Brandon's Puppy

2 Months Old!!

Matthew is two months old today. Time sure is going by fast...
He's such a wonderful baby. He's been sleeping through the night for over two weeks. Every day he smiles and coos more and more, trying to talk to us. He loves having his brother around, smiling and laughing at him. His check-up is next Tuesday, so I'll provide the growth information then, but I estimate he is probably weighing about 10 pounds. Here are some really cute shots I took of him earlier today. He's a cutie, ain't he?!

Baby blogmeet

My cell phone rang yesterday morning as I was waiting for Matt to wake up for his10AM feeding. It was Chantel, and she wanted to meet up for lunch since she's in town. "Awesome!" I thought. I figured Chanty might be in the mood for some Cuban food since it's rare, if not non-existent in Alabama, so I fed Matt, prepared his diaper bag, got dressed and met Chanty, her mom and Penny around 12:30PM at Versailles. We had a great time, and so did the babies. Here are a few shots of their meeting.

Matt and Penny meet.

Penny and her mommy.

Mommy, are older women this hard to get? Do you think if I pretend to be sleeping she'll pay attention to me??

Zoo-tastic!

We live so close to the zoo that we decided to purchase a family annual pass in October. The weekend before last Brandon, Matt and I went with my friend Angie and her daughter, plus some of her family. It was her daughter's first trip to the zoo, as well as Matt's. This past weekend, Eric and I took the boys for a couple of hours. Here's a quick recap of both trips.

Trip 1:
The first animals we saw were the flamingos, closely followed by the tigers. Check out this one, looking like he's ready to pounce. Then we went to visit the Siamang Gibbon apes.Here they are, making their calls. It was really cool the hear them, we hadn't experienced that before. Here's a bit of info about their calling habits (makes sense, we were there around 11AM).
We then rode the monorail system to the further end of the zoo, and walked to the giraffe feeding station, but not before passing the African elephants. We were awed by this baby rhino following around its mommy around their exhibit. Next up were the gorillas; if you look closely on the left side of the picture, you can see Brandon and Emilie on the inside of the viewing cave. After that, we had lunch around 3PM, and headed home.

Trip 2:
This week, one of our first stops was the Asian elephant exhibit. We arrived just in time to see this girl do some tricks for a treat. We then headed towards the Wings of Asia Aviary, which was destroyed by Hurricane Andrew in 1992 and has been completely rennovated. The entrance to the aviary includes a dinosaur exhibit, where our own archeologist had some fun. Inside the aviary, we saw a bunch of beautiful and interesting birds, both large and small. We thought this black and white duck was absolutely adorable, and we were very eager to see if this guy would give us a better view of his beautiful feathers. He was a bit shy I suppose, because he just stood there, looking at us.
We then headed to the Children's Zoo for a quick visit to the petting zoo and lunch around 3:30PM. Brandon was anxious to feed the giraffes again, but the feeding station closes at 4PM and we just didn't make it over there on time. So that was the end of our most recent visit to the zoo, and this guy was sweet enough to greet us near the exit. =)

My mom

Today is my mother's birthday. She loves quotes, and here are a few that I know she'll love.

When you are a mother, you are never really alone in your thoughts. A mother always has to think twice, once for herself and once for her child. ~Sophia Loren, Women and Beauty

Mothers are fonder than fathers of their children because they are more certain they are their own. ~Aristotle

Mother is the name for God in the lips and hearts of little children. ~William Makepeace Thackeray
God could not be everywhere, so he created mothers. ~Jewish Proverb

The moment a child is born, the mother is also born. She never existed before. The woman existed, but the mother, never. A mother is something absolutely new. ~Rajneesh

A daughter is a mother's gender partner, her closest ally in the family confederacy, an extension of her self. And mothers are their daughters' role model, their biological and emotional road map, the arbiter of all their relationships. ~Victoria Secunda

A mother becomes a true grandmother the day
she stops noticing the terrible things her
children do because she is so enchanted with
the wonderful things her grandchildren do. -Unknown

Happy Birthday Mom!! We love you!

The Boys

Sorry for the lack of posting this weekend. Hubby's birthday was on Friday, and he's had Friday, Saturday and today off from work, so we've been doing the family bonding thing. Here's a little something to hold you over until I return to my "regular" blogging.

More Fun Stuff

I am trying to take full advantage of my maternity leave and do things for myself and my family that I usually don't have time to do. Besides doing things around the house, and catching up on my scrapbooking, I'm trying to take Brandon out and do things he can fully enjoy. I've walked him home from school a few times, we've visited the park with his cousin several times, and I've taken him to a bunch of events around town, as I noted here, here, and here. On Friday afternoon, we went to the Children's Museum again. This time, Brandon really enjoyed the supermarket exhibit, which simulates a grocery shopping experience, with child-size shopping carts, registers, stands and counters...the works! They even have "oranges" that the kids can pick from a tree and put in their baskets, and they learn where milk comes from thanks to this cow. Across from the supermarket is the bank, where kids can make money, see how tellers work, and go inside the vault and learn about safety deposit boxes. A few rooms over there's space for a traveling exhibit, and the one there now is "Let's Play Railway", which includes two wooden train tables, a huge model train set, a bunch of vintage trains by Lionel and the like on display, and three plastic trains that they can crawl through and play on. Needless to say, Brandon did not want to leave! We finally coaxed him out when we told him we were going to the playground, where even Matt had a little fun.
That's it for now, but the fun is far from over. Stay tuned for Saturday's adventure at the zoo! =)

The Fair

If there's one way to know that Spring has arrived in South Florida, it's the arrival of The Fair. I loved going to the fair when I was little, and Brandon loved it the last three years we've taken him, so my sister and I decided to take the boys last Thursday. I think the $1 Opening Day entrance fee had something to do with it too. It was my nephew Mikey's first fair experience, as well as Matthew's and cousin Maxx, so we wanted to commerate the moment by buying those over-priced photos they take when you first walk in, if it was a good picture. And it was! (Thanks to Lilli for photoshopping out the crowd behind us!).
With two pre-schoolers, and two babies, we knew we "grown ups" wouldn't be riding, but we wanted the boys to have a great time, so we bought them a POP (Pay One Price...aren't they creative?!) ticket, which is a $20 wristband good for unlimited entry to the rides. It was well worth it, because both boys rode just about every ride in the Kiddieland section of the fair. They rode the carousel, the Jumping Jumbos (which I guess is the distant cousin of the Dumbo ride at Disney World), the Dizzy Dinosaurs, the bumper cars, the flying bees, the swings, a couple of fun houses, the race cars, and a few others. After all that riding, and some eating, we headed over to the petting zoo, but Brandon was a bit scared of the animals being so close, so there's was no petting involved.
We then proceeded to the best part of the fair: The eating! Throughout the day we had, between my sister and I, a gyro, a corn dog, two corns on the cobs, 2 cokes, a cinammon roll, a chocolate dipped ice cream cone, and I'm sure a couple of other things I don't remember. They boys had pizza and ice cream, they were too busy having fun to care about the food. Sorry, no pictures of us eating, that would be simply embarrassing!
Oh, and in case you were wondering about the babies...they slept almost the whole time we were there! It will be a couple of more years before Matthew and Maxx can ride anything, but in the meantime, Brandon and Mikey will have enough fun for all of them!

Pepin y el Perro

If I thought that the world was small, the Cuban/Cuban-American world is even smaller.
I am still in awe by the discovery Marta made a couple of days ago. Turns out her family and mine are from the same small town in Cuba!
I think a lot of what Tere says here has something to do with it. Cuban exiles, while more often settling in places like Miami and New Jersey, can be found just about anywhere. And once you find one of "your own", no matter how far away from Cuba, they and their experience becomes a part of you. To me, it's like a puzzle piece that I am missing. I will never know the beauty of Cuba and growing up there, and knowing it as my parents, grandparents and aunts and uncles did. All this was taken from me before I was born. It is because I feel as Cuban as I am American that this gap exists. So I hang onto these pieces and I find them and I cherish them, like the story of my great-uncle getting bitten by Marta's mother's dog, and I hope that someday my puzzle will be complete.

Gummy Grins

Happy Friday, everybody!

"There is nothing like a child's smile to make all the chaos worthwhile". -Connie Berry

Birthday Bonanza!

Happy birthday to my awesome stepsister Mary, and happy 6 months to her baby, my gorgeous nephew Maxx!

All Aboard!

This weekend, the boys and I spent A Day Out with Thomas at the Gold Coast Railroad Museum. Also attending were my three nephews with their mommies, and my friends Vivian and Sonia with their respective husbands and kids, and their mom and grandparents. That's 11 kids and 12 adults. The bigger kids were completely amused with the train ride, while the little ones napped or played with mommy.
Afterwards, the kids enjoyed the other activities that were available, like a mini-carousel, temporary tattoos featuring Thomas and friends, two bouncehouses, and hay piles to run around and play on. Brandon loved seeing his favorite toy train come to life, and I think Matt may be on his way to becoming a Thomas fan too!

Matthew pulled an all-nighter...Updated

...but not in a bad way. He slept through the night last night! His last feeding was at 10:30PM, and he did not wake up until 5:15 this morning.
I wonder if tonight we'll have the same luck, or if our night will look something like this:

By the way, the little guy is six weeks old today. Time sure is flying, huh?

Update: He did it again! Last night's feeding: 11PM. Next feeding: 5:15AM.
YAY!

It's all about ME!

Shamelessly stolen from Rachel, here's a little test to see how well you know me.

Create your own Friend Quiz here

See? I told you he was smiling!

The Big 3-0

Happy birthday, mi amiga, and welcome to the club!

As my overly cynical husband would say: "you're one year closer to death". LOL
I hope you have a great day, and a wonderful year. I hope that birthday wish comes true very soon. Love ya!!

No, I'm not feeding him MiracleGro. (UPDATED)

I took Matt to his 1-month well check visit yesterday. He weighed in at 8 pounds, 8 ounces, and now measures 20-1/2 inches. He was, once again, a very well-behaved little peanut. He's due back in April for his first round of immunizations...YIKES!

Update:

By popular demand, here are a couple of recent shots of the piglet. The first was last night, a little while before his last feeding before we headed to bed. The second one was this morning with his cousin Maxx, who is five months older, and is being fed MiracleGro ;-).

AWESOME!!

Today I got three adorable, non-gassy, so-cute-I-could-melt toothless gummy grins from Matt!
I was not expecting smiles just yet, so there is no photographic evidence. You'll just have to take my word for it. But I will definitely have my camera at arm's reach from now on.

Friday Fun

Hi everybody! Yesterday Mommy and Daddy picked me up early from school and took me and my baby broder to the museum. We had lots of fun. It was a special day because the man who made the story The Cat in the Hat had his birthday, and the museum had fun stuff for him. I did lots of things. First I pretended I was Thing 1. Then we went to a part of the museum about being safe, and I dressed up like a firefighter. Mommy and Daddy thought I looked great! Then daddy and I went fishing. We also drove little boats. I played outside in the park for a while, but then we had to go because it was my cousin Tyler's birthday. He is 1. We had cake at my Tia's house. Tomorrow he has a big party! YAY! Happy birthday, primi!

I have to go now, it's past my bedtime. Good night!

(Mommy's note: Yesterday was the first time all five boys were together...we hope to get a better picture of the bunch at the party on Sunday)

Seein' Blue everywhere

Looks like yet another little boy is on his way...

Congratulations, Lilli and Adrian! I'll start saving all of Matt's things for ya. =)

Home Sweet Home

A year ago today, we upgraded from this, a 2 bedroom, 1 bath condo with just under 900 square feet, to this, a 3 bedroom, 2 bath townhome with over 1900 square feet.

We've had a few ups and downs in the last year, but I am so very grateful for the beautiful home that we brought Matthew home to. We have a yard for him and his brother to run in, an extra room for them to play in, and a bigger house full of love for them to feel safe in.

It takes hands to build a house, but only hearts can build a home. ~Author Unknown