Our Weekend

This weekend we went to a birthday party for my cousin's daughter. The party was at the same little park where I've had Diego and Celo's birthday parties. They love it because the family brings a bunch of little ATVs and the kids do their favorite thing: drive. Here are some pictures from the party.

You know how sometimes you take a picture of someone and they don't really look like what they look like in person? All of Diego's pictures are like this to me. So when I saw this picture, it caught my breath because this is exactly what my handsome Diego looks like to me. Please never grow up and start dating.Here he is playing chauffeur to his my little cousin Sofi. He drove and drove and drove around for approximately 2 hours, always picking up different passengers. Here he is giving my mom "a big squeeze". You can't fight a love like theirs.And then there's Celo. He was just there for the food. Well, for the cotton candy. Here he is waiting patiently for his cotton candy to be done.Happy as can be to be to dig in.It was impossible to take a picture of him once he had heaven on a stick in his hands.I had to interrupt Diego's driving to snag a picture.

And Celo just wanted me off his tractor. Notice the wedges on my feet. Wore those things all day. Perhaps that's why my feet were too swollen to squish into my heels on Sunday.
Marcelo and the boys watching someone whack the piñata to pieces. Oh Celo. I'm sorry you inherited my tendency to constantly wrinkle my nose.

So Far in October...

The boys have played dress up...

Celo's still fits, but Diego has grown a few inches since last year.

Diego learned how to draw people...

He's never showed much interest in art, so I thought this was fantastic.

I got a fancy new external flash...
It's for a wedding I'm shooting in January. So nervous and excited!

I practiced with my new flash on my fall decorations...This is the extent of my fall decorations. And yes, I bought that stuff at Dollar Tree.

And the boys have gotten completely filthy while playing in the backyard in the"grass"...I mean dirt."Celo, if you smile I'll give you a treat.""Diego, if you smile you can have a sticker." October is looking good!

Brothers

This picture really shows the dynamic between these two boys. Sometimes Diego is all lovey towards his brother and tries to give him hugs. And Celo is just not having it. He's been indifferent towards Diego's hugs for a long time. See for yourself: This picture was taken when Celo was just 10 months old. Look at Diego's sweet smile. And then look at Celo's grumpy face. So, so typical.

Before I make it sound like Diego is an angel child who showers his brother with affection on a daily basis, let me be clear: that only happens 20% of the time. 50% of the time, they are at each other's throats. (And for that final 30% of the time, they are both angels: fast asleep.)

A little time apart while Diego is in preschool has done them good. No. Not true. It has done ME good. Because I don't have to hear, "Nooooo, D-GO! Don't DO dat." Or, "Cewooooooooo. Give me back my CAAAAAARRRSSS." The truth of the matter is that 3 hours apart, two days a week hasn't really changed things between them. The second they're back together, they're fighting. Celo has quickly learned that while Diego is at school, he is free to hoard all 6 McQueen cars without any objection from anyone. He loves having all the toys to himself. When Diego is home, the party is over. And Diego, suspecting that Celo has been playing with his toys while he's been away, walks around the house with as many cars as he can possibly hold, to be sure that Celo can't touch any of them. Then he's like, "Mommy! I keep dropping my cars!" And I'm like, "That's what happens when you try to hold 17 Hot Wheels in your arms."

Sigh. Maybe one day they'll get along. For now, I'll just enjoy that 20% of the time, when they are best buddies. Like on our walk the other night. The one thing Celo lets Diego have is driving privileges. That means he gets to sit back and relax while he is being chauffeured around the neighborhood. It also means he gets to man the radio.

They spotted a dog.

There's Celo with his hand on the radio.

It's much harder to see in this pic, but again he was changing the radio station.

This is what happens...

...when all your cousins are GIRLS. And your little brother doesn't have much interest in playing with you.I don't know who had more fun: Leilani, who got to play hairstylist, or Diego who got to wear clips all over his head.

Either way, it was very serious business.
At least they were efficient. Here are Isabella, Diego, and Leilani, in their assembly line of beauty.

At one point, Diego held up a ponytail holder and asked Leilani if she could put it in his hair. Leilani said, "No, Diego! Those are for girls." Apparently the clips are gender neutral.

Feeling the Love

Thanks to everyone for all the well wishes while we were sick. We're finally feeling better, which means I'm ready to stop writing post after post whining about how horrible we feel. Yay!

I'm just going to post some pictures that I was planning on posting before the flu invaded our home.

My boys have been buddies lately. Having a fence has really helped them learn how to play together better. One day a few weeks ago, I was watching them through the screen door and saw them sitting at their little picnic table, just hanging out, as cute as can be. I ran to grab my camera, and I did so just in time because look at what I captured!

Sorry for the blur. I took these through the screen:

So cute! Diego just leaned across the table and kissed Celo on the head. I wanted to run outside and squish them both.

And then a few days later, I was outside with them, and turned just in time to see this:

I need to keep these pictures so I can pull them out one day in the very near future when all I hear day after day is, "MOOOOOOOM, he kicked me!!!" I know it's coming.

God Made Dirt

...and my boys are very grateful.

Getting a fence is one of the top 5 best things that have ever happened to me. No joke. It has changed my life. Usually, with two sick boys, a sick mommy, and an even sicker daddy, life would be miserable. But it's not. Because my little sick boys don't have to stay cooped up in the house. They can breathe fresh air and play outside. I'm not going to lie....at first, happy as I was, I was a little hesitant about letting them get super super dirty in the two big piles of dirt we still have from putting up the fence. But once I saw how much fun they were having and realized that having to take a bath every day right before lunch isn't really that big of a deal, I just gave in and let them get utterly and completely filthy. They. Are. Loving. It. And, as a bonus, I get to take pictures of them without driving them crazy.

Here are Diego's dirty dirty hands. He loves to grab the dirt and slowly let it drop all over his legs.

Does this crazy face not say, "I love dirt"? Indeed it does. I love this boy.

Okay, these next few pictures give a glimpse of Celo's personality. Not only is he 100% boy with his love of all things dirty and his daredevil antics, he's also very very stubborn and defiant. Don't know where he gets it. Okay, I do know. Anyway, so the story of these pictures is that he wanted to eat the sidewalk chalk, and I kept telling him no. I kept saying, "Not in your mouth," and taking it away. Then I'd say, "I'll give it back, but don't put it in your mouth." And here's what he did.

In his own words...er...thoughts.

"Okay, Mommy. It's not in my mouth. Just on my face."

"It's not IN my mouth. Just right next to it."

"I'm seriously considering putting it in my mouth."

"Yeah...I think I'm going to bite it."

"Sooooo, what are you going to do if I just take one little bite? You know you can't say no to these eyes."

"Bit it. What are you going to do about it?"

Very pleased with himself.

Sigh. He's a little monster. A cute monster with crazy little curls that fall over his ears.

We got a fence!!

Christmas came early. We got a fence! Hallelujah! I am a happy happy girl.

We had lots of help to make this happen this weekend, so thank you to everyone who helped! The boys wanted to be outside the whole time, which was a little hard what with all the power tools and nails lying around. As soon as Diego saw people arriving in the morning, he grabbed his little toolbox and started rushing towards the backdoor in his pajamas saying, "I need to go help Daddy!" It was adorable.

While we were outside, Marcelo's cousin's husband found a grub worm (I think that's what it was called). A bunch of the kids (Marcelo's cousin has 7 kids and 3 of them were here to help us), had fun looking at it and touching it. At one point, Celo got his hands on it. I was standing too close to him, so it blurred out the worm, but here he is holding it:

Then, the dang thing bit him in the finger and made him bleed. It was pretty sad. Marcelo's cousin's oldest son, who is 12 years old, made sure that grub worm wasn't going to bite anyone else. How did he do this? He ATE IT. Yeah. I took a picture but I haven't asked them if I can post it. I may edit this later.

Here's Diego "helping". He was all business about it. He also kept going around and measuring things with the measuring tape.

The fence isn't completely finished yet, but I can hear Marcelo hammering away as I type this. The boys are asleep, hopefully for awhile longer, because I let them run around like crazy this morning to get them nice and tired. They were thrilled to get to play in their newly enclosed backyard. No more Mommy yelling, "Don't go near the ditch!!"

I took some pictures of the boys in front of it, but you can't see those yet, because I'm using them for our Christmas cards. So instead, you have to see me. Here I am showing off the fence. Okay, and maybe my new scarf, too. You think it's too cowboy-ish? Jae? Thoughts?

I let the kids go crazy and do whatever they wanted to do this morning because, well, what the heck. They were having fun. So they got FILTHY playing in the dirt. FIL-THY. They had to take baths as soon as we went back inside, and all of their clothes, down to their shoes, got thrown in the wash. Check out the mud behind Celo. And on his hands. And mouth. And his soaking wet shirt. He's looking longingly at the dirt he was enjoying just moments before, but the mean mommy said that's enough.

Diego filling up his dump truck. And that's my new pineapple plant behind Diego. I'm pretty excited about it.

Oh, and here's the giant gash on Celo's nose. He fell into a sharp "big kid" toy that he is no longer allowed to play with. I honestly thought his nose was broken because it started to swell. But it's not. He just gets to look like a little boxer, just in time for all the Christmas pictures I was planning to take. :)

As you can tell, I'm really excited to finally have an enclosed area for thr boys to play. They love to be outside, but we live on a corner lot, so lots of cars are always driving by, and our house backs up to a ditch. Before getting a fence, it was really hard to be out there alone with the boys. I'd be swatting ants off Diego's shoes, and then I'd look up and Celo would be running straight for the giant ditch. Not good. This fence is going to make my life a lot easier!

When it's finished, anyone want to come play? :)

Halloween 2008

I should really be doing other things right now, but if I don't do this now, I won't do it at all.

This year, Halloween was a lot of fun for Diego. He totally "got" the trick-or-treating thing, and loved every minute of it. Here are the pictures to prove it.

This was the best close up I could get of him.

At first, he was a little weary of all the people walking around. But his 6 year old cousin Angela quickly appointed herself as his chaperone for the evening. She held his hand from house to house and helped him hold out his basket. She was such a little mommy! At one point, I was walking behind them, right after a crowd of some scary looking costumes had walked by. I heard Diego saying to himself, "I not scared. Angela's with me." It was so cute!!

After awhile, though, Angela realized that her 6 year old legs could cover a lot more ground than Diego's little legs, so she went ahead with the big kids, while Diego took it a little more slowly with his friend Arielle. Okay, that's not really true. He didn't take it slowly at all. He practically sprinted from house to house. He would say, "How 'bout this one mommy? Anybody's home this one?" Or "Can we do this one?" Then he would run up to the house, and ring the doorbell as many times as humanly possible before the person answered the door. And then, when the door opened, he would try to walk into the person's house. He did this several times. I kept telling him not to walk in, but he still managed to get inside the door at least 3 times. I should probably work on teaching him to be afraid of strangers, huh?Just look at this face of pure joy. He would run back to me and say, "Mommy, I got a treat!!" It was soooo fun watching him enjoy Halloween so much. It's hard to describe how it makes you feel when you see your little one so happy, even if it's because of something so small.

Celo, on the other hand, didn't really care for Halloween. I wasn't able to get a single picture of him with his little doggy hood on, because he absolutely hated it. Best close up I could get:

We tried letting him trick or treat at one house, but all he wanted to do was run around in the lawn.

So he spent the rest of the night riding around in his wagon.

I'll post pictures from my parents' party separately.