How Long Will I Do This?

I don't know how long I'm supposed to journal about my family life and kids for. I had this grand idea that I would have a book printed for each of my children up til their first birthday. So now I haven't printed off Mila's yet, and I just finished Nayelli's. Now that I'm done, do I continue on? Do I catch up once in a while? Dunno. Who's to say?

So..... just in case.....

For Halloween we dressed up as Wizard of Oz characters. I found this perfect rainbow dress for Mila so that she could be the Good Witch. Luke agreed that he would be the Tin Man. I made a little apron for Nayelli to make her look like Dorothy and sparkled up some socks with this red glitter glue, but it all ended up coming off as she walked. Last minute, Aldo dressed up as a Munchkin, I was the Scarecrow and Bandit was the Lion.

Happy Halloween - Oh, My!

In November we went to visit Aldo's dad in El Paso. Time was due to see Abuelito. Nayelli and Mila attached to him like a magnet. And the car ride was fun and one to remember because every major stop the kids got a fun present to unwrap.

  

Visiting Abuelito in El Paso, TX

The Alvidrez Bloodline

The Christmas Play was a hit! We did a Disney-themed musical that went through the life of Jesus. I obviously was obsessed with the two group performances that had movements. They were so powerful! One was to "He is Not One of Us" and showed how the crowds rejected Jesus before he was crucified, and the other was to "He Lives In You" and was the salvational message/lesson that the main character learned. I'll tell you this - I will NOT volunteer to make theatrical flats again.

This year for Christmas, we stayed within budget, which was pretty cool. And I think for the first time I actually have the budget saved. Luke's big present was my old iPhone. Mila really wanted the doctor Barbies and I was planning on building her a cardboard Barbie house. The house ended up getting saturated when I tried to modge-podge the wallpaper on, and so I tossed it. She was still happy with her Barbies though. Nayelli got a train to ride on. She wasn't overtaken at first, but now she's all about it. Mila and her will hide random toys in the back, and Mila will push Nayelli on it, or they'll fight over it. So good buy. Mila and Luke are also very into LEGOs. It's neat to see them work on things together. Nayelli on the other hand is at a hair-pulling stage.

Aldo got us into football sometime in the middle of last season, and he was absolutely stuck on watching every Chiefs game this season. Well, he awakened the monster. We ended up hosting a Super Bowl Party that the Chiefs WON!!!! FYI, I had no doubts. Though I may not go to downtown to see the parade, or try to have every sign or show my support on FB, I do cheer for my KC teams.

    

Reppin' Chiefs & KC Every Sunday

 

World Champions 2020!

• Aldo is still loving his job. His boss was in Thailand for the winter and it seemed like he had off for a long time, and had snow days, and could go in late, but now we're back on a schedule, getting ready for the season of roofing to take off again I suppose. And, he's mentioned a few times how he can see himself running this business with a friend/partner in the future. Hmm...
• You can read my update in the last post.
• Luke has been taking Bandit to dog training on Sundays. Bandit is going through anxiety, which I didn't know that they go through that around this age...??? So he's chewed up three leashes within the last month, and he really, really, really feels comfortable in his kennel. But last week we worked outside and Bandit did a lot better. So cross your fingers that Bandit continues to work out of this anxiety phase and do well for Master Luke. Luke also has been enjoying the Percy Jackson series this year. We started off reading the first two books together, but then he got so far ahead that I had to stop.
• Mila has enjoyed the old princess movies like Snow White, The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, Cinderella, and Sleeping Beauty. She's also gotten really protective over her room within the last week. I'm noticing that maybe it's best that she have alone time in her room to play without Nayelli. So much she has to share, that it's good to have her own thing at times. Mila, like I said, does well enough in homeschool and she's excited to go to Kindergarten with a playground and other kids. She loves art and play-dough. Her hair is down to her bottom, and the other day I convinced her that it's ok to cut because we won't cut it so short that it looks like a boy's.
• Nayelli is learning more and more each day. She calls Luke - "Ook". She calls Mila - "Beela". She calls Bandit - "Dit". She calls poop - "po-po", Papa - "po-po" and popcorn - "po-po". She understands so much, and right now I'm trying to get her to understand the difference between YES and NO and the head nods or shakes to match. Nayelli likes to get in the dog food because she wants to help feed Bandit, but then she also will eat his food, or fling it to him piece by piece. She likes holding onto phones or tablets or remotes, and other devices. I think she feels the power. But she also has a tendency to call unknown numbers or have important items selected and ready to delete with a click of the red button. She takes one nap a day from 2:30 to about 4:30. And recently, she likes story time at the library. It's almost too long for her, but I know that it does give her and Mila something different. She likes the theme song to Gilmore Girls and dances to it, just like Luke used to run to Big Bang Theory, and Mila used to to whatever we watched during her early years. Mila has taught her the Baby Shark song and I am not annoyed with it yet.

Til next time. Doo-doo do do.

Habits

I recently heard that it takes 27 days to make something into a habit (+ or - some in case you're thick-headed, etc.) and in that 27-day period the results will look like a flat line. Then, at 31 days the graph starts to go up and after that accelerates. (In reference to dieting...)

So lately my life has been around making day-to-day decisions and trying to form them into habits. Thanks, sis, for the encouragement and the nasty drink mix, that cost wayyy too much, that you shared with me. Aldo's sister and I were talking about losing weight, and I've been wanting to for a while. The last few months have been spent "getting back to normal". Starting in October, after Nayelli's birthday, I started weaning her from breastmilk. I've accomplished something! I did it. It really was a major feat. The trick for her was chocolate milk. She didn't like regular milk; my guess is that it was not sweet enough. She still doesn't like it. I have to fool her with 3 parts chocolate milk and 1 part whole milk. And now she'll drink horchata or juice too. (And we also found that she's allergic to soda pop! We've concluded that it's too much fructose corn syrup for her little belly that will make her have the runs and the bile will break out her booty in a rash. TMI?)

Back to habits. So I've been wanting to diet. And exercise. I just want to be proud of my body. I want to look and feel good. So I started with weaning. I've had two periods now and I should be on my third, but I'm not totally back to normal I guess, and I can prove now that breastfeeding takes the energy out of you!!! I feel like I can do anything I set my mind to. It just comes down to GETTING MY MIND SET.

And it's one thing at a time. This past week I started to cut out cereal and replace with that nasty drink. Honestly, I don't see it fulfilling my hunger needs, but I'm going to stick to it. I only started on Tuesday and then on Saturday I decided to get cereal out of my household by eating the last bowl. And on Sunday, I split a pizza with Aldo at church for our last service as children's pastors. Today, I didn't have anything. But I've realized that I have go-to snacks... like chocolate, that I just want to nibble on throughout the day. That's going to have to be another goal.

And it's not just a cut this and this out when you eat. It's body, spirit, mind thing. So I also started praying, journaling and reading my Bible. THAT makes all the difference. I have more drive, I think. When it's backed up with prayer, then it's like God helps you, you know. I feel clear. I feel loved. I am emotional once in a while and my back hurts, but that has everything to do with me missing my period this month. I Googled that, by the way. I wondered... what are the odds of pregnancy after vasectomy + the odds per day of missed period? I found that after weaning a lot of women can have irregular periods for months. (Technically a period is only considered missed if you don't have a flow for 6 or more weeks after the start of the last period.) I started reading on Thursday, and took a break on Saturday and Sunday, and restarted right up again for this week. I haven't been getting up early in the morning. Sometimes it's during nap time. Sometimes it's here or there, but I found the time and I took it, and I made it a priority to do it. And there hasn't been mind-blowing moments. But one day I did read something marvelous and then later saw on Facebook that one of my friends was prophesying the same word. It really confirmed with my spirit that I was doing the right thing and that God loved me and wasn't mad or anything that I stopped reading for months. And that He would still use me. He would still talk to me and tell me important things.

I'm not sure when I'll add in exercise. I have this re-occurring idea that if I do burpees I'll lose the weight in a flash. <eye roll> ONE: I hate burpees. TWO: Not sure if it would do a thing with my belly jiggling all over the place. THREE: I don't know if I can do one burpee. I don't know if I can do one pushup!!! Should that be a goal? Be able to do 10 burpees? HA!

I've realized that being a stay-at-home mom is not for everyone. I have realized more about myself in this stay-at-home period. For example, I like the bed made. Hmmm... all this time! I've been able to let things go here and there because of kids and things like that, but more and more I'm starting to feel like myself again, and once a long time ago myself liked having the house clean. Now, I just find the energy and opportunities to do it. And I've kept up with the laundry and dishes. It isn't always pretty, but it's at a manageable thing where we wouldn't have to overhaul if friends or family decided to come over within the hour.

I've realized that I need things to look forward to. To plan for. To be a celebration and use my creativity, for me to expend my time on, for me to look forward to. Right now it's our trip to Germany in August 2020 with Granddad. I've done a ton of research on it. I've looked into travel companies - cruises, bus, itinerary planners - I've looked into the places, the costs, the history, the hotels, the bus/train system. I've got it down to where we could do the traveling and planning ourselves hitting up all the stops for a third of the price. But now I'm at a stopping point and can't go any further. Now I need the feedback of Granddad and mom and Nancy. I need the go-ahead to start booking. But I won't be able to do that until March because Granddad recently found out that prostate growths have returned. I don't know the seriousness of this. I don't know if he'll be able to travel come August. And so now I must wait. And I'm not good at waiting.

So in the meantime, what do I do? What should I expend my energy on? That's the crossroads that I'm at. In the morning I've been trying to keep up with Mila and school. I signed her up for Kindergarten roundup at the beginning of April. We'll see if schooling with me has helped in any capacity... I've been trying to keep up with the house. I can do that to a point. There is the vicious cycle that it just gets messy again. And I can't be the only one putting in the work. It's a family thing. So I'll do a little bit at a time. Luke is doing 4H again with Bandit, and he's added in some other projects that we'll attempt this year. Can't do any of them yet though, not until about June. We just eliminated children's church from our responsibilities and we have no obligation in ministry. That's not saying that I don't want to be apart of ministry, or that I'm not that in my home life or when I go to the store, etc. And like I said, I'm reading my Bible. But I'm not cramming it all in. I'm taking a bite at a time and letting it soak in. So now again... what do I do? What do I look forward to?

Should I make it about getting healthy? I'm 223 pounds and 31 years old. I had gestational diabetes with my 3rd kid. I'd like to not run the risk of heart disease, diabetes, high blood pressure, gall bladder disease, and certain cancers. I'd like to live a long, healthy, enjoyable life. (The other day I tried a yoga kid pose and I couldn't bend down because my belly got in the way.) I'd like to be able to keep up with my kids.

I think I should put some work into my health. And I know it takes one decision at a time.

Nayelli's First Birthday

I've been wanting to write for the longest time, but I specifically wanted to post about Nayelli's First Birthday, and then a lot of the time was spent waiting on her "professional" birthday pictures, because you can't post about the big birthday without the big birthday pictures. (I'm partly disappointed in them because I thought I would have hundreds of photos, and of people that attended... not just of her in the one position...) Anyway, the theme was "Wild One" in a round-about way. I just wanted it to be simple and everyone come to the s'mores cookout out front, and the colors to bring out her blue eyes. She looks really good in yellow, which brought me to Nayelli's yellow autumn outfit, which then brought up the sunflower decoration idea. Too many ideas... ... ...

Happy First Birthday, Nayelli Grace!

Her Rustic-Looking Cake

<3

It ended up being a pretty large turnout. Elli was so adorable, but I think she was a bit overwhelmed and didn't quite know what to do.

I have half a mind to just buy my own camera and equipment to take my own awesome pictures for future events. I love these so much! And I'm sorry there isn't more that was captured. We were a bit worried about it being cold and rainy. I had a backup plan with decorations I hung up inside as well.

Nayelli started walking a few days after her birthday! For animal crackers.