Monstruos del Mar

Finding things to do with kids during the morning in Uruguay can be challenging. Most child friendly indoor spaces don’t open until 3:00pm or later, but last month Montevideo became the latest city to host an exhibit titled Monstruos del Mar (Monsters of the Sea).

Held in Parque Roosevelt on the outskirts of the city, the exhibit is comprised of about 20 animatronic prehistoric sea creatures.

My sister and her boyfriend are visiting for a few weeks from the Netherlands and we’ve been looking for fun things to do as a family. Luckily I found out about this exhibit before it was too late, because like all things Uruguay, the publicity was lacking. We were already planning to be in Montevideo due to one of PJ’s therapy sessions, so we took advantage and made a day of it.

After showing my brother-in-law (ish) the Plaza de Independencia, Calle Sarandi, and Plaza Matriz, we had lunch at a quaint restaurant we had been meaning to try out called Sin Pretensiones. The food was absolutely DELICIOUS and stuffed us all right up. Even PJ ate all her pizza without being forced. I wish we had taken pictures of our food but we were just too hungry.

Once we were done we headed out to Parque Roosevelt to see the exhibit. I’m glad I did my homework beforehand because if not we definitely would have missed it. Off to the side is a little ticket booth where you can purchase entry or the ticket taker stamps your prepaid tickets. Out of the main tent you see the head of a large dinosaur thing sticking out.  I will say the noise machines they had was very loud, especially the exhibits with any sharks, making it kind of rough for PJ with her sensory issues.

At the end of the exhibition there was a colouring area, trampoline, and tiny triceratops for the kids to play and explore. They do have a sandpit where the kids can dig for “fossils” but I really didn’t want PJ to get sandy so we distracted her when we passed through that area. Overall PJ had a blast. She jumped to her hearts content, she manipulated her “Tio Rich” to push her all around on that triceratops, and coloured with her dad until it was time to go.

I will say it was a total splurge for us. It was $400 (USD 14.00) per adult and $240 (USD 8.40) per child over the age of two. It was worth just getting out of the house and being able to see something different though. You can buy tickets in advanced through RedPagos or at your local Tienda Inglesa. The last day to see the exhibit is April 5th.

Welcome to your world, Catalina!

On February 4th, 2017 our newest addition to our family came into the world!

The past two months has been spent adjusting to life with a preschooler (WHAT?!) and a newborn but overall it’s been great. Paloma has taken so well to her “baby sissy” and has adjusted better than I thought she would.

We are so in love with our newest addition, it’s hard to remember what life was like without this bundle of joy in our life. How she came into our world, however uneventful, will be hard to forget.

After another very hot summer day I was in bed watching tv when I started getting uncomfortable contractions. I had been having Braxton Hicks contractions since I was around 30 weeks pregnant so I didn’t think too much of it until I realized that after drinking water, putting my feet up, going to the bathroom, and lying down on my left side was doing nothing to alleviate them. I started timing them at around midnight, they were steadily coming every 7-10 minutes, nothing too concerning or worth going to the hospital for. I tried to sleep but every time I would get a contraction I would wake up. At around 6:30am they started coming in every five minutes. I started getting our bags ready and leaving things prepared for PJ and my parents in case we had to leave at a moments notice. I woke up Carlos at around 7:30am so he could go to the store and buy some food in case we would be gone for more than the normal two day hospital stay.

By the time he got back and PJs breakfast was made my contractions were coming every three minutes lasting about a minute each. Every contraction knocked the wind out of me and my knees would buckle beneath me. We packed the car and started on our hour long journey to the hospital. I would like to point out that I was anything but calm, cool, or collected. I was screaming and moaning in pain, banging on the ceiling and listening to PANIC! At the Disco’s new album Death of a Bachelor for some sort of comfort. How Carlos managed to get us there without crashing is beyond me.

Once I got to the hospital my contractions were so close together I couldn’t get out of the car so Carlos had to pull up to the ambulance bay and grab a nurse to assist me. They wheeled me up to L&D while Carlos parked the car. The emergency room OBGYN checked me and said I was barely a centimeter dilated. I thought it was impossible considering how close together my contractions were but wasn’t too surprised considering the same happened with PJ. As luck would have it my OBGYN was the doctor on call so he already knew we wanted to have a repeat c-section. He did make me wait about two painful hours before getting me into the operating room (rude) but everything went smoothly.

Catalina was born at 1:43pm, weighing in at 3.045kg and measured in at 18 inches. She was much smaller than any of the doctors thought she would be. Two days beforehand we had an ultrasound performed where the technician said she would come in close to 4kg.

My recovery has been great. I was feeling back to (almost) normal once they removed my stitches. Breastfeeding this time around has definitely been more successful and overall our transition to being parents to two beautiful girls has been much easier than I anticipated.

For anyone looking for a newborn photographer in Montevideo I can highly recommend Charles Sarti Photography in Carrasco. Charles is HIGHLY professional and truly dedicated to his craft.