It Never Ends

This has been my day today:

Clean up giant mess.
Boys destroy what I just cleaned.
Clean up giant mess again.
Repeat.

All. Day.

One day, they will have houses of their own and I will instruct their wives to make them do all the cleaning. So there.

On a brighter note, we are giving the boys the hugest surprise of their short lives tomorrow. Can't wait!!! Pictures to come!

Diego's Turn

Here are some tidbits about my big, dimple-faced boy.
I can't believe he's going to be 4 next week!! I'm actually really excited about him leaving the 3's behind. The 3's were hard for the two of us! He can be so so sweet, but also so so exasperating. The thing I have the hardest time with is the fact that he is completely unable to entertain himself. He has to have a playmate at all times. He literally cannot play alone for more than 5 minutes. He's my little shadow when I'm trying to get things done around the house. He's totally the kind of kid that makes a mom want to yell, "Can I please just use the bathroom in PEACE??" Not that I ever yell that. Ever. But it has occured to me on more than one occasion that the day will come where he won't want to be around me 24/7, and that's going to be a heart breaking day. So I have to dig deep into my patience well, take deep breaths, and learn to love the sound of "Mommy, mommy, mommy, mommy, mommy, Mommeeeeeeeee."


This is his cool guy smile. Don't ask me what the squinting is all about. As much as I complained in the above paragraph, I love this boy more than life. He is quite possibly the sweetest kid I've ever known. He just has such a soft heart. I hope he always stays that way. Several times a day, he will randomly hug me or kiss me and tell me that he loves me. I'll leave for a meeting or photoshoot and when I come back he tells me he missed me.

(Silly face.) I probably just made it sound like he's a mama's boy, but that is so not the case. He loves his dad. I'm pretty sure he thinks Marcelo has magical powers. He thinks his daddy can do no wrong and wants to be just like him. I love that they are such buddies. The other day, I overheard this conversation between the two of them:

Diego: Daddy, where were you?
Marcelo: Just fixing a car.
Diego: When I'm old like you I'm going to fix cars, too.
Marcelo: Great! You can be my helper.
Diego: Yeah! And I'll fix lots of things like you. I'll fix doors and closets and walls and bathtubs and everything that is broken.

Sadly, he already thinks we're old. He makes random comments about other people and says things like, "He was really old like you." And he has become very concerned about old age and dying. He gets a sad look on his face and says, "I don't want you to get very very old. Because then you'll stop moving." I have NO clue where he got this from. He gets all worried and says, "Will you stay with me forever?" It makes me so sad to hear him so worried about this. I really don't know where he's getting it.

He's been so cute about this whole baby sister thing. He couldn't be happier about it. When I kiss him goodnight, he says, "Wait! I want to give Eliana a kiss and say goodnight." He kisses my belly and says, "Goodnight Eliana!" And then laughs because he's so happy. I love it.

Sometimes he's such a good big brother. Sometimes. It's totally because of him that I was able to solve a little potty problem I was having with Celo. I love hearing him help Celo say the prayer when it's his turn. And just like he randomly gives me hugs, he does the same with Celo. But little tough guy Celo doesn't react well and tells Diego to get off of him. He's not quite as soft hearted as his big brother.


Last few stories:
- On Sundays, when I walk out of my room all ready and dressed for church, he says, "Mommy, you look like a princess." Last Saturday, we had a pajama party activity at church, so when I walked out of my room in pajamas, Diego was like, "Mommy. You have to change. You don't look like a princess."
- The other day, I was kneeling down to tie Diego's shoes and he was looking down on me as I was doing it. He touched my eyelashes and said, "Mommy, I love your eye hairs."
- The kid always spots it if I'm wearing something he hasn't seen before. He immediately tells me he likes my new shoes, shirt, purse, whatever, and asks me where I got it and who got it for me. So observant.
- Yesterday at church, Diego was really wiggly during the sacrament and I was trying so hard to get him to be quiet. I kept telling him that if he was reverent, I would give him a fun game to play when the sacrament portion of the meeting was over. He finally folded his arms and said, "I'm going to think about Jesus. You think about Jesus, too." And he bowed his head and closed his eyes. We talked about this in Primary not too long ago and he remembered! It was a cute moment.

As I've been typing this, Diego and Celo have been listening to music and having a "dance party". I need to get a video of Diego dancing. He loves it so much. He has already asked for his birthday party to be a dance party. He gets that from his Tata.

My Baby

So we are in baby preparation mode. So far we've finalized the name (Eliana), and now we're working on getting bedding. Do I want flowers? Butterflies? Polka Dots? Light colors? Bright colors? The options are endless! Once we decide, we'll have to repaint two rooms and rearrange a whole lot of furniture. Lots of work to do!

But today I want to take a little break from searching through thousands of bedding sets and talk about my current baby. This guy:

This crazy kid is a hoot. He says the funniest things and can melt you with just a look. He's impossible to take pictures of, though. He refuses to look at the camera. There has to be serious bribing involved to get him to look at me and smile. And even then, he gives me a cheesy, fake grin. The poor child needs a haircut, but I have such a hard time parting with his wavy locks!

So here are a few recent Celo stories:

Celo is a teenager trapped in a two year old's body. He sleeps a ton, has an attitude, and basically thinks he's the coolest kid ever. Recently, Marcelo was trying to tickle him, and Celo threw his daddy's hand away and said, "NO! Tickle YOUSELF!!" Who says that? Not just no, not just stop tickling me, but tickle yourself?? Marcelo and I cracked up.He's still occasionally lifting my shirt to look for the baby. When he doesn't find it, he asks me to open my mouth so he can try to look inside. Makes me laugh every time. He's had to accompany me to a few doctor's appointments and thinks my doctor's office is the most boring place ever. When we get there, he's like, "Mommy, I sick. I need to go to my doctor." I'm like, no, you're not sick. And he's like, "I do! I weed to! (Need.) I coughing. See? *Cough*Cough*. I not feeling good." And then the nurses hear him and say, "Awww, he says he's not feeling good." And I'm like, "He's lying. He just wants to go to his doctor because there are toys there." He thinks he can play me, but he can't. :)
Okay, and this story was the best. Celo is our little "quiet sufferer". He's a little tough guy. If Diego is hurt, scared, or feeling whatever emotion, we know about it. But Celo doesn't make a big deal about things. So, the other night, Marcelo and I were in the living room after the kids had gone to bed, and Marcelo heard a whimpering noise. When he went in to check on Celo, Celo looked up at him and very calmly whispered, "Daddy. I so happy you here. I berry scared." Marcelo tried hard not to laugh and asked him why he was scared. He said, "I scared of the pumpkins." We have no idea what he was talking about. But it was so dang sad and adorable at the same time that he was in there all alone in the dark scared out of his mind, but was just clutching his puppy and trying to be tough. I went in there and gave him big hugs for a little while until he seemed okay. Poor baby!

Just a few more tidbits:

- He gets seriously offended when Diego calls him "Yucky Celo." He's like, "Noooo! Don't call me dat!"

- He's picking up this whole potty training thing so fast. He refuses to let me put anything but underwear on him. He wants to be just like Diego. If we're going out, I try to put a pull up on him (for my own sanity) and he's like, "No! I want big boy underwear!" Oookay. Then I'm sweating the whole time, praying that he doesn't have an accident. And asking him if he needs to go every 20 seconds.

- He thinks Duck Duck Goose is the funniest game on the planet.

- Probably the cutest thing ever is seeing him wear his new rainboots that my mom got him, with nothing else on but a t-shirt and underwear. And of course his best accessory: his crazy hair. Love it.

- He uses the phrase "I do" all wrong. It's one of those things that I don't want to correct because it's so cute. He'll say, "Can we go outside?" And I say, "No, it's raining, we can't go outside." And he says, "I DO!! I weed to!"

- When he wants my attention but I can't give it to him right that second, he says, "Mo-mee-ee-EEEEE!!!"

- He can't say bacon. He says "facon".

Blue, Blue, Pink.

It's a girl! The picture above shows how I told my mom this morning. The dress pinned to my belly is the very first dress I ever wore. Here I am wearing it below (from a scrapbook page my mom made for me when I got married):
I love that I'm throwing up a peace sign.

We had our big ultrasound yesterday. It got moved around a bunch, so we weren't expecting to find out until next week. It was so nice for that appointment to get moved up because Marcelo and I were dying to know! He had already guessed girl, which makes him the king of the guessing game. That's 10 in a row he's gotten right! He recently got one wrong but he says it doesn't count because he only has the gift when it comes to family members, haha.

Anyway, we took the boys with us and told them the doctor was going to tell us if the baby was a boy or a girl. Diego was like, "But it's a girl." So when the doc made the big announcement, he was not one bit surprised. How did he know?? I asked him if the baby is going to look more like him or more like Celo and he said, "She looks like me." I'm going to take his word for it because back before I had Celo I had a dream that I had a little girl who was a Diego clone. She had reddish hair just like he did when he was born and her face looked just like his. My mom and my aunt think this one is going to be a girl version of Marcelo, which would mean she'd look like my beautiful mother-in-law. No matter what she looks like, she's going to have us all wrapped around her little finger.

We are beyond excited. It feels really strange, though. I've been in boy mode for so long that it still seems weird to look at anything pink. I'm sure I'll get used to it! There are going to be pink things in my house. That is so so weird! Diego made my mom buy her some bows today at Target. He picked them out. Hilarious!

I'm so glad God sent us two bodyguards first so they could protect this little girl. :)

19 Weeks

I'm in the mood to post a pregnancy update. This whole post is basically for me. I'm pretty sure it's immensly boring to everyone else. But I want to document some of the little things about this pregnancy. I'll start with the funny kid stuff and then move on to the more boring stuff. Feel free to skip this!

Kiddos:
Diego and Celo have really made this pregnancy a lot of fun. They say such cute things! Diego is convinced we're having a girl. Here are a few things he has said about it:
~"Heavenly Father needs to send me a girl because I already have a boy."
~While out shopping, he pointed at some girly toys and said, "Look! We need to get this for our girl baby." I interrupted with, "But we don't know if it's a girl." He just looked at me like I was soooo dense and said, "It's a girl."
~While hugging my belly: "(Big sigh.) I'm sooo happy Heavenly Father is giving me a baby sister."

He even has Celo convinced. One day Celo asked me when it's going to be his birthday and I said, "Not until after our new baby is born." He said, "My baby sistah?"

I am VERY concerned that these kids will be very very disappointed if they end up getting a baby brother! We'll find out in a week!

Other gems from Diego:
~"Mommy, is the baby going to be a good listener for Family Home Evening? Or is she going to be loud?"
~"I don't want a boy because he'll grow up and be big." I informed him that a girl would also grow up and get bigger, and he said, "But will she take my toys?"
~Diego is very concerned that the baby is in my tummy and that there is also water in my tummy. He said, "Is the baby swimming? But she's going to be scared!"
~If he accidentally bumps into me, he rubs my belly and kisses it and says, "Sorry, Baby."
~I started feeling the baby kick a few weeks ago. One night, I tried to get Diego to feel it, but he wasn't patient enough to stand there and wait for it. Soon after that he started telling me there was a puppy in his tummy. He'd say, "Come here quick! The puppy is kicking!" And would push his belly out. Crazy kid.
~He even has a name picked out. I won't share the girl name just yet. But the boy name is darling and I think we might just use it: McQueen. ;)

Cravings:
I eat toast with cream cheese and strawberry jam every single morning without fail. One morning, at about 15 weeks, I made oatmeal for the kids and decided to have some myself. It came back up immediately. (That was the only time I've been unable to keep food down this whole pregnancy.) I haven't strayed from toast with cream cheese and jelly ever since. On weekends Marcelo jokingly asks, "What do you want for breakfast?" He knows the answer is always the same. My eating habits are more unhealthy than they've ever been. I do squeeze in some fruits and veggies everyday, but I usually just want junk. Pizza, french fries, cookies, pretty much any kind of sweets. That's very different from my other pregnancies where I constantly craved blueberries, cherries, salads, and tuna fish.

Emotional Stuff:
I haven't once felt scared about having another baby. With Diego, I was so scared about how my life would change. I didn't know what I was in for. With Celo, I had no idea what I was going to do with two babies. Diego was still so little! I was terrified of having two kids. This time I just feel ready. Of course I have a few concerns, like what those first few sleepless months will be like, but overall I'm really excited!

Physical Stuff:
This pregnancy has been soooo different from the others. I don't know if it's because I'm older, if it's because I had such a bad year of health before this pregnancy, if it just gets harder with each pregnancy, or if this baby is a different sex, but this one has been hard!! I used to be all, "I love being pregnant! Pregnancy is the best! Once the first trimester is over, I don't even feel pregnant besides the kicking and the growing belly!" Now I could punch that version of me.

Okay, that's not true. Honestly, I'm glad I experienced such good pregnancies the first two times. Otherwise, I wouldn't be having a third. And I'm still holding on to the hope that this one will get better with time. Right now I'm still having moments of nausea, I'm having sciatic nerve pain, my back aches, I can't get a full night's sleep, I've gained three times the amount of weight that I had gained by this point in my other pregnancies, and I get at least one headache per day. Not that I'm complaining. :) It's a blessing and totally worth it!!

Wedding Sneak Peak

I still have a lot of blogging to catch up on, but right now I want to post about something other than all the things we did in December.

I just shot my first wedding! It was actually a lot less stressful than I anticipated. I thought I was going to be sweating bullets the whole time but I just had fun with it and I'm really happy with the shots I got. I hope Becky and Karl don't mind me posting a tiny sneak peak while they're away on their honeymoon! I'll slowly post more on Surina Photography.

Many more to come!

New Year's Eve/ Año Nuevo

(Primero un poquito de inglés, y luego escribo en español.) Happy New Year! Here's a quick explanation of pictures and then I'm writing in Spanish for my grandparents again. The first is my brothers wearing matching sweaters that my mom got them (just because it was funny), posing for a picture with my boys who are also matching (just because I'm trying to take full advantage of dressing them like twins for as long as I can before they start to complain). We had a good laugh about it. The second is my whole family posing with my camera set on timer. Not bad. Lastly, my little family on New Year's.


Bueno, aquí están mis hermanos con los sacos que mi mamá les compró para que se vieran como gemelos igual que Dieguito y Marcelito. Fue muy chistoso verlos y nos tocó tomar foto.



Toda la familia en la última noche que Sergio estuvo aquí .Aquí estamos en la casa de Rena y Paulo en Año Nuevo. Diego bailó toda la noche, como siempre. Marcelito se portó muy bien, jugando con un carrito toda la noche. Como no me sentía muy bien, nos fuimos a las 12:05. Asi que todos los abrazos que les dí a todos de "Feliz año nuevo" también eran abrazos de "Adiós! Que la pasen rico!"

No se nota mucho en las fotos, pero estoy empezando en 2010 con 15 libras más de peso! Este bebé es muy comelón(a), y ya me he engordado mucho más que en los otros embarazos. Diego me ve la barriguita y me dice, "Mami, tu barriga está grande!" Que puedo hacer si comer es lo único que me hace sentir mejor?? :)

Los quiero mucho!