Category: Decorating

It’s taken me yesterday and today to upload the baby shower pics to Flickr. I’ve been uploading in little spurts here and there between laundry, organizing, packing and going a little nuts.

Friday
Since I’d been feeling really sore and tired (and we were all trying to keep Alaethia in there till the day of the baby shower, at least) Mario was kind enough to drop the kids off for me in the morning, pick Jaylen up and even made me lunch! Ricky’d come over for lunch and came over to chit-chat. Mario said something like, “Look, she’s even got me making her lunch,” and Ricky replied, “Good! She should be pampered!” Alright Ricky!

Saturday
This was the day that I was almost certain I’d be going into labor by nighttime. I could barely walk, I felt an immense pressure in my pelvis and I was sure she was going to fall out. Everyone was worried and had me resting. Although I was in my Nesting stage and had these crazy bursts of energy, I still washed dishes, but Mom did my laundry and I didn’t have to cook. I felt spoiled, but in a way I also felt a little frustrated because I’m so used to doing everything on my own!

I stayed up with Yadira, Elda, and Mary and the kiddos while they got everything ready for the baby shower. They didn’t let me help with that, either!

Sunday
I spent the morning getting ready and then we went over to Mary’s around noon to help with sandwiches. Actually, Mario went in to help, I wasn’t allowed. I’d woken up that night with my wedding rings cutting the circulation from my fingers and I was swollen the rest of the day, so I was taking it easy. Mario dubbed himself the Sandwich Samurai, since, according to him, nobody else could prepare and cut a sandwich as fast as he. I totally wanted to post a picture of him in all his Sandwich Glory but he threatened to empty my whole memory card when he got his hands on it so I changed my mind :P.

We arrived an hour early at the hotel my baby shower was being held at so we could set everything up. Little did we know that we really had to set everything up ourselves–they didn’t even set up the tables or anything for us! Poor Mom and Mary moved everything on their own, and these were tables with granite (I think?) table tops!

People started arriving and we had a good time just chatting and then playing games. Like I mentioned in my last post, we didn’t get to play a few games because we forgot the pads of paper and pencils (and most of the games required things being written down!). It also got a bit crowded, as the hotel failed to mention that they only had 32 seats, and not the 50 they promised Mary. What idiots!

The little sandwiches and veggies were great, although I hardly got a chance to eat well since I was too busy mingling and posing for pictures. Finally, I finally have pictures of a lot of my relatives and friends. Some didn’t make it, but I’ll hopefully catch them later during another get together. I got to see Sally and Mayra, which is always great. I wish there were more visits :(. Pete was also kind enough to send his gift with Sally. How sweet is he?!

The boys were great. They behaved pretty well up until about half an hour before we left. They were becoming antsy since the adults were all sitting around talking so they started running around like they’d lost their minds.

All in all, it was a big success and we received so many nice things for Alaethia :). We have every single thing we need for her arrival and I just feel so overwhelmed with gratefulness for our family and friends :).

John and I went to Target on Monday evening after I’d picked the boys up from school. Mom stayed with them and John and I braved the slippery roads to find, most importantly, the Graco Mikayla stroller and carset Mario and I’d wanted since I first found out I was pregnant. The Target we went to didn’t “carry it” anymore, and two of the other Targets I called didn’t either. I couldn’t believe my luck. I shopped around and got a yellow crib sheet that was on clearance, some cute, girly headbands for Alaethia, a Boppy slipcover (also on clearance), a bottle/ baby food jar warmer and Newborn diapers. I finally decided to call the other Target and I couldn’t get through. When I finally did get through I spoke to a nice guy named Eddie, who told me they didn’t carry the Mikayla anymore, but they did have one extremely similar to it called the Alano. I wanted to take Eddie out to dinner. He put it on hold for me and we hurried over there.

Tuesday
It was super cold on Tuesday (but it didn’t sleet like they said it would) and the buttholes Mario works with all took the spaces up inside the installation bays (garages) so my poor husband was left outside in the cold, literally. He called around noon and asked me to take him a pair of his insulated pants so I obliged. Then Mom, Jaylen and I made a quick run to Target.

That night, Mario and I put the cribset together and after a quiet moment of tying the crib bumper all around the slats he tells me, “It’s going to be hard.”

Thinking he’s talking about being parents to three I tell him, “We’ll be fine. I know we will.”

He says, “No, it’s going to be hard being in love with two beautiful women.”

You can imagine how big I’m smiling and tell him, “Aww, that’s so sweet, Babe!”

And Mario, being Mario, ruins it all and says, “Oh, and Alaethia, too.”

Dork.

I think that was also the night that he dedicated “She’s Everything” by Brad Paisley to me. A combination of that, the songs he dedicated to our kids and my hormones made me bawl my eyes out. I love this man *sigh*.

My stomach was bothering me a lot that night and was cursing myself for not doing her laundry that day or packing my bag for that matter!

Wednesday
I woke up and quickly did a load of Alaethia’s laundry. After dropping the kids off at school, I came home, made Mario breakfast, we picked up his car (John takes it to work and then we pick it up and Mario goes to work) and then I went to my 38 week appointment. Well, Dr. C. has me down as 37 weeks in his notes, but I’m 38 weeks, darnit. Anyway, my appointment was kind of late, so it took forever for them to call me in. I was worried I wouldn’t pick up Jaylen on time. When they did call me in, they freaked out that my blood pressure was high the first time they took it. They took it again and I was fine. I weighed 134.8 this time, which means I lost about a pound. Weird. My sugar was also all over the place; there were 500 somethings (I don’t even know what the name is!) of glucose in my urine, but when they checked my finger it was fine, at 91. Also weird.

Dr. C. did a sonogram and I took video. She’s got such a big head in the sonogram–I wonder if it’ll be the same when she *gulp* comes out?!

She’s very low and upon doing the pelvic exam (ew) he said I was still at 2 centimeters. He said I could go into labor anytime now since I’m 38 weeks, but if I don’t go into labor by next Wednesday, he might consider inducing labor. I’m so anxious to find out if I’ll go into labor on my own or if I’m going to be induced like the other two times. At least we have everything we need now!

I spent the whole day after that packing my bag, doing Alaethia’s laundry, cleaning up, organizing her cart, and made dinner while boiling her bottles and pacifiers. Later, when Mario got home, he put her carseat and stroller together.

I’m so ready! C’MON, ALAETHIA!

I’ve also been messing around with WordPress (and so far, I think everything’s working correctly *knocks on wood*) and downloaded a few plugins like Post Views, Recent Posts, Subscribe to Comments and E-mail Subscription, so you can get notified when I post a new entry if you’d like (the last 3 mentioned are in the side bar). I wanted to get a new theme going, so the stuff in the sidebar can be more organized, but that’s probably going to have to wait. That, and I still, after all these months, have layout block. Sad, isn’t it?

Well, I should get going. I’m about an hour late on starting dinner so I should get to that. Damn me for not buying microwaveable foods, like Hot Pockets. That would SO come in handy right now!

Before I start complaining about my weekend 😛 I’d like to thank everyone for the well wishes :). I’m finally feeling much, much better. I can breathe through both nostrils!

I’m hating Roadrunner right now. For the past 3 days we’re connected for about 10 minutes (sometimes only 5) and then it’s out for about 20-30 minutes. Argh! A technician’s supposed to stop by sometime today but of course you never know when they’ll actually get here. With my luck, it’ll be while I’m out picking up the boys. Grr.

The last time I updated we were about to leave to visit Gramma and run all these errands. (Didn’t get the chance to vent about that evening when I wanted to since RR was off and on all darn night.) We visited Gramma for a good, solid hour. It was nice sitting there with her, chatting. The boys were incredibly well-behaved; they even shared her breakfast table and drew pictures while she watched.

We took her Christmas decorations down and put them away. Mom was looking through her clothes, putting stuff back on hangers when she notices this maroon velour hoodie sweatshirt that we hadn’t seen before. She asks if Aunt Nora gave it to her and Gramma says, “No. Yajaira gave me that one.” I tell her, “No Gramma, we gave you a solid red one.” I pull out the red sweatshirt we’d given her for Christmas and she says, “Oh…well, I guess just put the other one there.” Mom tries it on her and it’s a size too small. All the years I’ve known Gramma, she’s been a size Medium. She’s put on some weight the past few months since she’s been at the nursing home and she’s now a size Large. It thrills me to say this since she was so thin and fraile back in 2004 when she first moved to the nursing home. She’s our little linebacker now :).

We left Gramma’s and went to Walmart, where I got a few things we needed and we walked away with yet another Beta fish. Eenan was jealous that Mom had gotten one for Jaylen, so he asked her for one and of course the woman said she’d get him one. He got a red one and I got them some new glass bowls and pebbles. The cool thing is they both fit on the little “hutch” on their desk so they hopefully won’t knock them over. They’ve been doing pretty good so far with feeding them once in the morning and once at night :).

Mario called while I was at Walmart and asked if I could drop some money off to him at work. I had the darn Senta and Mario failed to tell me that it’s really hard to turn the wheel to the right. Something having to do with the transmission. When I’m trying to turn to the right to get on the frontage road, I get stuck there! I can’t turn the wheel, so there I am, sticking out several feet into the frontage road while crazy Shary Road traffic is turning in. I step on the gas as soon as I get a chance before someone slams into me. Stupid car. If it’s one thing that gets me into a bad mood is being seconds from getting killed because of that damn car.

I get to Mario’s work and lo and behold, he’s out to lunch. I call him, frustrated, and he tells me to leave the money with one of his friends. Fine. I look at the clock and it’s 1pm. I’m starving and so are the kids and we still need to go to Aunt Nora’s. We stop by Taco Bell and get some tacos, nachos and drinks and I call Aunt Nora when we get on the road again.

She’d told me they usually go out in the evening, so we figured we’d go during the day. Turns out she was leaving the house at that exact moment and said she’d call me when she was back.

I’m fuming once again and am even more annoyed that I spent $10 (as little as that is) on Faux Mexican Food for nothing. Had I known she wasn’t going to be there we could have just come straight home and had lunch here.

I start hacking up a lung so I ask mom to pass me my drink. I feel something cold on my belly, but I assume it’s the cold cup so I keep drinking. When I start feeling really cold I stop drinking and look down; there’s a puddle of Raspberry Iced Tea on my boobs and belly. GREAT. We checked the cup and the lid’s fully on and there aren’t any cracks, yet I somehow managed to spill about a cup of it all over myself. Stupid thing.

We got home and ate and I tried my hardest to calm down and be in a good mood. Aunt Nora didn’t end up calling and there was no way I’d drive at night if she had, so we chilled out here at home and I made Chicken Alfredo Pasta for dinner. Eenan ate and then went over to Mary’s to sleep over and Mario, Jaylen and I stayed up watching Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets LOL. It was supposed to be night 1 of getting the kids used to falling asleep early but that didn’t happen. Not for Jaylen anyway. He likes to cuddle with us when we’re watching TV :).

We woke up considerably early on Sunday morning, again because of all the noise outside our bedroom. We got up, took showers and ate breakfast (barbacoa tacos) then we headed to Home Depot (with Jaylen only, Eenan was in town with my in-laws) and bought some materials so Mario would finish up the shelves in the bathroom, to get rid of the rackety, flimsy over-the-toilet shelf we currently have our towels stored in. (Of course, Mario never actually got around to building the shelves. Grr.)

We bar-b-q’d later on during the day and learned all about some family drama that’s still going on. I don’t want to air out any dirty laundry, but Jesus, people just need to grow the eff up! I can only see absolute disaster happening (more than it has already) if people don’t learn how to control their tempers =\.

I shall continue the rest of my entry about yesterday (Monday) when Roadrunner stops pissing me off. I wanted to take a nap, but I’m waiting for that darn technician. Ah! Speaking of the devil, they just called to confirm the appointment. Thank GOD.

We didn’t do much on Halloween night. It was actually kind of, dare I say it, boring?

I made the worm cups, which sadly were only enough for the kids since I didn’t buy enough chocolate pudding. Mary made Mummys, which are weeners surrounded by Pilsbury croissants. Mario said he’d try his best to get out of work early, but of course that didn’t work out so we didn’t end up going trick-or-treating. Every Halloween, when we’ve taken the kids trick-or-treating, Mario’s the one who drives and tells us which houses to avoid. I don’t know who the heck to trust in these neighborhoods, so I didn’t even try it. The kids didn’t mind though–Elda invited them to go trick-or-treating at her Grandma’s and other places, but they didn’t want to go. Instead we (Mom, Mary, Noelia, the boys and I) passed out candy to the kids of the neighborhood. Eenan was on a sugar high so he was screaming, “We have candy for sale, People!” and we kept correcting him that it wasn’t for sale and he was scaring the people away by screaming but he didn’t care. Jaylen saw a classmate and later on during the night Jason and Mireya brought Brianna over, who was a little Geisha and looked SO cute and like the real thing!

There weren’t any more trick-or-treaters after 8:30, so I brought the kids in and bathed them and put them to bed (which was really hard considering how much candy they’d had).

I can’t remember much from Wednesday and Thursday (damn this pregnancy amnesia). I think all I did on Wednesday (or was it Thursday?) was go to H-E-B to pick up the Whipped Cream I was missing for the pumpkin pie I was craving. Since I had Jaylen with me, he of course just *had* to ask for something so I got ice cream (chocolate chip cookie dough) and ice cream cups. He apparently forgot about them because he hasn’t asked for any till this day.

All I did on Thursday was accompany John and his death mobile car (with Jaylen in tow) to the Lube place to get some things done to his car. Of course it overheated on the way over there and that’s because we didn’t go far at all. Total of the three things John got done to his car? $59–and he still needs to get his radiator flushed which is another $65. I was so afraid we wouldn’t make it home on time to pick up Eenan, but thankfully we did.

I was so relieved when Thursday night came around because that means that Mario’s off on Friday and I’ll only have to cook enough food for dinner for only that night; I usually have to cook a meal plus some for Mario’s lunch the next day for work. It also means one more day for the kids to have school before the weekend comes along.

I made nachos that night (not regular nachos, these have beans, cheese, veggies, and ground beef) and had the kids fed by 7:30 (we usually eat at 8pm). I get a call around 8:30 from Mario: he’s done at work but is going to Jorge’s. NICE. I hate it when I make the effort to cook (which is like, every night) and he calls and tells me he’ll be home late. At least give me a damn courtesy call letting me know that I shouldn’t slave over the damn stove and the kids and I should have sandwiches or something.

I did everything that needed to be done that night, took a shower and was in bed trying to sleep by 11pm. I was exhausted but no matter how much my eyes wanted to shut and go to sleep, Alaethia was kicking and thrashing around in there like crazy so I could not sleep! I was up till 1:30, just laying in bed, wide-eyed hoping she’d get tired soon but she was just too active. I called Mario at 1:40 and told him to get home because he’d be dropping the kids off the next day since I hadn’t been able to sleep. I assume it would be okay since he’s so darn used to sleeping late and waking up early for work. He got home at 1:53, and I didn’t end up finally falling asleep till 3:30am.

The alarm went off at 6:30am the next morning. What does Mario do? Turns off the alarm and goes back to bed. I’m pissed of course because I’m so darn sleepy but get up and get the kids ready and drop them off. I was so mad at him, but the kids were more pleasant that morning than they had been all week so I stayed calm. I came back from dropping the kids off and took a long, much needed nap.

Mario and I both woke up at 11:15 and went to pick Jaylen up. Mrs. T. said she owed him a special present since he helped her with a bunch of posters. I don’t know what it was exactly that he did, I think it had something to do with coloring, but he was beaming with proudness. I’m so glad he’s comfortable with school now and actually enjoys himself :).

We picked up some Burger King for lunch (because it finally opened!) and came home. We chilled out, Mario and I had an argument, we cleaned out the turtle tank and then it was time to pick Eenan up. When I got back from picking him up, we went to Home Depot to get a new spray hose for the kitchen sink. The old one had totally died and stayed on making the water pressure an annoying drip. Mario installed the new one when we got home and it worked perfectly again.

Eenan slept over at Mary’s and Jaylen fell asleep early. The kids had eaten dinner early (Star’s burgers and an ice cream cone they had coupons for for having perfect attendance) and we ate some turkey pot pies. LOVE those things. We watched the most recent episode of Heroes and then put our three-shelf bookcase together for our bedroom. We’re getting a little more organized in there which is a huge relief. I still need to buy some baskets to organize the closet shelves better and some kind of vertical rack for my pj’s and t-shirts so I can get rid of the extra massive chest of drawers we have. We just aquired a brand-new bassinet from Yadira and a playpen from Big Mario’s friend (which is great since I lent Ricci the boys’ playpen back when we were still in speaking terms and never got it back) so we need all the space we can get. We’re doing pretty good right now. I still need to get the rocking chair back in there–eek!

We woke up early and I saw Mario off to work, then got the kids and myself ready so we could accompany Mary and Mom to the new Premium Outlets in Mercedes. It took forever to get there, a while to find them, and a bitch to find parking but it was worth it. The stores we got to see were great and we got great deals at KB Toys, where we found toys like Sonic the Hedgehog ones that the kids LOVED and had been wanting for a couple years now. I was disappointed that Old Navy wasn’t open and there won’t be a Sanrio store at all, but it was still cool.

We came back home to drop the boys and Mom off, then Mary, Yadira, Angela, Matthew and I went to Danett’s babyshower. It took so long to start, and there were ladies who were being evil about the games (Jesus, some people take shower games so seriously!) but it was alright. The food was great and we got to see Annie’s sisters, two of which are pregnant (one was the shower girl).

And now we’re home, and I should be getting ready for bed. Goodnight!