Christmas 2009 - Part 4

La noche del 24, antes de irnos a dormir, le dejamos galletas y leche con chocolate a papá noél.

En el jardín de Diego, hicieron "comida para reno" (reindeer), que consistía de semillas y unas cositas brillantes. Lo dejamos afuera para que se lo comieran. Diego estaba feliz!
Por la mañana Diego se despertó a las 7. Marcelo y yo estabamos muy cansados porque llegamos a la casa muy tarde la noche anterior. Aquí está Diego abriendo su primer regalo del papá noel. Se ve feliz pero también se nota que estaba cansadito.

Marcelito estaba enfermito entonces no lo despertamos para abrir regalos. Lo dejamos dormir hasta casi las 10 de la mañana!! El pobre niño no se sentía bien y necesitaba descansar. Le dió una toz muy fea y casi se le fue la voz. Hoy sigue muy malito. Aquí está abriendo sus regalos pero con muy poco ánimo.

Unas horas después, los padres de Marcelo llegaron con más regalos. Diego estaba feliz! Les regalaron bicicleta a los dos.
Fue una navidad muy linda! La pasamos muy felices. La parte no tan feliz fue que Marcelito se enfermó. Ahora estamos descansado hoy y consintiendo a Marcelito.

Espero que hayan disfrutado todas las fotos! Les mando muchos besos y abrazos y espero que también hayan tenído una navidad muy especial. Ahora necesitamos que Marcelito se mejore para rumbiar el año nuevo!

Christmas 2009 - Part 3

Esta navidad se nos olvidó tomar muchas fotos. Sólo tenemos una de nuestra pequeña familia, pero no tomamos con mi mamá y mi papá y Sergio y David.

Aquí estamos el la casa de mis suegros antes de ir a comer con mi familia.Marcelito y Dieguito tenían la pinta que la Tata les compró. Se veían divinos!Comimos una cena deliciosísima de seviche y comida del mar. Muy rico!!Aquí están los niños abriendo su primer regalo con la Tata.Diego abría uno, lo miraba por un segundo, y decía, "Quiero abrir otro!"En cambio Marcelito abría cada regalo y lo disfrutaba. Aquí está diciendo, "Wow! Un cepillo de dientes!!"

"Mira mami, trenes!"Aquí están los niños con los regalos de "papá noél". Una bicicleta cheverísima para Diego y un carrito de manejar para Marcelito. A Dieguito le dieron celos porque le fascinan los carros que tienen motor y le fascina manejar. Pero este carrito es muy chiquito para él. Además, Diego ya tiene una camioneta grande para manejar!

Y esto sólo fue la primera ronda de regalos! El 25 abrimos más y más regalos. Que concentidos estos niños!

Christmas 2009 - Part 2

Una noche salimos a cantar con la familia de mi Tio Carlos y con amigos de la iglesia. Todos nos pusimos gorritos de navidad. No tenía uno para Marcelito entonces le puse cuernos de reno. No se si se llaman asi! En ingles es reindeer antlers. Aquí se está comiendo una galleta que se ganó por ir al baño. Estamos tratando de enseñarle a ir al baño como niño grande. Como le fascina el dulce, las galletas, y especialmente el chocolate (como la mamá), ha sido facil convencerlo! No se si lo pueden ver en la foto, pero cada uno tiene un carro en la mano. SIEMPRE tienen un carro en la mano. Cuando les digo que es hora de salir, corren y traen un carro para llevar. Nunca sueltan esos carritos! Es una obsesión.Les dije que hicieran una cara chistosa y esto es lo que hicieron. Diego nos tomó esta foto. Le gusta la fotografía como a la mamá!

Christmas 2009 - Part 1

We had a great Christmas this year! My brothers were here and we were all together as a family for Christmas for the first time in 4 years. Diego and Celo have loved spending time with their uncles. I'm going to re-cap Christmas, but I'm going to do it in Spanish because my grandparents are going to be reading this later today. So those of you who don't speak Spanish will just have to make up your own captions for my pictures. :)

La navidad fue muy linda este año. Fue muy rico estar juntos como familia por primera vez en cuatro años! Los niños disfrutaron mucho de estar con sus tios. Voy a compartir fotos de todo lo que hicimos.

Fuimos una noche a un lugar que se llama Celebration. Todas las noches en Diciembre cae "nieve". La nieve es una espuma y a los niños les fascina. Aquí está Diego disfrutando la nieve.

Aquí está tratando de comerse la nieve con el Tato.

Aquí está Marcelito con el papá tratando de tocar la nieve.

Le pareció cheverísimo! Mírenlo con ese gorro!Aquí estamos todos en la nieve.También tienen un tren que uno puede montar. A Diego y a Marcelito les fascinan los trenes. Aquí estamos en el tren. Sergio estaba haciendo cara de payaso.

Fue una noche muy divertida!

Merry Christmas!

"Wishing you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year, with love: Marcelo, Nathaly, Diego, Marcelito, and Baby #3"

We hope you are all having a wonderful holiday!

Word to the Wise...

If you are pregnant and happen to be driving around all morning running errands with your kids, and the song "Christmas Shoes" comes on the radio, change the station. Otherwise, you will be stuck sitting in a parking lot crying your eyes out while your kids scream from the backseat that they are ready to get out and go into the store. And then you'll go into the store with puffy eyes and a red nose.

More from the Boys

This post is mainly for my dad, because I know he's going to check my blog while he's out of town.

Yesterday we went over to my parents' house. Diego noticed that my dad wasn't there. This is what he said:

Diego: Where's Tato?
Me: He went out of town.
Diego: To what town?

He takes things so literally. I love it.

Last night, we were trying to get the kids to go to bed, and Celo wasn't ready yet. He was very upset that it was already bedtime, so he thought he could fight it by changing the words to the "Go to sleep" song we sing.

Marcelo started singing, "Go to sleep, go to sleep, go to sleep my sweet baby..." and Celo sang along, replacing all the "go to sleeps" with his own lyrics. "Wake up, wake up, wake up my sweet baby."

He thinks he's so clever.

A Cute Morning

This morning Diego played nicely on his own for a bit. He was in a sweet mood, saying things like, "Mommy, you're the best mommy ever!"

Then Celo woke up.

Right away, it was clear that Celo was in the mood to be as mean as he could to Diego. From the moment he woke up, he was taking toys from Diego. At one point, he ran and grabbed Diego's puppy and threw it into my room so Diego couldn't get it. I told him that if he couldn't be nice to Diego, he had to go to time out.

While Celo was in time out, Diego came running to me with the nursery manual we use for FHE and said, "Can you help me find the lesson about sharing? I need to show it to Celo." I tried hard not to laugh and helped him find the picture that shows a couple of kids sharing toys. (Is it obvious that we've had this lesson for FHE more than once?) Then Diego went into Celo's room and showed him the picture. I stayed out of the room but could hear him saying, in the sweetest little teaching voice, "Look Celo, see these boys and girls sharing? They're sharing their toys. You have to share, too, okay? You have to share like this. See, they're sharing the airplane? That's so nice. You have to share the toys. Okay?"

Celo just repeated what Diego said, "They sharing the toys? They sharing the airplane? Okay."

So so cute. And it actually worked! They played nice for awhile this morning. But now they're back to fighting. I might need to follow Diego's example and whip out that manual again.

Little Victories

Sometimes when everything seems out of control, like the toy disaster in the living room, the never ending pile of laundry to be folded, the dishwasher that I could have sworn I just emptied but is somehow full again, the fact that Celo had turned a corner and was being such an angel child but has now returned to his normal attitude-y, tantrum-throwing ways, the fact that Diego has decided to keep his volume level at "high enough to make my mommy's head explode" at all times, and on and on and on....I have to focus on the small victories.

Recent victories:
I got the boys to eat carrots the other night! I brought out a clear container full of Skittles and told them that for every carrot they ate, they could have a Skittle. As they ate a carrot, I'd pull a Skittle out of the container and they'd see how many they were getting. It was a stroke of genius and worked like a charm.

I felt well enough to be "present" as a mom today! Instead of having to be like, "Go entertain yourselves and try not to kill each other", I played with them outside and drew on the sidewalk with chalk. I read them Christmas stories by the tree. I made them a fun lunch. It felt good to feel normal again for a little while.

Diego has been saying prayers on his own again! He went through a phase of fighting it and fighting it and saying he needed help even though we knew he was fully capable of saying it himself. And now he's back to saying cute little prayers on his own. "Thank you for the cars and the windshield wipers and the lizards and the Christmas tree."

That reminds me, we've talked to Diego about the fact that everything on the earth was made by Heavenly Father and Jesus. So now, in his mind, every single thing was put there by Jesus. We have our TV hanging on the wall in the living room and the other day he said, "Mommy why did Jesus put the TV on the wall?" He's a little confused.

One final victory: I've tried and tried to make my mother-in-law's famous dinner rolls a million times and I never quite get it right. Yesterday, I got the closest I've ever come! They're still not as good as hers, but at least I'm improving. I need her to show me how to properly knead. OR, someone could just buy me a Kitchen Aid Mixer with a dough hook. Any takers? Santa? Are you reading this?

Tidbits from the Kiddos

There are so many things I should be doing right now. Folding laundry, cleaning up my aftermath from making dinner, getting ready for my meeting tonight...the list goes on. But if I don't write this down now, I'll never remember to do it.

So many times, the boys have said something that makes me laugh, smile, or melt, and I think, "I need to write that down!" But then I forget. When I finally remember to write it, I can't think of what they said that was so funny. Hopefully that doesn't happen to me right now.

Tidbits from Diego:
We were driving to school this morning and saw a million birds sitting on a telephone wire. I said, "Look at all the birds, Diego!" He said, "Wow. Are they going to put on a singing show?" So cute.

He calls the end piece on a loaf of bread "the upside down piece." He always asks for that piece.

He's convinced that he's getting a baby sister. He always tells me I have a girl baby in my tummy. When we were at the store the other day, he picked out some girly toys and said, "I think we should get this for our baby for Christmas." I said, "But we don't know if it's a girl." He looked at me like I was slow and said, "It's a girl." Hopefully he's not too disappointed if that little girl ends up being a little boy.

I love hearing his cute little answers to things, lately. "Did you paint at school today?" He gives me a big sigh and says, "No. I didn't get a chance to." Or I ask him something about his friend and he says, "I'm not sure. I'm going to have to ask him next time." It used to just be "I don't know." That was his answer for everything. So I'm really enjoying hearing him tell me more about what goes on in his little world. Although, sometimes he refuses to tell me what happened at school and says, "You're going to have to wait until Daddy gets home. When Daddy gets home I'll tell you because it's very special."

Tidbits from Celo:
Celo is hilarious. He is my funny little man. He loves to make up jokes and make people laugh. The best is when he cracks up at his own joke. We were in the car the other night heading towards Cocoa Beach. My mom was in the car and told the boys, "Look, that's Cocoa." Celo stifled a giggle and said, "Merry Cocoa!" He couldn't even finish the phrase without laughing. Dying laughing. He laughed and laughed like he had just said the funniest thing on the planet. Diego started cracking up, too. Diego repeated it, "Merry Cocoa!" and Celo burst into giggles like someone was tickling him to death. He makes up random jokes like that all the time and cracks Diego up. I don't even know why either of them think it's so funny, but watching them crack up together is one of the best things ever.

Celo has such an imagination. It's so fun to listen to the little things he makes up. I tried to teach him how to ride a tricycle today, but it didn't quite work out. He's too lazy to push the pedals and would rather keep his feet on the ground and walk the bike. I would tell him to put his feet back on the pedals and push, and he'd say, "Wait! I have a fwat tyah." (I have a flat tire.) He'd get off the bike and use a leaf or a stick or whatever he could find to pretend to put air into the tires. He even added sound effects: "Tshhhhhhhhh." Then I'd get him back on the bike and two seconds later he'd say, "Stop! Oh nooo. I wan out of gas. I need mo gas." (I ran out of gas. I need more gas.) He'd get off again and pretend to get more gas. It was very cute.

This morning, Celo woke up and said that he wanted his "Dirty McQueen." (A Lighting McQueen with brown wheels.) I handed him the McQueen in his room and he said, "No. Dat's not mine. Dat's Diego's. Diego took my McQueen." From the other room, Diego yelled, "The Dirty McQueen is mine!" But it's not. It's Celo's. So I said to Celo, "Don't worry, I'll get your McQueen back from Diego." He said, "You gonna be mad to Diego?" (Are you going to get mad at Diego?) I tried not to laugh and said, "No, I'm just going to tell him to give it back." He asked, "You gonna make Diego cwy?" (Cry.) He gets a kick out of his brother being in trouble.

These two boys make my heart want to burst. They also make my head want to explode, but that's another story for another day. :)

Surina Photography

So, many of you know that I dabble in photography. Over the past year, I've gotten work taking pictures for family, friends, and friends of friends. Word of mouth has gotten me a few shoots here and there, but I'm finally at the point where I'm ready to advertise more. Eventually I'd like to have a better website, but here's a link to the site I'm using for now: Surina Photography. (The name comes from my mom's nickname for me.)

If you are interested in getting pictures done, please contact me.

Snapping Out of It

Today is a rainy, gloomy day. My boys woke up to a mom that feels like she's been dealing with morning sickness for 7 months, not 7 weeks. I woke up with a massive headache, nausea, and a debilitating case of the crankies.

For the first part of the morning, the kids were left to their own devices and accomplished the following: broke the blinds in the living room, broke my favorite vase in the whole wide world (I almost cried), and dumped out all their toys in the living room and dining room, leaving a giant irritating mess.

After I yelled a bit, they cleaned up the aftermath. I chatted on the phone with my mom for a little and cried about how crummy I feel. She said, "Yes, but at the end of this, you will get a beautiful blessing." I said, "Yeah, a blessing that will grow up to scream and fight and make messes and break things." I announced to her that this is the last grandchild she can expect from me.

And then I read on a friend's blog a family in our stake lost a child. And then I cried. I grabbed my boys and held them tight and said a prayer for that little girl's family. I can't even imagine. Here I am complaining about NOTHING. These little treasures that I have are so precious. When I'm feeling like hugging a toilet, it's hard to remember how blessed I am. I expect a 3 and a half year old and a 2 year old to entertain themselves and figure out what the heck to do with their day. All they want is their mommy to play. They're only acting psycho because they're bored out of their minds.

After feeling completely ungrateful and very ashamed of myself, I built a fort in the living room. I played along in a game of "The Monster is Coming". I gave my beautiful boys a hug and a kiss and then I let them eat cookies with their lunch.

I am vowing to do better. I'm praying that the all day morning sickness will be over soon now that I'm into the second trimester, but even if it's not, I need to deal with it better. I'm so grateful for my sweet boys and I love them more than anything. But they would never know that by the way I acted this morning. I need to focus on the good moments. I need to smile more. I need to say "yes" more. They are such little miracles....crazy, hyper, stubborn miracles...and I can't waste another day.