Category: MLV

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!

Started Monday by dropping John off at work and taking the kids to get haircuts. We totally forgot to take them on Friday and had things to do over the weekend so we didn’t have time. Most places are closed Sunday and Monday over here but thankfully Manny’s wife, Mayra’s, shop was open. She did a great job on the kids’ hair, thank goodness. Got them home and had them take showers and then I got to cleaning. I wanted to get together with Sally since it was her day off, but I knew if I didn’t start on the chores I wasn’t going to do them LOL.

The family drama that was going on over the weekend branched off into and got worse on Monday. So much so that big changes happened, such as the whole back yard got a thorough cleaning and Mario’s Chevelle is now parked in front of Mom’s apartment (the drama had nothing to do with Mario, however). It got crazy. I called Sally and we made plans to meet at 5:30. Crazy girl would not let me drive to McAllen–I feel so bad that she drives all the way over here when we get together!

I went to my appointment at 4, accompanied by John, who wanted the scoop on the drama since he had no idea what was going on. I figured once I’m done at my appointment, I’d get home and shower and blow dry/flat iron my hair so I can look decent for once. There was a big discussion going on about the drama over at Mary’s, and since I was too busy listening to the details I didn’t get a chance to get spiffy, heh.

Sally gets here around 6pm and we make plans about where to eat while on the road. We chit chat some more and then she tells me she has a surprise for me. She mentions something about “him” and I look at her, wide-eyed thinking to myself Woman, I am married!

Turns out she invited our childhood friend, Pete, to join us for dinner at Chilli’s. This was so awesome; I hadn’t seen Pete since 2001, when I ran into him at a gas station and I was a month pregnant with Jaylen, and before that, since I left McAllen in ’97.

We waited for him and got seated when he arrived. It was so nice seeing him and I kept thinking how great it was that after all these years, at the ages of 24, there we all were having dinner and great conversation. He’s the same Pete I knew back when we were little, albeit older and wiser :).

We reminisced about childhood and we laughed about how, in 3rd grade, Pete would come over to my house and he’d patiently listen to me sing Little Mermaid songs and we’d usually look for bones, because we were archaeologists don’tcha know? Who knows exactly what we were digging up, probably a chicken or possum, but darnit, we were determined to put them back together :P.

We talked about people we grew up with who are together now, what some of them are doing and those we haven’t seen. I don’t remember if I asked, or if either one of them brought it up, but we talked about Freddy S. and how I hadn’t heard anything about him. Sally couldn’t put the name to the face and I said, “Freddy, remember? He had a crush on me since like, Kinder, or something?” and Pete says, “Who didn’t have a crush on you?”

I was kind of shocked and flattered, but I’m still not sure if it was true or if he was being sarcastic LOL. If it’s true, do you know what that does for my self-esteem? Boys had crushes on me before I had boobs, so they had to like me for me and not my breasts!

Sally and Pete shared details about their recent breakups and asked me about parenting. We talked about life in general and here and there they’d mention a party that they’d attended back in high school, or the years after that. I felt a tiny pang of sadness, almost a jealousy that life had gone on without me after I left. At the time I knew everyone would move on, of course they would, but I still sort of naively wished life would be put on hold till I could somehow return to McAllen. It was a tad bit heartbreaking to hear about these parties, but I found comfort in the thought that now that we’ve gotten back in touch, we can have new parties where I’m included :). Pete said that maybe after I’m “on my feet” after I have the baby, we can get together for a bar-b-q or something with some of our old friends and so everyone can meet Mario. I can’t wait for that :).

We continued to have even more great conversation and I just had a really fantastic time catching up with my old buddies. Mario called around 8pm to let me know he was out of work. I told him we were at Chilli’s and would he like to pick me up so Sally wouldn’t have to make the long trip to our house and then back home. He said sure, he’d be there in 15 minutes.

The darn waiter took forever coming around (and may I add, he and another girl screwed up Sally’s order twice and he brought me really shitty mango tea), so we couldn’t ask for the darn check. Since Mario had already gotten there, and the waiter hadn’t, Pete offered to pay for my meal. I told him no, I just needed to remember how much it was. He said he planned on paying for both our meals but I felt so guilty. Since Mario was already there and I felt a little rushed, I agreed to him paying for my meal, but darnit, I still feel guilty LOL. How very nice of him, though. He’s always been a gentleman.

Sally walked me out and she and Mario said hello and we had a bit more chit chat before cars started lining up behind us.

I talked Mario’s ear off all the way home about what a great night I had. Since Mom had fed the kids we picked up dinner for Mario at McDonald’s. We spent some time with the kiddos and then I got them ready for bed for school the next day. I prayed for the best since the night before Jaylen was still waking up with excuses why he couldn’t sleep till around 12am. I think they were so tired from being up so early and taking no naps that they stayed asleep all night that night.

I took a shower and then Mario and I watched TV in the bedroom. We snuggled and had Alone Time :). We have to get as much Alone Time in as we can since Alaethia will be here soon!

I slept really well that night, for once. I got up to pee one time and that was it. Wish that would always happen!

I got the kids ready for school the next day, Tuesday. After being on break for almost 3 weeks, they were exceptionally well-behaved and got ready in record time. After dropping them off and making breakfast for Mario I rested. I waited for Roadrunner guy. I would have updated about Monday that morning, but the friggin’ internet kept shutting off as soon as I’d sit at the computer (no kidding!).

I got a call from the nurse that Eenan had pee accident at 10:50. I take him a change of clothes and ask him, “What happened, Dude? Why’d you have an accident?” He says, “Well, I had an itch on my Weedos and I can’t scratch in class so I had to do SOMETHING about it!” I surpress a laugh and tell him, “Eenan! You can ask to go to the bathroom, you know! You don’t have to pee in your pants!”

After walking him to class and lecturing him on how it’s not cool to pee your pants to relieve an itch I go back home. The Roadrunner guy is already waiting for me when I get here. He works on the problem (an old wire he has to replace all around the house) and Mom stays here while I go pick up Jaylen. He had a great first day back.

Someone’s at the door and yay, it’s my new keyboard for my cell phone! I have an absolute fit with it since my phone’s cradle isn’t being read by the USB for some reason. I end up having to reinstall everything, install the keyboard’s drivers and sync everything to my phone and I finally figure the keyboard out at 3. I pick up Eenan and Brandon from school, where I quickly typed up an entry and it gets erased. Lovely. I try it out again and it works! I’m wondering if it works better on a flat surface since I was having trouble with it in the truck?

After making sure Eenan starts on his homework, Mom takes over and John and I leave to JC Penny. I have no desire to actually go, but I need to find something to wear for my baby shower.

I have the hardest time finding something nice. Scratch that, I have a hard time finding something that FITS! They don’t make extra-small in the darn maternity section of JC Penny (or so, I’ve never seen any) and size small just hangs on me and looks baggy.

After trying on two black dresses and stomping out of the fitting rooms John says, “What happened? Oh, they don’t make size midget.” Grr. I admit, I laughed, it was funny. But my hand was balled up into a fist at my side. He kept joking about how I was going to attach a hanger to his tear duct when I got tired of him and smacked him with one. It was so tempting!

After about an hour of moping around and looking through all the crappy clothes, I finally find size small in the only blouse I actually liked. And it fit! I had to get a tan colored cami for it but I had matching pants at home, so yay. I hated spending $35 on those clothes, though, especially since I’ll probably only get to wear it once!

I get some cute t-shirts for the boys and muscle shirts Mario needed. I’ll be returning them though, since they’re super long and he didn’t like that =\.

We walked around the mall. I told John I probably wouldn’t be able to walk too much since my back was killing me and Alaethia’s head was making it hard to walk these days. We go to Hot Topic. They had such cute onesies with cute skulls on them and I fell in love with some cute little hotpink shoes John said he’d totally buy her. We get John’s Proactive stuff and continue to walk around. I can’t stand the pain and realize I’m an hour late in taking the antibiotic for my ear infection. John wants a Vanilla Caramel Avalanche from Gloria Jean’s so we go. I didn’t want to wait any longer to take my medication so I buy a raspberry tea. Grossest tea I’ve ever had in my life, but oh well, I needed to take the darn pill. As we’re walking back it dawns on me that I might not make it back to car–my belly feels really low and heavy and my legs feel like they’ve turned to stone. We slow down, a lot and I somehow miraculously make it to the car, which was parked on the other side of the mall. As I’m driving I feel pain whenever she moves. It seriously feels like there’s no room left in there.

I pick up and take Mario some junk food he requested from Stripes. I get down and go to the truck he’s working on since he never turned around to notice we were there. I joke around with him about losing his tools since he just dumped them there on the floor of the customers, Cesar’s, car. Cesar approaches the car as I’m lecturing him (playfully mostly) and Mario tells him, “This is why I work, man–so I don’t have to hear her nagging.” Dork. I chill out for a few more minutes while he teases a co-worker who he calls Frodo. He’s the one who bought the Prelude off of us. He’s already done stuff to it and is getting ready to paint it!

John and I joke and laugh all the way home and I’m super exhausted when we get here. I’m surprised to find a Target package on the table. It’s from Diana!! She got Alaethia some adorable receiving blankets from my Registry. You don’t know how much I appreciate this, hun!! I’m so touched I still can’t find the words to express myself correctly. Thank you so much, you’re the sweetest!

Mom was still here when I opened the package and said, “How nice! You need to send her a thank you!” She was so shocked and interested that someone I met online and lives a continent away could possibly send me a gift. She’s as touched as I am :).

Later in the evening, when the boys were in bed and Mario was going to go for a drive to have a cigarette, he went into the closet and pulled out his old No Fear sweatshirt. I loved that sweatshirt; he’d wear it when we were back in highschool. Only before, he was so buff he filled it out. It almost looked like it was too tight. He’s stopped working out since then and has reverted back to his cut, but skinny self.

He emerges from the hallway with his arms at each side–the thing is hanging off of him. I surpress a laugh and say, “It looks…alright,” when he asks me how it looks. I can’t hold my laugh in anymore when he looks in the full length mirror in the bathroom and has a sad expression on his face. I’m wheezing from laughing so much and he turns and scowls at me. I stop laughing long enough to say, “Aww, look at your little neck!!” He bursts out laughing too, turns and goes back into our bedroom. He’s wearing another sweater and stands in the hallway to ask for approval. I say, “That looks better!” and he throws the No Fear sweater at me. I say, “Hey! I’m just saying it’s more flattering to your…physique!” We both laugh hysterically, only he’s laughing at how amusing I’m finding this and I’m laughing at how hard he’s taking it. He starts poking me in my sides and says, “You’re supposed to be my wife! Till death do us part!”

I wish I’d been taking video. It was so hilarous. My little skinny husband LOL.

Ooh, I’m having a contraction. And I need to start on dinner so I’ve gotta run!

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.