All About Alexa

I try not to strictly blog about my kids, but every so often it's necessary. It's come to my attention that I don't really do a very good job of keeping up on Alexa's life. I haven't actually recorded any of her milestones, I never do monthly blogs about her and I don't even have a baby book for her (note to self: this would make a great Christmas gift if I remember to tell my mom or hubby). I really do need to be better about this. Just because she's the second child, she doesn't deserve to get forgotten!

Alexa is 9 months old now & is seriously the happiest baby ever born. I'm not kidding you about that. The girl doesn't cry unless absolutely necessary. She loves life, loves her sister, loves exploring our world, loves food, loves sleeping, loves being outdoors, loves being indoors. There really isn't much we can do to upset her.

Alexa was going to the office with me up until September when it got to difficult for me to get much work done, but she was always a perfect angel sitting in my office for 5 hours at a time. Now she goes to daycare & never seems to care when I leave.

Since about 1 month old, she's gone down for naps & at night, in her own crib, wide awake. She'll just fall asleep on her own. She sleeps at night from about 6:30 until usually 4 or 5 am. She was sleeping straight through the night, but lately she's been waking up early for some reason. Hoping that it's just a phase, but I don't complain since she rarely gives us anything to complain about.

Alexa is crawling everywhere. She started crawling somewhere in her 7th month, so it's been awhile. She pulls herself up on everything & loves "walking" with someone holding her hands. She also loves her big sister & will do anything Ava wants her to do.

Her bottom two teeth are just starting to come in. Such a huge change from Ava who had all of her teeth by her first birthday. Alexa also has very little hair still. It's finally starting to come in a bit, but she definitely has less than Ava did at 9 months. Despite the lack of hair & teeth, she is super cute, mostly because she always has an adorable smile on her face. We love you Lexa!

Alexa's Baptism In Virginia

Last month we went to Fredericksburg for Alexa's baptism at my cousin's house. It was an amazing trip, one that I've been wanting to blog about for a month now. Except that I never do because I wanted to include pictures of the trip and well, the pictures we took are still on my camera. I just have not at all been in the mood to upload them.

Then today, I was sitting here in the office not really doing any work and I remembered that my awesome cousin (thanks Deb!) put a few up on her facebook page. So finally, here's a few pictures from the trip!

Alexa on her special Baptism Day

Alexa & her Godfather

All the family that traveled from all over to be there. We felt so loved!

My parents & my girls

Adorable, isn't she?

Ava loved looking for shark's teeth with daddy!

Playing at Alum Rock

Random Thoughts Going Through My Head

1. My sister's brother-in-law & his wife are pregnant with their second child. Their first is a girl and everyone knows that they are hoping for a boy this time. Right at this moment, they know what the sex of the baby is, but they aren't sharing it with anyone until after tonight. Because, you see, they baked a cake that has either blue or pink in the center. They are planning on cutting that cake this evening while skyping with both sets of grandparents. She just posted about it on facebook & with all the exclamation points she used, I'm guessing it's blue inside. Maybe it's just me, but doesn't this seem like overkill? Baking a cake & then cutting over the internet so that the grandparents are the first to know in an oh so creative way. Call me boring, but I honestly am just not into the cutsie stuff. Nobody is as excited about the sex of your baby as you are.
2. One of my tenants just complained to me that I need to have the landscapers let me know when they intend to turn the sprinklers on during the day. Because the other day they turned them on to test them and his black Mercedes got, get this... wet. Yep, that's right people. I'm supposed to send a memo to the tenants telling them when the sprinklers will come on so that they can move their vehicles. Because God forbid water gets on them. I understand the whole hard water thing vs rain, but seriously, it's a car.
3. My former Jefe (that's Spanish for boss) is getting married tomorrow. E was actually only my boss for a few months before I got promoted & ended up on the same level as her at another building. We've been great friends for years now. There were 4 of us that became friends through work & we all still meet up once every few months for dinner or lunch, even though we've all moved on to bigger & better things. One of us (I won't name names, but I know you read this occasionally A), up and left us behind to move to NYC, but she'll be here for the wedding tomorrow too. The last of the 4 of us actually introduced her best guy friend, whom she calls Roger Dodger, to E, and they are getting married tomorrow. Very sweet & romantic. I am so excited to be going to such a special wedding tomorrow.
4. I'm really behind on uploading pictures. There are pictures on my camera from 2 months ago. I just don't feel like sitting in front of the computer & sorting through pictures. I have an entire disc of 800 pictures to sort through from our beach photo shoot. I need to order some prints from those for my MIL before we head down south for Thanksgiving.
5. I hate how fat I am, but I have absolutely no motivation to try & lose my last ten pounds. Still haven't "found" time to go to the gym. Still paying for weight watchers but I haven't actually gone onto their site in, um, a few months, at least. I hate the process of losing weight. I almost wrote that I hate losing weight, but that didn't sound right since I actually would LOVE to lose weight.
6. I haven't really done much work in the office today. I went & got a pedicure & my eyebrows waxed, and now I'm sitting here waiting for my boss to approve the report I sent her that I need to send to my client by the end of the day. But my boss appears to be missing. Maybe she's getting a pedicure.
7. I just realized that I never wrote down the date that Alexa started crawling. She's been crawling for almost 2 months now, but I can't remember for the life of me when exactly. The poor second child. I have no baby book for her, I never managed to get out a birth announcement for her, and now I'm not even writing down her milestones. I'm a horrible mother.
8. I want to move. I'm tired of our house, and dealing with our lender, and not having a functional outdoor space for my kids to play in.
9. I'm so addicted to facebook & I have to check it all the time to keep up with everyone's status updates, or I will go crazy. Maybe I should stop facebook & then I'd have time to clean my house & write down my children's milestone moments.

Joined the Gym, Again

I signed up a couple of weeks ago to join the gym again. The thing is, I haven't actually gone to the gym yet. Every day since this thing with his dad happened, Edward has been coming home from work, rushing off to see his dad, then rushing back out to our condo to work on fixing it up so that we can get it rented again soon. Needless to say, unless I bring the girls to the daycare at the gym, I'm never going to get to go at this rate.

I finally stopped in there today to ask how the daycare there worked. It's $3 per kid per time. That could add up really fast. I only pay $99 for the year (I know, a really good deal!), so it seems crazy to me to rack up daycare costs. I'm going to call & see if I can add on the kid center thing for a set price, because I don't think I'll really end up going much otherwise. I really do want to start working out & eating healthy, but it's so easy to just let it all go when you're stressed out. I know that working out will help my stress level so much, but seriously, I never seem to have the time.

Any mom's out there that work out have any tips on finding time to actually work out?

Father In Law Update

So my Father In Law's stomach ache turned out to be colon cancer. They found a hole in his colon. They did an emergency surgery to patch it up & found the cancer. The hole in his colon led to a major infection because everything was leaking from his colon into his stomach. He's been in the ICU since last week but he's fighting the infection pretty well & they think he'll be out of the ICU within a day or two.

We haven't told him about the cancer yet since he's not 100% out of the woods on the infection. We also don't know the extent of the cancer yet. There's a chance that the cancer started somewhere else & metastasized into the colon. We just don't know how bad it is yet.

It's definitely a cruel twist of fate that this happened one day before he was finally going to be admitted to the Veteran's Home. If he had already been there, we would know that he'd be taken care of. Now we need to figure out where he's going to go once he gets out of the hospital. We made the decision to move his stuff out of the assisted living home because they can't provide the level of care he needs now. He'll need a full time nurse, so he'll need to be in a nursing home. So we're frantically trying to figure that out right now. We can't afford anything, and he certainly can't, so we're hoping Medicaid or Medi-Cal will cover it.

All of his things are currently in my dining room because we have nowhere else to put them. That's just one of the things adding to my stress. I had what I can only figure was my first migraine last night. I had to go to bed at 7pm because I couldn't even see because my head hurt so badly. I just keeping hoping I can make it through all of this stress in my life.

Could Things Get Any Worse?

This has been the week from hell, and today has been particularly bad. It all started on Monday with two pieces of good news. How does good news lead to a week from hell, you ask? I'd love to explain.

Good News 1: Our tenant has finally moved out of the condo. With only two days before the sheriff came out to evict her, we found out she finally moved out. After having her live there rent free for almost 6 months, it is a HUGE relief! Almost $1K in legal fees, but we finally got her out. This however, has created TONS of stress for us because she left the place a huge mess. We need to catalog & then clear out the crap she left behind, which is mostly all junk. Then we have to re-carpet, replace the cabinets that she burned in a kitchen fire, patch a few holes in walls, paint & clean the entire place. Then we can finally rent it out & start getting some money for it.

Good News 2: After applying over a year ago, we got word late Monday afternoon that my Father In Law has gotten into the Veteran's Home. It is a beautiful place & he will be well taken care of. It's good news. Except, his admittance date is tomorrow. As in less than 3 days from when they told us. That left us with a few days to pack everything up & get him ready to be up there by 8am tomorrow morning.

So I'm overwhelmed. Still not a huge deal, I'll get through it. Edward took today & tomorrow off from work to take care of these things. I have my budget due at work, so I'm a bit overwhelmed working on that as well. Still, I should be able to get through it all.

Oh, except that yesterday I found out that the reason that my right breast has been hurting is because I have mastitis. I hadn't had any flu-like symptoms, but it was hurting so badly that the doctor already started me on antibiotics. So we went to bed last night feeling overwhelmed, but still feeling like we can manage it.

Until... the day from hell started at 3AM with a call from my FIL assisted living home saying that he has severe stomach pain & they think they should bring him into the emergency room. Edward decided to hold off until the morning & they got him into the doctor first thing this morning. It's been a long day, but right now they are getting some sort of scan because they think it's an infection. I'm not sure what this means in terms of him getting in to the VA home tomorrow. Even if he can still go, I'm not sure how we'll get him packed up tonight since Edward was supposed to have him all ready to go this afternoon before his 6pm meeting tonight. But since he's at the hospital with him right now, there is no packing going on.

Oh, and you know how the little things can eat away at you? Well they certainly have today. Why don't I just list them for you so you have an idea of what I'm going through today:

-Side effect of my medicine for the mastitis, stomach issues. My stomach started hurting this morning.
-Then the flu-like symptoms kicked in & now I feel shaky & acky & very cold.
-On my way out this morning, Edward switched the car seats into his pick up since he wanted to load the van up with his dad's stuff. When I got in the pick up, no gas. Got late to the babysitter since I had to pick up gas.
-Got to the babysitter at the same time as the guy installing her new counter tops & had to turn the huge truck around twice in order to park cause the guy didn't know where he wanted to park.
-Lost the check I had just written to the babysitter as I tried to shuffle the girls down the street since I couldn't park right in front of the daycare like I normally do. (At least I did find the check!)
-Got to work to discover my Internet not working. Took an extra 45 minutes to get my computer started this morning, which took time out of working on my budget.
-Decided that after all of this, I deserved a Reese's peanut butter cup. But of course, when I went to get it out of the vending machine, it got stuck.

At this point, I'm really thinking that today is not my day & I should just go home, shut off the lights, and forget about life. Oh, except that I have two kids to take care of.

Back & Busy

I apologize profusely to all of my loyal followers who may occasionally check in here or follow me. I was planning on getting better on the whole blogging thing, not worse! We had a lovely trip to Virginia. The flights went well, the girls behaved, I loved visiting with so much family all at once. As always, I ended up being pretty homesick for awhile afterwords. Since we got back last week I've just been running around like crazy. Halloween stuff, baby showers, lunches with good friends. It never ends. I've been working more this week as well to make up for my time off in Virginia. I feel like I haven't had much quality time with my girls or my husband. Maybe after Halloween things will slow down a bit?

I haven't even uploaded our pictures from the trip to computer yet. Maybe someday soon I'll do that. Maybe someday soon I'll find my checkbook that I lost. Maybe someday I'll actually find a moment to return my library books. Seriously, I was handling this "mom of two" thing really well until recently, and now I just feel completely & utterly overwhelmed. Besides my checkbook, I've also lost a Starbucks gift card that had $20 on it and an entire file of mortgage information. All of these items just seemed to *poof* disappear from my house. I'm not kidding you, I have looked everywhere for them. I used to be one of the most organized people you will ever meet, and now I'm the exact opposite of that. I feel a bit like I'm losing my mind.

Off to dress the kids & get to work now. I'm tired of being busy.