I’ve been trying to upload this post for some time but kept getting an error. Anyway… Here’s a few pics we took of the kids and my parents on June 4 right before ‘Tata’ and ‘Grandpa’ left (June 5). I’m glad we got a chance to get these nice pics. They were long over due, for sure. We really miss them, especially wonderful, fun and loving Tata!

 

Tata, Grandpa, Victoria and Nico in our front yard

 

 

Ok, so this will be a short post. Just wanted to shout to the world in good ol’ OMG fashion that for the first time ever Victoria slept 7 hrs straight last night, and thanks to that so did I. I didn’t realize it until Nico woke me up at 7 am, I told him to go back to sleep a bit (which he did) and then looked at the clock and at myself in the mirror and realized the two ‘hard rocks’ I had on my chest were there because there was no middle of the night feeding. So, what to do? I woke a still heavily sleeping Victoria at 7:15 am and fed her, and she went right back to sleep for a half hour, then fed again. Nice… though I fear that if I go for more than 4-5 hrs without getting the milk out my supply will start to diminish and I may have to supplement like I had to with Nico. He would sleep 8 hrs straight at night, and I wouldn’t pump either, so my supply ran lower than his demand.

 

Well, at least for one night it’s refreshing to have slept 7 hrs straight… cheers!

Nico is talking up a storm in Spanish, and says some words and songs in English. He says so many things, and even long structured sentences. It blows our mind away. He can count 1 to 10 and sing Happy Birthday in both languages, and the ABC song in English. He can also say a short guardian angel prayer in Spanish. For the most part, I am the only one who can understand most of what he says, at least 3/4 of it. He still mispronounces many words, and a lot of understanding is done by association and context at any given time.

Unfortunately, he’s recently learned a bad word in Spanish as well, pronouncing it “tonio”. Sound it out and you’ll figure out what it is by substituting the t for a c. The worst part (as funny as it is, though seriously we’re trying to figure out how to erase it from his vocab) is that he knows when and how to use it, and does it very appropriately. Incredible what kids can pick up in a jiffy. Oof! We need to watch our language for good now. No excuses. For now, we’re ignoring him when he says it to not make a big deal out of it, fearing he may try to use it even more.

Ok, so blogging is actually not as easy as I thought. Finding the time to sit and write blog entries is nearly impossible these days. :( With a 2 yr old and a newborn, who has time for anything? I’m lucky I’ve still been able to eat (though at strange times of the day, and with probably too much time btwn each meal), and shower (most days).  OK, so maybe I shouldn’t admit that yesterday I was forced to skip it because Julio was out of town on a biz trip and things were too crazy all day with both kids. It was 1 am when I finally had a chance to actually shower, but at that point I decided sleep was wayyy more important than soap and water. Screw my oily hair. I vowed to shower this am, and miraculously I was able to. Of course, it was a 7 min shower, all while Victoria dozed off after her 3rd feeding and Nico watched Elmo videos on youtube. I crossed my fingers he wouldn’t move from there.

My back hurts, probably from my long gone ab muscles which never looked like they were there anyway but whatever, and extra wobbly post preg belly which no longer support my back. I’m sure my bad sitting and breastfeeding positions don’t help either, and don’t even get me started on all the bending over I have to do daily to change diapers AND pick up toys and crap. SIGH. I’m taking Tylenol, but it still hasn’t kicked in.

Then there’s my stupid TMJ, which is again flaring up. It could be worst, but so far I have daily headaches and some clicking in my jaw. I hope it doesn’t get worst, otherwise, I’m screwed for sure. I won’t be able to take the Valium (as a substitute for muscle relaxant) and Prednisone (anti-inflamatory w/ steroids) needed to cure the pain of a severe episode of TMJ. Oh boy, so much for breastfeeding. So many limitations. I could use some Valium right now, even if it wasn’t for the TMJ. LOL

I have no clothes. Nada. It’s so depressing. I can’t wear maternity clothes because they’re too big, and my sz 6/8 normal clothes are WAY too small. And I mean WAY. I am at size 12 thanks to the belly flubber (blah! talk about a self esteem downer), and I have one pair of jeans, 2 shorts, and 6 shirts I’ve worn a gazillion times. What’s left of my ‘cool self’ can’t deal with the lack of options and unfashionable-ness. :/ I can barely deal with this. I can’t lose weight fast enough. Of course, all the sweets and carbs I’ve been eating are not helping much either. And my scale doesn’t work, batteries ran out. Who knows, I could actually be gaining… sigh sigh sigh… oh screw it, let me run to the fridge and eat that Tiramisu Mom left, hehe.

Still not sleeping through the night. Will I ever, again? Victoria is so different from Nico. She feeds once or twice at night and is still grunting and complaining about gas and pains, and pooping wayyyy too much, keeping me up for quite a while at night. At least Nico has somewhat gone back to a normal sleep schedule, sleeping through the night and when he wakes up in the morning we can easily get him to sleep more, especially if we bring him into our bed. Thank God.

Victoria is sleeping much less through the day but has not established a schedule per say. She feeds on demand and I’m enslaved to her demands, yes Ma’am. I think I’d rather be deaf at many points throughout the day, especially when both kids are crying their heads off and making their individual demands, whatever they may by. God help me. Patience, please… I need to learn patience, patience, more patience, and build it up. Well, enough complaining, I’ve acted deaf for this while amongst the two crying bosses here. Gotta run. 

Ever since his 2nd Birthday, Nico’s been sleeping in his big boy room, on a twin size mattress we’ve placed on the ground until we get proper rails for the full size bed in his room and he’s a bit bigger.  Coincidently his Tata (my Mom) came to visit us for a couple mths at the same time, and since then Nico’s sleeping schedule has been completely wacked up.

Ever since he was 2 wks old Nico’s slept through the entire night, and right up to his 2nd birthday he was going to sleep btwn 9 – 10 pm and waking up btwn 8 – 9 am, without any night disruptions. You could say we were blessed and lucky. Then came birthday #2. Since then, he’s been waking up at 6 am crying, and we manage to get him to fall back asleep most night at least for another hour, but not without laying in bed with him and quietly slipping out once he’s finally crashed again. Of course it always comes at the exact time when I’m breastfeeding Victoria, and though he cries out for Mommy, 98% of the time it’s Daddy or Tata who run to the rescue. Then once he gets up after 7 am, it’s the same drill, and most times Mommy is still not available. I’ve been getting little sleep at night since Victoria’s been  colicky, and I’ve been lucky and blessed Mom and Julio have been holding up the fort and letting me catch an hour or two of sleep in the morning.

The situation’s gotten worst in recent days. In addition to what has already been going on, he’s now been getting up crying (like he’s freaked out) btwn 4 – 5 am. Lucky us, huh. It’s been crazy. But then came last night… woke up crying for Mommy at 5:30 am, I ran to his room and it was pitch black and I found him only by follwing his cry UNDER the full size bed. How did he get down there, beats me. I had to pull him out and he would not let go of me, clearly he was freaked out. Tucked him back into bed but he wouldn’t go back to sleep or let me leave without me cuddling with him. I slipped out when he fell back asleep, and he didn’t wake up again until 7 am. At that time, he called for me again and I went and told him it was too early, everyone was sleeping and Mommy needed to sleep more, told him to go back to bed and stay quiet. I didn’t think it would last more than 5 min, but I went back to bed nevertheless waiting for him to call for me again. To our surprise he didn’t make any noise or call for me again until 8:50 am. Halleluya! Hope is the last thing one loses… let’s hope his sleeping habits resume to being more normal and less erratic. For the sake of all of us. Especially mine. 

We welcomed our daughter Victoria Sofia on April 26th, 2010. She was born at 3:39 am, after only one push (and not even a very hard one).

I started real labor contractions around 9 pm Sunday April 25, progressed to back to back contractions 4-5 min apart in less than an hour, and we were at St. Elizabeth’s East hospital sometime between 11:20 pm and midnight. By the time I was admitted and taken to my private bedroom my contractions felt horrendous, so painful I cried through several of them. It was nothing like with my first, I can’t begin to describe the pain. Where the heck was that epidural?? It couldn’t come fast enough!

So there I was, 4 cm dilated, 75 % effaced, in real LABOR… pain pain pain! Talk about bad timing when they asked me, yeah the woman in labor and in tons of pain, to fill out stupid health forms about my medical history etc. WTF?!! Are you kidding me!?? I pretty bluntly told the nurses that was so stupid to be asking that kind of info at that particular time. I had to fill the damn things out between contractions, umm, giving me about 1 min between each. How come they didn’t send a pkg of forms to me weeks ago when I was happily pregnant and in no pain. Psstt! I swear I could have killed someone at that time.

Anyway, I progressed so quickly they had to bump me up from 5th in line to 1st for the epidural. Thank God they did, otherwise I would not have been able to have an epidural at all or one with absolutely no time to take effect. Unfortunately, even that didn’t prove to be fast enough because I got the epidural, felt some relief but progressed SO quickly that it couldn’t keep up with my labor. I felt PAIN all the way until the end! It was horrible, but I kept telling myself it could be a lot worst if I had no epidural at all. I went from 4 cm at midnight to a full 10 cm by around 3:20 am. I pushed a bit to test my ‘pushing skills’, and the nurse had to stop me before the baby came out. lol The Dr. was called in immediately. After a couple mins of prepping, and 2 extra doses of epidural meds I finally felt some numbing relief. After one single push, Victoria Sofia was born at 3:39 am. My first impression was “she’s tiny!…OMG look at that full head of dark hair!”  She weighed 6 lbs 7 oz and was 19.25” long. Nico was 7 lbs 5 oz at birth. She cried and cried, amazing such a little thing could have such strong lungs and vocal cords, haha. She had 10 fingers and 10 toes. Yes, I counted them. She was beautiful and perfect! :) It was an almost surreal moment. I have a daughter. I have 2 beautiful & healthy kids, a beautiful family. How blessed we are! God is great!

Here’s a few pics of our new princess (while still at the hospital):

No, it was not Victoria that was born (yet… though I am 37 weeks now). Our new Bosch dishwasher FINALLY arrived!! It has been installed and as I’m writing this it’s running through it’s first wash cycle. I can barely hear it. And it’s soooo beautiful! :D

 

It’s been exactly 15 days since I bought it. Long overdue! It was supposed to be delivered and installed on Tuesday March 30, but as luck would have it the order fell through the cracks and after I was on top of things for days, finally got things done the right way, emergency order and all. It pays to be such a pain in the butt and stay on top of things (most of the times…though it’s never worked with Sears – where we got our fridge, that’s a whole other story…I hate Sears!). After all the inconveniences (there were several, sigh), Lowes came through and offered me a 10% discount on the already $100 discounted price I had originally paid for the dishwasher. That, plus they told me that now the order also qualified for a free installation/haul away rebate (savings of $109). So all in all, we saved $280 on a pretty darn nice dishwasher. I’ll take this 15 day delay with all it’s inconveniences anytime for that kind of savings! Well, maybe not anytime, but I’m good this time. ;) And yes, I’m still remaining a loyal Lowes junky, even with this little incident (which is a first for me).

 

I am so thrilled to have a working dishwasher, and even more such a fine looking one. No more hand washing (such a waste of time!), no more disposables, no more use and reuse 1 glass/day kinda thing, lol… Did I mention how quiet it is??!! It’s FABULOUS in every sense of the word!  Below is a pic of our beauty (never mind the bright light down the middle caused by the flash).

It’s been a wonderful laid back Easter weekend for us. The weather has been nice overall, well in the 70s and sunny (though it rained quite a bit yesterday) and we’ve enjoyed some wonderful family time. 

 

Today we went to mass in the morning, and I can’t help but smile about how beautiful it was. The choir of old folks is just heavenly (@ 11:30 am mass), and I just can’t imagine attending any other mass that didn’t include their angelic singing. It makes for such a wonderful and heartfelt spiritual experience, it can be very moving and is truly inspirational. Simply divine.

 

After mass we ended up eating at Wendy’s and though it may not sound like the ideal place for an Easter lunch, the food was good and most importantly we spent a wonderful time together. I should mention how excellent dessert was… a large chocolate frosty which the three of us shared --ok, 3.5 counting Victoria who’s still in my belly. ;) After that we came back home and decided to set up the tripod and take a family pic. It was quite the ordeal. We were cutting into Nico’s naptime and he was just not cooperating.

 

After all the kicking and crying and begging to be let down to run on the grass, we finally got a semi decent shot. It’s not perfect, but I guess perfection is something you need to learn to let go of once you have kids. We’re lucky we have any picture at all, with how things were going. So here’s the top two pics…

 

 

We gave up after several tries… and while Nico napped we took some pics of this house’s lovebirds. That would be my husband and I, lol. ;)  Here’s a couple of nice shots… yayyy, we finally have some pics of just the two of us!