My Girls

I have to document this right now before I forget. It's been a really hard week as I am dealing with a difficult situation that consumes every hour of my day.  But because of this situation, I've spent a ton of quality time with my girls. Today we watched Brave together. It was my first time seeing it. At the end, when the mother and daughter hug, Eliana came over to me and threw her arms around my neck and gave me the hugest hug with the sweetest smile on her face. It was like seeing the mother and daughter being so loving made her feel loving, too. She gave me a big kiss and said, "I love you, Mommy." Camila can never be left behind in these situations so she climbed into my lap and said, "Mommy mommy" all sweetly and hugged me. I got all teary eyed for a minute. I just felt so grateful for that sweet moment in the middle of this stressful week.

A Small Victory

For almost two years, I've had some major emotional struggles. In hindsight I can say that it was a combination of thyroid problems, pretty severe anemia, and some post partum depression/anxiety thrown in. I would say that emotionally,  the last year has been the hardest of my life. I'll get into it in detail eventually...maybe...it's hard to talk about...but today I just want to touch on it a little. Because today was proof to me that I've finally turned a corner and that makes me want to do cartwheels.

Today was hard. Today was one of those days as a mom where you just feel beat down. Mila is very sick, so from the moment she woke up today, I was dealing with a cranky baby who just wanted to be held. She threw up all over me yesterday and was up until midnight feeling miserable,  so I went to bed last night with my house in shambles. Dishes piled up, laundry covering the couch, the works. So today, when she only wanted to be held and cried if I tried to unload the dishwasher (so I could load it back up with the monstrous pile of dirty dishes), it was a bit frustrating. Then, an issue came up where I had to drive around for the entire morning, which meant I couldn't be home to clean my house, even if Mila would let me. This was also frustrating. During this driving around, I met up with my dear sweet husband, who's tired face mirrored my own. Knowing the poor guy had school tonight and had a ridiculously long day ahead of him, I wanted to do something for him. But my day was packed, too. After picking up the boys, I had enough time to have them eat a snack and do their homework, and then it was time to take them all to the doctor.  My angel of a mother was able to meet me there so the kids didn't have to sit around forever....well really it was mostly so I wouldn't have to deal with their impatience forever. Anyway she came and took the kids to get dinner while Camila and I saw the doc and got meds. After that I asked her to follow me to Publix so I could buy pedialyte and everything else I needed for my sick baby without having to take them all in with me in the rain. It was raining hard by now. I hate grocery shopping when it rains. BUT as I walked around the store I suddenly thought, "I am not crying. My blood isn't boiling. I don't feel like this is all just too hard to deal with. I'm not falling apart. I don't feel overwhelmed. I just feel like a normal tired mom. Yes I'm frustrated today, but I just want to take care of what needs to be taken care of. Oh. My. Gosh. I feel NORMAL." It's hard to comprehend the enormity of this when you don't know the inner workings of my mind for the last year-ish. A few months ago I would have been a mess on a day like today. When I walked back outside and saw my mom I said, "I can tell I've improved because I'm not crying or freaking out! " It may sound dumb from the outside looking in, but it felt like a huge victory to me. I got home,  gave Camila what little food she could eat, sent Diego off to scouts, got the kids bathed and put the girls to bed. Then Celo and I had some one on one time reading funny stories until Diego got home. Before tucking the boys in, at their request,  I told them some funny stories about my childhood. I enjoyed that moment with them and kissed them goodnight at 9 pm (scout night is such a late night!) and then got busy doing all the cleaning I didn't get to do all day. I was beat by this time, but I didn't want my beat down, super stressed hubby to come home to an even more stressful mess. I cleaned the kitchen, living area, and was still folding my 3rd load of laundry when he got home.  AND I was in a good mood.  I told Marcelo about this victory because I knew he of all people would completely get it. And he did.

The joy is back!!!!!!! I took it upon myself to get myself off the psycho crazy pills (also known as birth control) that the doc had me on for the last 5 months to control my anemia. I haaaated how they made me feel. Time will tell if I still need to do something about the anemia issue. But for now, I'm going to celebrate these little victories and suck up all the joy in motherhood while I can.

Counting my blessings tonight!

Fort Lauderdale Temple

We had the opportunity of going to the open house at the Fort Lauderdale Temple this past weekend. It was amazing. Such an awesome experience to be there with my family. Diego definitely got the most out of it, which is to be expected, since they're all still little. But even the littles did great.

We went down the night before and stayed in a hotel, a first for my kiddos. They thought it was as good as going to Disney, haha. They were in heaven. I wish I hadn't messed up our plans with my poor navigation skills that got us there super late. But oh well, they still enjoyed it. They called each other on the room phones and thought the free breakfast was awesome. I love that they love the little things.

When we arrived at the temple we were taken to an air conditioned tent. We watched a 12 minute video about temples. I honestly couldn't really hear the video because I am pretty hard of hearing and I was seated close to the air conditioner. But I enjoyed seeing many beautiful temples in the video. Then they had us follow our tour guide to begin our tour. Our first stop was the shoe covering station where volunteers covered our shoes to keep the temple floors clean. Eliana didn't like that and asked to be held the whole time. Luckily we were with my parents and took turns. The inside of this temple was absolutely gorgeous. Like, so beautiful that it makes you want to cry. Which I did, in two of the rooms especially.  I kept talking to the kids and explaining little things. Diego seemed to really love it. He kept saying it's not fair that he has to wait till he's 12 to go back and till he's about 18 to go back to certain rooms. We got a picture outside of the temple and met up with our extended family to make our plans for the rest of the day. On our way to lunch we talked about the temple and Diego asked how long it would be before we went to another temple open house in Florida. I said, "It'll probably be a long time. The Orlando temple was built a long time ago..." I asked my parents when it was built because I couldn't remember and Diego answered, "In 1994." I asked him how he knew that and he said, "Because I listened to the video at the temple." Well, I'm glad someone could hear it! Love that smart boy.

We ate Colombian food for lunch (and dinner the night before). So good. Then we headed to the Lion Country Safari with the family. It was really cool to see lots of different kinds of animals. And the little park they have was nice. The kids rode a couple of kiddy rides and played in the splash area. Diego went down a water slide and loved it. We were only there at the park for about two hours.

Then we had the rest of conference weekend to look forward to. President Uchtdorf's talk on gratitude was awesome.  All in all a great weekend to remember and be thankful for.

Mila - 20 months

Camila will be 20 MONTHS OLD tomorrow. Time just goes faster and faster the older I get and the more kids I have. 

Just thought it was about time I do a little post on what she's up to these days. 

She is still a a major thumb sucker. That's going to be a tough one to break.

 She finally has hair long enough for pigtails. But every time I try to do her hair she says, "OW! OW!" the whole time.

She's showing tons of personality. She loves to sing. Her favorites are "Wee wee weeeee" to the tune of the I Love You song from Barney. "Ah ah ah ah ah ah ah ah ah ah, " which is from the song on Barney about raindrops being made of candy and then it goes, "Standing outside with my mouth open wide....ah ah ah ah ah ah ah ah ah ah." And of course, "Goooo......Gooooooo!" With is Let it Go, from Frozen.

She's also FINALLY talking more. She's been really stubborn about repeating things we ask her to repeat. She just kind of ignores us and makes this face:

I can't look at that picture without wanting to go pull her out of bed and squeeze her. It's her typical, "I don't see you or hear you" face. And her mess of curls...I'm just in love.

So here are the things she says on a regular basis:
Eat - Eat
Peesh - Please
Yesh - Yes
No - No
Yay - Yay
Nana - Eliana
Woah woah - Celo
Woah woah - Diego
Daddy - Daddy
Mommy - Mommy
MammAY - Mommy when she's annoyed at me
Meemee - Mila
Ahn - On
Osh - Off
Cwoshe - Close
Ah done - All done

Ah-den - again
Nack - Snack
Bahnee - Barney
Baby - Baby
Puppy - Puppy
Pash - Pants
Shoosh - Shoes
Shosh - Socks
Eyesh - Eyes
Nosh - Nose
Mouf - Mouth
Wo-you - Love you
Woh-wee - Sorry
Da you - Thank you
Dat - That
Dish - This

Wet - wet

Piapoosh - diapers

Peepeesh - peepee

Diddy - dirty

All I can think of. She loves all her siblings but seems to have a special bond with Celo. If she doesn't know where he went she walks around the house saying, "Woah woah!" and is quick to give him hugs. Sometimes she gets into moods where she wants to hug Eliana and Diego, too, but not as often. She loves to dance around. She's a hoot and cracks us up. So glad she's part of our family!