a familia portuguesa

The day started a bit rough-- Donovan woke up a couple times overnight, so even though he then slept an extra 40 minutes past his usual wakeup I was still all kinds of groggy through the morning. But then things got better, and in the afternoon he was almost unbearably cute in his playing. It also helped that I switched out his toys and was so interested in the "new" ones I pulled out that I got to sit on the floor near him and read a magazine for a whole 10 minutes. Then he came over and started literally walking in circles around me. lol

There's a Brazilian family that lives down the street. Well, Mom's from here, but the dad is Brazilian and his Brazilian mother lives with them to help take care of their 3 kids. The youngest is a girl who's about 2 yrs old, and she and Donovan are fast becoming playmates. They often play on the sidewalk outside their house and if we see them while D and I are out walking we'll stop by and play for a bit. They usually have a few toys out and at first as soon as D showed any interest in one of her toys, the girl would grab it and run off with it out of jealousy/possessiveness. But now she'll bring him stuff and shares really well with him most of the time. The grandmother told me she asks about Donovan when we're not around (she calls him "the baby" as in "where's the baby? I wanna play with the baby"). It's all very cute. The grandmother speaks only Portuguese and a few words in English, so communication is tough, but enough of it is close enough to Spanish that we can kinda understand each other. It is fun to listen to her and the kids speak back and forth in Portuguese, there's a fun rhythm to the language... sort of like Spanish with Italian attitude. Who knows, if we spend enough time around them maybe D will pick up a bit of Portuguese, too. ; )