travel

April 7, 2021

1st trip to Dominican Republic

So, our trip was an emergency one. Mateu’s paternal grandfather was not doing well and was in the hospital.

We managed to leave 1 day after notice, 12 hours in the airport, flight was delayed, we left Newark airport at 12am and arriving in Dominican Republic at 4am.

Upon arrival we received the sad news that my grandfather did not survive and passed away from three heart-attacks and strokes.

Mateu did meet his grandfather when still in my belly. However, Mateu will never get to hug his grandfather after being born.

They saw each other at least twice a week over Watsapp video chats. We wanted to take Mateu sooner, but, he was a newborn and due to the Covid19 global pandemic, his grandmother advised not to travel.

This trip was in hopes to personally meet with his grandparents. We are sad, Mateu never got to meet his grandfather and happy the three of us were there for 15 days spending quality time with our families.

We also went to visit Mateu’s maternal great grandmother’s who passed aways a few days earlier. He only saw his great grandmother twice on Watsapp video chat, the last time was hours before she decided she leave this life.

Overall Mateu Javier was great traveling with, aside from not staying still.

The 9 straight days of church, Mateu was unbearable, rarely sat still, ran around the entire church which behind was a baseball and soccer field. Mateu made me {mommie} with heels, take him to the fields where he found love for soccer. For two days, he played soccer with kids much older than him. He screamed a lot and by the 3rd day, everyone knew Mateu’s screams, laughter, his running arounds and loving personality.

If I must say Mateu is such a sweet, loving and caring little guy, that everyone wanted to hold and play with him. However, his father was his number one priority. The entire trip, my son barely wanted to be held by me, he had a very tight bond with his father, saving our time for breastfeeding times only. Thus, this was extremely hard for me, I enjoyed watching my son obsessed with his father giving me a little more me time to rest my arms from carrying my son everyday since he was born.

Mateu Javier met a good 99% of the family on his fathers side and a good 60% of my side of the side of the family. For me this was so wonderful, under the unfortunate circumstances.

Overall, we made the trip somewhat fun for our son and I wonder if Mateu will remember everything we did, because from our experience our little man had a fabulous time, besides us getting sick for 3 days, Mateu Javier never lost too much of his appetite, he did vomit twice, became disgusted from the fatty Dominican milk and now dislikes plain milk.

Mateu did learn to drink from a straw, brushed up on his auto driving skills, road a horse for the first time ever, played in Jimenoa River in Jarabacoa, played in the Oquendo Hotel in Zona Colonial in Santo Domingo and spent hours in the beach in Juan Dolio. We did a lot more of course, but my son was a trooper, I absolutely love traveling with him.

Here are some highlights of our trip to Dominican Republic.