Our first time!

Well, we bit the bullet and took Coco to Chuck-E-Cheese's the other day! He's a little young for most of the games but still had fun and loves to tell you what all he did there. "And I play slide! And I ride truck! And I eat pizza! And I have apple! (Apple soda to drink)" So cute. 

Couldn't reach pedals but pretended like he was driving! ("I racing Mama!")

I can see us going back :)

AFTER the fun pizza date, we took Cohen to get a haircut.. His hair was 100% in his eyeballs (see above) and 95% mullet status. :-/ 

We tried Cool Cuts 4Kids, this time, after bombing at Sharkey's a couple times and getting some sub-par cuts at Floyd's. 

I showed this chick, "Dee", pictures of exactly what I wanted, explained that we like his hair longer, and told her he does not take kindly to people cutting his hair. (Nor do I.)

She said, "Oh, the surfer style! I got that. No problem."

Cohen liked the fire truck seat. Was excited to watch Cars during the cut.

Things turned sour when she tried to put the hair cape thing on him. He flipped out. So nix the cape.

Tears came immediately after the first lock of hair landed on his arm. Kid doesn't like being dirty. 

Have you ever seen anything more sad? Poor baby wiping his tears. 

It took Hector and me holding him down to complete this cut. 

Final product:

Does that look like a SURFER style to you?! No, looks like your basic, run-of-mill, mushroom boy's cut. 

We had to have a fun bath when we got home to get rid of the itchy hairs on his skin. 

Blue water! Tons of bubbles! Yay!

Well, that's about the end of my saga. I hope his hair grows out quickly. 

Mother's Day

I worked the whole Mother's Day weekend. We're used to this. But on the Saturday night before the big day, Hector and Cohen surprised me with a party when I got home!!

Walked in to this:

Streamers and confetti everywhere!!

Then on the table was this:

My favorite pizza! Hey, just not having to cook is a gift!!

In the bag were some very thoughtful gifts: the Jesus Calling devotional book, a movie, favorite work snacks and this:

My boys spoiled me!! I sure do love them!!

Big News!

It's raining, it's pouring
The little one is snoring (only cuz of allergies)

So I thought I'd update my ol' blog. My last post was on 2/21. And guess what? I was 3 weeks pregnant on that day!

Yep, that's right! Baby #2 is scheduled to arrive in the first week of November!

Here was our big announcement! (at 13 weeks!)

-And a couple other contenders, too. Just love Coco's face in these!-

Are we shocked? Yes, a little. Are we surprised, though? Not one bit. You see, I had a Mirena placed after Cohen was born. (an IUD, for those not familiar with the name) I can't say that it didn't work, because we never got pregnant in two years. And it was nice almost never having a period.

But I seriously believe the Lord started working on my heart, on whether or not that was the right thing to do. It was literally keeping us from being open to the Lord's plan. It was our planning. Our selfishness. Some things that seemed to be pointing me towards removal of the Mirena were: seeing a couple friends at work have theirs migrate through the uterine wall, into the abdomen (requiring surgery to remove it) and reading a friends post on birth-control in general. Mirena's website states that it is thought to work in several ways that make the uterus uninhabitable to a fertilized egg. Thought to, meaning they're not quite sure. They also say it may prevent you from releasing eggs, but this is not it's design. This all shouts to me, "A sperm could get through, and could fertilize an egg, but ultimately be aborted because the conditions in the uterus are too hazardous to facilitate implantation." SO, I had it removed. I felt a huge peace about our decision.

Well, 3 weeks and 6 days later I took a home pregnancy test that was.. you guessed it! Positive! You know why I took a test? Because I had an interview that day, and the pants I'd bought a week earlier felt way too tight. Hehe. Bloating. I don't normally bloat, so I thought, "mehhh... I 'll take an old test I had leftover from God-knows-when." This was at like 5 am, because I hadn't been able to sleep and was up trying on interview clothes. Weird, I know. So, yes. Shocked when I saw those two pink lines. But not surprised, because when you open yourself up to the Lord's ultimate plan, you should not be surprised when He takes you on a journey you may not have chosen for yourself.

We had our first doctor's appointment on April 3rd. I was 8 weeks and 6 days along. This is what our itty bitty looked like:

Pretty typical froggy-looking baby. 

We saw the heart beating and it was 166 bpm. Praise the Lord! They told us everything looked great!

We opted to have the First Trimester Screening done (which involves an ultrasound and a blood test) to see the chances of the baby having any chromosomal abnormalities, in order to be better prepared to care for a baby born with any. So we did this at the next month's appointment. Look how we've grown!

Hand at the mouth! 

Our sweet baby was bouncing and flipping and spinning all over the place, so the sono tech asked, "Um, did y'all eat lunch on the way over here?" Of course we had.. our appointment was at 1pm! So, baby was very energized. This ultrasound just brought tears of joy to my eyes. Joy at the wonder of God's miracles! This was on April 30th, at 12 weeks and 5 days. The tech told us the baby was measuring at 13 w and 3 d! Big baby! :) 

Today I am 14 weeks! I feel great, except that I sometimes still get overwhelmingly tired! But I don't have the nausea and upset stomach that I had for the first 12 weeks! I am already experiencing lots of heartburn... another head full of hair? :) 

Gender dreams? I'd be lying if I said I wasn't hoping for a girl this time. But, that's just one side of my heart. The other side would love for Coco to have a little brother. So, only time will tell! We should find out in mid-June. 

More later!!

today.

Today I'm reminded just how much I hate living in an apartment.

Let's see.
Was it the screeching children running up and down the hallway during what I had hoped would be mine and Cohen's shared nap time?

Was it him waking up after only 45 minutes because a random ice cream truck that's never been here before came blaring "When the Saints go Marching In" right outside his window for 5 minutes??

Was it us thinking, "Man, we have quiet neighbors above us!" for the past two months only to find out it was VACANT, and they are most assuredly home now? Goodbye peaceful ceilings, hello elephants bowling above us!

That was just today.

There's always the lovely sound of your neighbor flushing their toilet at 3 a.m. to rouse you from your peaceful sleep.

Or, smelling your neighbors Indian spices through the vents at dinner time. (No offense to Indian spices, just eww when I'm cooking or eating something else over here.)

Don't try to tell me that all this is fine since I don't have to do my own yard or fix my A/C when it breaks. Most of the time for me, apartment living blows.

End of rant. Nice to think we signed a contract here for 10 more glorious months.

Cooking at Home

Since moving, it's been all too easy for us to just go grab food for dinner. Not only does this get expensive.. it's not good for us. :( Feeling bloated and yucky is not worth the simplicity. Sorry Pei Wei, Whataburger, Chick-fil-a, Burger King, Jet's Pizza..  you won't be seeing us so often. I made a conscious effort to make a plan and a list of grocery items for three make-at-home meals this week. I didn't want to get to ambitious on our first week of eating at home. :) Hoping to work up to like 6 meals a week at home.

I went to Pinterest for all three of these.

Tuesday night we tried Dr. Pepper Chili.

(her chili!)

My chili! I only omitted the onion (don't judge me!). And, I accidentally grabbed a can of adobo sauce with NO chipotles in it. :( So, I just used three Tablespoons of adobo sauce instead of 1 T and 2 chipotles. Still good. This Chili was so tasty! Very tomatoey, and the Dr. Pepper made it perfectly sweet! Glad there were leftovers! 

Wednesday night, we tried Chicken Enchiladas with Avocado Cream Sauce.

(That's her photo, not mine!!)

I was not crazy about this, unfortunately. I left out the onions. Hector said this is why it lacked flavor. The sauce needed more salt, for sure. And, on the recipe, she doesn't specify how many rotisserie chickens to use, I used one, and was lacking about 3/4 of the chicken necessary. :-/ I don't think I let mine cook long enough.. because the tortillas came out kinda gummy... ya know? Or maybe it was because Hector poured WAY too much of the avocado sauce on top before baking, that they never stood a chance. Regardless, don't think I'll be making these again. A lot of steps for bland, gummy enchiladas. (TO ME.) If I followed her recipe more closely, I'm sure they'd be ok. 

And tonight, we're having this. Sweet and Spicy Chicken.

(Her pic)

Can't wait for this one. I'm a meat and potato girl at heart! 

Yay for eating at home three nights in a row!

Love Day 2013

This Valentine's Day was our Cohen's third V-day. Also, this was my first time to basically spend it alone with him, since Hector was working this year. Kinda weird, not gonna lie. Anyways, I wanted to make it special for him. I want holidays and birthdays for our kids to always be special, that's how I want them to remember them. I know my parents always gave us something on V-day (still do!), so I make sure we do the same for Cohen.

Do you do any special traditions on Valentine's Day??

Here is how our day went....

Coco's surprises waiting on him!!

He woke up kind of grumpy (not how I'd imagined...) so we started off with Chocolate!

See what I mean??

One of his goodies, a Lightning McQueen t-shirt!

His cards! Totally got this idea from Emily Anderson, over at the anderson crew.

I tried first to make pink pancakes. I didn't have red food coloring. Then I thought, red sprinkles would be cute! But they melted in the batter and turned it kinda pinkish (win??). Then I just sprinkled the pancakes with multi-color nonpareil sprinkles while they were in the pan. This would've been beautiful if I hadn't over-cooked the pancakes. BUTYOUKNOWWHAT? Cohen ate every bite. I hope you can tell that I cut them out with my heart cookie cutter. It's important.

Checking out the crazy pancakes!

What is Valentine's Day without flowers?? (bla bla bla) We already had these. ;)

He wanted to wear "Queen" immediately, so we changed. Then I tried to get cute pics with the bunting in the background. He wouldn't stop watching Cars long enough to pay attention to me. True Love.

I'll scrapbook this one day (I swear.). 

C-ars lover!

O-beys mommy and daddy--mostly!

H-appy all the time!

E-nergetic! (understatement)

N-ice to everyone he meets!

His cute (kinda weird) Love Cup with a crazy straw.

Then we made Daddy a Valentine!

Easily distracted.

Then we had a love lesson about Jesus. 

Um, he almost stayed in the lines!

Minimal, but Daddy loved it. :)

I can tell that Valentine's Day will never be about just us (me and Hector). And I kind of don't want it to be. I want it to be us and our children, showing each other how much we love each other. I'm not a fancy girl, I don't need 2 dozen roses, expensive champagne, and a $100 meal at an overly busy restaurant. Our $14.99 bunch of flowers from Target, $13 bottle of our favorite Moscato, and take out food from Market Street was perfectly sufficient for us. 

"We love because He first loved us." 1 John 4:19

My big 2 year old!

Our "little" guy turned two just over a month ago! We had a fun little Texas Ranger's Baseball party for him. It was much more scaled down than first birthday, but that's ok. We were about to be moving and didn't want anything that cost a crazy amount. And our apartment isn't the biggest place!

The Concession Stand! 

Rangers!

His Cake (I made it and Mom helped me frost it!)

Found these at Party City!

Everybody signed the baseball--What a great memory! 

Cousin Alysse got to come! 

This little boy snuck up and ate more cake after his guests had left!

One of his favorite gifts from us was his first Thomas and Friends track set! He loves it!

It was such a wonderful night. We served hot dogs and chips. We had all the concession stand goodies: popcorn, Cracker Jacks, Baby Ruth's, Snickers, Reese's, and Big League Chew!! I made some little yogurt and fruit parfaits for a healthier option, then of course there was cake. :) Our little birthday boy was so happy! We're so thankful for everyone who came over--The Allen's, The Cole's, The Ray's, The Buxton's, Uncle Josh, Roland&Jordan&Alysse, and of course Granna and Pop!! 

Cohen at 2 

Favorite snack: Gummies

Favorite drink: mama's "Peppers" (Dr. Pepper) (He doesn't get much, and not often!!)

Favorite toy: cars!

Favorite movie: Cars!

Favorite tv show: Caillou or Thomas and Friends

Weight: 25#9.5oz

Height: 32.5 inches (2 feet, 8.5 inches)

He's such a sweet, sweet boy. He is getting head strong now, though. Learned to say, "No!" "Mine!" "I don't want it!" But he also will grab the car keys, come up to us, pucker his lips and say "Kiss, kiss" and then walk to the door and say "See ya later! Be careful!" He loves to watch the show, Caillou. He asks for it by pointing at the TV and saying "Caillou?? Wosie?? Gibbert??"Which of course is Caillou, Rosie (his sister) and Gilbert (their cat). I think it's precious even though I don't love the show. He's a great kid. Makes us laugh and smile everyday. We love Coco!!!

Also, a special shout out to Jackie and Patrick who came to Cohen's party.. She was 39 weeks and 6 days pregnant.. and she went into labor that night, after the party! Wow! So Little Colton Ray was born the next day, sharing birthday with sweet Cohen! Such a great day!