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Baptism

Laura — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 10:18:27 +0000

I have a baptism invitation on my library of a neighbor that I kept because it has a beautiful picture of the girl that was going to be baptized. My daughter one of these days asked me: Where are our baptism invitations? Well, that’s a great question. There aren’t no baptism invitations of my children simply because they are not baptized.

I was baptized as a little baby but I think that my children have the right to choose if they want to be baptized or not. My husband is a God believer, I’m not. My son (almost 11) already understands my point of view and the question phase as passed, now it’s my girl’s phase.

I want them to understand what baptism is and if they really want to, it will be a pleasure to baptize them, until then they are fine the way they are.

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Sick Kids, one Tooth out and Here We are

Laura — Sat, 28 Nov 2009 19:31:05 +0000

This week was not an easy each both my kids had to take antibiotics but different reasons and I felt like running from one place to another taking care of one and the other.

My daughter had her 3rd tooth falling and it caused an infection because it was very difficult for it to fall. Due to the infection the doctor didn’t want to remove (pull) the tooth and for a whole the tooth kept hanging in the mouth. The antibiotic did wonders and the tooth finally fell.

My son since last weekend was having headaches, sore throat, coughing and tummy ache, but nothing that I wasn’t in control. On Wednesday he had an exercise at school where he had to run on a cold and rainy day…he ended up getting worse. Antibiotic and two days at home. Humm he was happy to stay home for two days.

Today my son is on a birthday party, I just requested an auto insurance quote for my mother’s car and we postponed the Christmas tree setup for tomorrow. My husband is at a friends house helping out hanging some pictures on the walls and I’m about to leave to pick up my son at the birthday party. I hope tomorrow I have a calm day.

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Room Change

Laura — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 00:12:19 +0000

I always forget to take pictures. I hate when that happens.

Last Winter my son’s bed went to my daughter’s room so that they were more cozy during the cold nights. This year we decided to do the opposite. As my son’s room it’s bigger we put my daughter’s bed on my son’s room. Well, my husband it’s the one that dismounts and mounts the furniture so he has all the work.

We also did this because my daughter got used to sleep in our bed and we thought that being on her brother’s room she would decide to sleep there, well we were wrong, she still prefers to sleep with me while dad sleeps in the couch.

Well we need to work this out!!

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Christmas Presents

Laura — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 00:04:03 +0000

Image via Wikipedia

Well, kids are getting excited with Christmas and Christmas presents are a daily subject. From a guitar to a skate, from a Doctor Nenuco (doll) to a Skater Barbie this year we have a huge different from the last years. My son is not requesting very expensive presents. No Wii, no video games, no cell phones, no expensive gadgets. I’m very happy with his attitude and I believe without cheaper presents this Christmas will be a better one.

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My Kids Relationship:Love and Hate

Laura — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 10:50:48 +0000

I am an only child so no brothers or sisters. Although it was nice not to have to struggle over things with another child, I can say I was a very lonely child. That’s why I always said I would like to have two children of my own so that they could have what I never had, a bother or sister.

I was lucky and I have two beautiful and sweet children, a son and a daughter and they can have what I haven’t: a brother/sister relationship. They can play together, they can watch tv together, they can cuddle each other and do all he things siblings should do including fighting, screaming at each other and making their parents (us) go crazy.

They have a kind of love and hate relationship. They can play along very well in good and worse, and the worse part is really the worse. It’s very difficult to control them when they get mad at each other and it always ends up causing problems among us all as a family. My husband and I don’t always agree with the education methods and these stressful situations only make things worse because we have to deal with two mad, killing each other kids. Usually none of the kids want to admit who started the fight or who is the guilty one.

My son, as the older one, can be very provocative because he already knows how to make his sister mad and we make him see that we must know when to stop teasing his sister, but it not always work because he feels we are blaming him all the time.

Some brother/sister issues are really complicated and sometimes I have serious difficulty is stopping them. Other times they are the sweetest couple and we can see they can live without each other.

I’ve talked with other parents and they all comment the same siblings relationship. I wish I could control them more and make they see that they don’t need to fight, that they can resolve things the right way but…I’m realizing that it’s a reality of sister/brother relationship.

I looked around amazon for some books about siblings relationships and I ended up with these:

Have you read any of these books? Do you have any suggestions?

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Holidays are ending

Laura — Sun, 02 Aug 2009 19:50:20 +0000

My husband just ended his two weeks holidays and tomorrow he is going back to work. The four of us had two weeks full time together and we had our higher and lower moments.

Having to cope with two kids with five years apart is not easy and can be really hard sometimes, but we managed to survive and we also learned from the experience. Even without having done an IQ test yet, we can say, they are very intelligent and smart. Yes, they are very smart in getting us into doing things we don’t want them to do but we end up letting them doing them. It might sound confusing for those without kids but for sure parents with kids know exactly what I am talking about. So we have been quite firm with the rules we tend to break during holiday time although some extra shopping were made for them like video games that weren’t really necessary.

I will stay at home three more days and then I will be back to my full time job. I hope the weather is good enough for them to go to the pool or even to the beach so that don’t get bored at home.