First and Second babies

My sister just had her second baby about a week ago. Her first baby will turn 2 in February. She just posted about how her first baby seems to have gotten so big seemingly overnight. As I looked at her photo of her 'big' boy and her little boy it instantly reminded me of similar photos I had taken of Ella and Jackson at that stage. 

Except in my case Ella had just had her first birthday six days before Jackson was born. Still a baby herself. Yes people, we did have our hands busy, and yes we know what causes that. And yes, we are quite possibly crazy.

So, in honor of remembering how fast kids grow I decided to post a few long-lost photos of my first and second babies together.

Here is Jackson and Ella's first official meeting. If someone shoved a baby looking like that at me I'd probably make the same face as Ella. (Wait, I probably did....) C'mon, you have to admit that Jackson is not looking, well, normal. I guess he did just come from a long journey down the birth canal, so we'll cut him some slack.

It's safer now that Daddy is holding him. Not so scary looking anymore.

See how Jackson is just eyeing that bottle in the following picture ? He eyed that bottle from early on. (Most likely because I quit breastfeeding at 4 weeks, poor baby)

Winnie the Pooh and Tigger too!

This one looks like Ella has a secret to tell Jackson, but he's not interested.

"Hey Jackson, wanna see if I can push you off the deck?" "Okay, sounds like fun...whhhheeeee!"

All dressed up for a Valentine's Day surprise visit to Mommy's office.

I have countless other photos of Ella and Jackson too, but for now these will have to do you.

First babies are a lot of fun. But I gotta admit, once the second baby comes around it's a whole new world and those first babies seem to grow up right before our eyes.

This is what a quiet afternoon looks like

I really don't even have words. 

I mean, the girls were quiet for a couple hours in their room yesterday, happily playing together, which is not always the case with a 4 & 7 year old. I guess I didn't get suspicious when the puppy kept coming out of their room in various doll clothes that anything was amiss in the land of little-girldom.

Not until I went in to get them for lunch and stepped into the battlezone. I narrowly escaped without injury as I dodged tiny barbie shoes just waiting to poke my bare feet and velcro trying to adhere itself to my pant leg. And just about when I was getting ready to yell and scream, I had a moment of deja vu:

My sister and I sitting in our room growing up with our industrial size lard tubs of barbie clothes and my little pony stuff strewn over every available surface of our room. We would sit for hours and dress barbies for a fashion show or put together our own little barbie houses in separate corners of the room so that they could "visit" each other. No we didn't always get along everyday, but those are some happy memories. And cleaning all that stuff up was the last thing on our mind.

So I'll let my girls have their fun and let the mess stay. It will all get cleaned up eventually right? Right?

ETA The maid ended up cleaning up the whole room this morning even though I tried to tell her not to, to let the girls do it themselves. Well, at least she is doing what I am paying her for even if my children are not learning those valuable lessons about taking care of their stuff!!

Who's that girl?

I started working out with a trainer the other day. As I was standing there in my (new) workout clothes facing the full wall of mirrors I had to wonder to myself -- Who is that fat person? Is that really me? How could I let myself go this much? And finally, I really need to quit with the spandex-type top because really, does the whole gym need to see the intimate details of my flab? I seriously did not look at myself in the mirror for the rest of the workout because I just don't like looking at the rolls that form whenever my midsection is even slightly bent over. Unhealthy body image? I am not super obsessed with my weight and never really have been, but I just don't feel comfortable at this present weight.  So I finally got brave enough to do something about it.

A little backstory: I have 3 children born within 4 years of each other. That is a lot of time being pregnant or nursing/caring for an infant. And let's be serious, when you've got a houseful of babies it is much easier to sit around and watch The Wiggles rather than workout. So the weight started to creep up. 

About 2 years ago I joined Weight Watchers while working at PennWell. It was a good program and I had lots of coworkers doing it too, so the support was good. I also joined an indoor soccer league simultaneously, so I was able to get down to a comfortable weight for awhile. Then we moved to St. John and I no longer worked and didn't really know anyone for about 6 months and got extremely lazy just sitting around the house and baking yummy treats. From there things just kept going up. A direct result of too much time on the couch and not enough exercise. Near the end of our time in St. John I had finally joined a Pilates class that I really enjoyed, but then entered the move to Mexico and the same situation has presented itself all over again. This time language has been a barrier, so I have mostly stayed inside my safe little condo all day and watched my American TV. So many excuses, I know, I know.

I used to be pretty athletic. I mean I did play college soccer and everything. I don't mind a good workout, so I have to ask myself why I have become so sedentary over the last 2 (okay make that about 8) years. I like working out in a group, so I think part of the problem was finding someone to workout with. Since we moved into our mega-neighborhood complete with gym, I have done some cardio on the elliptical sporadically and always seen a woman trainer kicking her clients butts. I wanted my butt kicked! Of course I was always too nervous to actually go talk to her because she speaks Spanish and I do not. Finally about a week ago my neighbor and I were talking and she said something about starting to work out again with her trainer and then she said she would introduce us. Long story short, I started working out with the trainer (the same one I had always seen) this week and so far the language barrier has not been a problem. Or maybe my Spanish is coming along better than I give myself credit for.

So, I am now in workout/weight-loss mode. It's nice to actually break a sweat from something other than sitting out at the pool. I don't even really mind the sore muscles because they are a testament to the hard work I have been doing. And now I have something new to blog about, just to give you fair warning.

Unless I die from the torturous workouts first.

Stalker

I have a stalker.

I know because some of my personal things are turning up missing, there are signs of my stalkers presence all over my house and I am being followed almost 24/7. Now, before you get all CSI on me, my stalker is also only about 10 inches tall, has fuzzy black hair and wears a pink collar.

That's right, I am being stalked by my black lab puppy.

She is almost always right by my side or underfoot lately. If I am on the computer in the kitchen, she is sitting under my feet. If I am cooking, she is usually under the cabinets at my feet or (dangerous for her as I have stepped on her plenty) laying behind me at my feet. If I move to another room, she moves to another room. If I go searching for the kids in their bedrooms, she is trotting along behind me. She even followed me to the shower and howled until I opened the door and she came in (and quickly back out!)

I guess she knows where her bread is buttered.

It is nice to have a loyal companion during the day, but I don't really want her showing favoritism to me over the kids when they get home from school. That would be wrong. Because, you know, it is their dog.

Until it becomes mom's dog.

Which by the looks of things has already happened.

Ghost town beach

Yesterday Patrick had a day off, so we dropped the kids at school and decided to hit the beach in Puerto Morelos. The grey skies I mentioned here have gone away and brought some really beautiful weather. Yesterday was a fantastic beach day. Not a cloud in the sky, the sun was high in the sky and it wasn't too hot. 

So we drove the 15 or so minutes and this is what we found.

The beach was empty! Every other time we have been to the beach at Puerto Morelos it has been pretty crowded so I don't know if it is always like that during the week (we have only been there on weekends), or if this is just a slow tourist week. Anyway, we decided to go walking along the shore to see some beach houses down the way before getting wet. As we walked we also noticed how calm the water was, reminiscent of some St. John beaches :( About halfway through our walk Patrick spotted a sting-ray right up close to the shore! I didn't have my camera with to capture that though. He thought it was dead at first, but the he kind of disturbed the sand around it and it moved away, so it was definitely alive.

After about an hour of walking we cooled off in the water and suntanned a little bit, well I should say I suntanned, Patrick just has two shades, white or burnt-red since he refuses to wear sunscreen. We saw a few people and a couple with their dog, which made us wish our puppy had come along. Before long though we had to leave to pick up the kids from school, so we dusted off our sandy feet and hopped in the car back to Cancun.

It really was a perfect beach day.

Mystery Meat

We tried out a new (well, not new but we had never been there before) taco place the other night with some friends. It was a total local hangout and I'm sure our table of 8 gringos looked a little out of place, but whatever. The food was really good, the futbol game was on and there were cheers all around when a goooooooooaaaaaaallll was scored. Besides that there were lots of different tacos to try and you could just keep ordering until you were full. There were a few, ahem, interesting choices on the menu. The menu was all in Spanish, but I know what ojo and lengua are, and no thanks, I'll stick with the pastor and arrachera. Except one of our friends did order the lengua tacos. And after many, "just try it, it's good" I stopped being a baby and did try it and it wasn't too bad. It was soft and cooked just right kind of like a filet mignon or something. Thinking back today about what I ate I want to throw up, but in all honestly it wasn't too bad, it's just getting over the thought of what you are eating. I don't think I'll be ordering my own anytime soon though.

That is all. You can go back to your regularly scheduled lives.

Oh, and if you don't know what lengua is, it's tongue. Yum, right?

Fun with Photoshop

I've been tooling around in Photoshop this morning trying out different actions I got from this site. I wish I knew a lot more about Photoshop than I do. So much for those college classes.

Anyway, here are a couple I saved. I love this picture in it's original form, but playing around gives it some nice effects too. This photo was taken about a month ago when we went on the ferry to Isla Mujeres.

Seventies vibe:

Vintage, Heartland vibe:

Cool enough for soup

It feels like a nice fall day today in Cancun. Gray clouds are overhead, rain is coming and going, leaving big puddles on the concrete and the breeze is rather cool.

I love it.

I know the rest of you are probably freezing your behinds off and cursing me for welcoming the cool weather. Sun is overrated anyway. I can revel in the clouds and gloom without guilt now that my guests are gone. hehe :)

Anyway, in honor of the weather I decided to make some chicken soup. Nothing says cold weather like soup. Probably won't be a winner with the kids and Patrick, but since I am in charge of dinner, that's what I'm making. And never mind the fact that I have never attempted any kind of chicken soup than the kind you open with a can opener and microwave. I'm following a recipe, so how hard can it be?

Hope the sun is shining wherever you are cause I could use of few more days like today!

A trip to the spa

I got my (toe)nails did the other day and brought along a newbie to experience the world of pedicures.

I try to get a pedicure about once a month. I really need to go more than that because it seems like the bottoms of my feet are perpetually black. That could also be due to poor soap application to the bottom of my feet in the shower, but I digress. 

Living in the land of flip-flops or other toe-revealing, no-sock wearin' footwear it is important both asthetically and physically to pamper your feet every once in awhile. It just makes you feel good, not to mention nice slick polished soft feet look so nice. Since living in Cancun, I've found a nice little spa that I like and at 180 pesos a visit (less than $18 USD) it's a great deal, so I don't feel bad about going too often. 

So onto my latest venture to the spa.... I took my brother's girlfriend....and my brother. He was a little hesitant and maybe a little embarrassed by his crusty feet (or maybe it was being the only hombre in the spa), but I think he enjoyed it. I know afterwards his feet (all our feet) were much nicer to look at.

ZIP-A-Dee-Do-Da

The great thing about having visitors when you live in a tourist destination is that you have an excuse to go do all the tourist stuff. Since we have moved to Cancun we have done our share. We have been to Xel-Ha, Xcaret, The Jungle Tour, Crococun Zoo, been to La Parilla for Mexican food and mariachis and yesterday we tried out the Selvatica Canopy Adventure zipline tour.

It was the best fun yet!! The tour consisted of 11 ziplines, a bike ride to a beautiful cenote (a 150 foot freshwater sinkhole) where there was a zipline to jump in and time to refresh yourself with a swim before heading back for a lunch of chicken fajitas, rice and beans. The tour guides were really awesome and so good with the kids.

Selvatica is located a little past Puerto Morelos and you have to go down a long road to get into the jungle, but it was worth it. We arrived a little early, but that was okay, it gave us all a chance to try out the Segways they had available for the bike ride portion of the tour. After trying them out, the boys decided to pay the extra money and take the Segways because when are you going to get a chance to ride Segways again?

I'll just title this one "Danny Blart, Mall Cop" if you don't mind.

Here we are in our gear, ready to go. (Actually the photo was taken after the ziplines, but we didn't have our camera before and you can't have it up in the ziplines since you need both hands and constant attention, so we took a group one after) One of the guides took this photo and I don't know if he meant for it to be crooked or not, but I like it that way.

Here is Patrick zipping through the jungle upside down. After we had gone on a few of the lines, the guides let you do it upside down with one of them behind you. It was really cool going over all the trees not holding onto anything! The ziplines were about 15-20 feet high above the jungle floor, so we were definitely up there!

I forgot to mention that these photos were taken by the photographer that is on the tour with you and they sell the photos plus a video at the end of the tour. We bought each of our photos and got the video free. I just took a digital photo of each of the photos cause I'm ghetto like that. 

Here is Danny on the zip. Looks like a pro already. The only thing slowing you down at the end of the zip is the Mexican braking system, a.k.a. the gloves you see on our hands. They had a very hard leather piece in the palm and to break all you had to do was close your fist. So technologically advanced, I know.

Here is Sarah on the line. She went too slow and got stuck near the end of one of the lines and Danny came up behind here and pushed her in a little ways before the guides swung out and brought them both in to the tree platform.

Me upside down on the line.

No, my babies did not sit this one out. They were first in line on every zip since they had to be tethered to a guide the whole time. You have to be 3 years old to go on the tour, but 8 to go unassisted, so all the kids went with a guide on each line. I was afraid one of them would get scared and we would have to turn around, but they all loved it. Here is Ella going upside down. Why oh why am I encouraging my babies to fly through the jungle 20 feet in the air??

Jackson didn't quite get in the correct position (feet crossed and up above toward the line)

Kaley opted out of going upside down, but she certainly could have.

After we did all 11 ziplines we got a 10 minute break to go to the restroom, get our bathing suits on, etc. before we headed out to the cenote. They didn't provide small bikes, so me, Sarah and the kids rode in the van and the boys went on the Segways.

Here is a view of the cenote. It sure was refreshing after a hot day in the jungle!

We all took a turn on the zipline into the cenote and Jackson decided he was brave enough to go too. Everyone on the tour was cheering him on as he climbed up and grabbed on.

And there he goes! As soon as he came back up from the water (I had gone before, so I was waiting below for him) he said, "THAT was crazy."

And here is some of our group on the rope bridge. It was hard work getting back to the wooden staircase to go for another round on the zip.

Ella decided at the end that she couldn't let Jackson outdo her, so she went on the zip into the water as well. I took video of her instead of stills. She was brave, but landed kind of in a forward belly flop, so the wind was knocked out of her.

(I keep trying to load the video but it just does not want to upload. I keep getting errors)

All in all it was a great day and I would highly recommend this tour to anyone. Fun for the whole family and all the guides were so great.

Sometimes being a tourist for a day isn't such a bad thing, just look at all the fun things you get to do.

It had to be done. Seriously.

The girls in our family now outnumber the boys. And when you have 2 daughters who like to play with Build-A-Bear clothes and a brand new, tiny girl puppy, what are you going to get? Dress up time of course! Isn't she so pretty?

Here she is ready for the ball..

We also needed a side view of that gown for the peeps at home

I guess she didn't like how this one looked on her since she wouldn't look at the camera. Diva.

Go Team! If you recognize that as OSU Cowboy colors you would be correct. We teach them young around here who the only team to cheer for is.

And finally what photoshoot is complete without a swimsuit shot?

Lost Things

While at the beach yesterday me and Kaley were taking an ocean break (What?? we actually got in the cold water??) and suntanning on our towels and we decided to make some sand art. In the tradition of Tinkerbell we searched for "Lost Things" in the sand to build the sand art with. (If you haven't seen the movie this probably makes no sense, but whatever, just go with it) We found bottle tops, dried up crab legs, a twist-tie, a big nut from some tree, some left-behind pistachios, plastic from a broken sand bucket and some black coral.

Behold, our creations....

Kaley and our crabby crab

A mouse

A Sunflower

A kind of lame turtle

A monkey, I guess, or we could just say dancing mouse

And today we also have a bonus photo. This one I like to call "Jackson after face diving in the sand to catch the football...and still missing it."

This just in...I hate cleaning my house

I have never been much of a clean-type homemaker. If toys are left out, dirty clothes on the floor and empty cups and bottles are littering my coffee table I've always been kind of 'go with the flow.' It all gets picked up within a few days or so. Same goes for bathrooms. In my previous life I think they may have gotten cleaned once every two months. And don't get me started on dirty dishes. Living without a dishwasher for the past two years has not prompted me to do them right away, rather to just wait until I can't fit anything else in the sink and I'm forced to do them. I'm not saying this because I like embarrassing myself, rather to illustrate a point. My home has never been spot-clean and perfect. 

Except since we moved to Mexico.

We got ourselves a maid. Everyone has them you know. She does my dishes, makes the beds, sweeps and mops the floors, dusts, cleans the showers and toilets, picks up the kids' toys and even does the laundry -folding, ironing and all (although I'm thinking about taking that duty back seeing as how she has never used a washer and dryer before working for us and she always puts the clothes away in any drawer she feels like). So it's been nice coming home to a clean kitchen and the scent of Fabuloso from the shiny, clean floors everyday. No matter that by bedtime everything is pretty much a mess again, but hey she's there bright and early the next day anyway!

So to get to the point of this post, my maid has been gone this week visiting family. I am left here to do my own dirty work. It's not fun. I like cooking and baking, I just don't like the mess the kitchen is afterwards and knowing I have to clean it up. Also I miss my Fabuloso scented shiny clean floors.

I know I sound like a spoiled child. There are worse things than having to do your own housework right?

Starting off the New Year right

Yesterday we decided to take advantage of Patrick's day off and drive to Puerto Morelos with some friends and have ourselves a beach day. Puerto Morelos is about 20-30 minutes outside Cancun on the way to Playa del Carmen and has some great beaches. It was our first time venturing to the beach there and it was a little crowded, but we had a great time. We are in love with the little town of Puerto Morelos. Made us feel like we were back in St. John. Such a small little quaint beach town....and the same driving distance to school/shopping/etc. as from our current residence on Cancun's Zona Hotelera. (hint, hint Patrick!) Actually Patrick really liked the town too and started calling some numbers on renta/venta signs that he saw. Ahhhh, to live at the beach....Anyway, here are a couple photos from the day.

We plopped our stuff down at a spot that had a ready-made sand hole. Score! Half of Mama and Daddy's work was done!

Not being one for sunbathing, Patrick recruited Jackson to throw the football around. He's getting pretty good at throwing and catching. Yeah, Jackson is too :)

After a bit our friends wanted to find some shade and a little refreshment.....we walked a little ways and found a sign advertising cerveza fria, margaritas, pina coladas and mojitos....and more importantly, some beach chairs and an umbrella. Must remember in the new year to buy some chairs and an umbrella.

We stayed awhile chatting and sunning ourselves while the kids ran around, but Kaley got sand in her eye and opted to sit with me instead (and for some reason decided to go topless....she fit right in as there were plenty of grown up ladies sans-top)

Before heading off to find some seaside lunch I decided to take a photo of my toes in the sand for all you out there wishing you could be barefoot in the sand right now. Plus I just got a pedicure the other day and my toes still look decent!

Hope you started your New Year off right. I know we certainly did.