End of the impromptu hiatus

It seems to have been quite a long time since last we blogged! We've had a busy two weeks, including a week of Sacha being on spring break. Since I have no hope of catching up if I attempt a full rendition of everything that happened since the dentist post, I'm just going to do bullet points.

Marshall the dentist continues to play an active role in our house. Since our dentist visit, Mateo has been very excited about brushing his teeth and even flossing the front two. We're thrilled that his first dentist visit was such a positive one!

We had a rather traumatic few days immediately following the dental visit. Among the things that happened:

• Sacha had been experiencing pain and sensitivity in her right eye for several days and finally went to the doctor. After ruling out any major problems, the doctor found...wait for it...a piece of saran wrap in her eye. It was about a centimeter in diameter and apparently had been hanging out in there for three days! We have no idea how it got in there, but she was very glad when they fished it out.
• However, a few days later, as Sacha was attempting to find the hidden key to our friends' house, so we could get in to feed their cat, she knelt down to look for something and didn't see the plant in her way. It poked her in that same eye and the bruise that it caused is only now beginning to go away.
  
• Later that weekend, while Mateo and I were hanging out at their house after feeding the cat, we were playing upstairs and Mateo wandered out of my sight for a minute. As I was going to find him, I heard the thump thump thump of him falling down their steep (but carpeted) stairs. Ack!! Luckily, he was okay. I felt horrible, though. Ugh.

After that, we all tried to be more careful and things have gone more smoothly. In fact, we had a lovely rest of Sacha's spring break. Sacha's mom came down to visit for the first weekend, which was the same weekend described above. It was actually a really nice weekend overall and filled with adventures! We all took in a young people's concert by the Portland Baroque Orchestra, the purpose of which was to demonstrate instruments played centuries ago. Mateo sat transfixed for an hour with Sacha, while I held our sleeping baby. She always goes to sleep to classical music on the radio and this was no exception! We then had a big adventure to find a place to eat dinner, which ended unexpectedly at the food court at the mall. It was too long to detail here, but we had a lot of fun getting there. It was wonderful to get to spend the weekend with Bubby!

Also that weekend, although not in chronological order, we went to two other concerts. It was a musical weekend! We saw the city's gay symphonic band with some friends and my grandma took Mateo and I to a big choir and orchestra concert at her church. Both were very fun. We felt extremely musical after three concerts in three days!

We then capped off spring break with a trip to Arizona with my family. We've gone with them several years for spring training and my parents very generously offered to take us again this year. And we happily accepted. We got there and we saw the sun! Shining! And emitting warmth! That was really all we needed, but we also got the company of my parents and brother and sister, a luxurious hotel, the fun of going to baseball games, and as much delicious food as we could eat. We returned to Portland with more vitamin D that we've gotten in months, plus memories of a great trip.

Here are some photos, including a comparison of Teo and Talia in the same outfit. I think he was about five months old and she just turned nine months.

First, him:

Then, her:


Also, us at the game, which we attended for about two innings due to nap schedules:


Teo on the plane, acting only slightly crazed:

And, cuddling at home:


I'll post more photos once I get them from my mom, who was far better about taking photos than we were!

Today, we're back in our cloudy city and back in the swing of things. Sacha's mom is down here again and we went to a mental health conference together this morning. Then, after we got the kids mostly ready for bed, I actually went out with a friend to a book reading in an actual bookstore. We went to see Dooce read and she was just as funny and engaging in person as in her blog. It was very fun. And so novel to have an actual social outing! Thanks, Megan!

Coming up, hopefully, are monthly letters to our kiddos, who are now almost 29 months and 9 months, respectively...

Dentist trip

M had his first dentist appointment this morning. We had been meaning to take him in forever, because the ubiquitous "they" say that the earlier you take kids to the dentist, the more comfortable they'll feel at appointments in the future, but, of course, had been putting it off. Then, yesterday, he started pointing to one of his teeth and saying that it hurt. He has all his teeth in now, thank God, and the tooth looked a little odd next to the gumline, so we thought maybe he had a cavity. I called a pediatric dentist that someone recommended and the earliest they could see him was this morning. I was dreading the visit, because I was sure he had a cavity and the dentist would give me a lecture about all the things we're doing wrong from a dental point of view (namely that he still nurses off to sleep at night and that's really bad for your teeth).

Not sensing my anxiety, Mateo was beside himself with excitement over the impending dental visit. All day yesterday, he kept begging to go to the dentist right now! He knew the dentist's first name was Marshall and he kept asking when we would get to see Marshall. This morning, we had to leave pretty early to make it on time, but we had a few minutes of extra time for breakfast and he pretty much refused to eat anything. He said something to the effect of 'no, I don't want breakfast, I want to leave for the dentist RIGHT NOW!"

Anyway, the long story short is that he doesn't have any cavities. Whew. His tooth was a little bit stained, which is why it looked weird, but there wasn't anything wrong with it. The dentist said that his gums were still a little irritated around one of his most recent molars, so that could have been causing the pain.

And, Mateo was a total rock star throughout the visit. He played happily with toys in the waiting room, as I explained to the receptionist that Mateo has two moms and hence I had crossed out the "father" part of the form to add another "mother". (This whole gay parenting thing seems to include coming out to people in the most random places.) He trotted happily back to the exam room and sat on the chair without a word of complaint. He got a bit discombobulated when they started reclining the chair, but was quickly distracted by the cool sunglasses he got to wear so the light wouldn't shine in his eyes. And, not only did he let them look in his mouth, but he sat patiently through the whole cleaning. The dentist and the hygenist said at the end that many two-year-olds won't even sit in the chair, so he did really, really well.

He was so excited about the whole thing that, after we got home, he spent the first 10 minutes "showing" baby Talia how to floss. Priceless.

Yay for healthy teeth!

Sleepy time changes

Home on the sleep front has been different, and is going well. About a week ago I went in to see that Natalia had rolled over and sat up in her co-sleeper. Clearly it was time to move into a different sleeping arrangement and so we set her up in the pack n' play. She is now sleeping in the front room in her pack n' play.

For the last few nights, sleep has been going fairly well. She goes down with nursing and then a bottle of 4 oz. I normally put her down awake, without the pacifier, and she gets herself to sleep in 5-10 minutes. Then, she sleeps till morning before she gets more milk. Some nights she is up a few times to get the pacifier inserted, but she seems to sleep much better if she falls asleep the first time without the pacifier.

Alayna and I are really enjoying getting more sleep and more rested. Hopefully with more nights she will actually start sleeping through the night without needing too many pacifier re-inserts! (Alayna says that she has hardly been needing the pacifier at all.) All I can say is that I am so excited that at eight months she is sleeping through the night. I think we all needed this. Knock on wood, knock on wood - says everyone!

Bye-bye student nanny

We just found out today that are student nanny has dropped out of nanny school. I actually feel somewhat sad about the whole situation, though I do think it is for the best. I just feel like our kids have made a connection with her and I hope that she comes by sometime to say goodbye to them. For the last few times she has been saying that she doesn't really want to be a nanny, so maybe nanny school doesn't make that much sense.

In other news, it's the weekend! I just spent part of the day observing at another school. It was so interesting to see how this other bilingual program worked. Really, all of my working in other teachers' classrooms and observing has been driving home a point to me: it's not the school that matters the most, it's the teacher. Unfortunately, you don't have that much control over what teacher your child gets, and so people all try to get into the "good schools" hoping that those schools have more "good teachers." I saw a few really amazing teachers at this school, and I saw some not so great teaching in quite a few classrooms too.

Another change for this year is that I have been thinking that in the future I would actually enjoy teaching younger kids. Before working in first, second and third grade classrooms I thought that I would never want to teach below third grade. Now I would be excited about the idea of teaching in a first grade classroom, or really any grade between first and fifth.

Looking at people

Natalia is obviously too young to be really communicating with words, but I found out yesterday and today that she does understand some things we say. I asked her to look at Mateo, and she looked at Mateo. I asked her to look at Mama, and she did that as well. She also looked at me when asked, and then back to Mateo, which I did just to see if it was a fluke!

Also, she consistently says a-dah when someone leaves the house. And sometimes she will hit her leg. Maybe waving will be her next skill to learn. Alayna says that she thinks she is waving, because she is flapping her arms.

This afternoon was much more peaceful than last afternoon and I feel nicely refreshed. I had a wonderful time with the kids, we took our first trip into the hot tub with just the three of us. It was a little bit challenging to think about how to do that safely, but with the floaty (for Mateo), and Natalia still not able to roll (key for getting her and Mateo out and keeping her out of the water), it was all quite successful. It was such a nice way to spend part of the afternoon. Yesterday it was snowing, today it was warm enough that we all headed outside to go in the hot tub.

I made a nice, easy dinner for everyone. A spinach salad with peas, broccoli and tempura chicken with orange sauce along with some garlic bread left over from last night. All in all, it was a successful day.

Tonight we are planning on watching The Biggest Looser, our latest obsession, and to do the Jillian workout video. We can't watch the TV program without at least working out too!

Adventure with a student nanny

I want to talk about life with a student nanny. For the past few months we have had a student nanny. Now mind you she was supposed to start in December and come once a week, every week, for 17 weeks. It is now March, and she has come 7 times. Do the math. Ah. Anyway, it started out with bad weather, snow storms, stomach flues ect.

Anyway, today was the day that our nanny was supposed to cook us dinner. It started by her calling to say that she would be 30 minutes late because her teacher had not given her back the meal plans. Now, she wasn't at school when she called, and it was a Monday, so she should have known ALL weekend that she didn't have her plans, but somehow she didn't notice till right before 11am on Monday.

Today we were going grocery shopping and she was supposed to do all of the meal prep and clean-up, while watching the kids. This is what happened. I had her get the kids ready to go grocery shopping all on her own. She did decently, but needed to be reminded that:

1. You should turn out the lights before leaving the house.
2. One should bring the diaper bag for an outing.
3. We normally put down the blinds.
4. You should take Mateo to the bathroom and make sure Natalia has on a clean diaper before leaving the house.
5. The buckles should not be twisted in the car seat.
6. You should always check to see if the seat and buckles are actually buckled in (thank god I checked - ahhh.)

Grocery shopping went quite well. During the shopping she said she was hungry. The "I am sooo hungry" look and stare at me type of look. So, I bought her a power bar. Whatever.

We got home a bit before 5, and the meal prep then started. I encouraged her to get going while Natalia was taking a nap, and it took her about 20 minutes to whip up the brownie mix. I am not honestly sure what took so long (add two eggs and butter and mix), but whatever.

The dinner was challenging. Things I taught or coached:

1. You do need to wash your hands after touching raw chicken.
2. If the spatula touched raw chicken, it should not touch the cooked pasta before it is washed again.
3. What does the word dice mean and how to cut, handle, cook and test for being cooked with chicken.
4. Use the kitchen timer. Did you put on the timer for the brownies - no. Did you put on the timer for the pasta - no. How long has it been going for - I don't know. How long is it supposed to cook for - I don't know. (3 minutes . . . opps)
5. When you should put the pasta in the water - ie after it boils
   
6. How to drain the pasta.
7. That you should not ignore Mateo if he is behaving well, but give him some positive feedback.
8. You can not spread refrigerated butter on cold bread - it must be warmed gently in the microwave.

And the list goes on, and on, and one. I actually feel like I could use a drink. . . and you know what, I have almost never said that, even with two kids.

What have I taken from all of this? Beyond being horrified at this poor girl's lack of life skills. We will be teaching our children how to cook! How to fold the laundry! How to help out around the house. Will we have another student nanny - well I just don't know.

The fam

My mom took this. We love it! Thanks, Mom!

Stuff

We just had one of those busy days like we used to have before having kids, and like we were starting to have with Mateo around the time Natalia was born, but this time we did it with two little ones in tow. And, we are actually feeling okay now, at the end of the day. We feel like we're starting to get back into our groove.

We woke up and got everyone out the door by 9 this morning. We headed to a park, where we met my brother, who is in town for the weekend, and each of us ran for 15 minutes while the other one hung out with the kids and their uncle. It was a cold and somewhat wet morning, but we had fun anyway. Mateo discovered that going down a wet slide while wearing rain pants can allow you to catch serious air at the bottom. Sacha said he flew about three feet before he finally landed on the bark chips! And, there were ducks and much running around ensued due to that.

Then, we went home and made a late breakfast while Uncle Galen entertained the bigger kid. Mateo wanted nothing to do with us, except for occasionally informing us that Uncle Galen had come to play with him! Immediately after the uncle left, Apa came by to consult with us about house design. As in: how do we get our lovely daughter to sleep somewhere other than our room. We actually may have a solution, but it will take some rearranging, a big boy bed, Mateo moving into the playroom, which would become his big boy bedroom, Natalia moving into Mateo's current room, a white noise machine, and some time. Whew. It seems impossible that it will work, but we'll just go as slowly as we need to.

Anyway, after Apa left, Sacha made us lunch and then everyone went down for a nap. Yay, weekend!

We all got going again around 3 pm. Sacha sent Natalia and I out to buy fancy drinking chocolate for us all at Cacao downtown. Yummmm. We drank it while eating microwave popcorn. Classy, eh? Then, spurred on by the surge of chocolate and caffeine in our systems, we tackled our basement, which had devolved into chaos. With the help of the ocean of toys down there and the computer, which has this mesmerizing visual thing that you can put on while you're playing music, we managed to spend a couple of hours down there. We sorted all our baby and toddler clothes, organized other stuff, and actually managed to clear some wall space, so that we are no longer surrounded by our possessions on all sides when we go down there.

Then, once Mateo and Natalia finally couldn't stand it down there for one more second, we went outside to take a walk. It was in the low 40s, so a bit chilly. We started wandering around the neighborhood and ended up dropping in on some neighbors with two kids slightly older than ours. They took us in and let Mateo play with their toys while we checked out their basement project. Then, we headed home for dinner. Sacha had made a delicious stew in the slow cooker. Yum.

Then, we reset the clocks, got the kids ready for bed, and put them down. And now, miraculously, we actually have some energy left over. We were going to watch a movie, but it's a bit late with daylight savings coming tomorrow. So we're probably going to head to bed soon. It was just a lovely day filled with just the right amounts of everything. Now, I'm off to scour craigslist for big boy beds before turning in. Good night!

Fridays are for MAXing

Sacha and the kids took the MAX out to visit me at work this evening. It's quite the trip from our house: a longish walk to the MAX station and over an hour on the train. Luckily, my office is right by a station. As always, the kids were quite a hit at the shelter. Every time they come in, I notice an upswing in receptiveness of the clients to me in the next week or so. I'll walk in the next day to a chorus of adolescents squealing "your kids are soooo cute!" and seeming more interested in talking to me than before. So that is fun and good. Especially after a work week that has been a little bit of everything and pretty stressful.

We then went out to dinner and drove home. We listened to the all-classical station that puts Natalia to sleep and Mateo on instrument alert. Until he finally fell asleep, we heard his little voice from the back seat asking for "The cello again! Is that a violin? I want to hear the trumpet again, Mommy!" and so on and so forth. He is really fascinated by instruments and music right now.

What I intended to post about was that each kid has hit a new milestone this week. Natalia has officially learned how to pull herself up to standing and has even done some cruising! I think it's been a little over a week that she could pull herself up. Then, when we went to Jungle Playland, the indoor play park that Mateo can't stop talking about, she pulled up on some big foam blocks and cruised all the way from one end to the other. She will also walk if you hold her hands and encourage her forward. She is growing up to be a big girl so fast!

Mateo's big new thing is that he's learned how to change the inflection of his voice when asking a question. Up until about a week ago, his questions sounded more like statements. Now, his voice rises at the end of a question. As in, "you want to play the guitar, Mama?" How could one say no to that?

Things are really good right now. I've been getting kind of stressed out by work stuff, but then I have to stop and remember that work stuff is temporary and that everything I need is sitting on the couch next to me and slumbering peacefully in two rooms on opposite sides of our house. And, of course, all the family and friends in different places that we're so lucky to have. Sacha said that Natalia was so out of it when we got home from dinner that she finished nursing, flopped over on her belly (which she hardly ever does) and started snoring. Baby snores. Could it get any better than that?

First sentences in Spanish

Mateo has been taking leaps and bounds with his Spanish. Yesterday Alayna and I went running at the park. (Yes, we went running and we each ran for 15 minutes. While one of us was running the other was playing with the kids at the play structure.) Anyway, after running, it was time to go home and Mateo didn't want to get in his car seat. Alayna, being quite creative, found an old paper cup, and pinched the top together so it was a puppet. The puppet asked Mateo to get in his seat, and Mateo did right away.

Then, he wanted me to sing a new song that we learned yesterday at our Spanish playgroup. (Spanish play group had 10 people this week, and is slowly growing!) The song goes "hola, ____ (nombre) como estas, muy bien muy bien, gracias." After I sang one of two times I stopped, and Mateo said, "El vaso quiere cantar otra vez." (The cup wants to sing again.) Wow. He said his own original sentence in Spanish.

This morning he said, "El cerdo toca la guitarra, la gallina toca la trompeta y la vaca toca la violin." The pig plays the guitar, the chicken plays the trumpet and the cow plays the violin. This is from a book that we read, and frequently I say that sentence, but still I was excited to hear him saying so much.

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In other news, both Natalia and Mateo slept through the night last night! Yah! I can take more nights like that. Also, Alayna and I were in bed by 9:30 and for the first time in over a week I feel slightly rested.

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Another note of news. From when I went into the hospital (to give birth) to today, I have lost 50 lbs. Sure some of that was the baby, but it has been quite the journey. I am just 5 lbs. away from my goal weight. In January I started by making three changes: no eating sugar after dinner, eating dinner by 6pm most nights, and exercising 6 times a week. This week I started doing Weight Watchers points again, and that has helped me take another drop. I have been following the Beck plan, which goes along with any eating plan to help me the emotional and mental side of loosing weight.

Supplementing with formula

For the last eight months I have been breastfeeding Natalia. After a rough start, it has been such a nice thing to do. A lot of the times, though, I have felt stressed about if I was pumping enough milk for her. I think that up til the last month we used my milk or Alayna's milk 95% of the time. She then stopped nursing Natalia during the mornings, because someone was getting really distracted and impatient while nursing.

This month I am probably not making that much less month, but need to make more to compensate for the shift. It does seem that I've been getting less of a let down when I pump at school. As it is I normally pump two different times to get 3-4 ounces for Natalia. I get to school, check in, and pump for 15 min. Then, after I teach my last class, I pump for 10 minutes and leave. Some days, though, I have to do something else for part of that time, and will get a bit less. Anyway, she is starting to get supplemented with some formula a few days a week. For a while I was feeling bad about the supplementation, but I am coming to peace with it. Some formula really isn't going to hurt her in any way.

I have also started giving her a few ounces of formula after I feed her for the night. She continues to wake up once a night to eat (many more times for the binky), and Alayna and I are wondering if she might sleep better if she was a little fuller. On that note, we are also focusing on giving her something with a good amount of fat for dinner, like whole yogurt. Tonight, after I nursed her fully, she gulped down two more ounces. I just hope this means she will sleep a bit more.

After thinking for such a long time that I didn't want to give her formula at night, I am now all for it. If a few ounces of formula, after she nurses completely, means she sleeps for a few more hours and that we are all happier, saner and more with-it during the day, I am all for it. She still gets plenty of nursing during the day, and this will hopefully make for more rested moms!

Things are looking up

After a tough, tough week, Mateo seems to be feeling better. He spent most of the week feeling pretty awful, which in turn made us all feel pretty awful. His throat seemed to really bother him, even with lots of pain medicine in his system. He didn't want to eat or drink, didn't want to go to the bathroom, didn't want to do anything but have one of us holding him at all times.

Each night both of us were up for around an hour, because he couldn't seem to go back to sleep once he woke up, which didn't help the daytime for anyone. We both spent hours "sleeping" with him on the couch. We were laughing because normally you'd think of sleeping on the couch and think, those people must be having marital problems. Not so in our case - just a sick kid! We didn't have many sleep reserves to start out with and this set us all back. Plus, it was just so sad to see him feeling so awful. Poor baby.

We were so grateful to our parents and friends for checking in with us, for dinner being brought to our door, and for one fabulous friend who braved the germs to come over yesterday morning and spring us for a couple of hours. Thank you!!

Anyway, thank goodness he's feeling better and Natalia seems to have avoided getting the horrible virus. He is feeling so much better that we even went up to Vancouver to our favorite indoor play park this afternoon. We actually had a really nice day together with very few toddler meltdowns, which leads us to think he really must be doing better. And, we had a nice dinner and evening with Apa tonight, which we always enjoy!

Here are some photos of our last few days.

It got a little crowded in our bed last week. We tried bringing Mateo to bed with us to sleep and that lasted about 10 minutes. He snuggled for a brief time and then said, in a chipper voice, "Hi guys! I'm snugglin' with you!" Then, the thrashing commenced. And the sister-waking followed soon after. Soon, they were both crying. It was great. Morning was somewhat better...



Hanging out with Mama...



Thank you, Katie!


Playing with Apa...




Littler kid feeling smiley...



Bigger kid on the mend!