A Mother Heart

I love these guys. So much.

I got stranded in Wyoming last night,
and I didn’t see these precious faces until this evening.
I just couldn’t get enough of them!
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There’s something really special about being a mother. Something that makes me love it.

You know what else I love?

Watching complete strangers being awesome parents.

Today at Kohls’ I walked by a young couple with a little one or two year old boy in the mother’s arms crying. The father got close to the little boy’s face, and in the sweetest voice said, “I know that’s really fun to play like that, but you can’t ___.”
(I think the blank was something about being in a crowded store and running away from mom and dad being dangerous – I was mostly out of earshot by the time he got to that part)

I just loved that the dad was so in tune with his kid – the kid did think that running around the busy store was fun! But he also needed to understand how dangerous it can be not to obey mom and dad, and not to stay near them. Overhearing that exchange in the store lit up my face. Seriously. I smiled for almost a minute afterwards. I see too many moms and dads dragging their kids around public places, snipping at them, saying mean things to their kids, or even spanking them in the middle of the store (sometimes I am guilty of this behavior – not so much the spanking part, but definitely being impatient with my kids in public places). The way this father spoke to his son was so sweet, so loving, so tender. I’m sure that little boy had no doubt in his mind that his daddy loves him and that all his daddy wanted was to keep his little boy safe.

What a great dad.

I’m married to a guy like that.

He’s a great dad.

Great dads make great kids.

That’s why my kids are fabulous.

Snakes and Snails

We have a little family of garden snakes that live in the flowerbed by our front door. This fall when we were cleaning up for the winter, I caught one to show to the kids. They weren’t scared at all!

I love that we get to experience this beautiful world Heavenly Father created for us. There is so much variety – it never gets boring! And there is so much to see and experience. I hope my kids get to experience more than I did – and I got to experience a lot.

(PS – see Doc’s nose there at the bottom of the picture?
He was scared to death of the snake. Ha ha)

Lame Excuses for Lame Blogging

Are you ready for a bunch of lame excuses for why I haven’t been blogging here lately? Okay, here goes.

1.) I have been spending a lot of time on my other blogs, particularly My Soul Delighteth – because I love reading the scriptures, mostly. But partly because I am lazy, and also because it is hard to write about my boring, sometimes really hard life, especially when I could just write about how much I love the gospel instead.

2.) Life has been hard. It has been up and down, like most people’s live are, but our downs are really really really far down. And I don’t like that. I like normal ups and downs – not normal ups and depressingly horrible downs. Thankfully we can fix the horrible downs, and we’re working on it.

3.) These little stinkers take up a lot of time – and I wouldn’t have it any other way. I love them, I love being with them, and I love teaching them about our Savior and this beautiful world.

 

 

 

4.) We’ve been doing a little bit of vacationing this summer (I will post about these trips, I promise… it might just be in a few months. Ha ha, no just kidding. I will be caught up by my birthday – promise). We drove to the top of a 14,000 ft tall mountain in Denver. Mt. Evans. It was beautiful and I gained a new appreciation for the beauty that is in this world. And for my son’s … fearlessness. Seriously. It was like the kid wanted to jump off the side of the mountain. As if that would actually be fun. Something about the thin air and all the rocks must have set him off. (PS We did a bunch of other stuff in Denver, too – stay tuned for a cool post complete with pictures!)

5.) Then there was a camping trip with our old friends from Monterey – Gabe and Noah – and Russ’ little brother, Jordan. The kids had so much fun. I’m amazed none of them got eaten by bears. Just kidding. But they kept running off into the woods (of course). It was a ward campout with our neighborhood ward and it was really nice to get to meet a lot of them, especially since we recently made the decision to start attending our neighborhood ward. (more about that later, too…)

6.) And then we spent a week in Puerto Rico. It was like a second honeymoon. And fabulous.

Maybe they aren’t so lame excuses. We did have a lot of fun this summer! I can’t believe it’s already September!

Well, between now and the end of September I hope to get caught up on all the blogging. It’s going to be crazy, but I think I can do it!

In the meantime, I hope you enjoyed my readers’ digest version of the summer.

You can keep tabs on me over at My Soul Delighteth and Math Savers. And hopefully I’ll be catching up over at Child’s Play, too.

Spaghetti and Music in the Mountains

Earlier in the summer when my mom was in town for a few weeks, my sister, my mom and I had a girls’ day out in Park City. We went shopping at the Tanger outlet mall there, and then in the evening went to see Time for Three (a two violins/double bass trio) perform the Bach Double Concerto (well, the two violinists performed the double concerto – I’m not sure if the bassist played in the chamber orchestra or if he just sat back stage for that part of the concert). The second half of the concert was the three of them playing all sorts of good stuff, and interacting with the audience. They were amazing. If you ever have a chance to see them live, do it. Think Jon Schimdt and Steven Sharp Nelson, but three of them, and with violins and bass instead of piano and cello.

Anyway, I didn’t take any pictures of us at the concert, but it was fabulous, and I thought I would share this music video with you. Hope you like it.

Back to the story. So my mom, my sister and I spent that whole day shopping. I found this awesome shirt that I really wanted at the Dress Barn, but they didn’t have it in my size. Let me tell you how awesome Dress Barn is. They called up the nearest store that had it in my size (in North Carolina – what!?) and after I gave them a 25% “down payment” they shipped it to the Park City store for freeeee! All I did was pay them 25% when they shipped, and the other 75% when I picked it up. Talk about customer service!

Well, since I had to go back to Park City to pick up the shirt, we decided to take a little bit of a family trip. We didn’t do much other than go to the Dress Barn and then walk up and down historic main street, but it was fun anyway.

We ate at Main Street Pizza & Noodle company. It was delicious and I hope we get to go again some day. We ate right out on the sidewalk. They had crayons and coloring for the kids, and even though they made their macaroni and cheese out of those multi-colored noodles (you know, the green and orange spiral ones you use for pasta salad?) we still had a good time (strange colored noodles = no children eating food, just sayin). We’re also pleased to inform you that Joseline was not harmed by the big bear, and even thought it might be kind of cuddly.

And then the kids fell asleep on the way home. Can’t beat that.

Jiggety Jig

To market, to market, to buy a fat pig
Home again, home again, jiggety jig.
To market, to market, to buy a fat hog
Home again, home again, jiggety jog.

(this is the final post in a four post series about our trip to Denver)

  

All good vacations must come to an end, but this trip’s end was a little drawn out (in a good way). We had to take Megann to the airport in the afternoon, but we had to check out of the hotel in the morning, so we found a park near the hotel with a water fountain and all sorts of fun for the kids. Since it was nice and warm outside, the kids had a blast in the water. Some of the other kids at the park had water guns, so I had to find a water bottle for Vincente to use for a “water gun” – there were some other kids doing the same thing, so he wasn’t totally weird, I promise.

There was a field on the other side of the hotel parking lot that was inhabited by many little prairie dogs. Every time we left the hotel we saw the little guys standing watch at their holes, and sometimes scurrying around looking for food. On our way out after checking out of the hotel, we stopped to take some pictures and I got this cool video of one of them chirping at me like I was going to steal their babies!

We were happy to be home, even if we didn’t get there until about two in the morning. The kids were relatively good on the drive home, but they didn’t really enjoy having to fall asleep in their car seats. But we all survived, and we loved spending time with Megann and her husband and seeing a new place.

I love to travel. I love to see new places, and I’m grateful for the opportunities I have had. And grateful that I got to share them with my kiddos!

Conversations with a 4 year old

Russ was laying with Vincente tonight at bedtime. Here’s how the conversation went:

Vincente: “Papai, you’re superly awesome.”
Papai: “You’re superly awesome, too.”
…
Papai: “Papai’s going to the other side of the world for a little bit.”
Vincente: “There’s lots of water over there so you can’t go over there.”
Papai: “Papai’s going to fly over the water in an airplane to some more land.”
Vincente: “Oh.”
(Joseline makes a ruckus)
Vincente: “Joseline’s really silly, huh?”
Papai: “Yeah, she’s like Mamãe.”
Vincente: “Yeah, Mamãe’s silly, but a little smart, too.”
Papai: “Like you.”
Vincente: “No. I’m a lot smart. I’m a lot of smart than you. I’m superly smart.”
Papai: “You are superly smart.” (trying to suppress the laughter)

Earlier Vincente and Joseline had been coloring in a Portuguese preschool workbook. Russ mentioned that Vincente doing the workbook pages must have boosted his confidence a little.

Ha. Just a little.

Lightbulbs

I had an epiphany the other day. Let me catch you up on a few things, first.

Things have been crazy here. Sometimes good crazy, sometimes bad crazy. I feel like I’m always writing that on here – my life is crazy. Well, it is.

And I have been struggling a lot with feeling like I am doing a much as possible in the day. Most days I get to bedtime and I wonder where on earth the day went, and how on earth I didn’t get the laundry done, the dishes washed, and the bathrooms spotless. Because I stay home all day, and don’t have any obligations outside of my family, I feel like I should be able to be super mom at home – super spotless house, great meals cooked, clean laundry folded and put away, not to mention spending hours playing with my children, reading to them, and going places with them.

Well, here was my epiphany. There are not that many hours in a day, and when most of them are punctuated by unexpected messes, potty accidents, and children fighting, they seem to get used up a lot faster.

I have always tried not to have too high of expectations for a clean house and home cooked meals because two small, very high energy children (if you know my kids, you know what I mean – touch touch touch touch, fight fight fight, talk talk talk talk talk, sound effects sound effects sound effects… it never ends. Seriously) make doing all that very hard, and I don’t want to spend my children’s entire childhood cleaning the house. I’d rather play with them, and the other stuff can wait. Sure I can teach them to clean with me – but honestly, that doesn’t really get stuff any cleaner because they make a bigger mess than they fix. But like I said, I’d rather do things with them and have a little bit dirty house because “babies don’t keep.”

  Back to my epiphany (that was only part of it) – I went though in my head what my day looks like. I wake up around 5:30 or 6 (on good mornings – i.e., when Russ hasn’t kept me up all night watching TV shows or movies or talking), so that I can have a few hours (usually only one) to myself to prepare for the day – I usually spend this time reading the scriptures and writing on my scripture blog. Then the kids wake up and I feed them breakfast around 7:30 or 8. By 9am I have cleaned up breakfast, and have the kids dressed and ready for the day. Then around noon, we eat lunch, then we read together and I put the kids down for naps around 2pm. By the time Joseline wakes up (and Vincente, if he even napped) we eat dinner, and then it’s time for bed. So, If you look at things this way, the only time I have to do much of anything is in the morning, for about 3 hours. Sure I have nap time, and I do a few things, but I don’t really like to spend my kids’ down time doing things I could do when they are awake, like cleaning. I prefer to do things I can’t do when they are awake – like reading a good book, writing, or taking a quick nap, myself.

Sure, things will change as my children (and our family) grow, but right now this is how it is, and I think that if I can keep realistic expectations – that is, be okay with only having essentially 3 hours in the day to get things done, then I should be fine. In fact, the reason I’ve been doing so much better the past several days is because I have been okay with it, and I’ve been planning my days better to take advantage of those few hours. And I’m much happier.

When I am feeling down for not keeping the house spotless, my dad reminds me of this poem:

Mother, O Mother, come shake out your cloth,
Empty the dustpan, poison the moth,
Hang out the washing, make up the bed,
Sew on a button and butter the bread.

Where is the mother whose house is so shocking?
She’s up in the nursery, blissfully rocking.

Oh, I’ve grown as shiftless as Little Boy Blue,
Lullabye, rockabye, lullabye loo.
Dishes are waiting and bills are past due
Pat-a-cake, darling, and peek, peekaboo

The shopping’s not done and there’s nothing for stew
And out in the yard there’s a hullabaloo
But I’m playing Kanga and this is my Roo
Look! Aren’t his eyes the most wonderful hue?
Lullabye, rockaby lullabye loo.

The cleaning and scrubbing can wait till tomorrow
But children grow up as I’ve learned to my sorrow.
So quiet down cobwebs; Dust go to sleep!
I’m rocking my baby and babies don’t keep.

(“Song for a Fifth Child” by Ruth Hulbert Hamilton, Ladies’ Home Journal October 1985)

Good Men and a Great Country

 

I wanted to write something about Independence Day this year, but I couldn’t really think of anything eloquent, so I’m including a picture of the kids so that this post isn’t a complete waste.

I am proud to be an American, and I am proud to be an Army wife.

People say that our country doesn’t have any business fighting in countries like Afghanistan and Iraq, and other Middle Eastern countries. I do agree with those who say there are things we need to fix inside our own country first, but really, our problems, serious as they may be, are not even close to the problems people face in other countries.

Some people are losing faith in the “American Dream” but I think what we have really lost is work ethic, determination, and personal accountability. As a people, we have forgotten what is important, we have forgotten how to get what is important, and we have forgotten that the best part of having something is sharing it.

I hope this year, on this Independence Day, we can re-evaluate our “American Dream” and what we  are doing, not only to achieve our dream, but to share it with others – all around the world.

And I also hope that we will continue to fight to protect our freedoms that we enjoy in this country, particularly religious freedom.

I feel so blessed to live in this, the land of the free, and the home of the brave.

Potty Training Volume 2 Issue 3 - well, that was easy

Potty training is (almost) officially done. In basically one day. She still hasn’t pooped in the potty (she’s done it twice in her undies) but I think that is just a matter of me paying better attention, and her getting used to doing it on the potty. It’s a lot of new stuff for one stinker to learn! And she’s done SO well!

We’re doing the potty-every-half-hour routine, and so far she’ll go right away by herself to the potty and go pee. Her diaper was dry when she woke up this morning, and she went pee right away in the potty. She’s been dry all day (she doesn’t pee when she poops, and I think that is part of why it’s hard for her to learn to poo in the potty – she used to poop in a perfectly dry diaper before we started potty training).

I’m so grateful that it was so easy. I feel like I can go back to life as normal again. Things are going to get better. I know it.

PS – the kids are so entertained in this picture because I took it with the webcam and they could see themselves on the computer screen. They thought that was hilarious. I LOVE these babies!!

Monday Musings - Good Reads and Motherhood

Being a mother is all it’s cracked up to be. And more. I love it. And my attitude about motherhood is improving every minute. It’s a lot like marriage. When you are young (and not married) you have this sort of “fairy tale” impression of marriage. You’ll find the love of your life, making covenants in the temple, and the rest of your life will be utter bliss.

And then you get married and realize that marriage is a whole lot of work, patience, love, and getting to know each other. Especially getting to know yourself.

Sometimes the same thing happens with motherhood.

As a young girl, you look at the moms of small kids and think how awesome it must be to have those precious children and raise them all your own and do their hair and dress them up and take them to ball games and out for ice cream.

And then you have kids. And you realize that motherhood is a whole lot of work, patience, love, and getting to know each other. Especially getting to know yourself.

For a little while you may say to yourself “What on earth was I thinking?” among other things that you may or may not admit to yourself. Like “I wish I could just give them back!” or “I’m never having another kid.” or “I wish I could just start over.”

But none of that is constructive, and you did at one time want to be a mother, which I don’t think was just naïveté. I think the Spirit does a really good job of planting the seed of motherhood in every young girl. We want to be mothers. We crave motherhood, even if we don’t know exactly what it is like. But that is what this mortal experience is all about – experiencing new things and doing things that we have never done before.

So instead of thinking all those crazy thoughts that we deny ever even having, we should be praying for the Lord to give us strength to do things that we don’t think are possible – like keeping our cool when our kids pee on the carpet, draw on the walls, and throw their spaghetti (sauce and all) on our brand new shirt and favorite pants.

It helps to remind ourselves that they are just little people, too, who are here in this mortal life for the same reasons we are – to experience new things and do things that they have never done before. And it’s our job to help them in that journey, because even though our journey isn’t done yet, we have experienced more of it than they have, and we are (hopefully) able to guide them through it all and help them make sense of the whole thing.

I have been reading a lot about motherhood lately (it is, after all, my full time job, and I want to be the best employee I can be).

I wrote my thoughts about the things I read over on my scripture study blog. At the bottom of the post I listed the articles I’ve been reading. I highly recommend the one about Quality and Quantity Time by Beppie Harrison.

I am so grateful for the opportunity to be a mother, and I am glad that I had such a strong desire to be a mother when I was young and I’m even more grateful that I am learning to love being a mother. It is a lot more work than I ever thought it would be (it’s emotional, physical, spiritual, and temporal work) …

… but it is the best work I have ever done.

My New Normal v. 5.0

(one of the do’s from here on Joss… yes, this is in Sacrament Meeting. Sue me)

You may remember that I am on a continuous quest to find my new normal. It (my normal) changes as the seasons change – both the literal seasons, and the metaphorical ones.

For a while, I didn’t have a very good grasp of the concept, and was down on myself for not getting enough done each day. (read: not doing the dishes, keeping the house sanitary, reading to my kids, etc). I’m not sure what on earth I was doing, but it most definitely wasn’t being productive.

So I went into “super-structured-productivity” mode where I attempted to write every task I could do on an index card, put them in a box, and tried to go through them in the day. Rarely did I get all of them done, and more often than not, I would end up at noon with 5 cards before the one that said “Lunch.” Obviously, that method wasn’t working.

For a while, I tried paring down the cards, but that just left me frustrated at the end of the day, because I wasn’t doing everything I really wanted to do.

Then I ditched all methods of organization and structure completely. Which basically led to chaos and destruction.

Finally, I read President Uchtdorf’s talk for the millionth time (okay, probably for the 30th – but dude, for a Conference talk, that’s a LOT of reads!) – this time I read it to prepare a talk for Sacrament Meeting. Remember that one I wrote in Portuguese? Well, I guess this time, the talk actually got through to me. And all those other times I thought I had been learning something.

Well, I don’t know if it was the actual words of the talk, or just all the gears the talk got turning, but I finally figured it out.

What did I figure out?

This:

 There has to be a balance between structure and flexibility.

The structure part needs to be those four most important relationships that President Uchtdorf talked about. The flexibility is for all the other stuff (the laundry, the dishes, etc etc).

In my new normal it means this:

- meal times are structured. They happen at (roughly) the same time every day. Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner.

- morning devotional, “preschool”, special play time, reading time, and nap time happen at (roughly) the same time every day.

- everything else goes on a card in the box, and I do the cards as I can throughout the day.

                                          (Vincente doing Warrior 2)

So far this has been leaving me feeling great. I feel good because the most important things are there (I’m taking care of the temporal and spiritual needs of myself and my children), and I can still get a lot of the other things done. You know, the semi-important things like having clean clothes to wear and clean dishes to eat off of, and food in the cupboards.

I’m still tweaking the cards – I think I’m going to start having the ones I have to do every day, and then the “other stuff” that carries over to the next day if I didn’t get to all of it today. Instead of always washing the toilets, and never vacuuming (seriously, I like cleaning toilets probably more than any other chore. Call me weird. Or maybe a veteran BYU custodian. Either one works.)

But at least now I am less stressed, I feel like I’m doing the most important things, and I still feel like a good wife and mother (i.e., the house is – mostly – clean when Russ gets home from work, and dinner is either ready, or getting ready). My kids like me more, and I get to play with them more often, and do the things they want to do, instead of having some system or schedule control me. I can drop what I’m doing and go play with them, and then just come back to the task later, because there is no pressure to “get ‘er done” before lunch. I’ll just stop and do lunch if it gets to be lunch time.

P.S. I left my camera at the in-laws (over 30 miles away) and therefore will only be posting pictures from my iPhone or from forevers ago until further notice. My sincerest apologies. And eventually I will post more birthday stuff for Vince. I do love him, I promise. I just left all his bday pics on the camera in Salem. Sad day.

Happy Hump Day

Is it Wednesday already? I am so ready for the weekend – probably because it is General Conference weekend.

I hope that I didn’t offend anyone with my breastfeeding post. I was just feeling kind of strongly about it at the moment.

I dreamt last night that I gave birth to a little baby boy who weighed about 7.5 lbs. He was beautiful, and I breast fed him. And Christy (my sister) was there with me at the birth instead of Russ. And I didn’t even have to push him out. Ha ha ha. That was probably the part that gave it away as a dream!

Not sure if it means anything (I am not pregnant – and not trying to be pregnant). Just thought I’d share. It was kind of a crazy dream. And at first he wasn’t crying (he was doing that silent cry that really really made babies do) but then he suddenly started crying, and that’s when I woke up (around 1:30 a.m.) to hear Joseline screaming in her room.

So we spent nearly the entire night trying to calm a freaked out two-year-old. Several prayers, songs, water bottles, and snuggles later, she was asleep. But I think she’s going to need a serious nap.

Monday Musings – Breastfeeding, the outcast

I have been thinking about breast feeding a lot lately. Mostly I’ve been thinking about all the misunderstandings surrounding breast feeding. What has spurred this? No, I’m not pregnant (but I wish I was – more about that later). I think what started me thinking so strongly about breast feeding was finding that my aunt who just had her first baby has stopped breastfeeding before her baby was 2 months old because “her milk dried up.”

Now, before I go on, let me say that I know that there are some women who just can’t (physically) breastfeed. But let me also say that the number is a lot smaller than people think it is. However, there are a lot of women who emotionally can’t breastfeed, due to lack of support or lack of desire. I think those are the two real reasons why women aren’t successful at breast feeding. And really, the lack of desire is closely linked to the lack of support. Women who were brought up in “non breast feeding” homes I think are more likely to lack the desire to breast feed.

The whole perception of breastfeeding is what is messed up. Too many people think that breastfeeding is something that is nice to do “if you can” but not essential, and it’s “okay” if you don’t breastfeed. Sure, in way, that’s true. You’re not a sinner if you don’t breastfeed. However, breastfeeding is completely natural, normal, and is actually how God intended for us to feed our children. He didn’t make women produce milk “just in case” someone didn’t come up with formula.

Being a strong advocate of adoption, I completely understand the significance of better infant formula that is almost as good as breast milk (formula will never ever be as good a breast milk. Ever.) There are infants who would die if it wasn’t for formula. So for that, I’m grateful for formula.

But there are women who plan on feeding formula for the majority of their baby’s lives. Vincente never had formula, and Joseline only had formula a handful of times (and I think they were all when I was gone longer than expected).

Now, back to the perception of breast feeding. To a lot of women (even those who are stay at home moms) “breast feeding” involved pumping breast milk, sticking it in a bottle, and giving it to the baby.

This is not breastfeeding. The only time a mother should be pumping is when the baby cannot latch (ie, a preemie, severe latching problems, or separation). I pumped for Joseline when I was away from her for a weekend when she was about 5 months old.

I think part of the problem is that women don’t associate having a baby with breastfeeding. There is a reason why milk comes in when you have a baby. It’s because you are supposed to put that baby on your breast and nourish it.

BREASTS ARE FOR BREASTFEEDING. Sure, they are for other things, as well, but their very nature is for breastfeeding. Women think of their breasts as a sex symbol. We worry about our cup size, we worry about how a shirt makes our breasts look. But breasts are originally and ultimately for breast feeding our children. That’s why even very small-breasted women (like myself  - I barely fill an A cup) can still breastfeed successfully (Baby #1 – 10.5 months, exclusively breastfed until solid food around 4.5/5 months when he started cereals; Baby #2 – 12 months, exclusively breastfed for 6 months). Both of my babies are ultra healthy, have never had ear infections, and have never had anything worse than the sniffles.

I think that if women who wanted to get pregnant would equate that with wanting to breastfeed, and would think about breastfeeding while they were thinking about what color to paint the nursery, there would be better breastfeeding figures in our society.

I do not judge women who choose not to breastfeed (whether for real or perceived real reasons) but please do not spread your lack of enthusiasm for breast feeding to new or expectant mothers. Too often, I hear this from people who (often) chose not to breastfeed (because it was hard because ______ – news flash – breastfeeding is NOT easy, just like being a mother is not easy. Oh wait, that’s right, breastfeeding is part of being a mother). I hear people saying “It’s okay if you can’t (read: don’t want to) breast feed. Your kids will be just as healthy if you don’t.”

THIS IS NOT TRUE! Sure, choosing to formula feed your babies is not giving them a death sentence. But PLEASE do not tell people flat out lies – that formula fed babies are just as healthy as breast fed babies because THIS IS JUST COMPLETELY NOT TRUE. NOT TRUE. NOT TRUE!!! It is a load of crap mothers feed themselves (and others) to make themselves feel better for not breast feeding. Well, I have two things to say to that:

#1) You have no reason to feel bad about choosing not to breast feed. Like I said before, it is not a sin. If you really do feel bad, then make up for it by encouraging other new mothers to breast feed – not by spouting untruths to them to make yourself feel better.

#2) It is a scientifically proven fact that breast fed babies are indeed healthier than formula fed babies. SCIENTIFICALLY PROVEN.

You know what, breast feeding is even so important that the Surgeon General of the United States himself has issued a call to support breast feeding.

Breast feeding is natural, normal, and our God-given ability as mothers. Have faith in that God-given ability, and go find help from people who know what they are doing, and by golly, breast feed your child! Don’t pump and give them a bottle – latch that baby on your breast and let them drink the liquid gold that your body creates in a beautiful miracle. If it hurts, find out why and fix it! Don’t just give up because it hurts for two weeks. Fix your latch, talk to a lactation consultant, call La Leche League, go to your OB, your midwife, your friend, your neighbor, SOMEONE, and GET HELP!

And then, if you really can’t breastfeed – then blessings to you for trying, and for wanting to, and for doing everything you could to keep breastfeeding, and my heart goes out to you – you are a great mother, and please help other women breastfeed, don’t feed them a load of crap just because you weren’t able to breastfeed – you are still a good person, and breast is still best.

Sorry for my rant. I hope I don’t offend anyone. I just had to get that off my chest.

Breastfeeding reads:
The Surgeon General's call
Dr Jack Newman’s website
La Leche League International

Happy Birthday, Baby!

 
Today is my sweet Joseline’s 2nd Birthday! We went to IKEA last night to buy her a “big girl” bed for her birthday. She has been asking to sleep in Vincente’s bed for the past few nights, and so we decided it’s about time. We bought this bed in the black pictured below.  It also come in white, but the white looked dingy when it got scratched up, so we went with black. It fits our tastes. We hope Joseline will like it! I’m sure she will. I also love that it is wider than a normal crib mattress, because she’s starting to look cramped on the crib mattress. We’ll probably be getting Vincente bunkbeds for his birthday. We’ve been meaning to get bunk beds for a while, but we haven’t because, well, probably because we are lazy. But since it’s his birthday, and we got Joseline a bed (ironically, her mattress is bigger than his now) we feel we should probably upgrade our 4 year old into a twin mattress.

For her birthday, I blew up some balloons and put them in her crib before she woke up this morning. We were going to get some helium balloons from the party store last night and then tie them on to her crib this morning, but I think she actually enjoyed this more. She was actually HAPPY when I went to get her out of her crib. Joseline is pretty crabby most mornings, so this was a nice change. And she spent a good 20 minutes or so playing with the balloons before they moved on to something else. We’ll do the helium balloons for Vince, probably. It would have been fun to switch her beds in the night while she was sleeping, but we probably would have woken her up.

We’ll have cake and ice cream for her tonight for a party, and eventually we’ll have a family party with Russ’ family for both her and Vincente (their birthdays are 10 days apart).

Happy Birthday, Joseline!

(below: Joseline’s 1st birthday – she has so much more hair now!)

Casey Jr

Probably one of the kids’ favorite pastimes is playing with the trains. Well, only if we are playing with them.

These wooden tracks are my favorite. Our collection is a mod podge of Ikea tracks and trains, Target tracks and trains, and a few random trains we inherited from friends and family.

Mostly Russ is the one that plays trains with the kids. He’s the one who plays most “pretend” games with the kids, too. I’m just not as exciting. But I do enjoy building train tracks with the kids, and towers. More than that, I enjoy being with them and seeing their personalities, and watching them learn and develop.

I wish I had new exciting things to report about our kids, but mostly they’ve been doing the same old, same old. Joseline tries to talk more, so that’s good. Vincente loves the daycare at the gym, and Joseline finally went yesterday without screaming as I left. Last Thursday I took the kids to the gym daycare, and Joss cried when I left them, and Vince cried when I picked them up. That’s just about how it goes with them.

The pump class is amazing. The instructor is fabulous and upbeat, and the class is at the same time on Tuesday and Thursday, so I get to do pump twice a week and then run the other days (although… I haven’t really been running much because it’s been so cold, and I can only run so long on the track or the treadmill).

I’m doing yoga on my own at home with some good yoga videos I found on YouTube.

It’s nice to get back in shape… and boy do I need it!

Repost and Some Thoughts a Day Late

I was reading the following post today and I just loved it. It was a record of one amazing weekend, and I just thought I’d post it because this past weekend was just about as amazing, but I don’t have time to write about it (I was trying to get Live Writer fixed… it’s fixed, but I have to leave for the gym in about 10 minutes!)

So here’s a repost of July 6, 2009 for your reading pleasure:

Sunny Day
originally posted July 6, 2009

Ah, the sun, the sand, the shore, the waves crashing on the beach, a perfect ending to a perfect weekend. We spent the day on the beach in Santa Cruz with the Wildes. It was fabulous. We didn’t even really do much. Just bummed around on the beach. I like bumming on the beach better than bumming at home – you’re bumming around either place, but at least when you go out to the beach you feel like you’ve done something that day.

Mostly, Russ and Dan went out on the boogie boards, and Michelle and I sat near or in the tent with the babies, while Vince jumped around in the sand, explored the rocks, ate bananas and sandwiches, and made friends with some other little kids on the beach.

The babies were pooped after a while. Okay, well, Ethan mostly slept the whole time. Joseline was awake for the most part, but she was bored with Ethan (since he was just sleeping) and kept squawking at me, begging me to take her out to see the ocean.  When I did, she would just stare at the waves crashing on the shore. It was really just a peaceful day. No rush to do anything. Just … living. That pretty much describes our weekend! (oh yes, that and potty training Vince – which has been WAY wonderful)

I got some pretty great shots – even with my dinky camera. It actually works really well out in the sun. Indoors is where it has problems.

On the way home we stopped at “Top-a-Lot Yogurt” in Santa Cruz. It was a self-serve frozen yogurt place. Think DIY Coldstone. You grabbed a cup, filled it with your choice of 6 different flavors of frozen yogurt, and then topped with any of dozens of toppings from candy pieces to fruit to sauces. Then they weigh your treat and you pay 39 cents per ounce of goodness. I think our total (including Vince’s chocolate ice cream topped with marshmallows) was something like $11. And Russ got a HUGE bowl of ice cream with just about every topping that had anything to do with peanut butter (pb cups, Butterfinger pieces, peanut butter syrupy stuff, chocolate syrup, etc). I should have taken pictures of the place. There are way too many things to think about these days now that we’re taking a two year old to the potty all the time.

This evening, some new friends from Delta Co. came over to hang out. It was a lot of fun. They have a daughter just about Vince’s age, and they are both potty training, and they both had accidents tonight. It was adorable. Okay, well, it was fun having friends over. The kids were exhausted, but they played pretty well together, considering. Joseline went to bed almost as soon as we got home. She was worn out from the beach, even though all she did was hang out in the tent with sleeping Ethan! I’m super ready for bed, but I’m waiting for Russ to finish some Chinese homework.

All in all, I am very satisfied with this weekend. I told Russ that I am neither anxious for him to go back to work tomorrow (like I usually am after the weekend – geez, just go back to work already! You’re messing up our routine!), nor sad to see him go back to work. It’s like the weekend was perfect, and I am completely content for life to just continue as normal! I think that is the sign of a perfect weekend.

Of Sleds and iPhones

This was back in November, when it snowed so much it was almost up to my knees, but I never got around to posting the pictures.

On this particular snow day, Russ had the van at work and so I walked half a mile in the snow with the kids to the nearest park (and probably the nearest hill – we live in a very flat part of the valley). Vince loved sledding, but I think Joseline was really cold, so... not quite as happy as V. I don’t blame her. It took us about 20 minutes to get to the park (I was pulling her in the purple sled because the sidewalks weren’t clear enough for a stroller. I need to get one of those bike trailers that converts to a sled with a harness and then get myself some snow shoes and just take the snowy world by storm with my little babies in tow! 

By the time we were ready to get home, I patted my pocket to make sure my phone was still there, and to my horror, it was gone. It must have fallen out of my pocket when I went down the hill on a sled, because I knew that I had it when we got to the park. The kids were screaming because they were cold and tired, so I knew that I didn’t have time to look for it right then. Thankfully it was fully charged, so I figured I could go find it when Russ got home. Well, then he wasn’t going to be home until really late, so I called my sister and asked if she would mind watching the kids and lending me her phone so I could go find mine.

Russ got home just as my sister got here, so she went with me to find the phone. It was dark and cold and the world was (thankfully) quiet.

Christy called my phone over and over again, but ... nothing. Then, when I was near the place where we had been sledding down the hill, I heard something. I wasn’t sure what it was, but then I told Christy to call again, and I HEARD IT!! My phone! Ringing triumphantly under the snow somewhere. I didn’t know exactly where it was, but I had a good idea, so I started digging like a dog in the fresh snow just at the bottom of our sledding hill. My hand hit something hard and I heard the ringtone fly past me, landing behind me. MY PHONE! Relatively unscathed, too. I hadn’t seen a hole in the snow where it would have fallen down, so I figured that when I went down the hill, it must have slid out of my pocket and then through the side of the 12”+ snow in front of our sled track.

I still can’t believe I found it. I had resigned myself to never finding it until the snow melted again, but there it was.

Ha ha, and just a few days before that, I had dropped it in the toilet (it fell out of my back pocket). My poor phone has been through a lot, but it still works great!

And for your viewing pleasure, a (very) short clip of Vince going down the hill. I forgot that I had it zoomed in for picture taking before I started the camera, and this was the last time we went down the hill before we left.