Thoughts from the last few weeks

In no particular order:

*MJ is learning Spanish. I can't believe I didn't blog this sooner (maybe I have). The kid's vocabulary is just amazing so I thought he could pick up words in other languages too. I think I know where all of my brain power is escaping. He doesn't know that many words, but picks up whatever we are working on rather quickly. Now when he tries to debate with me about getting something like a cookie. He says
"Me gusta dulces" (since we haven't taught him cookie yet) and,

"You can't say 'no' Mommy. You have to say yes. Say yes in Spanish, "Si." Can you say yes in Spanish Mommy?"

Boy, I'm in trouble.


*Joey is the slowest teething baby I have ever known! I'd say he has 5 teeth, (3 on top, 2 on bottom) but none of them are actually all the way in. Wow, this is definitely something he's gotten from Mario.


*Do you remember when MJ would "attack" people as a baby. I remember at least one Aunt Teresa incident. Well, it seems this move runs in the family. Joey is quite happy tackling people. He has a slightly different technique... I think MJ has been training him.

*MJ is into 2 more shows. My Friends Tigger and Pooh, and Bob the Builder. I don't want to sound like we watch TV all the time. We just wanted some variety in the approx. 25 minutes of TV we watch a day. And these are age-appropriate, commercial-free, and usually some how creative or problem-solving, so it's really helped MJ's imagination (and given me a break to shower or keep him from climbing on the walls when he hasn't had a nap). I was at a consignment sale and saw some Bob the Builder toys but reminded myself that MJ is able to imagine those toys out of his construction equiptment that he already has. And it is so much more fun seeing him pretend like that. We don't have a "Bob" but he pretends that this small green dinosaur is Bob who plays with the digger, bulldozer, crane...etc. He even sings the theme song while he's playing. I'll have to get a video of that.

*Both MJ and Joey are getting so good at playing with other kids. It's fun to watch MJ play imaginary games with his friends. It's interesting how when he plays with the girls there is a different tone to the game (someone always needs to be rescued). I remember MJ could get overwhelmed by large groups of people. I think lots of noise is just the norm for Joey. In fact, Joey has been awake for over an hour now without MJ, and I think he looks rather bored.

*I'll have to say this again, having 2 kids seems so much easier than one. But I wonder if this is because one of them is old enough to talk to me and dictate what Joey is doing. I think any mother gets a level of comfort with having a child in a different room. You learn to listen for happy playing noises and destructive/dangerous ones. It's nice when I hear an unusual noise and I can ask MJ what Joey is doing. MJ is pretty good at giving me the play by play. It saves me a bit of time.

*Joey and MJ are so very close to sharing a room. They still can't fall asleep together (unless they are very tired and I am close by monitoring quietness), but they have survived sleeping through each other's noises in the night.

Joey on the slide

This video was from a few weeks ago.

Mario's Birthday

This was such a super picture of all of them. I'm glad they all cooperated.

Joey LOVES Brown Bear, Brown Bear What do you Hear? That is definitely his favorite book. He will chase you around the house begging to have it read to him.

Did I meantion that Mario had 30 candles on his cake and blew them all out at once.

Here's one picture I managed to take of Mario reading his present.

Catching up Pictures

All of these pictures are from awhile ago. This was another park day for our boys - different park. This park has many different places to climb and play and have fun, but is quite spread out. This can be a little tricky when you have more than one munchkin to watch, which is when playground rules become ultra-important. Hopefully it won't take too many lessons to teach MJ to stay close to Mommy when we are at the playground.

Here are MJ and Little Pete playing. Pete did a great job exploring new playground equiptment that day.

And here are some pictures from very long ago (sometime in February). We were able to watch the Kaza kids who all spent the night (except for Catherine). We had an amazing time, and all the kids were great.

The girls did some awesome crafts (I had all this stuff from my teaching days, which Mario thought was silly that I kept...but see how much fun they are having!) Even Peter did some stuff.

Then, to return the favor, Tabitha and Babu watched our kids the following Friday. Our kids were not so easy. I felt bad for poor Tabitha who was probably exhausted and had to deal with my sad kids who missed Mommy and Daddy. Hopefully they will learn that the Kaza's house is a place where not only can they play and have fun (which they love to do) but they can also sleep there without Mommy.

Catching up - Mario's 30th Birthday

How can I possibly go so long without blogging? This is just very sad...and it's not that I've forgotten about it. I think about the diary of my life all the time... I just keep putting it on the back burner and don't seem to sit down and do it.

I'll have to go back in time a bit. Last Friday, my dearest Mario turned 30! Suddenly, I feel a little older. I have pictures, but will post them later. We had a new fish dinner (this Fresh Herb Tilapia) and it was a hit. It's been harder to please Mario's appetite lately since he eats out at fancy places all the time. We then had a Suarez birthday cake (of course). I can't help myself and must decorate the tops of cakes with some other color icing. Since Mario is not a fan of the sugary frosting from the store on top of a Suarez cake, he wisely suggested I make a white version of the Cocoa Whipped Frosting. It worked pretty well and I was able to dye it blue.

Then Mario opened his presents which consisted of some various items including Settlers Cities and Knights (an awesome Settlers expansion that was introduced to us by the Starons), a few of his favorite snacks, some photos of the boys, and the wonderful memory book that so many people helped put together. He really enjoyed it, and I enjoyed watching him read it. I tried to get pictures of him reading, but he thought that was a bit strange...so you'll have to believe me that he liked it a lot. Thank you everyone who contributed!

I had arranged for a babysitter to come close to the kids' bedtime, but we had so much fun just relaxing and hanging out that we stayed in and watched Annapolis (which was actually a pretty good movie). It was just the next in line on our queue and neither of us really knew what it was about when it started.

I have more catching up to do of course...and pictures to post. But first, I must get some kiddos to bed!

It's been awhile

It's been awhile since we've posted about our family, but it hasn't been for lack of stories.... more like too much was going on. In no particular order:

- we were robbed: we believe we left our minivan unlocked in our driveway, 2 Saturdays ago, we were heading out the door and realized a wallet and 2 cell phones were gone. Not all bad - we were up for new cell phones with our plan anyway. So, we got upgrades... just annoying and a sense of personal invasion .... who does stuff like that anyway?

- Joey is a happy walker and climber. And he definitely likes to go for dangerous or breakable things. He's a big fan of electronics. Fortunately, he hasn't broken anything yet. It's fun to watch him solve problems. He already knows how to get himself up and down stairs. But 2 weeks ago, he realized he could get a toy downstairs with him by tossing it down a few steps, crawling down, and then tossing it down a few more.

- MJ is just so fun to watch grow up as well. He made pancakes a few weekends ago (hence the picture below). He continues to be a sweet big brother. The other day when he woke up earlier than Joey and I. But coming into our room to call Mommy, he tiptoed in and rubbed my back to wake me up. I guess whenever he wakes me up, I remind him to be quiet if Joey is sleeping. It was definitely a much nicer way to wake up.

- We all got colds again. Joey began wheezing with the cold 9 days ago. He's had 3 colds in less then 2 months and had breathing trouble with all of them. So, on top of our usual nebulizer and short term Orapred treatment, he will be taking Singulair once a day as a preventative measure to keep his bronchiole tubes from closing when he gets a cold. They won't say he has asthma yet, as he could grow out of it. But I don't want any more colds that could add to the trauma in his lungs. Poor guy.

- As a result of Joey's cold, we've been at the doctor a lot. The last time we went, MJ was ready to be a grown up. He told me he was going to put Joey in his carseat and drive him to the doctor so I could stay home. I told him he wasn't 16 yet and couldn't drive. So, he told me he was 16 years old. He insisted on pushing Joey's stroller through the office. And while we were there he played doctor with all his toy doctor equiptment. When we left, he gave us all a squirt of hand sanitizer.

- Just last week I tried to upload pictures to our home computer and learned that we had some issues with that drive. Mario set up our computer in a very safe way using different drives for the operating systems and our data and our pictures. It just happens that bad luck has struck, and the hard drive with all our pictures crashed. It is beyond Mario's skill to recover, so we are going to hope that either Geek squad or the online sources we found can get them back. I usually back up our pictures relatively frequently, but I think the last back up I made was July 2007. YIKES! We had been meaning to get some sort of system for backing up our computers awhile ago. I guess this was the incentive we needed to get it done.

Thank you Suarezes

We got Joey's birthday present from the Suarezes and opened it on Sunday. He is very excited about the bear, especially once he found the ND shirt.

We just spent a lovely day at the Kaza's house. Tabitha was so hospitable as usual, and I really feel I should have done more. Here I had a pregnant woman feeding me and allowing my children to wreck her house. It just wasn't right. Sadly we don't have pictures, but the boys had so much fun with their cousins.