We were up so late the night before that Mario didn’t go in to work. And neither did Jorge LOL. He’d already hinted to me when we were over at their house last night that he wouldn’t be going in, but I didn’t tell Mario till the morning, after he’d already called in. Jorge was kind of upset, but there really wasn’t any work.

We had lunch and went to Home Depot to pick up some pipes and other material so Mario could finally—after 6 years—install the exhaust in the kitchen. The funniest thing was we ran into Jorge and Jorgie. Mario was ahead of me and I was pushing Alaethia in the cart. I see Jorge spot Mario and he starts quickly chasing him with his basket. I started laughing loudly so Mario turned around and saw Jorge. I asked him why Jorgie was with him and he said they were all taking a family day, aww.

We left Home Depot right on time to pick up the boys from school. Mario started working on the exhaust as soon as we got here. I finally have a working exhaust!

After dinner I turned on my computer to look for something and for some reason I scanned my computer. I left the scanner running before we went to Jorge and Maggie’s again.

We got home and I was up at 2am trying to remove the stupid Trojan (Trojan.Brisv.A!inf to be exact) from my laptop. Mario and Alaethia were already asleep. Boo. And what pisses me off is that I didn’t even get this on my own. It happened either when Sammy asked me to download and put songs on his MP3 player, or when Mario had borrowed my computer to download some stupid Scottish song. Grr. This is the last straw; no more doing favors for anyone on any of my computers, like uploading music to everyone’s iPods or MP3 players. Our desktop is in the boys’ room and all the kids go over there to borrow it. Well, not anymore. I’m setting a password up on it and no one–not even my own children—will use it. All I need is for them to become as screwed up as Mario’s laptop. But that’s a whole other story.

Sun., Feb 2nd – I woke up and had some breakfast, then started opening all the gift bags, taking pictures of everything, and separating by color so that I could start washing Emily’s tiny clothes. I still needed to go buy some Dreft, but I’d do that later.

I literally piled everything up in a corner of my room till we need it, like the tiny bassinet you can put between yourself and your spouse to keep from rolling over the baby if she sleeps with you and tons of diapers and wipees.

I started making a list of all the stuff we needed, which wasn’t much and we didn’t really need anything, it’s more wanting things for convenience. I’d go to Target and Walmart the next day while the boys were in school. Maybe John would go with me.

Mon., Feb. 3rd – I wanted to go to town all day. John never answered my texts. I was going to go to town on my own (Mom was watching Alaethia and about to give her lunch) but it was already 1pm and I only got to go to the bank. I came back home and totally busted Mom eating on sofa. And she says she’s not the one teaching Alaethia bad habits! Grr. Anyway, Alaethia was eating and I made myself some lunch, too. I took a shower and picked up the boys. I dropped them off and went straight to the doctor.

I got to read about 2-3 chapters from Twilight while I waited. Mario texts me that he and Jorge just had Kumori. He does it on purpose! I told him I was mad and he told me not to be. I told him I wouldn’t be mad if he went to town with me that evening. Ha! I got myself a shopping buddy!

I was laughing with Laura, my nurse, when I got called in. I weighed 140.1 lbs. I got a sono done: her head is HUGE. They’ll start seeing me weekly from now on and Dr. C. needs to check me the next time. I needed to get the Group B-strep culture done and Laura was going to be the one to do it LOL. She and I both felt embarrassed about it so she handed the swab to me, explained what to do and so I did it. As I’m walking out of the room Erica takes the culture from me and Laura puts her arm around me and starts telling Elizabeth and Erica how she just couldn’t get herself to do it because we’re good friends. I got my next appointment card from Elvira and then went home to pick up the Walmart and Target bags of stuff to exchange.

I picked up Mario and we went to Target first. I exchanged the white/gray head support for the pink/gray one and we got everything we needed from there. As we were walking I told Mario how, the week before Alaethia was born, John and I were running around everywhere looking for her stroller and Boppy and everything else I needed for her. It was super cold and drizzly that whole week.

We went to Walmart next. We got all the baby stuff we needed and even got the girls matching dresses! We exchanged the dress Sally had gotten for Alaethia on her birthday for a smaller size and found the exact same one in Newborn for Emily! Too cute. I can’t wait to see them in the dresses together :). I was surprised that Mario was actually being a good sport. He wasn’t annoyed or rushing me at all. If I didn’t know any better I’d say he’s a bit excited picking things out for his new baby daughter ;).

We got a new crib mattress for Emily, since the one that ‘s currently in the crib is Alaethia’s and she’ll need it for when her toddler bed comes in. I’d ordered it online from Walmart and it should be coming in from Feb. 13th to the 20th sometime. I still wish I hadn’t gotten rid of the boys’ cute white plastic bed. But we didn’t think we’d have anymore kids and Alaethia’s crib turns into a day/toddler bed and then a full-size bed. But oh well. I’m glad we found a nice, white wooden bed for Aly—and that it was under $65!

Oh the way home we went to Jorge and Maggie’s for a while. We sat around the table laughing with them and watching Jorge put up his new TV stand, then came home after an hour or so. We told them we’d go back. I had been hinting at Mario that we should leave quickly so I could get home, put everything away, make dinner and get Alaethia ready but no. He wanted to stay for an hour. Ok. So we get home and he’s moping around, not talking to me because he’s already in a mood. Too bad; I needed to eat and so did Aly. While he was sitting there moping I told him to please get up and help me to speed things along, so he got Alaethia ready. We finally got to leave after an hour.

Aly was well-behaved. She just sat on the sofa watching the fruits of Jorge’s labor: mounting his 50″ Hitachi on the new stand. It looks really nice! They’re doing amazing things in that house (Jorge’s Mom’s house). They removed this huge picture off the wall that was well, sort of 80’s, and now the place looks even bigger. I can’t wait to see how the house’ll look when they remove all the dark wood paneling.

I think that was also the night the guys started working on the new laminate wood floor they were installing in Jorgie and Justin’s bedroom. They’d already had new drywall and paint done, all the needed was the flooring and painting the trim white. It looked really nice and pretty easy to do. I wish we could put that type of flooring in our house, but the floors need to be re-leveled badly

Maggie didn’t think we were going back so she’d gone to sleep, so Aly and I just watched the guys working on the floor. We got home rather late, around 2am and we were beat.

The day of Emily’s baby shower!

I woke up around 10am and went over to Mary’s to help with potato peeling and whatever else they needed help with. Mona, Elda and Mom were already there helping. We started putting everything into the trucks so Mary, Mona and Elda could take everything to the hall.

Once I was done helping out I came to shower and straighten my hair. I thought I was going to have enough time to do everything, but as always, I ended up having to rush. Noelia got here around that time. I bathed Alaethia and got her dressed in the cute yellow bumblebee outfit Sonia bought her from Gymboree for her birthday. She threw such a fit while I was trying to do her hair—she hates for anyone to mess with her hair—so it took around 20 minutes to do her hair alone.

So I’m getting all her stuff together and finally start getting dressed myself when Noelia and Mary come in to see what I need help with. They were both dressed in cute dresses and cardigans…and I looked at my clothes and I was in a (really cute, but still) blouse and jeans. I decided to completely scrap the jeans and put on my black and white giraffe print dress and black cardigan. But then I looked down at my legs and realized I didn’t shave during my shower. Great. I hiked up my dress, used a washcloth to wet and lather up my legs with soap and started shaving. I cut myself in 3 different places, which is really weird because I have that Lady Shick razor and never cut myself, but I guess I was in that much of a hurry. I re-rinsed my legs with a clean washcloth, slapped on my makeup and Mom, Jaylen and I were out the door. Eenan went with us to Alaethia’s baby shower two years ago but decided he’d rather go with Mario to Jorge’s (Mario’s Nino) to start prepping for the Superbowl Party.

We arrived about 8 minutes late. Mona, Elda, Noelia, Mary of course, Sonia, Yadira and kids were already there. I walked around saying hello and aunts of co-workers of Mary’s started showing up. The aunts that said they weren’t going to make it because basically, the Superbowl was more important, really didn’t show up. Sally and Carmen had already told me they couldn’t; Sally had prior plans and Carmen’s little girl was sick, plus she had to get ready to ship out for the Army (!), so they didn’t make it. But all my other friends…they didn’t show up either. It was pretty disappointing. They didn’t even have to bring a gift…it would have been nice just to see them.

Aunt Nora at least got to go, and that’s because I let her know at the last minute because I’d sent the invite to Justin and he forgot to tell her about it, heh. The games were fun. Mary had them make a baby out of Bubble Yum bubble gum. It was between Norma D. and Venessa’s baby, so they both got a prize.

They also played a word scramble and then The Price Is Right. That one was a little difficult, but around 4 people ended up tied with 1 right each LOL.

We had bingo and the food that Mary made herself (chicken in celery sauce, corn, mashed potatoes and a roll). It was delicious. Everyone kept asking if she’d gotten the event catered!

Jaylen took his DS so he was entertained for the most part. He did get a little teary-eyed when bingo was over and he hadn’t won anything LOL. Alaethia was running around with all the other babies, especially Belle. And when she’d get bored there was always someone who wanted to hold her, so she was happy.

They had a few more games and then Elda, Yadira, Mary and I served dessert, while Natalie, Yazmin and . The cake was great, even though, as always, the lady messed up on the colors. The grapefruit pie and everything else was awesome. Everyone started leaving around this time, except for close family. They waited patiently for my slow butt to finish my dessert and then they made a huge circle of chairs around the gift table to watch me open gifts

There were so many cute, tiny things! Emily has tons of new clothes, plus her hand-me-downs for Alaethia and Vicky—this girl will NEVER run out of clothes!

I was amazed at everyone’s generosity! I had to really cram everything into the back of the Equinox to make everything fit! Aide was a doll and helped so much with putting everything up. She said I shouldn’t be doing anything because I’m pregnant. As she was walking away with a ton of bags I’m thinking, “Hello?! You’re pregnant, too!”

Yes, she is! They’d told us the day before. We’d just been talking about how they’d been trying for months now and still nothing at Jorge and Mona’s housewarming party the week before. Annie said that pregnancies usually come in 3’s, so she was surprised that no one else was pregnant along with me. She said it’ll either be Aide, Noelia, Elda, or Mona along with me. Aide had texted me, “Guess I’m one of the three!” LOL Let’s see who else is next!

We drove over to Jorge and Mona’s and met up with all the guys, who were already bar-b-q’ing and drinking. Mario and I went to Dollar General a few blocks away after a while to get dip, cheese and some of those 3-d glasses for the half-time show, or whatever it was. I ran into one of my students, Eric, when we were walking out the door. Once we got back we watched the game and ate and then the 3-d show started. It sucked. We couldn’t see a damn thing with those glasses LOL.

Most of the girls got bored and went inside to chat around the table. Then we moved our congregation to the living room where I copied the pictures Mona took at the baby shower to my SD card. Technology’s lovely.

As I was copying the pictures, Mario goes over to the sofa I was at and sits next to me. He tells me he’s tired and he wants to go home. I tell him okay, I’m almost done transferring the pictures. I’m into my conversation with Mona and Annie so I don’t notice that he leaves. I mean, really leaves. He doesn’t tell anyone anything, just stealthily disappears like a ninja. He calls me like 15 minutes later and tells me that yup, he didn’t want anyone to stop him from leaving so he just left. When we got home the old man was already asleep! Oh, but when I was working he was up every night till 2am!

I looked around and decided that I’d wait till the next day to put everything away. I had a long day!