Alex -- Único!

Every year on Easter, the Lisbon church does a little something special for all the kids. This year, they put together a slideshow of all the children in the Sunday School program. The babies (0-3 years) were all grouped together, 4 or 5 to a slide. But for the older kids, each one had their own slide with a picture as well as some words written about them by their teachers. They flashed the slides up and then had each kid come up to receive a special present. This was Alex's slide. Imagine, if you can, the entire church erupting in laughter when this came up on the screen, Rusty and me included! (English translation follows.)

Alex: Unique! Excited, but very affectionate and tender. He likes to question, to play, puzzles, and to sing. His development in Christian education is fantastic, and his example has been each time better. He has a heart bigger than him. God bless you and guide you to do great works. May Jesus always live in your little heart.

Three-peat: Sneak Peak

So, I finally managed to locate my ultrasound pictures, from when we were in the States, and got them scanned and saved to our computer. So, as promised, here they are. (Alright, I know that probably no one but my mother cares about seeing a picture of the inside of my uterus, but since this blog also functions as my own personal online scrapbook, I'm putting them up anyway. I posted ultrasound pics when I was pregnant with Alex and Stephen; I wouldn't want little Three-peat to feel left out!)

When we got back to the States in January, one of the first things I did was send Rusty out to buy a home pregnancy test. At that point, I was about 99% sure I was pregnant, but you can't just walk into a store in Portugal and buy a pregnancy test. You have to go to the pharmacy and ask for one at the counter as if it's a pack of cigarettes! So, I decided just to wait until we went back. I think I was also in denial that I was actually pregnant. Maybe if I don't take the test, I won't really be pregnant. Okay, so I was also irrational. Keep in mind that this pregnancy was unplanned... we hadn't even decided if we were going to try to have another baby ever, and certainly not now with our move to Angola looming ever closer.

Sure enough, the test was positive, so I made an appointment to see my OB while we were in Michigan. I was exactly seven weeks pregnant when I went in, so I wasn't expecting to get an ultrasound, as they typically don't do one that early on unless there is some sort of problem. But after she examined me, she said, "Are you sure about your dates? Because your uterus seems to be pretty large for being only seven weeks pregnant." At which point I literally started hyperventilating, thinking to myself Oh, my gosh, the only thing worse than being pregnant right now, would be being pregnant with twins. I might have a nervous breakdown right here in her office and the nice men in white coats will come to take me away to the nuthouse...

So, she sends me for an ultrasound... tech says everything looks great... I hear the heartbeat... I tell her to make extra sure there's only one baby in there... she says yes, just one... I say, "Are you sure? Because twins run in both our families..." she says "Yes, absolutely, there's only one." Whew. "The twin scare that wasn't," that's what I like to call it. Suddenly, having just one baby seems doable after all.

Seven weeks pregnant.



I had a second ultrasound about 4 weeks later. It's amazing the changes that occur in a few short weeks during that first trimester. From being a little blob to being practically fully formed and taking on the shape of a baby:

Eleven weeks pregnant.

In a few weeks, we'll have another ultrasound, and we'll hopefully know if we're having a boy or a girl. Will Three-peat be The Little Princess, or the Third Musketeer? Stay tuned...

Look Who's Two!

At the beginning of April, we celebrated Stephen's second birthday. Really? He's two? Already? It seems like just yesterday that we were driving to the hospital in the middle of an April snowstorm. And now that tiny, helpless baby, born less than 10 minutes after we checked in, is a sweet little boy with a personality all his own. He has brought so much joy to our family these past two years!

So what does it mean to be two? It means that Stephen has graduated from high chair to booster seat at the table. It means he is starting to try to climb out of his crib, so we are considering moving him to a "big boy bed," which may end up just being a mattress on the floor. It also means that potty-training is staring Mommy in the face, and she is trying to work up the gumption to start on that. Potty-training while being pregnant is not much fun.

Lately, Stephen has become so talkative. He's learning new words and phrases every day and constantly amazes me with just how much he understands. He can count to ten in both English and Portuguese, loves to sing songs and read books, and has started saying prayers at the dinner table. There is nothing more precious than hearing your child thank God for "Nyanya and Babu, da airplane spoon, and da baby ducks."

For Stephen's birthday this year, we decided to celebrate by having a picnic supper at the park with the team. The kids played on the playground for awhile, and then we ate -- peanut butter and jelly pancake sandwiches for the kids, chicken salad for the grown-ups. Birthday cake and presents followed. It was a simple but fun party, perfect for a two-year old! Here are a few pictures:

The birthday boy with his daddy!

The kids enjoyed their food on the grass...

...while the adults sat at a nearby table.

Opening presents

The "cupcake cake" birthday cake. It is supposed to look like a soccer ball!

Stephen and Eliana -- pretty close to the same size now!

Enjoying their cupcakes

Signs of the Times

So, just in case you missed the announcement on Facebook or from us personally, the big news in our family right now is that -- surprise! -- we're pregnant again! "Three-peat," as this baby has been officially nicknamed, is due at the end of August. I am 19 weeks right now, so just about halfway there. We have spent the last couple of weeks trying to get registered with the public health system here in Portugal and after getting a bit of a run-around, finally succeeded. I have my first appointment next month, and hopefully the ultrasound, you know the one where they tell you if you're having a boy or a girl. Not that I'm all that anxious to find out, I just want to be able to have an answer other than, "Ainda, não sei," ("I still don't know.") for the 500 people that ask me at church every Sunday if it's a menino or a menina.

I feel fine for the most part. The nausea has mostly passed, to be replaced by heartburn. I struggled with being very tired all the time in the first few weeks, but I feel like I have a little more energy now. My belly is growing, and as it does, I'm finding it more difficult to sleep comfortably. Since I'm not even halfway through at this point, I feel a little desperate when I contemplate what it's going to be like in the hot, hot summer when I'm as big as a whale. Also, the painful varicose veins in my left leg that emerged when I was pregnant with Stephen are back, along with a bunch of other pregnancy aches and pains that I don't remember feeling this early with either of my other two. Chalk that up to age or this being my third baby, or whatever, but I'm certainly enjoying the whole "pregnancy experience" less this time. I really shouldn't complain, though. In comparison to some, my list of concerns is very small, and I am thankful for (so far) another healthy and uneventful pregnancy.

I have more thoughts to share about all this -- this is one of those things I alluded to when I said a few posts back that I was struggling to work through some things. But I'm tired and I don't feel like my brain is really functioning at the level I want it to be to write that stuff. So, I'll leave you with a few pictures for now. I have ultrasound pictures, too -- I went to see my OB in Michigan three times while we were back in the States, but I still have to dig them out and scan them, and I'm too lazy to do that right now, so it'll have to wait for another post as well.

Our team welcomed us back from the States with a beautiful welcome home banner decorated by all the kids. They also made this one especially for Three-peat. This baby is already loved by so many!

First baby gifts, given to us in the States by Grandma and Grandpa "B." Every one of my babies so far has received one of Grandma "B's" hand-hemmed baby blankets! They are so special to me and to them -- Alex still sleeps with his every night.

I was 15 weeks in this photo. My belly sure popped out a lot quicker with this third pregnancy!

The Big Five

I can hardly believe it myself, but I am now the mother of a five-year old. Sometimes I look at our Alex with an odd sensation of disbelief. Did he really grow in my womb? Was he ever really a tiny baby? A toddler just learning to walk and talk? I look back at pictures and know he was, and yet I still have difficulty imagining him as anything other than the smart, lively, energetic boy he is today.

Alex had his fifth birthday at the end of February. Once again, we spread out the celebrating across two continents. From Chuck E. Cheese and cake and icecream with his grandparents and cousins in America (see last picture on my previous post), to his school party and team party here in Portugal:

Birthday cupcakes with his class at school

Birthday cake for the team party -- he asked for a Star Wars cake, so I took the easy route and made a chocolate sheet cake and put a few Star Wars toys on top. He thought it was cool, and he loved that he got to keep the toys after we ate the cake!

Five!

Just before opening presents from his friends.

I had intended to make a slideshow of the first five years of Alex's life to show at the team party, but sadly, it was one of those things I just didn't get around to doing before his birthday. I still plan on doing it at some point, but it won't be a "birthday slide show." But I did think it would be fun to take a little walk down memory lane by posting pictures from the first day of each year of Alex's life so far:

Less than 1 day old - Mito, Japan

1 year old - Portland, Oregon

2 years old - Memphis, Tennessee

3 years old - Little Rock, Arkansas (living in Detroit, Michigan at the time)

4 years old - Lisbon, Portugal

5 years old - Lisbon, Portugal

Top Ten: U.S. Trip

I feel as though some sort of explanation is in order as to my long absence from this blog. Life has been very busy these last months, it's true, but there's more to it than that. I've been struggling to work through some things recently, and I'm unsure how much is appropriate to share in a public forum such as this. This blog is mostly just a "chronicle of days," snapshots of the Campbell family's life, and there's certainly nothing wrong with that. But, like most of us, I would imagine, we usually take pictures only of the good things, the fun things, the things we want to remember. We don't pull out the camera to capture the cluttered house, the defiant children, the pile of dirty dishes in the sink, the embarassing language blunders.

So... how to capture the good as well as the bad, the difficulties as well as the joys... this is what I've been trying to figure out lately. But that will really have to wait for another post. For now, as the title of this post indicates, I need to recap our recent trip back to the United States.

And how to do that in just 10 pictures? Our six weeks there were filled with so many fun memories. We saw both sides of the family, spent some time with Hillsboro (our sponsoring church), visited with many supporters, including the Somerset church in Pennsylvania, and met up with many friends, both new and old. I limited myself to just 10 pictures to highlight our trip, but I'll try to fill in the gaps with a little commentary along the way.

We began by spending a few days in Michigan with my parents (and my sister and her family who happened to be there, too!):

Celebrating Christmas in Michigan with Nyanya and Babu and the cousins... highlights included the obligatory pic in front of the tree, opening presents (my parents gave us a Wii -- yay!) and tearing down and eating the gingerbread house.

Seeing the model train display at the Henry Ford Museum.

Indoor playgrounds galore! Jungle Java in Detroit, the Monkey's Treehouse in Nashville, Playdate PDX in Portland, and of course, McDonald's Playplaces!

Lots of fun in the snow, in both Michigan and in Pennsylvania -- besides helping build this giant snowman, Alex got to go sledding one day with Daddy and Michaela!



From Michigan, we headed south to Nashville, where we spent about a week with the Hillsboro church. A big highlight was the time we got to spend with Hillsboro's new preacher and his family, the Hopes. They have two kids about the same ages as our two boys. We love them already, and we're so glad they are at Hillsboro! We also took a day and drove to Huntsville where we met up with Rick and Marinda Trull, our team coaches, as well as some of Rusty's extended family who live in the area.

From Nashville, we flew out to Portland, OR to spend a few days with Rusty's sister and nephews. Robbie and Johnny are seniors in highschool this year, and they are both starters on the varsity basketball team. We were able to go to one of their games while we were there, which was a lot of fun! We also saw several friends and visited my grandmother (my dad's mom) who lives in Portland.

Cousins ("My big cousins," as Alex calls them!)

From Portland, we flew back to Nashville, and then began a roundabout trip back to Michigan... driving first to Virginia to visit my "oldest friend," Michelle, and her family... then to Pennsylvania to spend some time with our friends Jimmy and Natalie and the Somerset church, also one of our supporters... then finally back to Michigan, stopping along the way to have some down time as a family at the Kalahari Resort in Ohio, home of the largest indoor water park in the U.S!

Stephen liked to float on his back in the giant wave pool while Alex and Daddy had fun on the waterslides!

Back in Michigan, we enjoyed almost two more weeks with my family before we headed back to Portugal.

We took a day and drove to Coldwater to visit my other grandmother (my mom's mom).

There was lots of grandparent time. Stephen liked to use Babu's chest as a ramp for his trains.

Music time with Nyanya... she would play from this book of kids songs she's had forever, and the kids would dance around the living room, playing with noisemakers or pretending to be a choo-choo train, or any number of other things, as the songs dictated. The kids also enjoyed finding the candy hearts that Nyanya would hide around the living room... like an indoor Easter egg hunt.

Celebrating Alex's 5th birthday with his cousins... he didn't actually turn 5 until the end of February after we got back to Portugal, but how often are we going to be able to celebrate with his cousins who live in South America? He wanted to go to Chuck E. Cheese, so we did that one evening as part of his present, and then opened presents and had cake and ice-cream at home the next night.

Christmas in Portugal

This post is long overdue, but with all of our traveling these past few weeks (we have been in the U.S. since the beginning of January, but will be returning to Portugal soon), it has been difficult to find either the time or the motivation to blog. As a way of "catching up," I thought I would post a few snapshots that capture how we celebrated Christmas in Portugal this year.

Interestingly, our family has now celebrated Christmasses on 4 continents! And, although this was not our first Christmas overseas, far from our families, it was our first Christmas abroad since our kids were born. So, we focused on beginning some of our own holiday-related traditions, and of course we tried to make the most of our "European Christmas," since it will likely be our only one!

We kicked off the month of December with a cookie decorating party for all the team kiddos.

Everyone got a big Christmas tree to decorate.

Stephen just wanted to eat his cookie!

We went to the zoo one Sunday after church to see Pai Natal (aka Santa Claus), and Alex had his face painted.

And Biruk and Efesson had their faces painted too!

After spending the afternoon at the zoo, we enjoyed some of the Christmas lights in downtown Lisbon before heading home.

Rossio Square

Every street had some sort of lighted display.

Carousel ride in Rossio Square

Alex had a school Christmas party one Saturday.

And that same day, there was a Christmas party in the evening at the Lisbon Church. Alex's Sunday School class did a reenactment of the birth of Jesus. Alex was one of the wise men.

We had a yummy dinner, and a table full of delectable desserts. In the front is Jesus' birthday cake. It was topped with sparklers that they lit as the grand finale to the evening!

We invited Jordan to spend Christmas Eve and Christmas Day with our family this year. She helped Alex decorate his gingerbread house.

And here is the finished product. Obviously, we let him have a lot of creative license. (By the way, he aquired the big bruise in the middle of his forhead when he walked into a pole on the street because he wasn't watching where he was going.)

Watching "The Polar Express" before bed. Our friend Regina also joined us for Christmas Eve and Christmas Day this year.

Opening stockings on Christmas morning.

Alex got a new raincoat and some rain boots for Christmas this year. He was so excited to wear his new gear to walk to school!

Christmas Dinner with the Reeses, Jordan, Regina, and another friend, Linda. It took some work, and some creative thinking on my husband's part, but we were able to cram all of us into our tiny kitchen around an actual table for a nice sit-down meal of roast lamb, mashed potatoes, spiced peaches, and all the other trimmings!

All in all, a very Merry Christmas!