Category: Alaethia

Oh, Baby

Just finished adding pictures to my previous post. Took me long enough, right? There’s a new Pixydust first: I posted a pic of myself after bawling my eyes out. Not too attractive, so be nice, okay? 😛

I guess I can say I jinxed myself after that post. I wished that Alaethia would let me sleep that night and nope, she didn’t. She cried her little eyes out till 3:30am and I needed to be up at 6:30 to get the boys ready for school. It was awful. I bawled right along with her; I was that exhausted. I’m more than positive her insomnia was brought on by colic. At first I thought it was because she slept a lot during the day but I figured it was a tummy ache since she’d ball her little legs up to her torso whenever she’d pass gas. Poor thing.

Mario couldn’t sleep through her cries after a while, so around 1:30 or 2 he woke up and stayed up with us trying to console Alaethia. We both sort of just sat there, half-awake taking turns trying to make her relax. Finally, after 3 bottles, lots of burping and back and tummy massages, she fells asleep with the aid of a pacifier at 3:30. Hallelujah. I seriously thought I was going to be awake all night.

I was so tired I contemplated keeping the boys home from school, but I thought better of it and forced myself awake and got them ready. The last time they stayed home they fought all day long and I couldn’t get sleep anyway (not that I kept them home to get sleep; it was the time they tricked Mario into believing they were sick!).

It would have been great to come back home and sleep till I had to pick Jaylen up, but Mario and I’d decided the night before that I’d drop him off to make running our errands easier in the afternoon since he had to work and didn’t want to drive all the way back home. I made myself some coffee and he drove over there and I drove myself back home. I had the music blaring and the windows down so I could feel cold and awake.

I got to sleep for an hour and a half with Alaethia when I got back. Mom had watched her for me while I’d been gone. I woke up feeling much better but I was still much more tired than usual. I picked Jaylen up and when we got back Big Mario was here so I asked him to do me the favor of getting Eenan’s bunk mattress down for me. I was going to return the crappy thing since it was rock hard and I was more than positive they’d given me a box spring instead of an actual mattress. I’d called the store before and spoke to a woman who told me they’d exchange it with no problem. I told her it didn’t have the plastic blue packaging it came in and if that was fine and she said yes, to go ahead and take it in and to ask for Andres. Cool.

Mario calls me to drive to his work and deposit his paycheck. Mom, Jaylen, Alaethia and I all drive over there. He comes over to the car and he says he hasn’t been doing any work for the past hour and would love to go home already. He goes up to Albert and I see Albert give Mario a hug, which I’m assuming is because, yay! He’s letting him come home. They both come up to the car and open the door on Alaethia’s side. Albert says, “I’m just congratulating him on the baby again.” ‘Crap’, I think. I totally thought he was going to let him go. I see Mario go back into the store so we drive away.

He calls me when I reach the stop sign and says, “Where are you?”

I reply, “Here at the stop sign.”

“Well, can you come back for me?”

I couldn’t stop laughing. Turns out Albert did let him leave and he was clocking out when he’d gone back into the store LOL.

We go deposit at the bank and then to pick up my glasses at EyeEar. I’ve developed astigmatism in my left eye, which really sucks. My glasses are all funky now and it felt like my left eye was swimming around in my socket while the right one was nice and focused. I kept taking huge steps because it felt like I was about to land on my face whenever I moved. Mario, who’s suffered from astigmatism in both eyes since childhood, says it takes about a week to get used to them. Great. At least my Transitions lenses are sexy.

Next we went to a cell phone store Mario’d been talking about. My Valentine’s Day present to him was going to be a new Boost phone, since all the guys at work have one and they all decided to get one. I still don’t think it’s a great gift, but that’s what he wanted.

He’s satisfied with how much it cost and was like a kid with a new toy; he couldn’t stop talking about how awesome it was and was so excited to start getting all his co-workers’/friends’ numbers.

I hadn’t eaten breakfast, just drank coffee, so we decided to have lunch at Taqueria El Molcajete, which is a Mexican restaurant off the Frontage road in Mission that makes their food just like they make it in Mexico. It’s genuine Mexican food and it’s delicious. I have some Frijoles a la Charra, half a baked potato with the works that I shared with Mario and half an order (3 small tacos) of fajita tacos, with cilantro, onions, avocado and lime. To drink, I had an aqua de Jamaica. I’m drooling just thinking about it!

We rushed home to pick up Eenan and after we’d gotten the kids home we stuffed the mattress in the truck, left the kiddos with Mom and hurried to the Furniture Factory Warehouse to exchange the mattress.

We get there and look for the manager, which is who we’re directed to. I get a call from John, so I go outside to answer. The boys are wreaking havoc and Mother can’t control them. John puts them on the phone and I get a headache hearing them try and explain through tears and screams what one did to the other. Pillows. Throw pillows on the couch are what caused the problem. I tell them to stay away from eachother and designate each of them into separate rooms. Just as I’m hanging up, Mario’s storming out of the store with a business card in one hand and his cell phone in the other. I ask him what’s wrong and he says the guy’s being a ‘dick’.

Apparently he’s not allowing Mario to make the exchange, even though he explained to him that I spoke to one of the female employees the night before and she said to bring everything in. I’m so fired up from just dealing with screaming children that I yell, “OH HELL NO,” and march back in to the store.

I tell the guy how I spoke to the woman and we went all the way over there to make the exchange and it was going to happen. I let him know how shitty the so-called mattress is and how could they sell something so crappy and uncomfortable?! He says, “That’s why I showed them to you that day. It’s the same thing as the ones you saw in the showroom.” I tell him, “Oh, no they’re not. The ones out there are NOT as rock-hard as the one you sold me. All we want to do is exchange it. We’ll pay the difference on a new mattress. I was told it could be done and that’s what I expect.” His face is flushed and probably humiliated because all the people in the store are staring at us by now. He agrees to ‘help us out this one time’ and we pick a mattress and voila, problem solved. I hate arrogant asswipes like that. Mario was pretty pissed that he was giving him such a hard time.

When they’re putting the old, nasty mattress into the warehouse, the nice guy who was helping us out, Andres, says that the mattress has a hole. A what? We don’t know how it got there since Eenan didn’t even sleep on the damn, hard thing. He tells Mario it’s fine, but that if the boss had seen it he definitely wouldn’t exchange it. He gives us the OK to go and we go. Mario gets into the car and he’s like, “Drive! Get out of here before they change their minds!” LOL It’s safe to say I’ll never buy anything from there again. I only went there in the first place because Willie’s Appliance and Furniture never answered when I was calling around for prices.

We rush home, get the mattress down and stuff everyone in the truck. We finally, after God knows how long, made plans to go to a movie. Mario wanted to watch Ghost Rider and although I wasn’t too keen on watching it, agreed and so did the boys. We met Mary there and got all our junk food. I had Alaethia in my lap and I’m so glad to say she’s a great baby even at the movies. She didn’t fuss once and when she got hungry she didn’t even scream; she just made her little lip-smacking noises to cue that she’s hungry. (I haven’t mentioned how ADORABLE it sounds when she does that. First she smacks her little lips together and if I haven’t gotten the point by then she starts to eat her hands LOL.)

Jaylen was so cute. He loved the movie. He was on the edge of his seat during the suspenseful parts and when something exciting happened, he’d clap :P. He kept saying things like, “Oh, yeah!” and “That was awesome!” At the end of the movie he said, “Mom, can you buy me this movie?” and then, “That part (which sounds like ‘paht’) almost made me cwy,” during the happy ending (or, sort-of happy ending O_o).

Eenan was a little jumpy but enjoyed the movie anyway. When the movie was over the boys went to the bathroom first, then Mario held Alaethia while I went. When I came out of the restroom Eenan’s wearing Alaethia’s diaper bag around his neck and says, “Look, Mom, I’ve got an udder!” then he points to the bottle on each side of the bag and says, “And two teats!” Where he gets that stuff from, I have no idea. The whole hallway was laughing LOL.

I feared that last night would be a repetition of the night before, but thankfully Alaethia was only up till 1:30 (even though it felt like it was much later). I gave her some of her gas drops in her bottle that Dr. C. had prescribed for her and it worked like a charm! She slept from 1:30 to 5:30 and then from 6 to 9! Needless to say, I felt much more refreshed this morning than I did Friday morning.

She spent a lot of time awake this morning and this evening, so hopefully I’ll get some rest tonight (I won’t count my chickens, though!)

I finally did what I’d been wanting to do for at least a month: I went through my closet and got rid of at least 20 screen print tees that I don’t wear anymore, sorted through my PJs and sleep shirts and moved everything into the chest of drawers where Mario’s clothes are to eliminate the huge one that my clothes used to be in. I still have the last drawer to go through; that one has some of Mario’s button-up shirts and slacks. Once I have those hung up we can get rid of the huge drawers, move the one with our clothes in front of the bed and put the TV on it and then get Alaethia this cute chest of drawers I saw at K-Mart for her clothes. I also put all my maternity clothes away, which I’m highly considering selling through here, my website. I was going to put them away, but I don’t know when or if I’ll ever use them again, so I figured I could sell them to someone who’d need them soon.

John helped me load all the bags and the huge box that was taking up space into the truck, we got Alaethia’s stuff ready and Mom stayed with the boys while we went to the storage unit to drop all the stuff off. I had to feed Alaethia while we were there, so it took a little longer than we expected.

Next stop was Target, where I decided to cave and buy the car bottle warmer since Alaethia refuses to drink a bottle even if it’s room temperature. Can’t blame her, I’d want warm milk, too.

I had John scold me each time I wanted to buy something I didn’t need and he did a good job of it. I treated myself to some Starbucks, which I didn’t actually spend anything on since Mary’d given me a $5 gift card. Yay!

We went to the mall next, where John was gong to buy Alaethia the Dead Animals blanket he’d been wanting to get her. It’s much more adorable than it sounds, trust me! Too bad they completely sold out within two days and they have no idea when they’ll receive more. Grr.

We looked around a bit more and left to Circle K to pick up some snacks to drop off for Mario, just because. It was nice seeing him for those few minutes, even though he poked at my belly roll and kept smushing my arm fat, which for some reason he loves to do. *hiss*

We were starving so we stopped at Taco Bell to get some food. John treated me and when we got to Wal-Mart I bought him toilet paper LOL. Fair trade.

It took much longer there than we’d anticipated since we had to eat first, then Alaethia needed to be fed and changed. Then she decided to poop mid-diaper change and then peed all over herself when I was about to swap out the dirty diaper for the new one. Thank God I always carry a change of clothes for her. I wrapped her up in her blanket and we went into the store.

Took forever to get everything we needed since I was shopping for myself, John was shopping for himself and we had to buy stuff for Mom, too. At around 7pm, we were done, finally. Mario called as we were getting in line at the register that he was on his way home. We’re finally on the road at 7:45 and when we’re leaving Mission and getting into Palmview, we notice that traffic’s suddenly come to a halt and there’s a person running across the expressway. I had about 2 seconds to come to a complete stop from 65 MPH; thank God the truck in front of me swerved towards the shoulder or else I would have slammed right into him. I kept praying that the people behind us would stop on time, too. I was so worried about Alaethia, who would feel the impact first if, God forbid, we got hit. We were fine and so was everyone else, even though there were two crashed cars on one side of us and two more in the ditch in the median. Traffic started up again about a minute later.

I think I panicked and tensed up, because as soon as I started driving again my back got this throbbing, shooting pain. I was shaking so hard I couldn’t even hold the wheel correctly. John was getting a bit worried and kept telling me to park on the side of the road to calm down, but I got a grip on myself after a while and kept driving. I was so terrified though, that I couldn’t get my feet to press the gas to go any faster than 60 MPH, which is not normal for me LOL. My back still sort of hurts, especially around the spot where I got the epidural, but I’m just so glad we’re alive. That’s one of the main reasons I try my hardest not to drive at night.

Ok. It’s bed time. Wish me luck. Mario’s out somewhere because he threw a fit for some reason or another but I’m going to bed whether I’ve seen him or not. Hopefully he’ll get home around the time Alaethia wakes up for a bottle and I’ll make him prepare it for her, buahaha.

Housework A.D.D., Valentine’s Day & 3 Weeks Old

I’ve seriously got to get some kind of written schedule going to help me stay on track. I’ve got piles of folded laundry that need to be put away in drawers stacked on the futon, half the dishes that were in the sink are still in there, and I put the toilet cleaner in the toilet, but I’m just now remembering I was supposed to clean it. I can’t just do one thing and finish it. I get bored and absentmindedly move on to something else.

I need to shower, but Mario’s at a seminar and won’t get here till who knows what time. I don’t want to go to sleep stinky :(. I think it’s about time I rearrange my routine and bathe while Mom’s here during the day. I bathe the boys around 6-6:30pm, so maybe I should bathe them at 6 and take a shower myself at 6:30. Then get dinner started at 7 like I usually try to. But then when am I supposed to work out?! At 5:30? Darn John won’t go running with me. I totally need a running partner and nobody wants to join me :(. I’d feel silly jiggling running out there all by myself.

Anyway, going off on a tangent there.

Tonight would totally be a great night to update from bed. I’m crossing my fingers that there’s a fantastic sale on awesome laptops in this Sunday’s ads so we can get one already.

Alaethia slept in her crib for the very first time Monday night. My sore throat was awful and my nose was between running and being stuffy so I was certain I’d end up having to sleep with my mouth open that night–you know, to avoid suffocation and all. Since Alaethia sleeps in the crook of my arm I didn’t want to get her sick so I placed her between her little wedge thing in her crib and prayed for the best. I was super paranoid even though her crib’s right next to my bed. I closed my eyes and felt like I’d woken up just as quickly when I heard her little “I’m hungry” cries. Look at the clock; she’d let me sleep for 4 hours!

I fed her, burped her, changed her, cuddled her and put her back in the crib. It was no-go that time though. I was too tired to continue to try and get her to sleep in there. I like holding her and breathing in her baby smell anyway :).

I tried putting her in her crib on Tuesday night after giving her her bath (the last piece of belly button scab fell off Saturday night, so I can bathe her freely now :)!) and feeding her. It takes so long to burp her. Most of the time she doesn’t even burp and she’s gotten into the habit of spitting up a little bit after her feedings. I placed her in the crib and she stayed asleep. I curled up in bed while Mario was making copies of CDs and fell asleep. I could hear something far away, something like a gasp and then I heard gurgling sounds. I realize that it’s Alaethia and I spring out of bed to find her gagging on her spit up. I freaked out, picked her up and turned her onto her stomach and patted her back to help her stop choking. I was so scared I scrapped the idea of putting her in her crib for now. Maybe after she starts learning how to burp correctly =\.

I had absolutely no idea what we were going to do for Valentine’s Day. I’d asked Mario and we both just sort of shrugged it off since we knew he wouldn’t be getting out early enough to celebrate. I tried not to be excited, and I tried to convince myself that I wouldn’t be disappointed if something incredibly romantic didn’t happen.

The boys were little terrors the morning of Valentine’s Day. Eenan eventually got the point that I was quickly getting frustrated, so he shaped up right away. Jaylen on the other hand continued to lazy around on the couch and talk back to me when I told him to get ready. He left me all of 5 minutes to get myself ready. I told him he was grounded since he never listened and then began the waterworks. He wailed and cried all the way to school and once we parked in a parking space, he magically stopped crying. Just like that.

I got them both to their classrooms and made sure they had their large Ziplocs containing their Valentine Cards for their classmates. Rushed back home since I needed to get Mario’s stuff ready and then drop him off to pick up the Sentra at Whataburger since John had taken it in the morning to get to work. First thing Mario does is start complaining about how he only had one pair of tube socks left in his drawer, how my coffee was watered down and how tired he was of having to rush to pick up his car. He was all ready to go by 8:30, but Noelia wasn’t ready till 8:45. Not my fault he was rushing, even though he didn’t have to be at work till 10. We’d made plans the night before to have lunch together for Valentine’s Day. He continued to make little complaints about the car and when I’d finally had enough I told him, “You know what? Forget meeting for lunch. Just forget the whole thing.”

When we were about to walk out the door he tells me, “Are we meeting for lunch or not? If not, so I can pack something.” I roll my eyes and say, “Yeah, we’ll meet. Whatever.”

I tried napping with Alaethia when I got back but I got about half an hour worth of sleep since she wanted a bottle and then wanted to stay awake. Picked up Jaylen then got home and flat-ironed my hair and put on some make-up. I call Mario and ask him what time he’d like to meet and he said he was at a service call with Albert, so he’d call me whenever they were on their way back to work. This causes me to quickly become annoyed, but I was trying to be civil so, through gritted teeth I said, “Okay. That’s fine.”

He calls back not long after that and tells me to go ahead and take off so we’d get there around the same time. I give Mom a quick run-down of what Alaethia needs and how Jaylen’s not allowed to play video games and I take off. Traffic was terrible, but I made it over there in half an hour.

I see him when I drive into the alley behind the shops and he gives me a huge smile and suddenly I don’t feel as resentful towards him as I did just seconds before. (I hate it how he can make me forgive him so quickly just by flashing a sweet smile. I’m so weak!) He gets into the truck and says, “Hey, Beautiful, where do you want to go?” We decide on a Chinese Buffet place since it’s pretty fast.

We get our food and have a nice chat. We discuss how the kids behaved (or misbehaved) in the morning and chatted about the cute things Alaethia does. He tells me how he told everyone that I was upset with him and it all becomes a huge joke. I tell him thank you for lunch; it made my Valentine’s Day. The hour went by too quickly. I dropped him off at work and gave him a smooch on the cheek. I was pretty bummed that I’m sick and couldn’t even give him a decent kiss. I won’t even get into the fact that we can’t be, erm, intimate for six weeks and Alaethia barely turned 3 weeks yesterday LOL.

The rest of the day’s pretty normal. Mom wanted to get the kids a little gift, so after we picked Eenan up we went to visit Gramma then to Target. Jaylen was acting up at first, but after a while he calmed down and behaved. We chatted with Gramma for a while and she swooned over Alaethia. We said our goodbyes after half an hour and set off to Target. I wanted to get home before it got dark, since I can’t see well at night and I was already feeling dreadfully sleepy.

Mom lets the boys pick out a toy each (Jaylen, a Batman action figure, Eenan, a Naruto action figure) and I get some diapers and a burgundy bed sheet set that was on clearance for $13. I’d been looking for burgundy sheets and hadn’t had any luck. Can’t beat $13!

I get home and do my nightly routine and Mary treats everyone to some McDonald’s. I didn’t even have to make dinner–yay! I get a call from Mario that he’s going to be a bit late, again, since he and the guys had a system to do. He appologizes, but I tell him it’s fine and I genuinely mean it. I put Alaethia in her crib and change the bedsheets. Alaethia starts fussing when I’m done so I pick her up and hold her and Jaylen joins me on the new, crisp sheets. We’re watching TV when I suddenly see a shadow on the door. It’s too high to be Eenan, who was in their bedroom playing. I stare at the doorway at to my surprise it’s Mario holding a beautiful bouquet of flowers and two packages wrapped in yellow paper. He has the cutest expression on his face and says, “Happy Valentine’s Day!” I immediately feel a lump crawl up my throat and my eyes welled up with tears. I croak, “Babe! What…you didn’t have to!” I place sleeping Alaethia on the bed and hold him, bawling my eyes out. Eenan starts to get worried, because he hates to see me cry and Mario tells him softly, “It’s okay, man, Mama’s crying because she’s happy.” The boys both come over and hug us and Mario asks me to read the card attached to the bouquet. And I bawled my eyes out again :).

He tells me, “Open the rest!” So the boys help me tear open the small package first, which is a DVD I’d wanted: Friends With Money with Jennifer Aniston. The second package is something I’d been wanting forever: a box of Whitman’s chocolates :). How he guessed I’d really wanted one of those is beyond me.

With The Boys

My Bouquet

The Sweetest Card, Ever

Family Portrait

We put the boys to bed after that and then we bathed Alaethia. We cuddled in bed while we watched Open Season until I started drifting into sleep. I brought Alaethia back into bed with me, who’d been sleeping in her crib until she needed a bottle. She slept pretty well the first part of the night and then, after she’d woken up at 3:45 stayed awake till 5:15. I was so tired this morning. I was supposed to drop Noelia off at work but I didn’t think I would make it back, alive, afterwards. My throat also felt horrible, my ear ached, my Wisdom tooth is ripping my gums apart and I was afraid I’d gotten Alaethia sick. I called Mary to let her know I couldn’t drop Noelia off and instead I went to the doctor.

I weight 119 right now, which is pretty good but I’d LOVE to get to 115, and maybe even 110. That’s my goal. Alaethia is now 7 lbs. 10 oz. and is 20 inches long. She got a clean bill of health. Dr. C. recommended cuddling if she gets fussy LOL. I, on the other hand, have a throat infection but no Strep, thank goodness. My ear was clear of infections (and clear of everything else–Dr. C. said I maybe needed some ear wax since my ears were that clean LOL); he said, as I suspected, that the pain was probably due to my darn Wisdom tooth.

Mario’s been home for a while and Alaethia’s asleep so I should take the chance to take a quick shower and put some beef stew to cook in the slow cooker for Mario’s lunch tomorrow. I hope Alaethia lets me get some good sleep tonight. I have to drop Mario off tomorrow so I need to sleep!

It’s Like Dawn of the Dead, But With Old People

Not that I have anything against old people, not at all. I’ve been driving around like a mad woman since last week and the handful of old people who should not be allowed a license all happen to be on the road at the same time as I am. John said that phrase this afternoon and I thought it was hilarious (and so true. I even said, “That’s SO going to be my blog entry title!” I was supposed to change the title on my entry about Anna Nicole to “The Day John’s Penis Died” but I never did LOL.) We were on a McDonald’s run when TWO cars full of Winter Texans almost slammed into us from each side. That’s been the norm since last Thursday it seems.

I’m at my desktop computer in the living room right now, with Alaethia’s bassinet at my side just in case she spits up like she did a few hours ago. Scared the crap out of me. Thank goodness I was passing right by her bassinet when she started screaming.

I didn’t get to enjoy the fruits of my laptop and wireless internet for too long since Mario got tired of how slow the laptop was and sold it today to one of his co-workers. So now we’re saving the $600 we bought and sold it for until we can save a little more to buy a better laptop. I had no problem with it; I loved it. Mario, on the other hand, is impatient and the poor little processor in the laptop was too slow for him. He also likes to mess around with the inards of operating systems and hates that Windows Vista doesn’t really let him get into all the folders and such. I just want to update from my bed again :(.

Anyway, I didn’t drop Noelia off at work on Thursday. It was nice to get some extra sleep in the morning. After I picked Jaylen up from school, Jaylen, Mom, Alaethia and I headed to the hospital to get Alaethia’s PKU done. It thankfully didn’t take super long to get called in since we had to make it back on time to pick Sammy (Yazmin was admitted into the hospital since she had a bad throat infection that needed intravenous antibiotics to clear it and nobody was around to pick up Sammy) and Eenan and Brandon up from school.

I braced myself for some tears (not just hers, but my own as well) when I put Alaethia up on the table and removed her sock. The nurse pricked her heel and it took her about 5 seconds to realize what had happened and she screamed her little Kitty scream. I picked her up and consoled her and she calmed down. Poor baby. I only got a little teary eyed this time, but I’m nervous about her immunizations next month!

We looked around the gift shop for a little bit, where mom got me a cute, soft little teddy bear that has “Special Daughter” embroidered on the tummy, aww :). We made it back with more than enough time to pick Sammy up, so we wasted some time at Joy Dollar. Jaylen of course went straight to the toys and picked out some swords with shields for him and Eenan. Can’t beat quieting the children down for $1! Well, quieting them down while we’re at the store. Once they have those swords out at home and are dueling with eachother, that’s another story.

Everything went pretty smoothly that night until it was time to make dinner. I decided on spaghetti and meatballs since I had a brain fart and thought, “It’s easy to make and I don’t really have to do much.” Right. Completely flew over my head that I actually have to prepare the meatballs. Alaethia started crying unconsolably just as I was defrosting the ground beef and would not let me put her down. Luckily, I still got it: I made meatballs with ONE HAND. Mashed all the ingredients and made perfect little balls and everything. *pops collar*

I finally gave her her first “full bath” that night. Her belly button stump had fallen off at the beginning of the week, but she still had a huge scab across her belly button and it was a little red and would bleed a little on her diaper. I was concerned, but they’d told me at her doctor’s appointment that she was healing well. I still couldn’t wet it though. I got tired of mopping her down with damp washcloths so I gave her a bath as carefully as I could without getting her bellybutton wet. It was a success and of course we took pictures :).

So Fresh and So Clean

John and I went to Target earlier that day to see if they had the stuff he wanted and we made a quick stop at Michael’s, where I bought $3 worth of scrapbooking papers (they were on sale for a quarter each) and some embellishments. I bought one of the papers especially for documenting her first bath :).

Scrapbooking Papers

Embellishments

I had to drop Noelia off on Friday morning and Mario had to work so I had to rush and get the kids to school then get Noelia to work on time. I got everything ready as quickly as I could that morning and then Noelia, Mom, Alaethia and I got into the truck. Got her to work with a few minutes to spare.

On the way back home Mom and I are looking for an old thrift store we used to go to. I’m so intently paying attention to all the shops on each side of us and trying not to get into a car accident that I’m stunned when I see something fly across the windshield and CRACK!! I frantically look around to see what happened and notice a circular crack on the top right side of my windshield. Looks like a baseball hit it. A darn trailer that was going in the opposite direction somehow managed to toss a huge rock at my window diagonally. How the hell does that happen?!

I call Mario to let him know what happened. We already had 3 small “stars”, one that had been repaired and now that huge one. I was pissed. Mario was annoyed. I called Mary and she tells me to put in a claim and get it taken care of with the insurance. So I do that as soon as I get home. I speak to a guy from the claims department at the company I’m getting the windshield repaired at. I ask him about the crack: it’s 2-2 1/2 inches long, can it be repaired? He says yes, as long as it’s less than 6 inches long it can be fixed. Awesome. I give him all my details and he says he’ll call the insurance company. I have an appointment at 9:30 at the windshield/glass place on Saturday morning. Lovely.

After picking Jaylen up I start getting ready to leave to my optometrist appointment. It’s about damn time I get new glasses; the ones I currently have I’ve had for 6 years. I’ve had the exact same frames two different times but the lenses have been the same for 6 years. I’m beginning to have problems seeing letters from far away again and have so much trouble seeing at night so I’m way overdue. I leave the house with enough time to find the place; I wanted to be early since I had to be there 5 minutes earlier than my appointment at 1.

I’m driving down the street looking for the place. It just so happens to be on the same street Mario works on. After frantically looking for it and pissing everyone around me off for driving 15 MPH, I decide to stop at Mario’s and ask him where the darn office is. We can’t find a phonebook anywhere and when we finally do, I’m already 5 minutes late, which means I’m 10 minutes late if you count the 5 minutes I was supposed to be there early. Turns out they moved the one that was near Mario’s work and it’s all the way on the other side of the expressway. Nice.

I finally get there and customer service SUCKS. One guy finally pays attention to me and directs me to the back of the place, which is so odd because nobody really knows they’re allowed to go back there O_o. Once they call me in it’s cake; everything was done really quickly. I’m only slightly more blind than I was before, so I guess that’s good. I got some brownish frames this time, sort of square and they’re Transitions lenses with anti-glare, which I’ve always wanted. Came out to $135. I almost died, but the lady who was attending me painted such a pretty picture, and after telling her how long I had my current frames she said I deserved some spiffy new glasses. I told myself, “You know what? You DO deserve some new glasses!” so I got just about everything they “recommended” I get. Mario was a little upset with how much I spent, but like I told him: this is the first time I go all out with my glasses and I’ll probably keep them for another 6 years. Not like him, who spent $170 on Tommy Hilfiger glasses that broke in a few months. Grr.

I picked up some McDonald’s for the both of us and I dropped it off to him. I was starving. All the weight I lost is going to come right back if McDonald’s keeps taunting me with it’s big golden arches :(. They’re everywhere! And I don’t usually like McDonald’s!

Mario got out early but I didn’t see much of him anyway. He was outside bonding with his dad by the fire of the bar-b-q. I left them alone and chilled out inside with my little lady and my littlest man (Eenan was sleeping over at Mary’s), since the day’s beautiful weather was quickly turning chilly and damp.

I actually got online to check my Myspace that night and to my surprise I had a friend request from an old friend from Middle School: Carmen! When I first saw her name I thought, “Could it be? No…” But it was! We exchanged messages for a while then had a nice, long talk on the phone catching up on eachother’s lives. We made plans to meet the next day for lunch somewhere.

In the time I’d left Alaethia with Mom for the few hours that I was at my eye appointment and then picked up the kids, she managed to screw up her routine. She gave me so much trouble that afternoon; she’d cry and cry, drink about an ounce of milk, go to sleep, wake up screaming and would drink another ounce. It took a few hours to get her back on track and I was fearful that she wouldn’t let me sleep that night and that her almost perfect patterns were gone for good. Although Alaethia did pretty good that night, and did pretty good every other night before, I felt so exhausted on Saturday morning. I overslept by a few minutes and it threw off my whole morning. I didn’t even get a chance to iron Mario’s clothes. I ate some breakfast real quick and got all of Alaethia’s stuff together. I was taking her with me; there was NO WAY I was leaving her with Mom again for that long! The boys, on the other hand, weren’t making much of an effort to get ready and since I was already running late I left them with Mother.

I was nervous driving to the glass place that morning since it was cold and rainy. She did great on the way over there and was an angel the entire time we were there. It took a while to get done this time and I was starting to get worried. It didn’t take but half an hour the first time we went there to get a chip fixed. The receptionist was just appologizing for how long it was taking when one of the installers came in to tell her it was done being replaced. I laugh and say, “Oh, you mean repaired.” The guy chuckles and says, “No, it was replaced.” My heart starts racing and I slap my hands over my eyes. I say, “It wasn’t supposed to be replaced! It was only a crack!” He says he looked over the work order and it was put down as a replacement; there’s no way they’d be able to repair that type of crack. I tell him I specifically asked the guy if a crack of that size could be fixed and that he’d said as long as it was under 6 inches, it could be. We stand around pondering what to do and then the guys tell me not to worry about it, to go home. I say, “What? I just…leave? Just like that? What happens then?” The same guy chuckles and says, “We just won’t get paid our comission.” Just dig the dagger deeper in why don’t you? Like I didn’t feel guilty about everything that was happening already, and that’s because I didn’t even do anything wrong! So we decide I’d just leave and we’d resolve it on Monday. Yippee.

I drove to Mario’s to show him our new windshield and told him the horror story behind it. He sort of just laughed it off, which annoyed me a little. I parked and called Carmen up to get my mind off the darn thing. We made plans to meet at the mall and have lunch there. She was going to have her kiddos with her and I had Alaethia.

It was so good seeing her! We held eachother in a hug for a few minutes when we first saw eachother. I remember that at the end of 8th grade we weren’t as close as we were in 7th. You know how all that middle/high school drama goes. Sadly I can’t even remember what happened that came between our friendship. She moved away after 8th grade and we lost touch completely, but I’m so glad that it’s like we never stopped talking!

Her kids went to this little mall event they were having for the kids’ club. I signed up for Sephora.com and got some free makeup, yay! We walked around and just chattered on and on and then we had lunch at the food court. I had spinach and mushroom stuffed pizza from Villa Pizza. *drool* That was delicious and oh, so sinful.

We peeked into a few of our favorite stores. She has a wedding to go to, so we went into Macy’s to look for dresses. I saw red clearance flags in this one section of the store, and I quickly skidadled over there. I found a cute tee (Just Jimmy’s one of my current favorite brands) for $4.99. I just noticed how much the shirts actually cost. I’ve got 5 of them and I’ve never paid full price for them. I usually get them at ross for under $7. That’s why I LOVE Ross!

John called telling me he wanted to go to the mall, too, so as soon as Carmen and I were done walking around the mall I went home and we made plans to go right back. The boys didn’t want to go, again, so it would just be John, Alaethia and me. Well, Alaethia decides she needs a bottle at the last minute (and she’d just eaten right when we got home) and then Mary asks us to drop her off at Noelia’s work. Everything took an additional hour and 15 minutes to get done, so we didn’t end up going to the mall. John wanted to get Alaethia a cute blanket from Hot Topic. I hope there’ll still be some left for when we finally decide to go back.

I started feeling sick with a sore throat that morning so after stopping by Game Stop, where John bought some game thing, we went to H-E-B to get medications, honey and chamomille tea, cereal and ice cream :P.

Mario was home on Sunday and since Target was finally going to have some DS’s in stock John asked if we’d be kind enough to do him the favor of getting up at the crack of dawn and getting one for him. We left the house at 9 and we expected them to be sold out. We get to Target and there’s 6 whole shoppers in the entire store. Better for us. I’m so glad we have a Target “over here”. The ones in McAllen are always sold out of the good stuff because of the people who come shopping over here from Mexico.

We had some breakfast afterwards at Burger King and then Paul called us to go over to his house so we could work on networking their computers. I just sat with Alaethia on their bed and talked with Norma while Mario figured out the computer stuff (with Paul watching LOL). It was nice seeing them after so long. Their kiddos are all so big!

Mario dropped Noelia off at work today, so I got the kids to school extra early and got home with enough time to do everything I needed to do. I tried taking a nap with Alaethia after everyone left, but everybody and their mama kept calling. Including the lady from the glass place. After a whole bunch of BS, I still won’t find out what happens for another week. My deductible is $100 now, but they were saying it was still $500, which isn’t true. If they do accept it as $100, I won’t have to pay anything at all. It better happen that way; I don’t plan to pay anything since it wasn’t my mistake.

I got a call from a guy at I.R.R.A. asking me to pick up my darn high school diploma (that I’d ordered since 2005) already, so after I picked Jaylen up from school John and I went to Edinburg to pick up the darn thing. It looks nice and un-cheap, unlike my first diploma. I called Sally while we were over there and we made plans to meet after 3:30 at my house.

We met Mario for lunch (after we’d picked up the McDonald’s I mentioned at the beginning of the entry) and ate at the park we’d eaten at on Thursday. It was so nice out today. I wish I could see my Babe more often, but I guess since I don’t get to it makes the time we do spend together more special :).

I was to help Sally figure out what to make for dinner and then we’d go buy the groceries we needed. So fun! We wrote down recipes and talked for a good while and when we were about to leave she realizes she doesn’t have her wallet. She calls Pete and they realize they threw her wallet in the trash at the park they were having lunch at this afternoon by accident! Thankfully, Pete goes and checks and to everyone’s relief the wallet was still in the trash! Sally’s going on a hiking/road trip this weekend, which I’m so jealous of! Hopefully, after she comes back all the girls will be able to get together like the old days :). I can’t wait!

So I guess you can say I’ve had a pretty awesome, albeit hectic, week. I’m on Cloud 9 in life right now. I’m so grateful to be surrounded by loving family who’s more than willing to help me out when I need it and friends who I can count on and distract myself with. I was so afraid I’d have Post Partum Depression again for the 3rd time, but I’m so incredibly thrilled to say I don’t feel the baby blues at all!

(Edit @ 12:35pm) Just went through this entry and realized the insane amount of typos and things I left out since I was writing this with one eye open last night. I was that sleepy. I also realized just how long this entry is. I salute you if you actually read through the whole thing! (End Edit)