My almost 2 year old

This might sound very braggy braggerstein, but I don't care. I want to remember these things.

In just one month, Diego has started talking sooooo much. Is it always understandable? No. But at least he's trying. I can ask him things now and actually get a real response instead of just, "Yes." I'm like, "What did you do at Tata's house?" And he answers with, "Trains" or "Cars" or whatever he played with. At the end of December, we were in church, and to keep him occupied I showed him a picture of Joseph, Mary, and Jesus. He grabbed the picture and said, "Awwwwww, Baby Yeesus!" I couldn't believe he knew who it was. He said it like Baby Jesus was the cutest thing ever, too. It was pretty funny.

For the most part, though, Marcelo and I still have to do a lot of translating when Diego tries to talk to people. My favorite is the way he says helicopter and triangle. "CA-ca-ca-ca." and "WHY-ca-ca". Sounds nothing like the real word. I was all stressed out for awhile that he wasn't putting two words together, but over the past month, he's been doing it a lot. He tells me, "Baby crying", or "Ball too big" when a ball won't fit where he's trying to shove it. He loves being around lots of people, so every single morning he asks me where we're going by starting to name everyone he knows. "Tata house? Ani house? Amy house? Weewee (Lili) house? Ee-ani (Leilani) house? Way-gee (Reagan) house? Tata coming? Daddy coming?" When I have to tell him it's just me, him, and the baby for the day, he's so disappointed. I am his last choice of companions. :( I don't mind, though. I love that he's growing up with so much family around him, because I didn't.

He's learned so much lately. He knows some of his shapes now (square, circle, triangle), and can count to ten in english and spanish. He's a total expert at colors, and, I might add, a GENIUS at cars. I know everyone thinks their kid is the smartest kid ever. But I'm just telling it like it is. He's definitely not the greatest at pronunciation, and has noooo desire to ever learn how to sing, but the boy can point out the make and model of your car like no one's business. Any time he sees a black Hyundai Tuscon, he says, "Tata's car." If he sees a white Frontier, he says, "Abit's car" (Abit is my brother David). He seriously knows everyone in the family's car. And his latest is that he'll see a white Tuscon for example, and say, "Tata's car white." It's pretty crazy. I'm 24 and I can't do that. (He does NOT get his gift of being observant from his mother.)

This weekend, Marcelo's work had an open house, so we went to check out his new office. I'm always telling Diego that Marcelo is at work, so I was happy to get to show him where Daddy is during the day. I acted all excited and said, "This is Daddy's work!" To emphasize it, I pointed to the floor and said, "This is Daddy's work. We're here at Daddy's work!" I thought he was getting it until a few minutes later when he started putting his hands on the floor and exclaiming, "Mommy, Daddy work!" He thought the floor was Daddy's work. I confused the poor kid.

He's been really sweet lately. That's why I'm taking advantage and writing this. I don't know how long this good streak will last, so I figured I'd better write it down so I can look back on it the next time I want to sell him on ebay.

Nita's Trip

My aunt Dianita came to visit from NY! I hadn't seen her since my wedding 4.5 years ago. She's so cute! I love her. This was her first time meeting my boys, and by the end of the trip, I was quite afraid she was going to steal them. Or at least Marcelito. She pretty much held him the whole time she was here, and he loved every minute of it. :) And his mommy enjoyed the break!

While she was here, we went to Old Town, Disney Village, and the Rainforest Cafe. We had lots of fun and there were lots of photo ops, so here's my favorites. They're mostly of Diego because Celo slept through all the fun stuff, lol.

And here's one of the boys on New Year's Eve. I'm not posting a family shot because I hate how my hair looks in the pic. Call me vain.

Diego loooooved Dianita. He called her "Nita." She already left, but he's still asking for her. And Celo, well, he wishes I would hold him as much as she did!

I hope it's not too long before we get to see her again. We'll have to plan a trip to NY!!

Beautiful

I just want to post this picture because I love it! My dad took it.

Marcelito asleep on Tia Nita's shoulder.

It's a new year!

It's 2008! Weird. Ugh. I can't believe I'm going to be 25 this year.

So Christmas already came and went. We had a really fun one this year. Diego got sooo spoiled. Not by us. By the grandparents. He thought ripping presents over was the best thing ever. I took a million and a half pictures with my brand new camera that Marcelo gave me right before Christmas. It was such a huge surprise! I had never even asked him for a camera. He just knew that I loved photography and that someday I would love to have a good camera. Someday. I had nooooo idea he was even thinking about getting one now. So when he showed up with a McDonald's bag (with a salad I had asked for), I opened it up, searching for my yummy Asian salad, and found a Canon Rebel XT instead and just started crying. It was such a great surprise. Sooooo, I'm loving it and have already taken like 700 pictures. No exaggeration.

Anyway, so back to Christmas. We spent Christmas Eve with my family. We had a big crazy party like always. We danced and talked, and ate ate ate. And then opened presents.

Here's our little fam.

Tato and Tata My favorite picture. It *almost* captures the sheer joy of opening toys and more toys.


A cute one of Marcelo under my parents' tree.
We spent Christmas day with the ILs (in-laws). I didn't really take many pictures that day, but here's a couple we took at Church the Sunday before.

What? No one's crying?Oh. There it is. That's more like it.

Michelle made the vests to match the girl's dresses. They were satin, so they ended up looking like they were singing in a choir. But it was still cute!

We didn't really have our own Christmas until after we came home from the ILs. Diego opened a few presents from us, took a nap, and then we went back to my IL's for dinner. And that was our Christmas! Lots of family, lots of love, lots of food, and lots of toys to get rid of to make room for the new ones!

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

This was our Christmas card this year. Except I didn't really get around to sending it out to people. Oh well. At least I got to enjoy it. :)

Terrible Twos

I should totally be working on the calendar I'm making for my in-laws, but I just need 5 minutes to breathe. Writing is always therapeutic for me, so here I am.

Diego is getting to be such a terror. I mean, he already was a terror, but in a good way. He was just active and into everything. He loves to explore things, be loud and crazy, and run run run. But now, when I say he's a terror, I mean he doesn't listen to squat, he sounds like a broken record saying, "No way! No way!" I have no idea where he learned that. He is becoming increasingly defiant. For instance, today, I asked him if he wanted to go to the naughty room (which up until this point had been working great) and he said, "Yes!" Then he proceeded to walk towards the room while he looked at me and said, "Bye bye! Bye bye!" Which is what I say when I'm threatening him. Like if he won't come to the door when it's time to leave, I'll be like, "Okay, fine. Bye bye, Diego!" and act like I'm leaving without him. So he threw it back at me. Then later, he was being good for a little while so I promised him we would go play outside. I was like, "Okay, let's put your shoes on so we can go outside." Being outside is his favorite thing ever. But he's soooo stubborn, so he was like, "No way!" and ran away from me. I usually start threatening him or bribing him at this point, but today I was just too tired to fight it. And the way I saw it was, hey, he's the one who wants to go outside, not me. So I just went about my business and cleaned up the living room. He totally didn't care. Whenever I came anywhere near him, he ran away. Then if he noticed I wasn't paying attention to him, he ran up to me and was like, "Woosh, Mommy!" (Shoes, Mommy.) I would say, "Are you ready to put on your shoes?" And he'd say, "Nooooo!" And run away again. Twenty-five minutes later, (and a much cleaner house later) I was like, okay, either we're going outside or we're not, but I'm not going to play this game anymore. So I sat down with his shoes in front of me and said, "Diego, let me put your shoes on you so we can go outside and play." He just sat there across the room. So I said, "Three..." and he inched a little closer..."Two..." and he stopped moving all together..."One..."and he ran and sat in my lap.

Really? That's all he needed? The 3, 2, 1 threat?

I'm sure I'll laugh at all this later, but today it's not so funny. He's a smarty pants, though. I'm really proud of him. He knows all his colors, he knows A, B, and C, he knows the name of every form of transportation immaginable....car, truck, plane, boat, train, motorcycle, bicycle, etc. Today (when he was being nice) I asked him, "How do you say 'water' in Spanish?" He said, "Awa!" (Agua). I asked him, "How do you say 'duck' in Spanish?" He said, "Pato!" "How do you say Airplane in Spanish?" "Avooo." (Avión) He knows so many words in Spanish now. I should really talk to him more in Spanish. He's mostly learning from my mom.

The child does not want to speak in sentences, though. He'll be 2 in February and I'm dying for him to start stringing words together! But so far, the longest sentence he'll say is, "Mommy, ah you?" (Mommy, where are you?) He's also big on possesives. He loves to say, "Mommy's car" or "Ama's ouse" (Grandma's house). He puts so much emphasis on the S. Like, Mommysssss. Oh, the best is when he says applesauce. Let's just say it sounds like he's saying apple booty, but in a not so nice way.

Despite the tantrums, this age is fun. I guess for the next year or so, we'll be going back and forth between the Terrible Twos and the Terrific Twos. It's a rollercoaster.

Okay, back to work.

Mastitis Blows

Mastitis is the worst thing ever. Aside from not being completely numb during my second c-section, this is the worst pain ever. I'm going back to the doctor tomorrow to demand that they fix me.That's all I have to say.