Eliana - 9 Months

I know all moms say this, but I wish time would just slow down. I can't believe Eliana is already 9 months old! I can't even talk about how much I love this girl. My heart might burst.
This is the outfit she wore for my mom's 50th surprise party. My mom loves Cumbia (a typical Colombian dance), so my uncle had the idea to dress her grandkids and grandnieces in cumbia clothes.When my mom saw the kids, she was brought to tears. Mission accomplished. :) I could just reach in and squeeze her in this picture. Am I not supposed to say that kind of stuff because it's my own kid? Sorry. It's just those expressive black eyes!!She's teething. That explains the drool.Oh, hi Mommy. Are you still taking pictures of me?Starting to get over looking at the camera.Aaaand she's gone.

At 9 Months, she:

-Crawls. It's frightening. I can't leave the room for a second. I'm about ready to throw away all the boys' tiny little toys. Choking hazards everywhere. It's a bit stressful.

- Sometimes pulls to standing, but only if she's really ticked and wants me to get her out of her crib. Pretty much every milestone has happened when she was really mad. The first time she crawled, it was because Marcelo put her down and walked away and she was all, "Do not leave me here!" When he headed back into the room, she met him halfway, crying her little eyes out and crawling with so much angry determination, hahaha.

-Sleeps beautifully. The boys wake her up every morning as they stomp past her room. She doesn't want to miss a thing, so as soon as she hears them, she wants to be wherever they are.

-Signs "eat", "up", and waves hello.

-Loves to play peek a boo. I still haven't been able to get her doing it on video. She covers her face with her hands and makes the funniest face. As she uncovers her face, she says, "BAH". It's adorable.

-Says dadadadada a lot. Mama, not as much. Only when she cries. She tries so hard to imitate sounds. I'm pretty sure it's still by accident most of the time, but when she says things spot on, the boys think it's hilarious. I held a duck up and said, "Quack quack" one time, and she said, "Kak kak." Diego rolled over laughing. "SHE SAID QUACK!!!!"

-Purposefully ruins her brother's creations. At least that's what they think, lol. She loves to crawl to their masterfully created train track, or perfectly engineered city landscape (plastic roads, tolls, and garages for their cars), and just pull them up and destroy them. The boys get really mad, but I can't help laughing because the look on her face is like, "Hahahahaha, see what I did there??"

-Is called Eliana by most, but Baby Elle by her brothers. Celo made up the nickname. He even made up a song. It goes, "You're just a Baby, Elle. You're just a Baby Elle." But he says "baby" like "babeh". And dances around.

-Is 100% weaned. She's not a huge fan of formula, but at least she drinks it now. FINALLY. She was by far my hardest to wean. She was also by far my hardest to breastfeed. It was painful like 90% of the time.

-Loves all kinds of food. Her favorite seems to be cheese, but she'll eat anything I put in front of her. That's a huge difference from the first few weeks of solids. I thought she'd never eat anything. The boys gobbled up cereal and baby food right away, but this little diva was not interested for a long time.

-Has 2 teeth. I think her top teeth might be coming soon though, because she's been drooling like crazy.

-Is only in the 25th percentile for weight, about 50th for height, and 75th for huge noggin.

Wedding Pictures

I was blessed to be able to do a lot of photoshoots from October to January. Three of them were weddings. I've kind of become an accidental wedding photographer. I didn't set out to do weddings, but I've had much more fun doing them than I had imagined. It also kept me a lot busier than I thought it would! I'm soooo behind on posting all the pictures!

Here's a sneak peak from one of the January weddings.

That last one is probably my favorite. :) I'll post the rest on facebook soon.

Oh So Very Sleepy

I miss blogging. I really do. But I don't have TIME. Or when I do, I don't want to use it to blog. I want to use it to sit back and do nothing. Because I. Am. Tired. All. The. Time. Really, really tired. And all 3 of my kids sleep through the night, and have so for the past 3 months, so it's a little unfair that I still have to feel this tired. It's all thanks to my dumb thyroid that doesn't want to function properly. I seem to have postpartum thyroiditis. I had it after Celo, but it regulated on it's own and I never had to get on medication. This time, I found out through some routine bloodwork that my levels are way high (putting me in the hypo category), so I'm not sure what's going to happen, but I'll be seeing an endocrinologist in April to see where my levels are at and what the next step will be.

A lot of people have asked me what the symptoms are and I feel so dumb telling them because really, it's just symptoms of being a mom to young kids! Just to name a few: fatigue, weakness, memory loss, impaired concentration, irritability, sensitivity to cold all the time, hair loss, dry skin, and muscle aches. See? Totally normal young mom stuff. If it hadn't been for that blood test, I would have never known.

Anyway, I'm hoping that now that Eliana is 100% weaned, my body will start to return to normal.

In the meantime, if I have seemed moody around you, have forgotten to email you back or call you, or have flaked on you in one way or another, please forgive me. I'm kind of losing my mind.

911...again

So awhile back I wrote this post and totally forgot about it until my friend reminded me yesterday. (Don't even get me started on my memory problems.)

Anyway, a few days ago, the boys were kind of being monkeys and I was kind of tired of it. So I laid down on the floor, like a good mommy, and pretended to be asleep. I was totally just goofing around with them, and was a little shocked by what happened next.

So I was laying there on the floor with my eyes closed, and Diego was getting annoyed with me. He was like, "Mooooommmmmyyyyyy. Wake up!!" in this tone like, "Enough already." He said it a couple of times and I kept my eyes squeezed shut. Celo was nearby and flatly said, "I think she's dead." Pause. "Do you want to play trains?"

WHAT? I opened my eyes and said, "Celo!! Did you really think I was dead?" He laughed and said, "Yeah." I said, "Weren't you sad?" He thought about it for a second, trying to figure out how to respond, and finally said, "I was starting to be." Liar. Testing them, I asked them why they didn't call 911. They said that they didn't know how, so we had a little refresher course in case of emergency. I also took the opportunity to explain death a little more, since Celo obviously thought it was no biggie. I wasn't prepared for how hard it hit Diego. He was under the impression that if someone dies, they go to heaven for awhile, but then they come back. Because, hello, babies come from heaven, so people eventually come back from heaven right? When I broke the news that when you die, you don't come back, it seemed to really click. With tears in his eyes and his lips quivering, he expressed his greatest fear: "But Mommy....if you die....who will m..m..make us dinner?? When Daddy makes dinner he always makes the same thing!"

Glad to know I'd be missed.

Diego is FIVE

Diego turned five at the beginning of this month. I can't even believe I have a 5 year old. I REMEMBER being 5. We just had his party last week. There was a construction theme since he is currently in love with Mighty Machines and learning everything there is to know about tractors, diggers, front end loaders, bobcats, etc, etc. Here are a gazillion pictures of the party. You're going to feel like you were there, lol.

The decorations.All of these little vehicles were at the $1 spot at Target. Score!Goody bags made by my mom as usual. Thanks, Mom!!Diego surrounded by girls. As usual.Besides his brother, the only boys at Diego's party were his school friends Connor and Kevin. The rest were 5 girl cousins and 5 girl classmates. Here they are in their hard hats digging for bubbles.Pin the traffic cone onto the construction site.Pretty sure Celo peaked. The girl behind him is Natalia. I'm pretty sure she thinks she's Diego's girlfriend.Dump truck piñata.Diego's best buddy, Connor. Connor knows how much Diego loves puppies, so he got him a mini puppy pillow pet. :)All Diego-friendly food. Except for the veggie dips, but it's not like he was going to touch the veggies anyway. Couldn't get them all smiling at the same time. They're still cute, though.I used Golden Oreos for the "sand". As I was making it, Diego started whining that he wanted it to look like snow instead. Oh for goodness' sake.Singing happy bday.His friend Kevin sat next to him during the presents. It was pretty cute.

My dad spent some time in the grass with Eliana. Adorable.

It all turned out great and Diego had a blast. But I am soooooo done party planning. At least until May.

Dear Celo

Dearest Celo,
Today was a hard day. I was trying to teach Sharing Time in primary, and you were trying to make that impossible. You ran around the primary room, you snuck past me several times and talked into the microphone, and you crawled around on all fours acting like a puppy. When your teacher, Tia Michelle, and primay counselors tried to grab you to make you sit back down, you ran out of the primary room and down the hall. I'm pretty sure every person inside the primary room could read on my face how I felt about this entire situation. Daddy came in and tried to get you to stay seated. When that didn't work, he took you out and demanded that you behave. When he gave you another chance, you repeated your previous antics. When those tortuous 40 minutes of primary were over, Tia Michelle tried to take you to your class. I tried to teach Sharing Time again, while Tia Michelle held your classroom door shut and you tried hard to escape. I spent a little time in the hallway trying not to cry. Your sweet teacher came to me at the end of church and reassured me that you eventually gave up trying to escape the classroom and did pretty well for the rest of class. When we got home, Daddy and I took away your beloved puppy just like we had threatened earlier in the day. You became furious and yelled, "That's not FAIR!" I wondered if you were really 3 or if you had suddenly turned 13. Daddy had to be the one to talk to you because he was calm and collected. Mommy had to take deep breaths in the kitchen. Daddy said lots of things to you like, "I'm sorry Celo, but you didn't make good choices at church today, so you're not going to be able to play with your puppy. If you make better choices at home, you'll get the puppy back. We're sad that you wouldn't stay in primary today. You weren't very nice to your teacher." You said lots of things to Daddy like, "I don't like it when you say those things to me! You're not being nice! That's not the way you talk to your family! I can't talk to you when you talk to me like that! I'm just going to go to my room and go to sleep!!"

And now you're taking a nap. And for that I thank you.

Love,
Mommy

I'm Baaaaack

Kind of. It's been a crazy couple of months and I've had zero time to post. There's so much I want to catch up on, just for the sake of documenting it all. A quick rundown of what's to come:

*The bazillion photoshoots I still haven't posted
*Christmas - Celebration, Downtown Disney, and family Christmas parties
*Our cruise
*Eliana's 6 month, 7 month, and 8 month pictures and all that she's been up to (crawling, saying hi, getting teeth, and working on weaning)
*My mom's surprise 50th bday extravaganza
*Funnies from the kids

I'm working working working on editing some photoshoots, so I can't play on here right now, but here's one quick Celoism:

Celo: I want to do what Diego's doing.
Me: Nope. Only Diego gets to do that because he's big.
Celo: Yeah. He's a big GIRL. (then laughs hysterically at his own joke)