The wheels on the bus

I got a message on my voicemail today that our car is finished and ready to be picked up. They never called to say what exactly was wrong with it, so I assume that means it was nothing major. We are, however, considering switching mechanics to a place that specializes in our type of car.

After a day that included much ferrying around with our one working car, we are pretty excited to have the second one back in action. However, yesterday, I took the kids on a big public transit adventure and I want to write about it before I forget.

I took the kids to an awesome storytime at a local cafe last week and I had promised Mateo we would go again this week, so I wanted to follow through. The cafe is several miles away, but on a direct bus line that stops about a third of a mile (I just looked it up) from our house. I decided I would take the kids on the bus. It was a short enough trip that it seemed doable and would give me a chance to get over the intimidation factor getting them both on and off public transit by myself.

The storytime starts at 10 am. We needed to catch the bus at 9:30 to make it on time. That meant leaving the house by 9:15. Come 9:00, Teo and I were ready but Talia was still snoozing. She loves to sleep in. I think this will be good if Teo ever starts sleeping in, but for right now, it doesn't do us much good in terms of getting extra sleep.

9:10 rolled around and she still wasn't awake. I began to realize that she would want to eat when she woke up, but I wouldn't have time to feed her if we were going to catch the bus. I had a bottle of Sacha's pumped milk in my bag, but it was cold and she just won't take cold milk from me. She will from other people, but maybe she knows that I'm wrapped around her little finger and will compliantly warm her bottle for her whenever she wants. And I will, so she clearly knows what she's doing!

Anyway, I woke her up, rushed her into a new diaper and new clothes and into the Ergo and off we went. I stuffed the bottle into my back pocket and hoped it would warm up fast! We got to the bus stop ahead of schedule, with Mateo chatting away in his stroller the whole way.

That brings me to the stroller. We have two strollers. One is a lightweight umbrella stroller that can go anywhere. That one was in the car with Sacha at work. (Actually, I thought the umbrella stroller was in the volvo at the time, but actually we had it in the civic and could have used it after all. Oops.) The other stroller is, as our mailman noted, the Cadi.llac of strollers. It is a great ride and can carry your kid and all your stuff with no problem, but it is a tank. In my usual way, I decided that we had to have a stroller to make this trip and that, even though the stroller was big, that we would figure out what to do with it when actually faced with the actual bus.

As we were waiting for the bus, I attempted to feed Talia her bottle. It was still too cold and she opted not to take it. Instead, she slobbered all over the front of my shirt, making it appear that I was having some major leaking problems. Simultaneously, I formulated a plan. When the bus pulled into view, I would take Teo out of the stroller and hold his hand. I would help him walk onto the bus and then I would bring the stroller on, fold it down, and put it under the seat for our ride. Piece of cake, right?

Well, it turns out that our stroller really is big. And those bus aisles really are small! I got Mateo on the bus and then proceeded to accidentally knock him over with the diaper bag on my back as I turned around to grab the stroller. Luckily, he was gaping at the bus (which he has been on before, by the way) and seemed unfazed. I then got stuck at the front of the stroller and had to sort of drag it down the aisle to our seats. I attempted to stuff it under the seat, but it was still so big that it stuck out halfway and partially blocked the path for other passengers.

However, the bottle had finally warmed up enough for Talia to drink most of it on the way. And, we got off the bus with no major problems. We made it to storytime early and had a nice time, complete with stories, songs, snacks, and general playing.

The way back was more sticky, because the bus was more crowded and I was more tired. And, there were no seats in the parallel rows in front, so I tried to lean the stroller against where we were sitting mid-bus. The driver then suggested I bring the behemoth up to the front and put it on the platform by the door. However, since he didn't stop driving the bus for me to do this, I had to pick up the freaking thing and navigate to the front with a baby on my front, and then wrestle it onto the platform thing, which was really not built to hold a folded up stroller, without falling over.

All I can say about that I have done easier things in my life. You would think someone might have offered to help, but, sadly, no one did. Getting the stroller off the platform and getting it off the bus was also an adventure, but we all made it off the bus and it drove away and our adventure was complete. Whew!

I learned two things from the whole process. One, it is completely doable to take two kids on the bus. I know, people do it all the time, but I never had and now I feel pretty confident in doing it. The real problem was the stroller, not the kids. The second thing I learned was that I will never again take that f***ing stroller on a bus. I will take the umbrella stroller or nothing!

That concludes our adventure for this week. Here's a photo to wrap it all up. I love seeing the kids start to interact more and more:

Today

We had a lovely weekend, except for one of our cars abruptly dying on the freeway. It's rather old and we got it for free from some very generous family members, so I guess it wasn't surprising, but it was kind of a bummer, nonetheless. We're hoping it can be fixed for less than what it's worth! We've suddenly started debating the merits of getting another car versus becoming a one-car family.

Highlights of the weekend included an amazing clothing sale that netted us most of the warm clothes Mateo will need for the next couple of years. Plus shoes. Plus a new diaper pail. Plus some toys. All for a grand total of $120.

Also, we were lucky to have friends watch Mateo for several hours on Saturday, while I was at an all-day cpr training, and to have Apa and his friend M step in to cover the kids so Sacha could wait on the side of I-5 with me for an hour for the tow truck to show up.

Today, we had brunch with Apa (including bacon, which I am obsessed with right now) and it was sunny and glorious and warm outside. You might have noticed that the photos above feature M without any clothes on at all. He is really, really, really into being naked right now. One of the most common phrases we hear these days is "You want to be naked!!" He says "you" when he means "I". And so we often just let him be naked. Today he was kicking an empty milk carton up and down the sidewalk and squealing loudly while wearing only his birthday suit. Hopefully the neighbors weren't too scandalized!

The last fabulous thing we did this weekend was go Liam's birthday party at The Little Gym! Fun! Mateo had a blast and got to run around and try all sorts of gymnastics equipment. His favorite things were walking on the balance beam and learning to do a somersault with some help. It was a really fun party and a nice end to the weekend.

Tummy time

Natalia has been having a diaper rash and so we have been trying to give her some air time. This afternoon she was having both tummy time and air time at the same time, and so I had her lying down on a cloth diaper to protect the carpet.

Mateo walks in with his Frosty Bear (a kid-sized ice pack, because he had a little fall earlier and needed some ice comfort) and puts frosty bear on his "tummy," face down on the carpet. Mateo then says, "Frosty bear has tummy time too!"

Then, Mateo lies down on his tummy and says, "Mateo have tummy time too. Mommy, have tummy time."

I lie down on my tummy and we all enjoy the calm moment.

Then, Mateo looks at Natalia and asks what she is lying on. I say that it is a cloth diaper, and so he decides he needs to lie on a cloth diaper (on top of the underwear he is wearing.) "Mateo lie on diaper."

Mateo then looks at frosty bear and says, "Frosty bear needs diaper." He walks over to the bucket and gets out a cloth diaper for frosty bear. And then . . . who do you think he decides needs a diaper?

Mommy!

So, we all had tummy time lying on cloth diapers!

I love our children sooo much.

Days and nights

I think I might be about to write a post about something other than parenting. Woah. Could it be possible?

I've been at my job now for close to a month and I think I'm getting into the swing of things. When I first started, the whole facility was undergoing a change and didn't have many clients, so the people training me had tons of time to spend with me. It was a little overwhelming, as it was my first real exposure to the massive amounts of paperwork that come along with community mental health and county funding, but it gave me a pretty good picture of what I was going to be doing.

After two weeks, the facility started filling up again and my trainers became largely unavailable. At the same time, I started getting my own clients and situations started coming up and that made my work hours get busy very fast!

I've always had a major problem with procrastination. At school, at work, wherever. If I have too much unstructured time on my hands, I tend to procrastinate as long as possible before finally getting down to business. I've always gotten my work done and done a good job, but I'm not really one of those on-task-all-the-time type of person.

I am thrilled to have finally discovered a cure for my tendency to procrastinate. First, a time limit: I'm only there for five hours a day, so I don't have as much time as I used to. Second, too much to do: I have enough work to fill up a full-time job. I get to work and spend the whole time trying to get stuff done and putting out fires and finishing as much paperwork as I can. Then, bam!, it's 6:30 and time to go home.

Even though I have full mornings with the kids, it seems like that was another day by the time my work day is done. Vice versa, my mornings with the kids are so packed with feeding, nursing, changing diapers, sitting M on the potty, entertaining, reading, driving, cleaning, etc., that it seems like it's been a long time away when I get to work in the afternoon.

This is all very good for me. I feel like I'm getting stuff done and making some kind of a difference, even though really I'm just trying to not make too many big mistakes at this point. I feel productive. And I feel generally glad to have this job and very happy at home...although if you catch me at the end of a rough morning, I might not be singing quite the same tune :) I do feel much less guilty about leaving the kids, though.

Now my big problem is that by the time I get home and put Mateo to bed and Sacha and I have dinner, it's after 8 pm and I feel like I just got home. I want to have some time to unwind, but I know it would be better to go to bed right after Talia does around 9 pm. I hope that as we get more used to this routine, I'll get better at finding time for myself some other time and getting to bed so I can be more rested.

Natalia's three month letter

Dear Natalia,

Today is your three month birthday! This makes you 12 months old (from when you were conceived)! What an eventful 12 months and in particular three months it's been. We are just so happy that you are such a healthy girl and that we have had no repeat visits to the hospital since your first week.


You are just a happy camper most of the time. You love to smile, especially in the evenings. Your favorite time is around 7pm or 8pm, when the baby books say you should be sleeping. You like to smile, look at us in the eyes, coo and just have fun once the sun goes down. You have moved your bedtime from 11pm till around 9pm (with some gentle encouragement), but so far continue to be an evening girl. We really hope that you continue to move to an earlier bedtime, because we are not evening moms!

Most of the time you go down without more than 3 to 6 minutes of fussing. You are quite the contented sleeper. Frequently you sleep from 9pm till around 3 or 4am. And then a few more hours till you get up. Last night you slept from 9pm till 9am and just woke up at 3am and 5am to nurse! We sure enjoy the sleep we have been getting~

You are getting a lot stronger. You had your first forward-facing moby ride today and kept your head upright. We were also able to pull you up gently from lying on your back to standing by just holding your hands. You thought that was pretty great. You can bear your full weight when standing, although you are quite wobbly and need lots of help to balance :)


You have all sorts of fun sounds. You like to coo, especially in the evening. You sometimes attempt something that sounds like "goo" or "oooh", but your favorite sound by far is "oww". You appear that any day you might start laughing, but you haven't totally gotten there yet. Maybe by next month! You are such an engaging and smiley little girl.


You love your mommy's milk and are always quite happy to nurse. You even nurse from mama about once a day and seem to be doing fine with that so far. You also take one or two bottles during the mornings and seem to enjoy them. You've gotten your brother hooked on having a companionable morning bottle while you're having yours!


Speaking of your brother, it seems to us like you're starting to notice him a little more. When he's in your line of sight, you almost always smile and look at him. We know it won't seem like long before you're toddling around after him everywhere!


Natalia, you are a sweet, cuddly, and lovable presence in our family and we're just so happy to share our days and nights with you. We love you to the ends of the earth!

love,
Mommy and Mama

Legal

We had our second parent adoption ceremony for me and Natalia this morning. We got all dressed up and got there on time, which was a minor miracle in and of itself! The whole thing took about 30 seconds, but it was fun and a great relief to have all the legal stuff taken care of. As the big brother, Mateo got to "help" the judge sign the papers, which made him very proud. Then, we went out to brunch at a restaurant called, appropriately, Mother's.

Here's the photo from Mateo and Sacha's ceremony in January 2007:

Free

We got a new pediatrician recently, when M and I switched to Sacha's insurance, and she actually agreed that M's original blood lead levels had been high enough to warrant some concern. This was different from his original doctor's opinion, which had been that I should stop worrying. The lead levels had started to move down on his second test, but his old doctor had balked at ordering a third one. The new doc thought we should get him tested again to make sure the trend of them going down had continued. And so we did.

A couple of weeks ago, we got back the results of M's latest blood test and his lead levels were down to being essentially undetectable!

Needless to say, this was a huge relief. It also made me feel rather validated, after a year of repainting, mopping, wiping down surfaces, and generally trying to contain the lead dust that seemed to be circulating around us.

As I've mentioned here several times, the whole thing has really stressed me out. When we got the blood test results back, I felt like it had all been worth it - all the cleaning and such, which had started when Sacha was newly pregnant, sick and tired all the time, and I really didn't need another thing to add to my plate - because now we have a lead-free boy again!

Turns out, we have a lead-free house, too. What?? I know. On the very day we got the test results back, we got our house tested. We had finally decided to do it. A guy from an environmental testing firm came out (who had tested my aunt and uncle's house a few years back) and took paint samples from all our rooms and one windowsill and one door. Mateo followed him all around the house in fascination, gleefully showing off his toys as the guy tried to work. It was pretty funny.

A few days ago, a letter with the results came in the mail. It basically said that we have no lead paint in our house. The threshold is something like 5,000 parts per something (million? billion?) and our highest number was 1,800 (which was in our bedroom, of all places). Most of the other walls were much lower than that - 50 to 500, for the most part. Even the window trim, which seemed the most likely candidate for lead, showed nothing major. Certainly, there is some lead in our paint, but not enough for it to qualify as lead paint. Not anywhere near enough.

This made us simultaneously ecstatic and confused. Ecstatic for obvious reasons, and confused because M obviously got it from somewhere. We did have a heating grate in our bathroom that he used to play with and that we replaced because it was unquestionably covered with lead paint. Or, he may have played with a questionable toy or something like that. Or eaten some dirt outside. Who knows. I wish we did know, so we could avoid that thing in the future...but mostly I'm just happy to not have to be so worried about our house anymore.

And, I'm sort of hoping our new cleaning routines have become ingrained over the last year, because it sure is nice to live in a clean and freshly mopped house - especially without the fear of lead poisoning hanging over our heads!

Strep

Last night I thought my fever broke, but this morning it became clear that I still had a fever. After talking with my parents, they thought I should go to urgent care to find out if I had strep. I was doubtful that it would actually be a positive test, but yes, I do have strep.

I just really hope the kids don't get it and that Alayna stays healthy! And, I must say thank the universe for antibiotics, modern medicine and good health insurance.

Having watched the kids for four hours with a 101 fever, it is not something I want to do again. . . on the other hand, I feel like if I can do that, I can do anything.

Many, many thanks to our amazing community and Zenaido and Ronnie from rescuing me and giving me a chance to rest for the second half of the day yesterday!

Wish me healing thoughts!

The day

We had quite the day over here. Sacha had a yucky day at work and on top of that is sick. She came home and took her temperature and it was 101. So she is in bed. But only after spending the afternoon with our little people. It sucks to be sick and not be able to just crash out in bed. I think she deserves the mom of the week medal!

Meanwhile, the kids and I had a morning packed with socializing, which was fun. We had a playdate and made waffles! Then I went to work and it was just nonstop till I left, late.

After I got home, we were talking about how we thought, by the third week of our new schedule, that we would be getting into the swing of things, but instead it seems that we're just getting busier. I guess that's the way it goes. Yay for Friday! And, for Apa and our friends Ronnie and Lili, who came to the rescue this afternoon by entertaining both kids and then taking them out to dinner so Sacha could rest.

Anyway, the reason I started writing this was that after I finally got home, I nursed Mateo and then spent a few minutes cuddling him before I put him down. As I was holding him, I thought how there's just nothing like snuggling with your sleepy child right before bedtime. It is the best. I know that this time of getting to hold those trusting little bodies is going to be very short in the overall scheme of things and I'm just so glad to get to experience it right now.

Poses

For no real reason, other than the fun of posing a wobbly baby, I keep trying to recreate this picture we took of Teo when he was about two months old.


Here are my most recent attempts with Talia:





Also, I just have to post one more of our son in his bucket. He loves playing in this thing more than life itself, practically. He just climbs right in and will play there for as long as we let him. Looking at his eyes, it's pretty amazing how they've lightened up since he was a little guy...

Jogging

I took the kids to the park today, or at least I tried to. A fabulous park in a different part of town. I loaded them both in the car and did my very best to keep M awake until we got there, but he fell asleep anyway. I was going to wake him up and everything until I noticed that the baby was also asleep. I had achieved the holy grail of napping and we were all stuck in the car!

So, I sat there for two hours while they both slept. I tried to rest but mostly I listened to a lot of public radio. I also got to watch a group of mamas in a baby bootcamp class working out at the park. As they lifted weights and ran around with their children in jogging strollers, I started thinking about the last time I actually worked out. It was...well, I couldn't remember when it was. Back in the mists of time. I began to wonder if I could even run as far around the park as the bootcamp ladies were. I used to run a lot, in high school and college, and even after I stopped doing that as much, I worked out regularly. Not so much since our little munchkins came on the scene.

Anyway, I went out and bought a brand new sports bra this afternoon. That had been my major roadblock to working out, because my old ones didn't fit and I needed something to support my poor milk-filled boobs if I was actually going to get anywhere with this.

There were a million choices, but luckily I found a good one and then (after I handed over an arm and a leg to pay for it) Sacha sprung me for a few minutes so I could actually go running! I ran for five minutes, which wasn't much but it totally wore me out, so I guess it was a good place to start. Hopefully I can keep up with this and get back into better shape!

Sleeping in a bed

I/m writing this one handed,while Natalia nurses! Our newest challenge in the sleep department is getting Natalia to sleep in her bed. She had been sleeping most nights in her bouncy chair. Then she moved to sleeping for the first bit of the night (till she woke up) in her cosleeper, and then the rest and majority of the night in her bouncy chair. We decided two days ago that it was time she started sleeping in her bed for night time, before bad habits are made, and are hard to break.

The first night she was up almost every two hours. That was rough. As one of our friends said, that was more like normal two-month-old sleeping behavior, but we liked her outrageously great sleeping behavior much better :)

As of last night, though, things were starting to go better. She got a great stretch of sleep from 9pm to 4am, and then till 7am. If we could just have another night like that! We're crossing our fingers and hoping that was the start of a trend...

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Here is one cute thing Mateo said this last week. He was looking at a basketball and said, "Ball." Then, he was playing with a freckle I have on my neck and said, "What's that?" I said, "It's a freckle."

Mateo thought for a while and then said, "Freckleball." So, that is what my freckles are now called, "freckleballs."

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One the Spanish front, I've been mostly speaking in Spanish during the afternoons. Also, Alayna and I are taking tutoring via Webspanish. We both think the tutoring is fabulous and I think it is way better than any of the online tutoring places I've found. You can take a trial lesson for $5!

Also, I finally found some decent videos for kids in Spanish: .Vamos a Jugar.

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This is Alayna now. We're finally starting to come up for air after two weeks of adjusting to our new routine. It's actually going pretty well and I'm liking my job so far, although the first week was tough. By the Friday of that week, I was in tears before I left for work. This past week was much better and I finally got to start doing parts of my job, instead of just training and training, so that was good. I have my first actual client this week, so hopefully that will go well.

Sacha and I have both been enjoying our time with the kids and we've taken them all over the place. We've been to the zoo, the park, the store, friends' houses, on walks, etc. We're both getting much more confident being on our own with them.

Our new schedule is still running us ragged, though. Between work time and kid time, we both have 12-hour days every weekday and then after that we're up with the baby until whenever she goes to sleep. I'm sure we'll adjust and it will be no big deal, but right now we're zombies by the end of the day. Not sure why we picked now to transition Talia to her cosleeper, but we just felt like the time had come. We're really hoping she adjusts fast, because we don't have many reserves to work with in the sleep department.

Finally, we wanted to send out two big thank yous from the past week. Our friends Joanie and Jane dropped by and took the kids to the park yesterday afternoon so we could have some free time. We went out to dessert and then worked in the garden in the beautiful sun. Today, we went to see Apa and he cooked us a lovely chili dinner and let Mateo play with his friends' humongous Bernese mountain dogs. The whole thing was a big hit with all of us. Thanks, guys!

Kidlets

Some photos.

Here are the kids cuddling in M's favorite chair. Talia's chubbing up and Teo is turning into a tall little beanpole:



Teo and Talia with their very proud Apa:


And this video, taken yesterday morning. M spent at least an hour in that bucket, with a few breaks for warm water replacement. And, we canned some pears that finally ripened after we picked them about a week ago. Happy Labor Day!