The thing that has taken up all my free time for weeks

This month has been straight CRAZY. I am beyond sleep deprived trying to squeeze everything into my day. I’m not going to lie…there have been tears. There have been tantrums. And sadly, I’m not talking about my kids.

Let me start off by saying this post isn’t meant to be a big fat whine fest. I just want to document the crazy so I can one day look back on it and either think, “Wow, how did I do it? Thank goodness things slowed down!” or “PSHHHH. That was nothing. I can’t believe I called THAT busy.” (I really hope it’s the first, but I’ve heard life just gets busier as the kids get older!) I am SO SO thankful that I’ve been so busy with my photography biz, and I am so grateful for how much that has helped my family. I still LOVE doing it. But even that wasn’t enough for the help we needed to recuperate from the big changes we made this year. So when a company I did some digital design for a few years ago contacted me and asked me to start designing for them again, I felt like it was a blessing from above that just fell into my lap and I jumped at the opportunity. Even though it meant that I would be extremely busy for the next few months. Seriously…let me break it down:

6:45 roll out of bed and scramble to get the kids ready for school, lunches packed, etc.
7:40 take Diego to school
8:45 take Celo to school
9:15-12 bits and pieces of the following: edit pictures, work on digital design, clean up the house, spend time with Eliana, run errands, do stuff for my church responsibilities, get dinner started, take Eliana on playdates or to the park, do some couponing, doctor’s appointments, meetings, and more.
12 –1:30 Celo comes home, lunch for Celo, PEPSI TIME for me, more editing, more digital design, answer emails and fb messages, spend some time online looking for a dress for my bro’s wedding, look into school stuff for Marcelo, etc.
1:40 go pick up Diego…for 15 to 20 blissful minutes I just sit in my car and read a book.
2:35 run errands if I couldn’t in the morning (ohmygosh walmart in the afternoon with 3 cranky kids is a nightmare…just fyi. I was in there one day and the lady in front of me in line was like, “You have the same face I do when I shop with my kids.” I like to call that Exasperated Poo Face.) If there are no errands, we go home and play for a bit inside, have an afternoon snack, work on Diego’s school stuff, go on a playdate, or just do something they think is fun.
4:00 Time for my 4 o’clock problem, which is the gaggle of neighborhood kids knocking on my door and wanting my kids to play outside, which means I have to choose, should I a) be a nice mom and go outside for awhile and stop Eliana from going into the street 857 times, or b) make them miss out on playing with their friends so I can make dinner and try to fold some laundry.
5:00 If I chose to be nice, I now make a quick dinner. If I made them miss out, we play or put on music or read and I work on school stuff with Diego. I try to do another quick clean up so the house isn’t trashed when Marcelo gets home.
6:00 Marcelo comes home and we eat.
6:30 clean up dinner and try to clean up other random messes while Marcelo plays with the kids and gets them ready for bed.
7:00 read books and do our bedtime routine.
7:30 kids are asleep, I want to be too, but instead I go sit at the computer and continue to work on stuff. On Wed and Thurs I watch tv with Marcelo for awhile before working some more. I never go to bed before 11, but most nights lately it’s more like 1am.

Add in soccer practice, Wed night mutual (church activities), and weeknight photoshoots, and projects I throw on myself like making my daughter a tutu. And whatever else I’m missing.

WHEW. It’s ca-razy. But it’s temporary!! 6 more weeks! I can do it!  I would also like to add that in the evenings when the kids are in bed and I’m working again, my wonderful husband who I love so much helps out with all the stuff I couldn’t get to. The man folds laundry, mops the floor, puts away the dishes, etc, and does all he can to relieve my stress and make things easier. He is amazing. I know he’s just as tired as I am, but the only way I’ve been able to make it through these crazy months is with him cheering me on, writing me texts through out the day saying, “Keep up the good work. You’ll pull through! Only a few more months of the craziness. You’re doing a great job.” I love him. Haha, he just saw me writing this and was tsk tsking that I’m wasting time blogging instead of culling my latest shoot. (Sorting through 1000s of pics and choosing the best.)

Also a big thanks to my awesome friends who also cheer me on, let me cry when I need to, and help me more than they know.  

So without further ado, here is the digital scrapbooking kit I’ve been working on all month. I’m slow at it, so it takes me forever. I worked so hard on this, so I wanted to share it here. It’ll be available sometime in the next few weeks at digitalexpressclub.com.
 

Papers:

Embellishments:

I’m sooooo glad to be done with it. I spent one night working until almost 2am trying to figure out how to make those dang animals. Definitely bit off more than I could chew when I agreed to make them a farm themed kit!

Okay. Back to editing. Aiming to be in bed by 11 tonight!

BRAIDS!

Eliana has been sick for the past few days, which means she has been extra calm and cuddly. While she was sitting in my lap I thought, her hair has got to be long enough for braids. I shall try it. And she sat still and let me do it!! I tried again today and she started to get over it during the second braid, but I distracted her with a book and she let me finish. Hooray!!! It’s cuteness overload, but at the same time it makes me want to cry because she looks so old.

I’m way behind on blogging, so maybe if I type out a ‘to blog” list I will make time to sit and blog it:

-Our last trip to the pool of the season.
-Our trip to Green Meadow Farms.
-Our 4pm problem. The problem is knocking on my door as I type this. Every. Stinking. Day.
-Diego’s soccer games.
-Celo’s scary health issues.
-Eliana wearing fall clothes. One word: BOOTS.

Lest I Forget…

The boys are happily playing, Eliana is asleep, and Marcelo is off getting a haircut. The laundry folding can wait a little while longer while I record a few memories before I forget them.

In no particular order:

--Celo came home from school one day so excited to open his backpack. He pulled out a ziplock bag and said, “Look what I got for you at school today!” It was a tiny flower that he picked from the playground. I thought it was so cute that 1) he picked a flower and wanted to save it for me, and 2) his teacher took the time to put it in a ziplock bag for him for safe keeping. Usually Celo keeps to himself and only thinks about playing, eating sweets, and playing some more. But every once in awhile, he does something so sweet and melts my heart!

--Diego is doing really well in school and absolutely loves it. He gets so sad if he’s sick and has to miss a day. There is a color based behavior chart a school (I feel like I already wrote this…did I?) so everyday I ask him what color he was on. All the kids start the day on green. If they do something extra good, they get on blue. If they’re extra EXTRA good, they go up to purple. If they have to be told something more than once or don’t listen or make a bad choice, they go on yellow. If they still don’t correct the behavior after that, they go on red and get a note sent home. So far, Diego has been on green, blue, and purple. It took Celo about 2 weeks to figure out that as soon as Diego gets into the car each day, I ask him what color he was on. In that second week, he started asking Diego what color he was on before I could ask. Their conversation went like this:

Celo: What color were you on today, Diego?

Diego: I was on green. What color were you on?

Celo: Um, I was on orange.

Diego: Is orange good?

Celo: Yeah, it’s really good.

At first I thought, oh…I guess Celo’s school has a color chart, too. But on another day when Celo’s response was, “I was on the yellow triangle” I realized that the “color” he’s talking about is what color shape he sits on during circle time on the shape mat. It was hilarious to hear him report, “Today I was on the green circle,” and then Diego would ask, “Is that good?” And Celo would say, “Yup! That one’s really good.” They don’t have this conversation daily anymore, but it’s still pretty often and makes me smile every time.

--Celo is completely in love with construction vehicles. He knows so much about them. He knows their names, what they’re used for….he can’t get enough. He watches Mighty Machines almost everyday, and recently checked out 6 construction books from the library. And not the ones that are cutesy cartoony. No. He wanted the ones from the reference section that explain what each one does. Graders, excavators, bobcats, front end loaders, backhoe loaders, cement mixers, skid steers, cherry pickers, rollers….he knows and loves them all. There’s construction going on on the way to Diego’s school and Celo loves to drive by there and see them all working. One day, Celo asked when he’d be done with school and we explained that it wouldn’t be for a long time and that he wouldn’t be done until he went to college. He asked what that was and the way we explained it was that it was a school you go to when you’re big and you get to choose what you want to learn about so you can become whatever you want to become, like a doctor, or an engineer, or a fireman, or anything you want. He said, “I’m going to be a construction worker so I’m going to go learn about construction.” A few weeks later, as we were putting him to bed, he asked, “Mommy, what’s the name of that school where I’m going to learn about construction?” I said, “College?” He got a big happy smile on his face and said, “Yeah! College. I’m going to go there to learn how to drive construction vehicles.” Then last night at the dinner table he talked for about 10 minutes straight telling us all about what he’s going to do when he grows up. He’s going to build things with construction vehicles. He’s going to build a mommy store that’s just for mommies and he’s going to build a big Target that connects to our local Target, and he’s going to build a big mall and inside this mall he’s going to have a Chick-fil-a and a mommy store, and a table that has flowers and food on it and a flower store and a toy store. He’s got big dreams.

--Eliana has become a hitter. A bully. An angry little dress wearing monster who slaps whoever is in sight and rips the hair straight out of her friends’ heads. She’s aggressive. She-e’s aggressive. Neither one of my boys were hitters so this is new to me and I don’t know how to teach a 16 month old not to hit. Whenever she smacks me in the face or hits her brothers, I grab her hand and say, “No! We don’t hit. Be soft.” And then show her how to be soft. Most of the time she strokes my cheek softly when I do that. Other times she smacks me again. But the best is when she leans in a kisses me right where she smacked me and then smiles sweetly like nothing ever happened. And then I forgive her immediately telling myself, “She only hit me because I provoked her. I deserved it. I know she loves me.” But the abuse must stop!! Someone help me.

--Eliana says lots of words and is pretty good at communicating what she wants. Most of the time. Lately, I’ve been trying to work on teaching her eyes, nose, mouth, hands, feet. When we’re looking at books and I try to point that stuff out, she gets really annoyed and closes the book. When I try to play with her and make her point out her body parts, she usually lasts for one round of “Where’s your _____?” before she walks away. So the other day after I dropped Celo off at school, I strapped Eliana into her carseat and thought, “Hey…she can’t get away from me right now, so I’m going to try the ‘where’s your ____ game.” I asked her where her nose was and she pointed at it. I asked her where her feet were and she just ignored me, so I pointed at her feet. I asked her where her eyes were and she just looked at me and started waving and said, “Byyyyyeeee.” As if to say, “You can go away now. Go get in your seat. I’m done talking to you. Why don’t you put a lid on it?”

Speaking of putting a lid on it, this is her subtle way of telling me to put my camera away.

Advil? Really?

This week has been full of illness in our house, so it has taken me almost a week to finally post this. It all started Sunday. We had only been at church for about 45 minutes when I realized that Celo was being unusually cuddly with me because he was running a fever. Luckily we had come in two cars, so Marcelo took him and Eliana home, where Celo laid around feeling miserable. My dear, sweet husband let me take a nap after church, and when I woke up at 5:30, he had just put Celo to bed. He said, “He still had a fever, so I gave him some children’s Advil at 5, and by 5:30, he was so tired, he couldn’t keep his eyes open.” I thought Celo going to bed at 5:30 was a really bad idea, because it meant that he’d probably be wide awake at 5am and I was really not looking forward to that. So around 6, Marcelo woke him up and and gave him a drink. Celo’s eyes were a little puffy at this point, but we thought he had just been rubbing them too much because he always does that when he’s sick. He told us he was very sleepy, so we let him go back to bed. Thirty minutes later, I got a feeling I should check on him again. I walked in and he sat up half crying, saying, “I feel like I can’t breathe.” That’s when I noticed his eyelids were very, very swollen. I scooped him up and took him to Marcelo and said, “Something is very wrong.” Celo told us both again that he felt like he couldn’t breathe. His face looked puffy and his eyelids were really pink and swollen. Marcelo quickly got his shoes on and told me to call the hospital and tell them he was on his way. He grabbed Diego’s Epipen just in case and the two Marcelos rushed out the door to the ER.

I put Eliana to bed right away and brought Diego to my room to read some books before putting him to bed. But he couldn’t focus on the books because he was traumatized by what had just happened. He started crying while I was reading and said, “Mommy, I’m scared that Celo’s eyes are so puffy. I can’t stop thinking about Celo. I want him to be okay.” It took everything for me not to just start bawling. He was so so worried about his brother and was just sobbing. I told him we could say a prayer so that Celo would be okay and that made him feel a little better. He said, “Can we call Tata and Tato and ask them to say a prayer, too? So we did. Then he said, “I want to see a picture of Celo when he was happy.” We then spent about an hour looking through pictures and videos on the computer. He would laugh at an old picture of Celo and then he’d stop suddenly and look at me with teary eyes and say, “Even though I’m laughing right now I still really miss Celo.” For the 3 hours that Marcelo and Celo were gone, Diego said things like “I miss Celo. I know he misses me, too, because we’re always together at nighttime and right now we’re not.” or “I’m so sad my brother is not here.” or “I don’t want Celo to have puffy eyes, I want him to look happy.” Marcelo kept updating me with texts and Diego wanted to know right away, “Is that a message from Daddy? What did he say? Are they coming home yet?” Twice, he called me and we let the boys talk to each other on the phone. Diego said, “Celo are you sad? Because I’m sad.” He also said, “I miss you.” To which Celo responded, “I love you, too.” It was all very sweet and made me teary. By 9pm I was desperate to get Diego to sleep because he normally goes to bed by 7:30pm and I knew waking up the next morning was going to be rough for him if he didn’t go to sleep soon. But even with me next to him, he just couldn’t shut his worried little brain off. Finally at about 10pm, he fell asleep. (The next morning he said, “You were right. I should have gone to bed early. I’m so tired. You should have made me go to sleep early.” Yeah. My fault.)

The Marcelos came home at about 10:30 and filled me in on everything that had happened. Marcelo said that by the time they got to the hospital, Celo’s eyes were completely swollen shut. They determined that he had had an allergic reaction to Advil (that was his first time taking it). Because Celo was complaining about his breathing, and because of the swelling in his eyes and a little in his face, they gave him a shot of epinephrine, (lower dose than in Diego’s EpiPen), and a ton of benadryl. For the next few hours they just watched him to make sure the swelling was going down and to make sure the worst of the reaction was over. This is what Celo looked like when they got home:

The swelling was way down, but didn’t go away completely for about 24 hours. He was SO hyper when he got home. He was talking really fast and telling me all about his hospital visit. “And there was a bed and it had buttons and I could press them and there was a thing that looked like a robot and it was funny and there were boy doctors and girl doctors and the floor was white and there was a trash can that had needles in it and they gave me a shot but it didn’t bleed so I didn’t need a band-aid and I cried because it hurt a little bit and I played with Daddy and and and…” Marcelo later told me that after they gave Celo the meds, he got really loopy and then really talkative and just “talked my ear off for the whole time”. He said it was pretty hilarious to listen to all the random things Celo wanted to talk about during their long wait. I wish he had had a video camera with him.

It was definitely a scary experience, but he’s okay now. I had no idea anyone could be allergic to Advil. What the heck is the deal with my kids being allergic to random stuff?? Now we’re afraid to give him Motrin because both Motrin and Advil have ibuprofen. Celo has had Motrin before, but it’s been a really long time since we gave him any, so it’s possible that he’d be allergic to that one, too. It’s also possible that he’s not allergic to the ibuprofen in Advil but the NSAID or the flavoring or dye that was in it. Wish I knew for sure.

Celo stayed home for the next two days with a fever and slight cold. Wednesday was illness free. Then Thursday evening, Diego and Eliana both got fevers. Friday morning, they both had a fever of 102 and we ended up at the doctor’s office. Eliana was wheezing pretty bad and lost her voice. We’ve been nebulizing her and trying to get her to eat, but all she has had is milk, a couple of crackers, and a popsicle. She has no appetite and just wants to be held. Last night, Marcelo and I felt like we had a newborn again because we were up with her for most of the night. Her fever just wouldn’t go down. We gave her 5 baths, medicine, put a wet rag on her head, and tried to get her drink something, but when she wouldn’t, we gave her a popsicle. Good thing that girl likes sweets. It was a very long night with our miserable baby girl. It was so so sad. She’s usually soooo tough. She recently slipped and scratched and bruised her face on some rocks and she literally cried for 20 seconds and was over it. But last night, it was clear that she was in pain and felt awful. This morning she woke up in much better spirits and with less of a fever, so hopefully last night was the worst of it.

Oh, Health, how I take thee for granted sometimes.

Catching Up and Backyard Fun

Life is absolutely crazy right now. But who’s isn’t, really? Between school drop offs and pickups, keeping my 15 month old entertained, laundry, church responsibilities, feeding my family, photo shoots, photo editing, soccer practice, and more laundry, I end the night pretty tired. So I thought, hey, why not pick up another side gig? And have begun selling digital scrapbooking kits again. At least I only have to turn one in every month or two, so it’s not like I added a ton more to my plate. It was a huge blessing for us last week when I sold two kits. It really could not have come at a better time and I’m so grateful that for our entire marriage, God has opened little doors for me to be able to help out when it’s needed.

With all the photo shoots I’ve been doing for others, I haven’t taken the time to take pics of my own kids for quite awhile. So the other day, I asked the kids if they wanted to play in the backyard and strapped on my camera. Luckily they didn’t even mind that I had a hidden agenda! Diego loves getting his picture taken and poses like a pro, Celo has gotten a lot more used to it and obliges, but Eliana….oh Eliana. She’s pretty stubborn about looking at the camera. I have to be quick like a cat. Ready for the overload? Some have my watermark on them because I posted them on facebook.

Diego recently cut his own hair again with a razor. A razor! When we asked him about it, he completely lied to our faces. We said, “Diego, we can see that there is a spot of hair missing, so you need to tell us the truth.” He said, “The shower did that.” It took 2 hours for him to finally fess up.

Celo and his beloved puppy. Wonder how old he’ll be when he tires of this little guy. I’ve sewn him back up many many times.

Then there’s the Princess of Spunk. Such a character, this one. I really need to cut her bangs but I keep putting it off because I’m afraid that one of these times I’m going to mess it up.

Eliana climbed into the truck and tried to drive it from the passenger’s side. I love putting her in pigtails.

But sometimes she doesn’t want pigtails. And then we get this.

 

I know this picture is blurry, but it cracks me up. She loved it when Diego pulled her in the wagon as fast as his little legs could go.

She loves trying to buckle things. I asked the boys to climb into the wagon with her so I could take a picture of the 3 of them.

It took so many tries to get a decent shot!! I made the boys say “CHEEEEESE” really loud, knowing that Eliana wants to do everything her brothers do. But then she just wanted to look at them while she said “EEEEEEE”.

FINALLY! Best I could do.

I love this one. Her hand on Diego’s arm is so sweet.

There it is again resting on his leg. She always wants to be involved in whatever her brothers are doing.

So much love.

But these last two are my favorites of all. I was calling Eliana in hopes that she would turn over her shoulder to look at me, but instead she stopped in her tracks and looked at me upside down.

How many more years do I have of taking their picture before they exclaim, “MOM! Cut it out!!!”?

Prayers, Drama, Cheese, and Nie

Tomorrow, Celo has to go to the doctor and get shots. When we were going to bed, he insisted on saying the prayer. In his prayer he said, “And please bless than we don’t have to go to the doctor tomorrow, and please bless that I don’t have to get shots. And please bless that I can just have a lot of fun tomorrow with no shots.” It was a really fantastic try, but he’s still getting shots.

***

Diego got in trouble for slamming Celo’s arm into the door today. (Celo is fine.) I had told him to stop opening and closing his bedroom door, but he ignored me and continued to torture Celo by telling him he was not allowed to go into the room and closing the door in his face. I saw what was coming, and indeed it came. So Diego got sent to time out while I iced Celo’s wrist. From the bedroom, I could hear, “YOU’RE MAKING ME HAVE THE BADDEST DAY I’VE EVER HAD!!!!” So. much. drama.

***

Lastly, this is the face Eliana now makes when I point the camera at her. I don’t even have to say anything. I point the camera at her and this is what she does:

Just take a look at that double chin. Where does she get it? I have no idea since she basically drinks milk and eats a small cup of yogurt for breakfast, a handful of grapes for lunch, and a handful of peas for dinner. Homegirl is picky. But she just keeps gaining weight! I did allow 2 big chocolate chip cookies today, which was quite possibly the biggest mistake I’ve made in a long time since she didn’t stop screaming for 2 hours while she begged for another and I refused to give her more. I tried crackers, bread, fruit, juice, milk, and she just threw everything I handed her and then pointed towards the cookies and said, “Eeees?” (Please.) I’m pretty sure all that screaming also had a lot to do with the fact that her daily 3 hour nap has been cut down to 1 and a half because of our school schedules. She has been so cranky this week! I even tried to go for a second nap today, but she wasn’t having it. She went to bed promptly at 7pm. Hopefully she gets used to the schedule soon.

Is her hair not the funniest thing ever? It’s just so funny to me.

Lastly, I have been following Stephanie Nielson’s blog since her accident 3 years ago, and when I read today that she’s pregnant I just sat at my computer and cried. Sometimes I am just so struck and amazed by my loving Heavenly Father. Reading Stephanie’s news just gave me this flood of grateful feelings and an overwhelming sense of hope. Not hope for anything in particular, just more like a grateful feeling that even though God puts trials in our lives, He always gives us hope. Does that make sense? It’s hard to write out exactly what I felt today.

Anyway, those are my random thoughts for the day!

First Day of School 2011

Last Thursday Celo had his first day of 4 yr old Preschool. He’s in the VPK program this year and goes everyday from 9am to 12pm. (Last year he went MWF from 9:15 to 12:15.) His teacher is Ms. Tracey and the teacher’s assistant is Ms. Dee and there are 15 kids in his class. Celo missed the first day of school because he was getting over a bug, so I was worried that Thursday was going to be hard. But he woke up soooo excited and I didn’t even have to fight him to brush his teeth, get dressed, or any of the usual morning battles. He couldn’t wait to go to school.

He picked out this backpack, even though he has never seen anything Spiderman related. He also picked out this outfit for the first day of school. An old, hand me down faded t-shirt.

While he was at school, Diego (who wasn’t starting school for another couple of days) and I made him a brownie with a one on to to make that first day extra special. Diego got to eat it too because I made it with egg whites. (I wrote a post a couple months ago all about the fact that Diego is no longer allergic to egg whites but blogger ate it and I haven’t re-written in yet. Gotta do that soon.) Celo loved the surprise and had a great first day!

Diego had his first day of Kindergarten today. He had been nervous about it for a couple of weeks, which was making it extra hard for me. When we went to the teacher meet and greet last Friday, he clung to me the whole time and refused to try to talk to his classmates. I could tell by how hard he was squeezing my hand that he was very scared and nervous about the whole thing. I kept talking it up and saying what a big kid he is, but he’d just look at himself and say, “No I’m not! Look at my size. I’m not big yet.” Last night, as I packed his lunch and got ready for today, I kept tearing up thinking, “How is he already a Kindergartener? He’s my little baby! How is he going to handle being at ‘big school’ all day? What if someone is mean to him? What if he accidentally eats something he can’t eat?” I was a mess.

When I was packing Celo’s snack and Diego’s lunch, Marcelo was like, “Let me do the napkins!” He wanted to do it just like his mom used to do. When the boys came home I asked them what they thought about their napkins. Celo thought it was funny that he had a heart with a face on it. Diego said, “I could only see part of it because my ice pack got it all wet and made a hole in it.” Whoops.

This was me right before bed, dreading the following morning. Yes, I am aware of how tired I look. That’s kind of a permanent thing.

Diego came into my room at 6:15 this morning and whispered, “Is it time to get up?” I told him no and assured him that I would get him in a little while. By 6:30, he was sitting in front of the tv, tired of waiting for me. It really wasn’t hard to wake up because I had first day jitters just as much as he did. He loves getting his picture taken, so once he was all ready, he asked me “When are you taking my picture” for like 15 minutes. Even though we got an early start, the morning was still quite the scramble. Hopefully I’ll get the hang of it soon, but I see a lot of frazzled mornings in our future.

Here is my big kindergartener! Tears. (Mine, not his.) Instead of doing a shirt this year, I wanted something more subtle, so I got him a button. He loved it because of the stop sign. When I met his teacher, I felt confident that she’s going to be on top of his allergies, so I doubt that I’ll have him wear the pin tomorrow. I’ll leave it up to him.

Diego picked out a plain backpack. At first he wanted puppies. I said no. Puppies on a lavender background. Nope. I’m sure he’ll thank me one day.

Celo and I made him this big giant chocolate chip cookie using this recipe (modified for his alleriges….only smart balance instead of butter, egg whites instead of whole eggs, and ghirardelli semi-sweet chocolate chips).  Yum. I’ve already eaten way too much of it.

Cracks me up the way he poses for pictures.

Even though today wasn’t Celo’s first day of school, I made the boys take a pic with signs. I’d like to make it a tradition for as long as they let me.

(We really need to start working on the outside of the house. Paint, landscaping, etc.)

See Celo wearing a striped shirt again. The kid only wants to wear stripes to school. I even had to separate his striped shirts in his drawer so he can find them easily. It cracks me up because Diego kind of hates striped shirts.

(* Third day of school for Celo.)

It took 30 minutes of sitting in the car loop to finally pick Diego up today. I’m tempted to just get to the school later so I don’t have to wait as long, but then poor Diego would have to sit out in the heat for longer. And if I get their really early so I can be one of the first to pick him up or to have a shorter waiting time, that would mean I’d have to wake Eliana up even earlier from her nap. I had to wake her up after just an hour and a half today, and it is now 5:40pm and she’s a major crankerina. She usually takes 3 hour naps, so the poor girl is exhausted. Slowly we’ll figure out this schedule.

When Diego got in the car he told me he loved it and that he had a lot of fun and a great day. His one disappointment was that they didn’t get to play on the playground during their outside time today. I’m thinking that was because there was about to be a torrential downpour.

It’s hard not to see this as the beginning of them growing up.   I still get Celo for most of the day this year, but it’s sooooo sad for Diego’s time at home with me to be over. Diego’s teacher tortured us with a letter she handed out as we were leaving the classroom. This is what it said:

The First Day

I gave you a little wink and smile
As you entered my room today.
For I know how hard it is to leave
And know your child must stay.
You’ve been with them for five years now
And have been a loving guide,
But now, alas, the time has come
To leave them at my side.
Just know that as you drive away
And tears down your cheeks may flow
I’ll love them as I would my own
And help them learn and grow.
For as a parent, I too know
How quickly the years do pass
So please put your mind at ease
And cry those tears no more
For I will love them and take them in
When you leave them at my door.
Love,
Ms. Wilkinson

What the heck?? If I wasn’t already going to cry, this definitely pushed me over the edge. Thanks, lady! I read the first 3 lines and teared up and decided it wasn’t a good idea to read it just yet. I went to the Boo Hoo breakfast and pulled it together because Celo was with me and I didn’t want to cry in front of him. After I dropped him off at school, I read the whole thing and cried in my car. My own sad-mommy-fighting-change feelings aside, I am so so proud of my boys for how great they did! I’m excited for the new adventures they’ll have and hope that our time apart will make our moments together that much more special! I love these boys oh so very much.