Catch up-Iowa Christmas!

We had a great time in Iowa, but now that I am looking at the pictures-they are pretty random and do no show half of the people there. Whoops. I'll have to be better next time. And I can always look on Facebook on Jessie's account. She took lots of good ones.

The boys and I survived the flight to Iowa and were greeted by our cousins! Liam and Logan sure love babies. and they were really good to Marcel.

Lots of kisses.

Sometimes we were sad, maybe when things didn't go our way.

One of the best parts was that I finally got to try a Cheesy Blaster! (no thanks to Meggie or Sarah, who didn't think they were good ideas) Thanks Eric! If you don't know what one is (and even if you do)-watch this www.youtube.com/watch?v=p1W8R5TSNNk

Manny is super excited about his awesome presents ( and he is wearing his favorite pajamas).

Uncle Eric playing with the boys

Aunt Sarah helping open presents

Granny holding Marcel

And loving on him

Eric had the great idea to make a gingerbread house. And when he does something he is for serious. He practiced in Utah before he came here, made a pattern (he even made individual shingles out of gingerbread), and everything. Then they (funny that it was only Eric, Rusty, and Bennett who actually worked on it) used their creativity to bring it to life. I love Benny's face

Please notice the wishing well to the right, the dog house to the left, and I don't remember all the other things that were there

Wrestling with Uncle Joel (I think this is Joel, Bennett, Emerson, and Manny) which ended in tears after Joel tooted on Bennett's head

Uncle Rusty trying to prove men really can multi-task

And my baby is a balancing genius

Waiting for Meggie to bring the swim suits

Liam (I think) couldn't wait

And this was the result

Joel throwing kids into the pool

Addison throwing himself/doing a belly flop

Terrible pictures. For some reason my camera was acting super crazy in the humid pool room

This is what Granny did during pool time. I'm pretty sure Elliott had an ear infection

Manny is so lucky to have such great uncles to play with.

Pool time was a success!

This is what Marcel and I did. Try to take pictures of ourselves. Didn't turn out so well, but we tried

Uncle Eric with a baby Joey, I mean Elliott, in his pouch/jacket

Catch up-Decorating the Tree and Nativity

We decorated the tree the day after Thanksgiving because I was so excited. And we only had a few weeks before we left for Iowa Christmas. I let Manny decorate it. Notive only one corner of the tree has any ornaments. Every time an ornament would fall off (which happened surprisingly often) I would move it up a little higher. By the time we left for Iowa the whole tree was covered, not just a quarter of it.

Can you tell what this is? I was putting hooks on the ornaments and Manny would hang the ornaments up. Apparently Manny thought this was an ornament (a giant, tangled mess of hooks). Don't worry, Luis took it down because he thought it was a safety hazard.

Here we visited my cousin Rachel at her dental office. And we had Lucky (the class dog) again. We get him about once a month or so.

Next we had an activity at church where people from the community and from church gathered to celebrate Christ's birth. There were hundreds of nativities, lots of choirs and orchestras, etc. And a kid's nativity room with dress up clothes, nativity sets, and such. It was really neat

Wise man Manny bringing gifts for baby Jesus.

Mary and Joseph

Holding baby Jesus

And playing with one of the nativities.

Manny made this nativity at school. Isn't it so cute?

Catch up-First weeks and Thanksgivings

Sad this is what we woke up to one day (about a week after we came home). Gross. Turns out it was just a clogged tear duct, but yuck.

This is Marcel about 2wks old.

I kept trying to get a picture of him smiling. While in a milk coma he would often look like this.

(Please noice Manny watching a movie on the couch. Sadly he watched quite a bit of tv/computer while we worked on nursing. It took us a while to get the hang of it.)

Yay for family pictures! Too bad my baby is still kind of in the alien stage (about 2 wks).

We were lucky enough to have 2 Thanksgivings. Luis' parents worked that day so we got together with friends and then celebrated AGAIN the next day! Our friends have an awesome house with an awesome yard (and not a busy street). A small hill in the front of the yard with a giant pile of leaves at the bottom.

Riding a truck down the hill into the pile. Surprisingly (not really) Manny had never jumped in a pile of leaves. He was pretty hesitant-they were kind of scratchy.

Thanksgiving Take 2!

I love holidays and being with friends and family

Catch up-Moon Festival and Halloween

September and October of 2011
We had such a great time at a Moon Festival Night at the library. Apparently it was International Moon Observing Day or something like that and our library in Apex received a grant to host this event. I sadly didn't take a lot of pictures, but it was really neat. They had telescopes in the parking lot, a guy from NASA dong a presentation and aswering questions, a movie, face painting, story telling, games, crafts, etc. And they gave out moon pies (which Manny soon discovered are disgusting).

Story time


Manny didn't want his face painted, but the girl was nice enough to paint a moon on his hand

Informational (there was a chart you could make about the phases of the moon and why they looked like that) and fun crafts.

Look how proud Manny is

And this is me around the first week in October (a whole month left!).

A friend in the ward had a Halloween party on her street. Manny chose to be a bombero (fire fighter) for this party.

For his school party he wanted to be a skeleton.

This is part of the parade.

And standing around. He looks a bit like a midget.

Wouldn't really smile for the camera, but he had fun.

Teri-yucky chicken and Gruining

I keep foregetting to write things down.
We had wonderful friends bring meals over after Marcel was born. One friend brought over teriyaki chicken. When it was time to eat Manny cried and said he didn't want to eat. Why? Becasue he thought she said "teri-yucky" chicken. Ha! Ha!
And Manny says lots of fun things. One is instead of ruin he says "gruin." So many times a day I am told that I "gruined it!" I seem to "gruin" a lot of things of Manny's. It's possible he is a little more emotional at this time.

Baby (Long birth story)

I should probably write the birth story down before I forget it. It has been almost 4 months.

So I was feeling crazy itchy. I went into the dr's office (Mon 10-31) for my weekly appointment and they drew some blood to check my bile acids ( I had cholestasis with Manny, too--where you liver decides to stop working, and you get incredibly itchy all over, but especially hands and feet). I forgot that it takes a few days to get results. So I came home kind of sad. On Tuesday I had some contractions and I kept saying-come on! Faster! But no such luck. On Wed I decided to try to walk the baby out. I went on a hike with some friends. More contractions, but nothing. On Wed afternoon the dr's office called and said they wanted me to come in immediately. My bile acids were high. Surprise! So they scheduled me to come in the next morning (Thurs) to be induced. But I talked about if I could go into labor myself, that would be great, right? The doctor said yes, then proceded to tell me ways to possibly induce labor. He said s-e-x (and yes, he actually spelled it out, he's kind of a weird guy), nipple stimulation (really?), walking, etc. I thought about them, but then decided I was too tired and too lazy to actually do anything about it. More contractions that night, but only lasted an hour.

So I woke up at 12:30am with contractions. 3-5 min apart. Yay! And I waited the full 2 hours of 3-5 min contractions the dr asked me to before I called. And this office is a one doctor office. To me not really the smartest idea. That means he is ALWAYS on call. Could be part of why he is kind of weird and looks tired all the time. I think he realized this, too because another doctor was scheduled to join the practice about the time I was to deliver (but not soon enough). I call the office and I tell the lady what's going on. She pages the doctor. I wait a half hour. Nothing. I understand that it is 2:30 in the morning and I am sure he's tired, but this is kind of important. I call back. She pages him again. I talk with him and he says-you know you're scheduled to be induced this morning, you could just wait. (What??) Unless you think they're getting faster. (I think they are getting faster. I was worried I wouldn't know when the right time was, since I was induced with Manny, but I knew. It felt like labor.It was kind of painful.)

I wake up Luis and he says maybe he'll eat some breakfast and take a shower. (Don't worry, at this time I was still waiting for the doctor to call back. And I understand his thinking. With Manny labor was an all day thing. He wanted energy and to be clean.)

We are finally ready and we take Manny to a friend's house (and amazing friend who let's me drop off my kid at 3:45am). We make it to the hospital about 4 and I am admitted. Now the contractions are really not feeling so good. The nurse offers me the IV drugs, and I say-shouldn't I wait, don't they lose their affect the more you use them? (I thought it was going to be a long time until I had a baby.) I end up taking them, but they don't really do anything except make me feel crazy. I really should remember not to use those again. And now I am kind of wanting an epidural. I do not remember feeling this much pain with Manny. The contractions just kept coming, and coming, and coming. I couldn't seem to get a break or catch my breath. But I can't get an epidural until my doctor is in the building. And he is not there. He doesn't show up until 6:15 or so. I'm sure he thought I was crazy or exaggerating and I could just wait, but not really. I finally get an epidural (after waiting for the anesthesiologist to give many others before me.) He saw me and said-maybe I'm going to give her a "fast dose." The nurse kept telling me I was going to have the baby soon, but I didn't really believe her. The epidural started working right away, but just on one side. Blast! Thank goodness it started working after I laid on my side. I got the epidural just in time for it to start working, and then it was time to push. I only pushed a few times and he was born at 6:57am.

Yay!

Here are some pictures.

This is a picture of me trying to show how big I am while Luis is getting ready.

Luis took one for me.

Who knew I would have an 8lb 1oz baby? (Besides my cousin Rachel, she totally called it that I would have an 8lb baby just by looking at me. Apparently she is good at guessing everybody's baby's weight.) Manny was only 6lb 9oz.

Nice and clean
What a handsome guy.

Manny is so excited

As is Abuela

And Luis

Manny loves to kiss him and smell him (which is weird, I know, but he loves to smell him)

Manny happened to have the "class dog" the weekend I came home. How exciting!

And Manny was so sweet. I kept finding toys like this with him (that's a turtle on Marcel's lap)

We are loving having Marcel around. Manny is adjusting better than I expected. He is pretty much sweet all the time (only a melt down or 2 a day, but always nice to his brother). And we are just loving having 2 boys.