Thanksgiving

This year was a Thanksgiving Day unlike any I’ve had in the past. Traditionally I get up early and start cooking. I pop my bird into the stove. Then I watch the Thanksgiving Day parade, while I decorate the tree. Not this year. This year, I woke up early and hit CVS for their Thanksgiving Day sale. I came home with tons of goodies, including a new digital camera that I ended up paying $35 for out of pocket. This year, Esteban had to work. Instead of trying to squeeze in a full day of cooking into a morning, I decided to skip it. Besides, Esteban would be going to work soon and he’s never really cared for the traditional thanksgiving meal items so I loaded the kids up into the car and headed to my aunt’s house in Melbourne for the day. It was a pretty large family gathering, which included three aunts, an uncle, and lots of cousins. We had a wonderful time.

Jayden is Two and a Half!

Jayden is now 2 and ½ years old. Wow, he has changed so much in the last 6 months. It’s amazing. I have all but lost a handle on all of his new words so this will be the last update I make. He’s like a sponge. He’s repeating everything he hears. He goes to bed with his electronic toys and repeats everything the toys say. He’s just now starting to use his baby leap pad and repeats the letters and numbers until he falls asleep. And he repeats things he hears on his favorite shows. He loves Curious George and Elmo. He’s still got very little interest in potty training. He adores Maya and I wonder what he’s going to do when he has to go to big boy school. We are on a waiting list for Head Start and hope a spot opens up soon. These days, Jayden is a picky eater. If it were up to him, he'd eat snacks all day. I try not to stress about it. I know he won't starve. I just try to make sure he gets all his essential vitamins and minerals, but he just makes it near impossible. Where did my good little eater go?

Some of my favorite things that Jayden does:

At night when I put Jayden down for the night, he will often call me repeatedly. I will answer the first few times, but after a while, I stop. One night, I was in my room waiting for him to fall asleep. Everything was pretty quiet and all of a sudden I hear him singing, “Mama, where are you? Mama, where are you?” I started to crack up. I got up and looked outside my door and I see him standing by his baby gate and he’s actually shrugging his shoulders as he’s singing “Where are yooooooou?” Of course, I had to go running over there to give him a hug and a kiss and then I firmly told him to go to bed!

Jayden likes to open the fridge door and stand there. Of course, I don’t like him doing that but I can’t help but laugh at him because he’ll stand there and say “Hmmm.” It’s like he’s contemplating what he’s going to have next. This always leads to a fight because lately he’s being a picky eater and I won’t allow snacks and sweets unless he’s eaten a proper meal.
Sometimes, Jayden is mean to me and it makes me sad. I put on my sad face and pretend to cry and Jayden will say, “What’s wrong mama? Don’t cry.” This is so darn cute! He climbs into my lap and tries to move my hands from my face and then I laugh and he does too.
I’m not too happy about this one. One day, I dropped Jayden off to the sitter and when I picked him up, I was no longer mommy. It’s mom now. I liked Mommy or even Mama, but no. It’s mom.

Traditionally, when Daddy and I sit down for our meals together, we give thanks to the Lord for our meal. We often hold hands and pray. I believe he prays at the sitters too because now, he’s started to fold his hands. Now if Daddy and I forget, he calls out our names and folds his hands at us. Now we pray several times throughout the meal, ‘cause he likes it so much. Amen to that!

Words
Mama, Mommy, Mom
Dada or Daddy
Ni-ni (Night-Night) or Night Time
Yes
No
Yeah!
Ok.
Bye-bye
Uh-oh
Ca-ca
Hi
Oh wow.
Oh no.
Ten-coo (thank you)
Bess-u (bless you)
Lub - u (love you)
Baby
Sowee (sorry)
Hello
Pees (please)
This
See ya
Cooz - ee (excuse me)
Car (he pronounces this as if he were from Boston.)
Home
Help (when he climbs into the crib, but can't get out)
Morning
Sit (sounds like s*it)
Eat (he commands Rio to eat)
Rio (sounds like ee-oo)
Go.
Ow.
Maya
Sleeping
Easy
Juice
Ball
Nice
Tight (when his shoes are tight)
Alright
Coming
Potty
Pee-Pee
Open
Close
Y'Welcome
Outside
Cold
Off
Look
Bus
Trucks (tucks)
Jayden (Ja-Jen)
Boo-boo
Awesome
Cheese
Crying
Up
Sun
Banana
Phone
Tree
Circle
Nose
Cute
Moon
Stars
Snacks
Hmmm.
Book
Spoon
Bird
Apple
Woof - Woof
Movie
Wait
Doggie
Hot
Bee
Move
Cool
Plane
Working

Spanish
Gracias
Si
No
Titi
Avion
Bobo
Amor
Agua
Caliente (he says tente)
Frio
Zapatos (he says papos)
Cayo
Sana
Casa
Luz
Cinco
Sucio
Aqui
Salud

Phrases
See ya soon
Bye Guys
I dunno (he actually shrugs his shoulders when he says this)
I know
Here I am or here they are or here it is.
Want more
Oh man.
Bye Home
Stop it (pop-it)
Come on.
I'm ready
Sit down mommy (when he wants me to read a book)
Where are you?
She's cute
Here you go.
Cars coming.
Daddy's coming or Mommy's coming
Don't cry
What's wrong?
It's fun
She's sleeping or Daddy's sleeping
She's crying
Got it
Night Time
All done
Move Rio (This is totally my fault)
Go outside.
Hey Guys!

An Early Thanksgiving

Esteban was on his way home from work after his shift on Saturday and no more than five minutes from home, he was in a terrible accident. I’ll spare you all the details. I can tell you that he called me around 1am and instantly I knew something was wrong. I could hear it in his voice. I wanted to go to him so badly, but it was so cold out and the kids were sleeping. I didn’t know how long it would be before the police arrived so instead I waited at home for him to call me back.

Jayden was in bed with me, because he was giving me an especially hard time at his bedtime and all I could do was hug on him and pray. I just started to give thanks to God. Thanks for saving my husband. Thanks for not leaving me alone. Thanks for not making me a widow. Thanks for not making me a single parent of two kids. Thanks for not taking my children’s father away. Thanks for sparing me from having to explain to Jayden that Daddy wasn’t coming home because he was in heaven. It’s bad enough when Jayden asks me a zillion times a day “Where’s daddy?” and I reply each time with “Daddy’s working”. He just doesn’t get it.

The officer was kind enough to bring him home since the car was un-drivable. He slowly crept in and crawled into bed. Neither of us could sleep. I knew he was wide awake. No snoring. I actually need to hear the sound of his snore to sleep. I just held on to him tight. I don’t know what he was thinking, but I was just Thankful that he had made it home safe and with minor injuries.

We made it through the night and got up to go get our personal belongings from the car which had been towed. What a sorry sight! I had to choke back tears. First and foremost, the car was a complete wreck. Totaled! It was scary to think that he had been in it at the time of impact. It was a miracle he walked out of there with just a few burns and bruises from the airbags. I couldn’t believe he hadn’t gotten more cuts since the windshield and the passenger window had busted.

Then my thoughts turned to the material. The fact of the matter is that now we are down one car and we live in an area with no public transportation. What are we going to do? Esteban doesn’t know how to drive my car. It’s a stick. Both our cars were paid off. Now, we would have to get another car and get into a car payment all over again. Esteban’s car was in such great condition. It would have lasted him another few years. And then, it’s a holiday week. I’m exhausted just tossing it all around in my head and yet there’s no sense in doing so. We’ve done all we could. We reported the incident and are waiting to hear back from the adjuster. We are sharing my car for now and I guess we’ll have to squeeze in car shopping on Black Friday!

An Abrupt Decision I Feel Good About!

I abruptly terminated my babysitter’s services. I don’t have a plan B, but I just couldn’t leave the kids there for one more day without knowing for sure what was going on. From the very beginning, we’ve felt that she just wasn’t like our previous sitter. I always tried to give her the benefit of the doubt even though I was sure Esteban didn’t care for the new arrangement at all. A couple of months ago, he just flat out told me that he wasn’t happy with the services we were receiving. Jayden would always came home with all kinds of bumps, bruises, scrapes, mosquito bites etc. And one day, Esteban was bathing him and found a bruise on his rear end. I didn’t know what to do. I wanted to go back to our old sitter so badly and beg her to please take the baby, but instead, I got us on a wait list for Head Start. That was two months ago. Things weren’t getting better.

I picked up Jayden from the sitter last Wednesday and it was like everything that could have been done wrong was wrong. That night, Jayden cried for so long and then I felt so guilty about him being run ragged all day long at daycare and put him in bed with me. He was twisting and turning and crying out in sleep all night and fell out of the bed twice. He’s never once fallen off the bed like that. It was the straw that broke the camel’s back.

Jayden hadn’t gotten his nap that day. Why? Was he over stimulated? What do they do besides play all day from morning to evening outside in the dirt? Do they sing songs, or dance or learn their colors, shapes or letters and numbers? Do they color or read books? In the 5 months that he’s been there, I’ve only received artwork twice.

And why is he always so banged up? Are the children being monitored or is it every man for him self out there? Once, Jayden was scratched pretty bad near his eye by another child. On another occasion, he had been bitten by another child. My mind was racing with different things that had happened on different occasions.

Also, Jayden was black with dirt. Now, he comes home filthy from the sitter’s every time he goes there. Sometimes he’s so filthy, I am disgusted with him and don’t even want to put him into his car seat. But on this day, he was super dirty. He had dirt in his nails that I had a very difficult time removing. Are they not washing hands often enough? Is that how they let him take his meals? He was wearing long pants, socks and sneakers and he even had dirt and debris inside his shoes, socks, and diaper. Yes, his genital area and bottom were black with dirt. Even the outside of his diaper was black. Don’t they use the wipes I drop off every day? Does she let them play outside in the nude or without shoes on? What’s going on?

Then Jayden was wearing one of Maya’s diapers. Yes, he had been squeezed into one of my infant daughter’s diapers. Meanwhile, Maya was wearing someone else’s generic diapers. Now, I have nothing against generic diapers, but if I’m paying for brand name diapers and I’m bringing them to you, I expect you to use my diapers. And the thought of him having dirt in places where the sun don’t shine just infuriates me.

So, I call her and express my discontent. I share my concerns to which she lightheartedly blows off. What do you think is going on here, she asks? I have no idea, but I’d rather ask than wonder about it. I’m not really happy with any of the answers she’s giving me and I don’t feel better about things after our conversation. She told me that Jayden had his diaper changed around 3pm and he must have gotten dirty afterwards.

This brings me to my next concern. I removed the tight ass diaper at 7pm. It had been four hours since it had been changed and it was completely dry inside. Four hours and he hadn’t urinated? This isn’t like Jayden. My mind is racing. I start to remember that every time I pick up Jayden from the sitter’s, he immediately asks me for juice. Is he getting enough to drink? Is he dehydrated? I gave him a drink and it was gone within 5 minutes and his diaper was full within 30 minutes. And if he’s not getting enough to drink, is he getting enough to eat. Jayden has become the pickiest eater lately. He only wants to eat snacks all day long. I remember that once I dropped him off during breakfast and they had the children sitting at the table with a few cheerios sprinkled on a napkin and a piece of fruit. I remember thinking is that all they are going to eat? I also remember asking the sitter what Jayden had eaten for lunch that day. She wanted to know why and then said he wasn’t being a picky eater and was eating just fine. But she didn’t answer the question did she?

And then there’s Maya. Once, I picked her up and her top was completely soiled with something that was not food. When I called the sitter, she said Maya had been drooling quite a bit and had spent some time on the floor. Well, how dirty was the floor? My floors aren’t the cleanest in the land but her clothes never look like the bottom of Jayden’s socks. She doesn’t even crawl and already she looks like that? I start to remember that I had even found dirt (black soil) inside of Maya’s ears as well as Jayden’s. Heck, I’ve even had to clean out the dirt from his nostrils.

Then there’s the issue of Maya’s eating habits. According to the sitter, Maya won’t eat. She doesn’t want to take her bottle. She attributed it to Maya being nursed at home and refusing the bottle, but when Maya is home with daddy, she takes 3-4 bottles and gulps them down. I remember I called the sitter distressed once because Maya had a pronounced indentation on her scalp. In the end, I determined she was dehydrated and you could really tell because her soft spot was really pronounced. I came home that day around 6pm and her diaper was dry. I didn’t change her diaper again until 3am and she still did not have a wet diaper. This solidified that she was dehydrated.

I started to drop off cereal to accompany her 3 bottles of milk. Once, she gave me the cereal back and said she had simply forgotten to give it to her. On her last day there, I dropped off three bottles, baby cereal and a container of baby food. When I picked up the kids, she returned all the bottles and half of the baby food. Maya didn’t want to eat today. What? All day, she had 2 ounces of cereal, one ounce of milk and maybe an ounce and a half of her carrots? I know Maya when she’s hungry. It’s not a pretty sight. How could she just not feed her?

Once, she told me that she had given Maya another binky she had laying around. Gross!

Another time she said she had given Maya some Tylenol because she was being fussy. I keep Tylenol in Maya’s bag, but she said she couldn’t find it and gave her some she had on hand. Hmmm. I don’t know who’s mouth the dropper has been in. And, I never filled out the medicine form so why is she dispensing medication without my consent?

Maya’s playpen is always full of stuff. It seemed to be used for storage more than anything else. So, where is Maya taking her naps?

The list could go on and on. There’s nothing I could put my finger on. There was no clear or consistent offense, but tons of these little isolated instances that just add up to a whole heap of concerns. I didn’t want to find myself saying, “I always thought something just wasn’t right”. I had to pay attention to my mother’s instinct. So I yanked them out.

I don’t know what I’m going to do, but we’ll figure it out. One step at a time!

Maya Turns 7 Months Old!

Maya is 7 months old today. I don’t know where the time goes. It seems like the more I try to hold on to it, the faster it slips through my fingers. Here are some of her milestones.

Maya is getting stronger and stronger by the day and growing out of her clothes quickly. She’s able to hold herself up pretty well in the sitting position with assistance, but can’t sit on her own yet. Her legs are really gaining strength and she supports her weight on them when you hold her up. She’s no where near crawling, but she gets tons of tummy time and when she’s on the bed, she pulls up on her arms and knees and lunges. Maya’s hair seems to be growing too. Most of the growth is on top, but I noticed that the little bald spot on the back of Maya’s head is starting to grow too. If I remember correctly, this is about the time when Jayden’s hair started to grow and get curly. I hope that Maya has a head full of curls too, but I’ll love her either way.

She has definitely decided that her favorite sleep position is on her tummy. Even when she nurses to sleep, she pops herself off and rolls over. Because of that, she’s burping herself so one less thing for me to do. Maya has four teeth now. None are big enough to get a picture of though. They broke through and they seem to be just kinda hanging out for now. Maya does quite a bit of babbling and her favorite most happy time is at her early morning feeding, somewhere around 5-6 am. Yes, we’re all just as happy as she is at that very moment. Here she is after she fell over from the sitting position.

Maya is eating cereal and baby food now. I can’t say that she has a favorite. She just eats it all up. She likes vegetables just as much as she likes fruits and she even liked sweet peas. We are starting to work on finger foods. She likes the puffs but she can’t manage to keep them in. They fall out of her mouth and she goes crazy trying to pick them up and stuff them back into her mouth. I have to note that Jayden always wants to eat when Maya does, even if he just ate. If she nurses, he tries to nurse. If she’s having cereal or baby food, he politely waits his turn and then puckers up and opens wide. He cracks me up!

Recent Pictures

Here's Maya eating cereal with a spoon for the very first time. It was every where and lots of fun, especially seeing Jayden's reaction. She didn't eat much, but I don't think she cared.
It's been such a long time since I've seen Jayden sleep in this position. It was just too cute. I had to snap his picture!

Jayden loves balloons and today, when I picked him up from the sitters, I surprised him with this one. He loved it so much, as you can see. He went to sleep with it. Of course, I removed it after the picture, but I like to let him think he went to sleep with his balloon!

Jayden loves the excersaucer more than Maya, I think. I love that they are eye to eye when she's in it. It' so much fun to watch their interactions together. It's so obvious that Maya enjoys all of Jayden's attention and he's crazy about her too.

Esteban did a great job of getting this picture of Maya rolling around in her crib. She barely spends time in there cause she still sleeps in our bedroom, but she enjoys hanging out in there.

Jayden loves books and we get a Disney magazine in the mail that is probably geared towards pre-teens, but he loves looking through it so I always give it to him. He actually fell asleep in this very position, flipping though the pages. Esteban found him completely knocked out and just had to snap his picture and I'm glad he did.

Here's Maya practicing her sitting. She still can't sit on her own, but she sure does look like it, doesn't she? I love this shot!

Happy Halloween!

This was Jayden’s first year trick or treating and I can honestly say it was both a trick and a treat for us. Esteban took the day off so he could be home with us in the evening and I left work early because it’s Halloween, a national holiday, right? We took the kids to the pumpkin patch at our church, but it was slim pickins, as could be expected on Halloween Day and all. We took a few pictures and left without a pumpkin because there was no way we could squeeze in pumpkin carving at this point. Jayden had fun rolling them around. Here they are posing for a shot.

We went back home and while Jayden had a quick dinner, I rolled out my dough for the Halloween sugar cookies I was going to make. The dough was not working with me and I had a rough time with it, but I got it rolled out and cut out my cookies in the shapes of pumpkins, bats, and ghosts. I baked them off and left them to cool, while I tended to Jayden.

Toy Story just so happens to be one of Jayden’s favorite movies right now. He sounds so cute when he says “Woody”. So it worked out great when I found the Woody costume. Now, Jayden would not be Jayden if he didn’t fuss about one thing or another. I go to put on his Halloween costume and he’s carrying on. He was not being a very good cowboy at all. He actually started to cry and then he wouldn’t put on his hat. Oh well, never mind. Here he is showing off his costume to the neighbor. I was begging him to put on his hat and trying to take his picture, but he ran away from me and hid behind the magnolia tree.

Around 6:30pm, we decided we better get going. I saw the neighborhood kids get started so we decided to head out as well. We get Maya and Jayden loaded up into the wagon and start our treck around the block.

We get to the first house and Jayden refuses to get out of the wagon. Then I pull the wagon up the driveway of the first house and he refuses to go to the door without Maya. Now I have to figure out a way to get the wagon all the way to the front door. We rang the bell and it was a neighbor we knew. He offers Jayden the bowl and Jayden actually tries to take the entire bowl. LOL Ok, now he gets what we are doing so I try to wheel the wagon down to the road and suggest to Esteban that they cut across the grass to the next house. No way! Jayden starts to scream, “Maya, Maya!” Oh brother! So now I’m pulling the wagon up and down each driveway. If I took him to the door, he would call Daddy! If Esteban took him, he was calling Mommy! So it was a family affair. Because he was getting so many compliments, he started to wear his cowboy hat. He couldn’t say trick or treat, but he said thank you and night-night!

It started to get dark really quick. I was almost thankful because now you could easily see who had their lights on and who wasn’t interested in trick or treaters. Now we started to skip houses, but do you think it sped up the process? No. It seemed to take an eternity to make it all the way around the block. But finally we did make it and we quickly got set up in the garage. Here's Maya in the highchair. She had a great old time on her first Halloween!

Here are brother and sister. Always together and always enjoying each other's company. Well, almost always. Two minutes after this shot, we put Jayden's hat on Maya and he almost keeled over!

We got Jayden settled with a lollipop from his bag of goodies. Maya was happy because finally she was getting fed her baby food. We put on the stereo and I sat down with a tall glass of ice water and the candy bowl close at hand. Jayden was greeting all of our guests and very interested in their costumes. We got quite a few trick or treaters. I was pretty happy since I was worried that we had missed them all while we were going around the block. Everything died down around 8:30pm so we went inside.

I quickly began to take care of Maya’s diaper and nursed her to sleep while Esteban took care of Jayden’s bed time rituals. Finally, we had our dinner around 9pm and I mentioned to Esteban that I was really happy. I always plan lots of stuff and it never works out like I imagined it would. For the first time ever, I got to do everything I wanted. We went to the pumpkin patch! I baked my cookies! We went trick or treating AND got back in time to give out candy. The only thing we didn’t do was decorate the cookies, which was fine because that leaves more fun for another night. I can’t wait for next year!