Wow its been a long time

Um yeah, so I had a baby and stuff and suddenly found out how hard it was to type one handed. So that is the main reason I have not updated this blog. By a strange twist of fate I woke up early today before both of the girls and instead of doing something responsible like cleaning the sticky spots off my floor I decided to update my blog.

A quick update on our lives. Bella is turning three on Friday. She is so excited about her birthday she keeps singing the happy birthday song to herself and talking about the pinata she is going to have. How does a three year old know about pinatas you may ask? One of her favorite shows right now is the old Disney show "Saludos Amigos/ Three Caballeros". She asks for it by name and loves to samba around the house wearing only her white tutu that auntie gave her. It is kind of a fun show for us as it has several cartoons based in Argentina, Chile and Uruguay. She likes the little one about the little airplane named Pedro. She calls him Pedo which makes papi cringe. (I'll let all the non Spanish speakers google that one to see why). She tends to be an obstinate little stink at times but we love her and her funny personality.

Our new addition born early October is Tali. (Again like Bella not her real name but to protect the innocents from the Internets it will work). She is an adorable, rolly polly little 4 month old. She is getting very cute and smiley and is fascinated by her big sister. Seriously she will just sit and watch Bella's antics and copy her laugh. She can turn over from back to front and front to back and with her strong legs she will scoot along face first. (Usually towards things like the edge of the bed). We were somewhat hoping for a calm one for number two but it looks like Tali will be up and moving and into things even quicker than Bella. Oh well.

I went back to work, again part time shortly after Tali's arrival. We have been blessed with a fantastic babysitter who is wonderfully flexible with my sometimes sporadic schedule. I am really liking my job and where I am at professionally right now. I have had some fun opportunities to make formal presentations on Dementia in the last couple months and have really enjoyed it. (I got a fruit flower arrangement as a thank you for one of my presentations yesterday, which was kind of fun and made my day). I am also starting to see a few more private counseling patients. We moved to a new physician office space that is more convenient for patients and a lot nicer looking but unfortunately quite a bit smaller. My coworkers have been stressed with the move. My office is now a nook in a hallway next to the lab table where they run urine samples. Okay, that makes it sound somewhat worse than it is, but I still find it kind of funny. I have other spaces that I share to see patients and such.

As for the Blue Prince, he is slogging along making the final push to finish his last semester of school. Its amazing how fast the four years have gone. (Speaking of which we celebrated our four year wedding anniversary last week too). He hates winter here working up in the cold in the mountains. It has caused him some serious issues with bursitis and other pain in his knees. Due to that we may be looking at making a move to warmer climes down south in the next year or so after he gets his journeyman licence. Of course there would have to be work down south as well, which is another complicating factor. Nothing is decided, and it is mostly fantasizing for the time being.

We all enjoyed the trip back to Uruguay in December to visit family. It was a long trip and somewhat overwhelming with two little ones but an adventure to say the least. If I ever again get the motivation to post I'll try and put on some pictures. The family dynamic with my husband's family tends to be difficult at times but it was lovely to see everyone and especially watch Bella interact with her cousins. It is amazing to me how they all look so much alike.

I am hearing some major rustling from the ranks so I guess it is back to being a mom for now. Hopefully my next post will not be so long in the future.

GIA graduation

At the beginning of the month my family all met up in California for my sister Caitlin's graduation from the Gemological Institute of America in Carlsbad. She is now a real live certified jeweler and has two sets of letters after her name. We are all impressed that she has turned her love of all things sparkly into a viable career.

Oh and when I said my family met up in California I was literally referring to almost all of my fun mixed-up family together at the same time. Here is a picture of "The Clan" (listed from the bottom left and moving up and around the table) when we went out to lunch. We have: My sister Shoshana, her boyfriend Casey, my mom, my mom's mom, my dad's current wife Kathy, my dad, My dad's second wife's mom Joanie, Family friend's the Jimenez (Joyce, Ron, Steven, and Nicki), my sister Emily, My sister Caitlin and her boyfriend Tom, myself and Bella. The Blue Prince is taking the picture and missing is my dad's second wife Ishi, who unfortunately had to go home the day before to support my littlest sister in taking her SATs. Needless to say it was quite a group. The term herding cats comes to mind but everyone got along well and it was fantastic to see everyone.


As you can tell from the picture, Bella is the only small person in the family so needless to say she got lots of love and attention. She held up well under all the adoration but by the end seemed to get a bit clingy with mom and dad. It is tough work being so overly loved all the time.

We stayed in Carlsbad and decided to spend Saturday afternoon on the beach. It was somewhat chilly and so we all decided to walk and wade a little bit on the beach instead of swimming.


Of course Bella didn't quite grasp the whole wading instead of swimming part and ended up more that a little soaked. The waves were quite rough so she wasn't the only one. All of us ended up with wetter than expected pant legs.


Bella had fun playing with Papi being lifted out of the way of the incoming water.


Shoshana and Casey decided to bury my husband in the sand, reminiscent of the sand necktie episode of Mythbusters. They didn't make it much farther that this, but it is a good view of what he would look like as a dwarf.



Caitlin and her boyfriend Tom were being all shmoopy and cute on the beach (and everywhere else). We liked to tease them about inadvertently matching. (I mean seriously, from the brown pants all the way up to the red hair). It was the first time that Tom met "The Clan" and bless his heart he had the initiation by fire of meeting us all at once. Well I guess we can't say that he got to meet everyone. The Big Brother and his Russian Bride were not present which probably made things a little easier as he likes to play his big brother protector role to the hilt on the few occasions he gets the chance. It's hard work having 5 younger sisters.

I didn't notice when I took this picture of the cute couples starring off into the sea, that Emily was sitting in the middle of them playing in the sand. Unfortunately I made the mistake of mentioning the juxtaposition of it to her, leading to a comment of "gee thanks, I didn't feel like a third wheel till you pointed it out". Emily understandably got a bit tired of all the coupledom by the end of the trip.
Always in search of a good family picture, this is the closest we got on this trip. Which is kind of sad considering the blurriness and scowl on Bella's face. All in all it was a lovely trip and a nice break from the cold Autumn weather in these parts.

Thanksgiving point

On Saturday we got tired of boredly staring at each other and decided to leave the house. Our destination: Thanksgiving Point Gardens. None of us had gone before and as I tend to geek out with plants and gardens in general it sounded like a good fit. (Is it silly to say that one of my favorite parts was the demonstration tomato garden? I was feeling slightly smug that none of their full sized tomatoes were ripe yet either). The Blue Prince just kept sighing with pleasure about how calm and peaceful everything was. (I think we have been working him too hard)Anyway, on to the pictures:



Bella and myself on the bridge of the Monet Garden. Bella is peeved that I wouldn't let her play in the lake.

Bella inside the Caterpillar slide in the Children's Garden.

The Blue Prince in the Wisteria tunnel leading to the Secret Garden.

I told him to pose like a Greek God statue and this is what he came up with. I won't lie, I kinda like it.

We were standing on a pier in the middle of the fish pond covertly throwing Cheerios to the Koi fish to make them come to the surface when Bella decided to join in the game and threw in her bottle. The fish proceeded to happily drink the milk out of the nipple. Through ten minutes of precise Cheerio throwing skills we were able to get the fish to move the bottle towards the shore where a valiant Blue Prince was able to pluck it out of the water.

Here is Bella riding on Papi's shoulders and of course pulling his hair. She has recently developed a bit of a troubling violent streak. If anyone knows the best way to deal with screaming, hitting, face slapping, and head butting tantrums (I think she nearly broke my nose this morning, when it got in the way of a flailing head butt) I am all ears.


A family picture self-portrait by the Blue prince. He is generally very good at these.

An unexpected encounter

Guess who I met at a random Costco in Las Vegas last weekend selling his wares?

That's right Greg Olsen himself, in all his glory selling and signing his artwork next to cases of frozen burritos and huge bags of apples. It was such a random encounter. He was very nice and chatted with me and my sister Emily for a few minutes and even gave us a copy of his art catalog. I almost asked him to sign the catalog but I thought that would be a bit much. Not to mention cheap as he was obviously there as a ploy to try and sell stuff. I guess that is one way to try and take your art to a more mainstream audience.

California Dreaming

So last weekend we decided it was high time to visit the aunties in San Diego and since our credit card was nice enough to cash in our points for a plane ticket, off we went. We arrived early Friday morning with just enough time to say hello and introduce the baby to Bubie Joanie at the airport as she was leaving that day to visit family in Colorado.
A wonderful time was had by all. We ate dinner at Little Italy, walked along the port and saw cool ships, hung out at the beach on Coronado island and visited Bilbao Park. Blue Prince had never seen the Pacific ocean and neither had Bella and both enjoyed it immensely. Bella was a little angry at first that she couldn't eat the sand (she burst into tears at her first mouthful) but soon got into the grove and loved crawling around. Now if only I could teach her not to eat leaves.