Category: Photos

Mom is almost totally done with her Christmas shopping as of Saturday, which makes me completely jealous. I wish I was almost done, darnit. We still need one more gift for Jorge (Mario’s Nino), 2 for Noelia (since we got her in the gift exchange), 2 for Big Mario (since it was his birthday yesterday and, of course, Christmas), something small for Mary since we already got her two other things, two more gifts for the boys plus stocking stuffers, my gift to Mario, and Gramma (but Gramma’s totally easy to shop for). We’re hoping we’ll be done this Friday, but I highly doubt it, considering we have the car payment and most of the other bills. We also need to save some money (about $500, ideally) for when Mario takes a few days off after Alaethia’s born. We’ll see.

As for Eenan’s competition, there was a mistake with Eenan’s final Place, or whatever it’s called. When we picked him up from Yadira’s that day (she picked up Angela and Eenan) he was thrilled that he’d gotten 2nd place, which meant he’d receive a trophy. When I drop the kids off at school on Monday, I’m opening Jaylen’s juice for him as he sits for breakfast and listening closely to the announcements. I hear, “For storytelling: Eenan, 2nd grade, got –th place!”

2nd doesn’t exactly end in “th”, so I thought they’d made a mistake.

His coach just so happens to drop her little girl off late that morning (she’s in Jaylen’s class) and tells me how unprofessional the hosts were this time and that they’d put up the wrong sheet; he’d placed 2nd on the Semi-finals =\. She said he deserved a trophy though, and she’d probably get him one herself. How nice :).

After we picked Eenan up from Yadira’s we had about 10 minutes to “rest” before Mary and I had to leave to a baby shower. It was for Mary’s co-worker, Melba’s, neice Priscilla. I remember her from somewhere…maybe middle school or high school. We talked for a little bit after we were introduced. I’m due 4 weeks after she is.

(Jaylen just came over to me and with trembling lips said, “My bwain’s beeping. I think it’s gonna bweak!” I ask him if he hears a ringing in his ears, if that’s what he means and he nods. I tell him his ear’s ringing, his brain will be fine. He’s so adorable LOL.)

I didn’t win any games but I did get to see most of the ladies that work with Mary. They kept asking about my belly and the baby. When I got up to leave, some of them were shocked to see how big I’ve gotten since the last time they saw me.

I was so tired and sleepy I couldn’t wait to get home. I’d only gotten 5 hours of sleep or so, and hadn’t had a nap all day so I was falling asleep whenever there was a quiet moment in the car on the way home. We get home and Eenan’s doubled over in pain, holding his hand against his groin. He says his Weedos don’t hurt, but right above them it does. No nap for me. I make sure I have his confirmation letter from the insurance, which I can use this month till I get their new cards. Thank GOD. I can’t tell you how happy and relieved I am that the kids finally have their insurance!

We try all the “Night Clinics” in our area and nothing’s open. They all close at 12pm, which is NOT night time, darnit. We had to go all the way to McAllen to see the doctor we usually see after hours. We waited for a good two hours before they finally called us in. Eenan was running all over, climbing chairs and jumping off them (they never act that way, I was mortified shocked) which led me to believe he’d been faking.

We finally get into the vitals room and this damn woman comes in and interrupts our visit. She spends about 20 minutes in there, totally oblivious to the fact that we’re there, because she’s an idiot and can’t remember which vaccine’s her daughter’s gotten. I was pretty pissed at the nurse, too, who could have told her to wait her damn turn.

The dumb nurse takes us into a room and the doctor sees Eenan really fast. He says he’s definetly got an ear infection (which we were also taking him in for) and that the stomach pain was probably due to that. That amazes me, how two things that are so far apart in the body can influence one another. I’d looked it up on Webmd before we’d left to the doctor and I read how it could be a virus, throat infection, ear infection or UTI. WEIRD. He’s doing much better now, thank goodness. Hopefully those icky coughs and colds will stay away, too.

Mary ordered pizzas that night, which I was so grateful for since I did not feel like getting home and having to cook in a hurry since Mario was probably going to get home before us. After we ate, I had the kiddos paint some clear Christmas ornaments that I’d gotten earlier that day in Target’s Dollar Spot. Since our big tree’s in storage (the box in the lowest, furthest corner of the unit, no less) I got a tiny tree and some ornaments for the kids to decorate since they wanted a tree LOL. I figure, when we do get the tree out, I can recycle their hand-made ornaments and keep using them year after year :).

We slept in on Sunday, which is always nice. It was so cold outside it felt really cozy inside. I picked up some breakfast (barbacoa and tamales) from Aziz per Mario’s request and we ate. Eenan was in CFF with Angela and then later attended church with Yadira. Mario and I (okay, I mostly watched and held things together) put the crib together while the kiddos played in their room. We moved our bed and side table a few feet and the crib fit exactly where I wanted it to: right next to the bed. I can’t wait to get the mattress, her crib set and mosquito net set up with it!

We had a party to go to just as we finished with the crib. We get to Mario’s grandma’s house and there aren’t any cars outside. Turns out they cancelled the party due to the birthday boys being sick but someone forgot to call us =\. We sat around and talked with Mario’s grandma and cousin and visited his grandpa for a little bit.

We had the whole afternoon to go so Mary treated us to House of China. I had the chance to choose the restaurant, but since Eenan had already begged to go to House of China, we went there.

The food was great, although I’m a bit disappointed that I can’t “fit” as much food as I used to. I guess with Alaethia growing at rapid speed she’s pushing my stomach up and squishing it. I get full so fast now and the heartburn? It’s terrible. Even sweets give me heartburn with this pregnancy.

Mom and Elda’s mom made tamales yesterday. I was volunteered by my dear mother to take her to H-E-B to buy the supplies (who didn’t let me take my nap at all yesterday morning since she was practically screaming outside my house talking to my father-in-law). Gave me a chance to buy some cake-mix for my dad-in-law’s birthday cake.

The tamales were SO GOOD and there was a bunch left over! They still have like, 3-4 lbs. of meat left to make more tamales with. How’d they know I’d been craving them ;).

Mario and I played checkers after we put the boys to bed last night. He frickin’ cheated, darnit. We played “his way” and I lost in like, 5 minutes. I didn’t want to play anymore (sore loser, so what :P) so we went to our room to read. I love reading at night since it makes me even more sleepy and I fall asleep right away. I did end up getting up every hour on the hour; sometimes because I needed to pee, other times because Jaylen had a kneeache and needed a rice sock first, then Motrin since it wouldn’t go away. I thought I’d be much more tired today, but I haven’t had a nap at all.

Who knows how I’ll feel this afternoon, though. The cold weather makes me feel so nice and lazy :).

The cold front came in and has been lingering since Thursday. It feels great outside — totally a pregnant woman’s kind of weather, or mine anyway. I’d much rather feel cold and warm up quickly than feel hot and sweaty and get no relief from fans or air conditioning.

I had a tough night Thursday night with Eenan. He’s gotten into the habit of throwing tantrums often and being extremely rude. I was so frustrated, especially since I’d been arguing with Jaylen over his games (he couldn’t find his Gameboy case) that I poured a half of a whole salt shaker into my mashed potatoes. The hormones took over and I immediately felt like a failure for messing up dinner (it’s funny to me now, but I was so sad that night) and felt even worse since Eenan kept trying to find ways to disobey me. I ended up just cupping my hands over my face and sobbing, which Eenan thought was completely his doing. He freaked out, jumped up and down and said, “Oh no, Mama! I don’t want you to cry!”

I felt horrible that he thought it was all his fault, and told him when he got into bed it wasn’t entirely his fault; I was stressed and having a bad night, but he was still punished for being rude all day long. He took the punishment (grounded from games) and went to sleep.

I felt much better the next morning (after I’d bawled my eyes out to Mario when he got home from work the night before — he puts up with so much; bless him). Eenan appologized and gave my belly a huge hug and we all left to school.

We went to his Awards Assembly at 9, where he got two certificates for getting All ‘A’ Honor Roll and Perfect Attendance for the 2nd six weeks. I’m so proud of my little dude.

When the kids got rowdy and one of the teachers spoke with them she said, “You need to be respectful to your friends who are coming up here and receiving their awards. They tried so hard this six weeks; they studied very hard and came to school even when they were sick–”

Mario and I turn to look at Eenan and he nods his head and points to his chest, implying that he’s one of the ones who felt sick and still went :P.

When he went up to the front to get his awards, I frantically tried taking pictures with my camera. Stupid thing would turn on, then swallow up the lens again. Then it showed a “low battery” picture, which wasn’t right since I’d had it charging the day before. I throw Mario a look of desperation and he says, “Toldya you should’ve bought another camera during the sales. Toldya.” Nothing like pouring salt in the would, eh? I got at least one blurry picture of him, but was totally disappointed I didn’t get one of him shaking the secretary’s hand or the group one of his class in front of the Christmas Tree on the stage. Poo.

When his teacher came to pick them up, I gave her Eenan’s Christmas picture money. We went to Jaylen’s class afterwards to turn in Jaylen’s and we see him happily sitting cross-legged on the rug. He’s wearing a little “hat” with the letter ‘N’ on it and a picture of a nest. He sees Mario and runs up to him to hug him while I spoke to his teacher. Mrs. S. and Mrs. T. had just been telling me that morning how the troublemaker in the class, a little boy named Ray, kept smacking Jaylen on the head the day before, so they had to remove him from his spot, which is next to Jaylen’s. Just that morning I’d seen him punch a little girl on the arm for passing Jaylen a sheet of stickers to pick from instead of passing it to him (and he hadn’t turned in homework–that’s what they choose stickers for). They told me Jaylen won’t say anything at all if someone’s bothering him; he’ll either ignore them or take it. I tell him he needs to let his teachers know about it, and that being hit or picked on is something he’s allowed to “tell”. He nods his head and Mrs. S. says, “I hope he does. In order for us to find out we have to catch him (Ray) doing it.”

Jaylen and the girls aren’t the only ones Ray picks on. He’s this tiny little boy, smaller than Jaylen, even, and he picks on all the kids–even ones twice his size. Kind of makes you wonder what goes on at home that he’s so aggressive and mean all the time :(.

When we leave the school we go to Family Dollar to pick up the rest of the Megaman action figures we’d seen the day before. They also had the Pet player thing, which used to cost $25 and we got for $5, yay!

John had another day off so we went to Whataburger after we picked Jaylen up from school to get the rest of us lunch (Jaylen eats lunch at school). We ate, Mario came home from Tommy’s house, where he was installing an alarm and he ate and then we got to talking about cameras. I told him I didn’t want to spend money on a crappy camera and have it stop working in a few months–it would be a waste. He wanted to get me the Canon PowerShot S3 IS, but it’s super expensive so there’s no way I would’ve let him buy it. He told me to do some research on Target.com and Flickr. I found some on sale at Target, but after reading reviews I decided I’d wait on both. Then I came across a Kodak EasyShare Z650–love at first sight! Although one of the other cameras that was on sale came with a gift card and was 7 Megapixels with 3x optical zoom, this one was 6 Megapixels with 10x optical zoom. My other camera only had 3x optical zoom as well.

I accompanied Mary to get some papers done for a loan and then we picked Eenan up. After we picked Eenan up, Mario and I packed up the rest of the boxes I had left in our bedroom and got them ready for whenever we could go to storage. Then we were off to Target.

Since I received my 10% off all-day coupon for getting 1,000 points, we decided to get the kids the games they wanted for Christmas and Mario got a book. We saved a good $50 at least on our purchases. And since everything came out to about $350 (it was originally $400) I automatically qualify for another 10% off shopping day in January, which is awesome since we can totally use the savings for Alaethia’s things!

The camera was about $20 less online, but Mario said, “Why wait? You’d have to wait for it to arrive at home.” So I just got it right then and there. I LOVE this camera. I’ve been lugging it around taking pictures of anything I can for the sake of using it LOL. Mario’s not a camera-person, but even he was stoked about it and was looking for accessories on Ebay for me, like lenses and stuff.

I made Mario promise he wouldn’t get me anything else for Christmas, because he’s got a knack for giving me my present “early” and then still getting me other things on the actual holiday. This is enough and much appreciated.

On the way home, while clutching onto the box, I immediately started to feel guilty and told him I hate spending so much money. He says, “Woman, you never ask for anything, ever. You deserve this!” I tell him, “Yes I do. I ask for…you know, stuff…”

He chuckles and says, “Like what? All these luxuries like pads, toilet paper, and shampoo?”

Aww <3. We bar-b-q'd at night and by the time we went to our room and read our books, it was 12:30am. Stupid mistake, especially since I had to wake up at 6am to get Eenan ready for his Competition today. I got Mario's stuff ready and now I'm waiting for 9:45 to roll around to drop John off at work, then Mom, Mary, Jaylen and I are going to town to finish Mom's Christmas shopping and hopefully make it back on time by 1:00pm to pick Eenan up. I hope he does well!!

I didn’t take my morning nap again today because of the cold front we’re waiting for. Mom just came over and she’s wearing a jacket, so maybe it’s already here. It was nice and sunny at 7:30 when I was dropping John and the kids off and when I went out at 9:20 after Mario left to work it was getting dark and windy. Thank God I packed them all (Mario and the boys) with jackets and jeans. It’s snowing in the Panhandle. I want snow…darnit.

Anyway, I had my 31 week appointment yesterday morning. I was prepared to be completely bored since they take so long so I took my Parenting magazine with me. I didn’t even need it. I sat down after I signed in, then moved because the air conditioner was pointing right where I sat and it was freezing. I sat in the bench seats next to this older couple and the lady quickly asked how far along I was. I told her 8 months next week and we proceeded to have a conversation about my pregnancy, previous pregnancies, her family, her children and how twins run in her family. It’s always nice to meet a total stranger and just talk like you’ve been friends forever. This has happened at that same office with three other girls I’ve met.

I was called in pretty quickly, if you consider an hour quick. I weighed 133.6 which means I’ve put on 2 1/2 lbs. in the last three weeks. I asked my nurse if that was okay and she said yes. So, so far I’ve gained 12 1/2 lbs. this pregnancy. I think I’m doing pretty good, considering just how much I really eat LOL. I walk a lot, so that may be “helping”.

Dr. C. joked around with me while I whipped out my camera. I planned on recording my sonogram the last time I went — had my memory card empty and everything — and totally forgot to do it. Not this time; this time I remembered. Good thing, too! I got to see just how big her head is, her face (which resembles Eenan’s sono at 8 months A LOT), her arms, legs, how she almost pulled on the umbilical cord (which I learned is what she’s doing when I feel those hard tugs), and her little private part! I finally have a picture of her little peach. So this is the 4th confirmation I have that she’s a girl :). You can see a few pictures I screen capped from the video in my Pregnancy Timeline page. I can’t tell you just how excited I am to meet her. The boys are, too; they’re constantly asking “how much longer till she comes out”.

She was measuring at 30 weeks 5 days yesterday and I’m 31 weeks 2 days. I hope this doesn’t mean it’s going to take her even longer to come out!

I’ll have another sono to make sure she’s doing alright at my 34 week appointment. I wonder what they’ll tell me. It kind of makes me uneasy that they haven’t strapped me onto the fetal monitor at all yet, but then again this is a different doctor. I’m just glad everything’s going smoothly :).

As I was walking out, I ran into a girl I met there. She had her baby last week on the 21st. He was so adorable; so small and his hair was stick-straight and he looked so new :). I can’t wait, I can’t wait, I can’t wait. I’m excited about everything: going into labor, where will I be when it happens, the delivery and finally holding her in my arms. I can’t wait to see the expression on Mario’s face and how the boys will take care of her and protect her. I know they’re going to be excellent big brothers. They’re so ready for her. We all are :).

I forgot to mention in my previous entry that on one of our many Target runs, I bought Alaethia her first outfit from me. She already has two from my mom and two from my mom-in-law. This was my first one. I *had* to get it since the blouse was on sale and the jeans were just too cute! There’s so many other things I want to get her, now that I know for *sure* she’s going to be a girl!

I already asked Mario if we could start setting up the crib, so I can see how much clearance there is between the trundle and the bottom of the crib. I want to get baskets to organize her sheets, diapers and all that stuff. I have so much to dooo!

I shall start with boxing up the rest of the crap I have in a corner of my room. I have to get that done today, no question. I already told Mario we’re taking it to storage on Friday when he’s off, so it needs to be done.

I also have to clean the whole house! Dad, my half-brother, his wife and little boy will be coming over on Sunday. I have a nephew–it’s weird to say it! And a neice on the way who will be here around the same time Alaethia will :).

Gotta pick up Jaylen!

[edit] Just got back from picking Jaylen up. I stopped by at Family Dollar to buy some slippers (that they, of course, didn’t have) and found Megaman action figures for the kids! Stocking stuffers — although I already gave them one each since Eenan got straight A’s and was student of the week and Jaylen is the best-behaved in class, the teacher’s new helper and always behaves well. And they only cost $2 each! This is an awesome day :).