8th Anniversary, Shots, and Thrifting!

I need to shower in approximately 14 minutes (it’s 10:16am), so I’m going to blog as long as I can while Alaethia’s asleep and I still have time.

Tuesday was Mario and I’s 8th year wedding anniversary. Everyone that asked how long we’d been together was in utter shock. They can’t believe it’s been that long. I can’t either, heh. It doesn’t feel like it, to tell you the truth. Feels like…5 years maybe?

I made Mario breakfast that morning then got Alaethia bathed before we had to head out the door at 9:30 for her 2 month physical and immunizations. Poor baby. I had no baby Tylenol to give her beforehand, so I knew she was going to be in pain :(.

Alaethia slept the whole time we waited and I read my book. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say that book was written about me, heh.

They called us in after about an hour (maybe an hour and a half, I forget) and they take Alaethia’s vitals. She was asleep the whole time they weighed her (10.10 lbs.), measured her length (22 inches), and measured her head (I forget the size…23? I’m not sure). She’s in the 50th percentile for her height and weight, which Dr. C. said is excellent. She was still sleeping when Dr. C. was pulling and tugging at her extremeties and immediately started grunting and arching her back and stretching. I asked about the rash she has on her face which is now somewhat spreading to her legs and arms only, and Dr. C. said he wasn’t sure yet, but hopefully it wasn’t Eczema. Oh no :(. He advised me to bathe her only every 2-3 days and prescribed a cream.

She fell back to sleep after Dr. C. stopped handling her, so when Erica, the nurse, came in with three syringes I had to wake her up. Poor thing didn’t even know what hit her when she was injected with the first shot. It was torture having to hold her legs down so that she wouldn’t kick :(. Mother was a few feet away, watching over Erica’s shoulder with her hands cupped over her mouth. I’d been doing the same thing, plus bawling my eyes out but I had to help whether I liked it or not. She got two shots in her right leg and one on her left. Erica told me the one on her left is extremely painful, as it’s got 2 (or was it 3?) vaccines in one. My poor girl.

(continued at 12:30pm)

Mario and I would be meeting for lunch to celebrate our anniversary. Nothing fancy; just some pizza at the park, but it’s the quality time that counts. Mom was staying with Jaylen and I offered to take Alaethia since I knew she’d be moody due to her shots and I didn’t want Mom to have too much trouble (Jaylen was already in a mood himself), but she made me leave her with her.

I gathered everything we’d need (plates, sodas), stopped at the pharmacy to leave Alaethia’s prescriptions, picked up some cash from Mario so I wouldn’t use our debit card and then stopped for the pizza. We even saved $3 since I’d just gotten a coupon in the mail I picked up for that restaurant, woo!

I picked up Mario and we went to the park. We decided to stay inside the truck where it was nice and cool. “Spring” has sprung in south Texas and that only means that everything’s nice and green…and the weather’s hot. It was nice though, just being in eachother’s company and talking and laughing like we usually do. That’s what I love about us: we can always make eachother laugh and there’s always something to talk about.

It was Mario’s turn to buy snacks for work (they take turns each week) so we stopped by H-E-B to get some ice cream sandwiches and chewy chocolate chip cookies for work, and some Butterfinger ice cream and cookies for us. I also found some $.75 cardboard storage boxes that I figured I could use for my sheets, just to keep them out of sight in the closet. Too bad I still can’t put the darn things together!

I dropped Mario off and kissed him goodbye, then picked up Alaethia’s prescriptions, came home and ate a quick lunch (edit 3/31/07: I just realized I wrote I ‘ate a quick lunch’ but no, I didn’t eat another lunch LOL. I’m so used to doing that every day that I just typed it out!) and then picked up Eenan.

The in-laws invited the kids and I over for some bar-b-q and baked potatoes my dad-in-law made. I had a little, since I still had to come home and make some dinner for Mario. I made Chicken Alfredo while the boys were still at the in-laws and Alaethia was taking a nap, so it was a pretty unstressful night. Mario got home and he had dinner and instead of a bouquet of roses (I told him he didn’t have to spend any extra money getting me roses or anything, because he totally was), or chocolates or candles, we spent some time cuddling with Alaethia and getting to bed as soon as we could since we were both exhausted. What can I say, we’re an old married couple already LOL. I didn’t get to sleep till almost 2:30 again that night since Alaethia’d slept most of the day, but I got to nap in the morning.

After my somewhat-restful nap with her in the morning, I picked Jaylen up from school and since John was off and wanted to go to Target (again) we left Jaylen with Mom and he, Alaethia and I left. I would have taken Jaylen with us, but he’d thrown a HUGE fit over his homework. Since he gets out of school almost at noon, he gets moody since he needs his nap. Most of the time, he doesn’t take it, so you can imagine!

John spent about 45 minutes browsing around the electronics section so Alaethia and I browsed around, too. I know I shouldn’t have, but I went straight to the scrapbooking section and to my absolute horror, discovered that the abundant supply of beautiful, wonderful scrapbooking things that were just on clearance on Monday were all GONE. All that was left was opened, wrinkled, less-desirable stuff :(. Oh well, I would have spent loads anyway, so I guess it was a blessing in disguise *cries*.

John finally got all the shizz he wanted to buy (games for his DS and Playstation) and we left. He gave me $10 for my troubles — troubles meaning gas as I took him to Target on Monday and then again that day. Gas is once again expensive and is what’s keeping me from town today, dammit. I already filled up twice this week, which equals to a whopping $60!

We stopped by the thrift store, which was not so far from Target, and to my absolute horror, it’s closed! There’s a patronizing “See you Thursday morning!” scribbled on a cardboard sign propped on the window with an annoying smiley face at the bottom. Grr. A light bulb goes off above my head and I drive to the Salvation Army. I hadn’t been there in maybe 3 years, so I was excited.

Well, it sucked. I found a few books and a tiny Pokemon plush for the boys. 4 of the books I wasn’t too thrilled about but I think they may be growing on me. I was happy to find Little Altars Everywhere by Rebecca Wells and The Notebook by Nicholas Sparks. I’ve seen the movie, of course, but have never read the book so I’m looking foward to that. Once I finish the Shopaholic series.

We get to the school just in time to pick up Eenan and Brandon and go home. Eenan forgot his spelling words for the third day in a row. He lost them somewhere and copied them down from his friend but left them in his desk. I let him know how disappointed I am and that he’s grounded from games. You’d think I told the boy I was selling him in exchange for scrapbooking supplies — he bawled his head off. He justified not doing his spelling homework with, “They’re super easy words, MOM! Like ‘prince’ and ‘princess’. I’ll get a hundred, easy!” I told him it wasn’t the point; he needed to do his homework anyway, no matter how easy it was. Today’s their practice spelling test. If he gets a hundred today, he won’t have to take the “real” test tomorrow. We’ll see *sigh*.

The boys spent the afternoon with the in-laws (well, Eenan did only for a little bit, as he was grounded). Jaylen went “practice” fishing with my dad-in-law at the lake and he loved it. Making dinner was easy again (meatloaf, mashed potatoes and corn), thank goodness, since Mary and Mom were outside with Alaethia. It was nice and breezy and she loves looking at everything.

It was Dad’s birthday, so I called to wish him a happy birthday and chat. We’d just spoken the day before, but he had a lot to say. I haven’t mentioned it much but we’ve kept in touch pretty well. We’ve made plans to get together, but for one reason or another it never works out.

He told me some pretty interesting things on both days, one of those things being that he still loves Mom and would come back to her in a second if she asked him to. (Although, I know for a fact she wouldn’t.) He also, for the first time ever appologized for walking out on us and basically ruining our lives by cheating on Mom. He said around 1996, he’d contacted Mom and asked for forgiveness and that he’d change, but she didn’t take him back. I don’t think I would have wanted her to at the time, but a little part of me — the little girl that wished her parents could be together and have a picture-perfect life — wished that it would have happened. How different our lives would have been had dad actually tried to be there. But like John said, would I be married and have my kids? I don’t think I’d want to trade that part.

Mario got home and we chilled out watching TV while Alaethia slept on my chest. She woke up when I put her down, so we went to our bedroom to finish watching the show (Untold Stories of the E.R. on TLC). She fell asleep again on my chest, and as soon as the show was over we went to sleep. It was around 12am.

At exactly 1am I’m woken up by a small voice talking and then weeping. I realize it’s Jaylen, who’s got a knee-ache. Those darn things. I’d get them almost everyday when I was little, up until I was a teenager (and sometimes I still do) and now Jaylen gets them as well. I got him a nice warm Rice Sock and some Motrin and he went right to sleep.

I slept the rest of the night through till the alarm went off at 6:45. It was a little easier to get the kiddos ready in the morning. I fed Alaethia when she woke up, got Mario’s lunch together (he made himself breakfast) and then he left. And I stayed awake. Made my regular breakfast of French Vanilla frosted Mini Wheats and coffee. I’m itching to go to the thrift store, as it’s open today, but like I mentioned before, I don’t want to waste anymore gas. We really need to start saving up as we’re trying to figure out where to go for our summer trip. I feel like going to San Fransisco!

I’m going to go keep myself busy by either reading or putting one of my other shelves together. I definitely need to go to the storage unit today and take Jaylen’s old bed and non-working Powerwheels. That’ll free up a lot of much-needed space!