Category: MLV

Eyes Wide Open–Chock Full of Randomness

First, I’d like to thank you all for the comments on my previous entry. Mario switched days off with a co-worker (per his co-worker’s request) and will have Monday off next week, so that’s when we plan to go through our closet and storage unit and find things for the family :).

Now for a much lighter entry. Mario was snappy last night, we made me get snappy. I took a shower, did laundry, and went to bed to read without saying a word to him at all. I was in bed reading for about 20 minutes when he jumps on the bed and puts his arm around my belly, chin on my shoulder and just lays there. Scared me half to death. That’s his way of saying “Sorry, let’s not argue anymore.”

I set the alarm for 12:30am, which I did not want to do, but I had to turn off the slow cooker (made ribs) and put laundry to dry. Add two more wake-up calls from the bladder; I couldn’t wake up this morning. I had every intention of crawling back into bed once John, the boys and Mario were out of the house, but I had some caffeinated coffee with Mario along with breakfast and now I’m completely awake. I’m going to regret this around 2pm. *eye twitches*

Remember what I said on my December 9th entry? That I had to go shopping and I just know one of the kids was going to act up? I was totally right. They were both good at the beginning. First stop was Gramma’s and they behaved pretty well. Next stop was Target. Something possessed Jaylen (a little demon I suspect) and he started throwing a fit as soon as we walked into the store and grabbed a cart. The carts were all wet since it’d been raining and he insisted on getting in one. After hearing a minute straight of his ear-piercing screams (and being started at my other customers) I told John to just put in in a cart, wet or not. He continued to scream over Heaven-knows-what and I started to feel really overwhelmed. John got what he went for (a hoodie sweatshirt) and he paid and I stormed to the front of the store as fast as I could. Eenan was being really good. He saw how stressed I was and just walked quietly beside me the whole time.

Jaylen, on the other hand, continued to scream all the way to the truck. Everyone got in the car and I calmly told him he was grounded, which set him off again. I lost it and yelled, “SHUT UP!!!” and started bawling my eyes out. I surprised Mom and John and the kids. Shoot, I surprised myself! Talk about hormones gone wild. I sat there, silently sobbing for a little while with my hands cupped over my eyes until I could get myself to calm down. I hate crying in front of people. And, hello? I don’t want people to know my kids can get to me that way. First thing I told mom and John was, “No one will know about this.”

And Jaylen? He didn’t even stay awake long enough to feel guilty for making his emotionally unstable mother cry. The boy fell asleep as soon as he heard my first sob.

I still had two stops to make, Kmart and Wal-Mart, but opted to go only to Kmart since the thing I needed to buy there was on sale and since it was Saturday, it wouldn’t be on sale the next day. There was no way I was going to Wal-Mart.

Mom stayed in the car with the boys. Jaylen was still sleeping and Eenan was being extremely good. I wiped my eyes one more time and John and I went into the store.

(Babe, you better NOT be reading this! Close the window right now!)

We went straight into the sporting goods department, because that’s where the knife Mario wanted was. We found it very quickly: A white and red ticket was taped to the display that said $17.99 on it, just like Mario described. We waited for a cashier and waited, and waited. Finally, after 10 minutes, I saw an employee pass by and I flagged him down. He sent the girl from that department over.

I tell her which one I want and she says. “Oh…” I feel my heart sink, shoot a look at John and ask her, “What happened?” She says, “This price is for an old Ad. It’s actually $31.99….”

She trails off and starts ripping off stickers from other items that are old and turns to me and says, “But, we have to give it to you for that price since the sticker was there.”

I felt so relieved and wanted to hug her. When we were walking to electronics, where we were going to pay, I whisper to John, “I’m so glad they’re giving it to me for that price. Otherwise, this would have been the–”

“–worst day of your life?”

“No, not the worst, but close. Top 10. No, top 5, at least.”

We browsed around a little after I paid and then we went to the truck. Jaylen was still sleeping and for a second I considered going to Wal-Mart but quickly snapped out of it after remembering just how horrible his mood is when he’s abruptly awaken.

I don’t know if it was pure coincidence, or if the dramatics with Jaylen set it off, but I started feeling really tired and breathless the next couple of days. If I did normal things, like walking around the house putting laundry away or sweeping or standing for long periods of time washing dishes, I’d get short of breath, my palpitations would start up and I’d feel light-headed. I was attentive to everything I was feeling though, and kept feeling for Alaethia’s movements, which were frequent, just in case.

Went to eat at Jesse’s on Sunday afternoon. Poor Mario had wanted to go there since his birthday and we finally had a chance. Mary went along with us. We ordered a delicious Seafood Platter and there was plenty of fish, shrimp, fried oysters (ew), stuffed crabs and frog legs (double ew) to go around. Mario specifically got that platter because he wanted to try the frog legs. He kept offering me some but I passed.

After lunch, we had two stops to make, the first of which I can’t remember for the life of me and the other to Wal-Mart. Mary offered to stay in the car with the boys since she was reading the newspaper so we were grateful for that. They’d been pretty good, but we didn’t want to risk it. I’m hoping this is just a phase Jaylen’s going through because it would really suck to have to leave them behind everytime I had errands to run :(.

As soon as we went into the store, I started feeling really sweaty and lightheaded. It was weird since I’d just eaten, so I knew it wasn’t that my sugar was low. We got everything we needed quickly and went home.

We got home and Mary took off again to buy a Christmas tree at H-E-B. Yadira, Tommy, and the kids came over to help decorate the tree. I’m usually up there, dizzy with Noelia after wrapping lights around the tree a few times, but I still felt too weak to help this year. Instead I took many pictures :).

It Only Took 10 Tries

We went to Elda’s after the tree-decorating to check out the chairs she upholstered. They looked so nice. Which reminds me, I need to upholster my hideous kitchen chairs, too. We’ve only had our table and chairs for a year (this Christmas) and the boys already destroyed the fabric. I’m going to upholster them with nice fabric covered in clear plastic. Hopefully they won’t end up stabbing the plastic, though.

Mario made burgers on the George Foreman that night, so I was plenty grateful for that. My feet wouldn’t have been able to take standing in front of the darn stove.

Mario and I had a talk on Monday or Tuesday after he got home from work. I don’t even know how it came up, I think it was something we saw on TV where a girl started crying or something and he asked, “Why are women like that? I mean, I don’t get it. How can you all just cry like that?” I laugh and say, “Hey, in my case it’s my hormones, darnit. I can’t help it at all. Trust me, I’d love it if I didn’t have to bawl all the time.” And the conversation went on from there.

We talked about the baby, our lives together, the boys, what we want in the future, and other stuff I can’t remember. I told him how I really wanted to help out with the bills and how I also wanted a house in at least a year, badly, and he told me not to rush. He said he found it strange how I kept saying I was “only spending a few months with the baby”. I felt like I had to rush. He never says anything about me not working, but I want to work. I cried a little when I told him I was going to miss a lot of her milestones when I started working, and he said, “You don’t have to miss anything, nobody told you you had to work!” Still, I’d love to work, but if I find it to hard to leave her I’m listening to Mario and staying home a little longer. The best of both worlds would be to work from home, but there aren’t very many opportunities like that where I live.

I’ll change the subject now. Thinking of all that stuff stresses me out, and she’s not even born yet!

Wow, my back hurts. My feet are feeling pretty good, but only because I constantly have them propped up when I get a chance to sit down. They’re not swollen or anything, which is weird, but they hurt so bad. Maybe it’s because I’m the heaviest I’ve ever been right now and my body’s not used to it? I wake up 3-4 times a night to pee and when I step down off the bed I get a stabbing pain in my feet. I finally stopped procrastinating and bought some soft flip-flop style slippers yesterday. My feet felt much better last night (I usually walk around barefoot, which hurts my feet even more). And speaking of night time, turning from one side to the other is the worst pain I’ve felt so far. I’ve heard a crack a few times when I’m slowly trying to turn.

The kids had a dentist appointment yesterday. I got Eenan out of school early, which I wasn’t too happy about since they have Benchmark tests and 6 Weeks tests going on. He should be alright though. Both of them did really good, although Eenan was hyper as always. Eenan got a filling re-done with minimal screaming. He just needed to hold my hand while Dr. Canales drilled. Jaylen loved his teeth cleaning and has absolutely no cavities :).

OMG, and did anyone watch the Biggest Loser yesterday?! Can you believe how thin the final four (and even some of the ones kicked off early and the ones excersizing at home) got? I would love to know what exercises they do. I need to find episodes on Youtube or something and save them so I can get inspired when I’m ready to work off this baby weight!

It occured to me that I’ve got a month and a week or so to go and I still have tons of stuff that need to be done around the house. I’ve already made a to-do list on Word and I’m praying we’ll get every single last thing crossed off that list!

My computer’s slowly dying. We’ve had it for 3 years already. I say ‘already’ because the last one we had gave out in 3 years also. It shuts down when making DVDs or when the kids are playing games on the Disney or Cartoon Network sites. I thought it was a virus or something at first, but Norton and all the other programs we have don’t alert us to anything. A while back, the computer diagnosed itself with either bad RAM, power supply, fan or harddrive. NICE. That’ll be easy to figure out *sarcasm*.

Before the computer dies, I need to back everything up (let’s see HOW I can do it since I can’t exactly burn much) and get all my old entries on WordPress. Thankfully, most of my important files are on my external harddrive. I need to go through my old pictures, which are on CDs, and add them (even though my camera from 2003–a Samsung Digimax 101–was crappy but at the time I thought it was amazing LOL) to Flickr. I also want to scan some old pics, like my baby pictures and pictures of Gramma, and add them, too.

I’ve also go to start wrapping presents. I’m the type of person that waits till Christmas Eve and stays up making cookies and wrapping presents till 1 or 2am because I’ve procrastinated all month. Not everything that’s in my closet is mine (Mary’s stashed some stuff in there, too) and I’ve got stuff at Mary’s and Mom’s:

Waiting

Oh yeah, and I have to clean up the living room and kitchen. I don’t like that part.

I Can Hear Your Teeth Chattering

It’s quite nippley out. It’s not even that drizzley outside and it feels frigid out there. I had to cave in and put on some sweatpants. I never wear sweatpants while I’m pregnant because I get hot really easily, but I was freezing this morning. And since the washer/dryer are outside and I had to get Mario’s clothes out to iron them before he got ready for work, I got cold and not even standing in front of the spaceheater helped. I’m praying I don’t get sick.

It’s been cold almost every day since the last week of November. I need to backtrack and read my entries from November-December 2004 so I can check if the weather’s the same as it was at that time, because that year it snowed. In South Texas. On Christmas Eve out of all days. That would be so awesome and magical if it happened again this year. I’d be really surprised if we don’t at least get sleet or something. It’s so COLD!

Jaylen and Eenan are doing much better. Eenan slept over at my mom-in-law’s last night and showed up a while ago wrapped only in one of Mary’s sweaters–he was naked other than his underwear. Darn kid. He started hacking while he thawed off in front of the heater. I started putting clothes on him and tell him, “Ahhh! Are you coughing again?!” He clears his throat, waits a minute to supress a cough, and says, “Nope.” Mmmhmm.

I dropped the kiddos off at school yesterday and came home, had breakfast and slid back into bed next to Mario, who makes me insanely jealous since he gets to sleep super late without interruption. It was the best 2 hour nap I’ve taken in a long time. I think it’s the cold; it just knocks you out and being wrapped in a thick, soft comforter next to a very warm husband makes it all the better.

We picked Jaylen up and John, Jaylen, Mario and I packed ourselves in the truck and went to pick up his paycheck. We had just about every bill to pay this paycheck, so we set aside all the Bill Money and deposited a bit more “just in case”. We won’t get to buy any presents this time (although I’m going to town after John gets out of work to visit Gramma and get Mario a pocketknife he wanted) but I’m just glad we paid all the bills plenty of days before we had to. I still have to go grocery shopping though. I loathe grocery shopping, especially when I have both kiddos with me. It never fails that one of them throws himself on the floor and that just so happens to be the exact moment that the whole store’s quiet and everyone turns to stare. *Hiss*.

We came back to pick Eenan and Brandon up from school. We went on a little hunt for Eenan’s jacket again, since he forgot it in his cubby and his teacher had locked the door. While I’m waiting for him I see a little boy who looks *just* like Eenan running in a sweater and jeans, hair flying everywhere and his backpack half-hanging off his back. He was searching for a janitor to open the door to his classroom. I got off the car and followed him and we walked to his classroom where his teacher just so happened to be standing with a group of ladies. THANK GOD he got ahold of her since this weekend’s proven to be really cold.

We went back to town, this time with Noelia in tow, and dropped her off at her mom’s office. Then we paid more bills and went to Target, where Mario got his gift-exchange gift for work and John got his gift-exchange present for Matthew. I forget what else we did exactly but we picked up some pizzas from Little Cesar’s (sp?). Yay! No cooking for me.

We ate at home, then I went through our DVD rack and dusted them all off. I really need to update our DVD list since I think we’re missing some and that sucks. Doesn’t help that we have them out in the open where anyone can just come “borrow” some when we’re not here (’cause everybody and their mama has a key to our apartment).

I washed the unsightly pile of dishes afterwards and after Mary got here with the cake mixes and icings I asked her to pick up for me I started making a chocolate cake. For Mario and his buddies at work. He kindly volunteered me to do so after he took some leftover Funfetti cake to work and all the guys ate it within 5 seconds. Mario didn’t even get to have a piece. Most of the guys wanted chocolate, so I made that one and I’ll make him the Funfetti one just for him here at home. I also had to get strawberry icing since John’s still holding me to my promise of making him a birthday cake that I never got to make him (I was working at the insurance place at the time). I guess I’ll do that before he gets home from work.

I hope there isn’t all kinds of traffic. I only have to go to Gramma’s nursing home, Kmart, Wal-Mart and Target and they’re all pretty close together so I don’t have to go into the hellhole that is McAllen during the holidays.

Speaking of McAllen, it’s kind of sad that the city I grew up in and was raised in is the #1 poverty-stricken suburban city in America. Wow.

According to the Weather Channel, it’s 47° now. I wish I could just go shopping in my sweatpants :(.

Early Christmas

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

New Love

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

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

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

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