Natha Bella

Feeling sick

2009-11-08T05:57:00.000-08:00

I hate being sick. And I hate when Billy and Bella get sick. It's just miserable and not fun at all.. I've been up since 3:30 coughing and feeling yiaky.. well, I've been coughing and feeling yiaky for a week now. That's partly why I decided to go to the ER at 5 am! My throat felt like it was burning when I woke up and I didnt know if perhaps it was strep or something worst.. BUT, apparently all I have is allergies and got 3 prescriptions for some antibiotics, steroids and allergy meds. I hope to start feeling better soon. I'm so sick and tired of coughing and feeling like crap :( Plus I've been drinking TONS of water and I go to the bathroom every 10 minutes..

I'm just glad Bella stayed with my parents last night so Billy and I could rest - even if I woke up at 3 in the morning!

Like Father, Like Daughter...

2009-11-04T21:11:00.000-08:00

They love being silly. They love making funny faces. They love each other to pieces!! They just stood there in front of the mirror in Bella's bathroom and started imitating each other. It's just too cute and funny to see them play and enjoy each other.

Halloween Pictures

2009-11-02T11:11:00.000-08:00

Bella was a Panda Bear in the morning and a Butterfly at night :) The Panda outfit is actually her church clothes but I figured since it was Halloween I'd dress her up in the Panda line from Gymboree. And then at night, our church had a fall festival program for the kids. And she actually wore the same costume she wore for her birthday in June.

ABC Animal Book

2009-10-28T22:19:00.001-07:00

Since I got pregnant with Bella I've been working on lists of ABC albums for her. Animals, Food, Things/Toys, Family, etc, etc..

Well, since I won to host the Shutterfly House Party next weekend and I got a free 7x9 album, I figured I'd do an ABC album for Bella (finally!) :)

Click here to view this photo book larger

Day trip to Kemah

2009-10-24T21:47:00.000-07:00

We had a great day today. It was Billy's off weekend so we drove to Kemah and spent the day there. Bella had a blast at the boardwalk and all the kiddie rides. We got her an all-day pass and she used every penny of it! :) Carousel, airplanes, train ride, and a mini merry-go-round. She loved it all!! We had great food at Landry's too. We sat outside overlooking the bay and seeing all the boats coming in and out of the pier. The weather was just perfect! Sunny with a cool breeze and in the 70s. What a beautiful day to spend as a family!

Here are some pictures:

First Major Injury

2009-10-18T18:42:00.000-07:00

Bella had a brutal accident today. While we were watching a show at the Renaissance Festival this morning, we were sitting on some cement benches and she was walking/jumping/playing on them. Well, somehow she fell and cracked her head. It was about 1/2 centimeter wide but just the blood freaked me out! Can't believe I actually did a year of medicine :O I think it was just seeing my OWN child's blood.. anyways, she's ok now. Bled quite a bit and cried a lot. She also said her head hurt :( Poor baby.. We cleaned the cut, gave her some Tylenol for the pain and put some neosporin in the wound. After a good nap, she went back to her old self - singing, dancing, hoping and being wild crazy!

Family in town

2009-10-15T12:49:00.000-07:00

My uncle (and godfather) Enrique flew to Houston with his wife last night to visit my parents and us. We havent seen them since Billy and I went to Colombia on December 2005. This morning while I was at a doctor's appointment they came by the apartment to see Bella. She sang for them and counted to 10 in Spanish AND English. Smarty pants girl! :) They were quite impressed! I've been trying to teach Bella more Spanish, at least talk to her a few things each day in Spanish. I know it's important for her to learn while she's still young. It's just hard.. Especially since Billy doesn't speak much of it either.

But my mom has been singing to her "Jesuscito de mi vida" (Jesus of my life) every time she can and Bella *loves* singing it and doing the hand motions :) Here are the lyrics. Just imagine a 2 year-old trying to say this and do hand gestures. It's too cute!! I'll have to film it soon and post it.

Jesuscito de mi vida
Fuiste nino como yo
Y por eso te quiero tanto
Que te doy mi corazon
Tomalo, tomalo
Tuyo es, mio no
Tomalo, tomalo
Tuyo es, mio no

Layouts shower...

2009-10-13T14:41:00.001-07:00

Well, since it's been raining on and off for days here in Houston, it seems appropriate to title this post "Layouts shower" :) Most of them are just day to day pictures. Bella playing, drawing, or being goofy..

Scrapping at Archiver's

2009-10-11T19:02:00.000-07:00

I took today's afternoon as a "me" day and went scrapping at Archiver's. One of the things I love about living in Houston is all the scrapping stores there are - Hobby Lobby, Archiver's, Lone Star Scrapbooking, Michaels, Jo-Ann, among others that I haven't even been to!

So, here are some more layouts :)

These are some pictures of when my Pea friend Sharon came to visit Bella and I with her son and niece.
Pictures of my little girlBella and Mocha - our 2 little princesses :)A little photo shoot of Bella one Sabbath afternoon in the backyard of one of our church members. Her hair was just starting to grow and you could see little wings (not quite curls). Plus her big plumpy cheeks... Just too cute! :)
Enjoy! I'll post 5 more tomorrow :)

More layouts to share

2009-10-10T17:16:00.001-07:00

Here are some more layouts I've done lately even though the pictures are from a YEAR ago!... yiaks.. but at least I'm scrapping them, right? Enjoy! :)

More scrapping

2009-10-09T06:48:00.000-07:00

Here are some layouts with pictures from last summer.

Here's Bella with her uncle David. He gave her an Exxon share for her 1st birthday :)

Bella and Daddy playing in the water and eating bunuelos (a typical food from Colombia).

We went to Lake Conroe with the whole family and had a blast!

The whole family. We went to the Woodlands Mall and Bella rode on the carousel.

Bella playing with a monkey and posing for my parents.

Catching up on my scrapbooks..

2009-10-08T21:42:00.000-07:00

I've been trying to scrap more since I have a room-full of stuff and I might as well use it, right?! :) Plus I have hundreds of pictures sitting on my desk waiting patiently to be scrapped.. I'm working in chronological order on Bella's pictures and I'm just finished July 2008 pictures :O

So, here are some of the layouts I've done lately. This is a album kit from BoBunny. I finished it at the last Sunday Crop I went at Archiver's and just this week added some pictures from Bella's first time at the beach in Santa Cruz, CA. If you click on the pictures you can see them bigger. Enjoy! :)

It has 5 more pages that need pictures so I'll add those later.

Welcome back!

2009-10-02T20:25:00.000-07:00

3 and a half months later I've resurrected to the blog life. Again! Before that I was "dead" for 2 months... gosh it's hard to keep up this thing!

In any case, since my last few posts, we moved to Houston after Billy got a job as the associate pastor of the West Houston SDA Church. And we LOVE it! The big city, the shopping, the places to go and see and visit, the beaches close by, and of course having my parents and my brother just 15 minutes down the road :) Billy's loving his new church and being the associate pastor of ONE church. It's funny how people asks us, almost regretfully, how we like it. People from Merced would make comments about how hot it would be in Houston while we were having temperatures of over 100'F there! Can you say *reality check*!!

But see.. Billy grew up in Biloxi, MS which is hot AND humid. Just like here. I grew up in Barrancabermeja (Colombia) which is hot AND humid. Just like here. Yeah I had AC 99% of the time. But so do we here. AC at home. AC in the car. AC in the stores. You have AC everywhere! Sure you sweat a little more while you walk from the house to the car or from the car to the store, but so what?! It's not like I'm gonna melt... most of the time anyways... LOL

IMHO, California (most of it at least) is over-rated. Too expensive. Economically depressed. Cold water at the beach. No offense to all my dear friends who still live there. But after living in 4 states in 8 years, I've come to the conclusion that the 'greatness' of a place is defined mostly by the people you have around you and how much it suits your priorities.

For example, Berrien Springs. By far, the smallest and coldest place I've ever lived: 3 gas stations, 2 red lights, 1 taco bell and a winter that lasted almost 6 months of the year! The closest city was about 30 minutes drive and not the greatest shopping. 45-minute drive to find a decent restaurant and good shopping. But we had a small group every week in our house or someone else's house and parties almost every weekend. Our church was awesome. School was great. And we made life-long friends (for the most part). Regardless of how much snow was on the ground or how busy we were with school, we could call a few people, order some pizza and play some board games (canasta being our favorite ;). My point is, the people that you have around you are more important than the great weather or location or other things that may seem like great stuff to others.

And so, we are loving living in Houston!! Billy loves his church and job. Bella loves seeing her grandparents every week and I love the city and all there's to do and see - zoo, aquarium, museums, YMCA, beach, malls, scrapbook stores... the list is endless! :)

PD. To all my readers (B, mom, and the occasional random stranger) I promise I'll do better with my posting. Maybe once a week is a good goal. We shall see... :)

Happy Father's Day!

2009-06-21T16:27:00.000-07:00

Wishing my wonderful husband, my dad, grandfathers and fathers in law a happy day! :)

Bad, bad blogger!

2009-06-19T21:26:00.000-07:00

WOW! It's been over a month since I last posted here. And so many things have happened since!

Bella turned 2! Yes, yes. My little baby girl is growing up and we love her more and more every day (despite the whining from time to time and the "no-no-no" little tantrums...). She's talking up a storm and learns new words every day. She still loves Little Einsteins and her favorite character is Annie. A few days ago we watched "The Jungle Book 2" and she loved it! I think it's all the animals and the songs and dancing.

We took a family vacation to go visit my parents, my brother and Billy's parents. We actually only saw my dad because my mom had to stay in Colombia to have foot surgery. My brother had to leave on a business trip 3 days after we got to Houston. But we had fun! We went to the zoo and the aquarium. And I dont think I have to explain how much Bella LOVED them!!! And I took about 500 pictures! :O We also went to the YMCA several times and Bella enjoyed the pool *very* much! :)

We then drove to Louisiana and stayed at Billy's mom. We drove at night to allow Bella to sleep but it didn't quite work as planned. Nonetheless we had fun and Bella loved seeing all the cows and horses and chickens and other animals at the farm. She even fed a baby calf some milk with a bottle - "I wanna give the nu-nu to the moo-moo." Her words, not mine! Billy officiated his cousin's wedding on Saturday and Bella got to dance with KJ (Billy's sister) at the reception. She also went to bed *really* late! We had Bella's birthday party on Sunday after church and she had lots of fun at the pool. Billy was sick half of the trip with random stuff. Bella got sick a couple of days but nothing serious.

Scrapbooking related... I met 2 friends from 2Peas. I had already met Debbie, but this time I got to meet I got my shopping fix at Hobby Lobby and Archivers :) Those 2 places ROCK! I've been working hard on Bella's album. Trying not to get behind even though I'm still working on her 1st birthday pictures! LOL LOL LOL

Mother's Day Present

2009-05-13T23:44:00.000-07:00

I got a beautiful grill for Mother's day! Cant wait to start using it!!

Ten ways to be a more light-hearted parent

2009-04-28T19:38:00.000-07:00

A friend sent me this article and it's amazing! Mental note: read and practice :)

One of my Twelve Commandments is "Lighten up," and I have a lot of resolutions aimed at trying to be a more light-hearted parent: less nagging, more laughing. We all want a peaceful, cheerful, even joyous, atmosphere at home -- but we can't nag and yell our way to get there. Here are some strategies that help me:

1. At least once a day, make each child helpless with laughter.

2. Sing in the morning. It's hard both to sing and to maintain a grouchy mood, and it sets a happy tone for everyone--particularly in my case, because I'm tone deaf and my audience finds my singing a source of great hilarity.

3. Get enough sleep yourself. It's so tempting to stay up late, to enjoy the peace and quiet. But morning comes fast. Along the same lines...

4. Wake up before your kids. We were so rushed in the morning that I started getting up half an hour earlier than my children. That means I can get myself organized, check my email, post to Slate, and get my bag packed before they get up. It's tough to wake up earlier, but it has made a huge difference in the quality of our mornings.

5. I've been researching the hedonic treadmill: people quickly adapt to new pleasures or luxuries, so it takes a new pleasure to give them a jolt of gratification. As a result, I've cut back on treats and impulse buys for my kids. The ice-cream sandwich or the Polly Pockets set won't be an exciting treat if it isn't rare.

6. Most messages to kids are negative: "stop," "don't," "no." So I try to cast my answers as "yes." "Yes, we'll go as soon as you've finished eating," not "We're not leaving until you've finished eating." It's not easy to remember to do this, but I'm trying.

7. Look for little ways to celebrate. I haven't been doing holiday breakfasts long, but they're a huge source of happiness. They're quick, fun, and everyone gets a big kick out of them.

8. Repetition works. A friend told me he was yelling at his kids too much, so he distilled all rules of behavior into four key phrases: "keep your hands to yourself"; "answer the first time you're asked"; "ask first"; and "stay with us" (his kids tended to bolt). You can also use the school mantras: "Sit square in your chair;" "accidents will happen," "you get what you get, and you don't get upset" (i.e., when cupcakes are handed out, you don't keep trying to switch).

9. Say "no" only when it really matters. Wear a bright red shirt with bright orange shorts? Sure. Put water in the toy tea set? Okay. Sleep with your head at the foot of the bed? Fine. Samuel Johnson said, "All severity that does not tend to increase good, or prevent evil, is idle."

10. When I find myself thinking, "Yippee, soon we won't have to deal with a stroller," I remind myself how fleeting this is. All too soon the age of Cheerios and the Tooth Fairy will be over. The days are long, but the years are short.

Have you found any good strategies to cut back on the shouting and to add moments of laughing, singing, and saying "yes"?

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ME!

2009-04-26T00:02:00.001-07:00

And I'm now 28...

Before turning 28! :O

2009-04-25T23:46:00.000-07:00

What could I say before the clock strikes midnight?... I dont have many words of wisdom in my last minutes of being 27. This last year has brought good and not-so-good things. One of the best things was Bella started sleeping through the night. Seems vain and superfluous. But try going without consistent sleep for 13 months while tending to a colicky baby who screams nonstop and you will understand me!
I also started attending MOPS at Yosemite Church and have enjoyed it very much! Even though it's only twice a month, it gives me some free time to socialize with other moms and form friendships. I've even been asked to serve as a table leader for next year's MOPS!
I also started working as the church and school secretary here in Merced. It's only 12 hrs a week but it helps me to get out of the house and be somewhat productive!
Finally, one of my most precious accomplishments has been working on Bella's scrapbook albums. I've already caught up to May of 2008 and have filled THREE albums!! :) LOL I'm sure Billy will freak out once he reads this and ask me *where* I plan on keeping all these albums of mine :) I'm sure one day, somebody, somewhere, somehow, someone will appreciate them! Hopefully....
Anyways, it's 11:55 pm and I better get my beauty sleep. It's just not the same once you turn 21... (plus 7) :) LOL So to all, good night. And to me, HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!!

Bella's 22 months!!!

2009-04-08T22:25:00.000-07:00

She's growing like a weed and getting cuter and cuter. She's talking so much and imitating everything we say and do. It's really funny but scary too!

Yosemite adventures

2009-04-01T13:02:00.000-07:00

We are back!! It was a good trip. We drove to Mariposa Saturday morning, Billy preached and then we drove to Camp Wawona (Yosemite). We had originally reserved a big house for the 3 families (us, Sabaos, and Reyes), but they messed up and didn't realize the house had already been reserved. So, they gave us 3 A-frame houses for FREE!! :) It actually worked out better because Bella's such a light sleeper and I dont think she (or us) would have been able to get any rest with 6 adults and 6 more kids running around...

We went walking Saturday afternoon and then attemped to do some rock climbing (on a fake wall). Yamila and I didnt make it past half way up... sad, I know! Especially since all the guys and kids went up and down at least 2 or 3 times. I tried. Seriously. It was freaking hard!!

Then on Sunday, after breakfast, we went hiking. I don't *totally* hate the outdoors but I much much rather go to a restaurant, watch a movie, or go to Starbucks and chat. That or scrapbook! :) I do hate hiking and I'm grateful that Bella is a great excuse for limiting those to "strolls in the park with shade and flat terrain". 99.99% of the time at least. Well, this time was the 0.01% and they dragged me along. I was glad the Reyes had a baby younger than Bella, which made hiking with a stroller not such a terrible thing. LOL

Then, on our way back from the hike, Billy saw a snake. A really small one, but a snake nonetheless. My idea of animals and nature is going to the zoo or aquarium. All the camping I needed/wanted to do, I did it when I was 10-15 while in Pathfinders (sorta like Boys' Scouts). And I refuse going to Campmeeting unless we have an RV. I like having a shower, a toilet, warm water, my pillow and a comfy bed.

We do love the beach and so whenever we can, we escape the valley and drive to Monterey/Carmel for some sun and sand :) That's our next trip. I need some sun and sand before I go crazy in this valley!!!

New car!!!

2009-03-22T23:02:00.001-07:00

Today we got an amazing RAK. The personnel director from the Conference had offered us a free car a few days ago and we picked it up today. A few weeks ago Billy had his annual review and he told him that it's been rough having only 1 car, especially for me with a baby and being stuck at home.. etc etc.. anyways, he talked to his wife and since they had recently inherited a car, they decided to pass the blessing to us and give us their older car. It's a Ford Explorer 1999 but it's in *great* condition and has a lot of upgrades. I'm just so thankful and I dont think it has sunk in :) lol... I just can believe it!!! :) :) Billy already took some pictures so I'll post some later.

Giveaways!!

2009-03-16T11:17:00.000-07:00

Look at these cute bath capes :)
http://spatimebaby.com/

http://frugalmommyof2girls.blogspot.com/2009/03/spa-time-baby-giveaway.html

First day of work

2009-03-12T08:51:00.000-07:00

Today I started my part-time job as the church/school secretary. The desk was a mess and between Billy and the school principal's to-do-list I could be full time, but alas they are only giving me 12 hrs a week... we'll see...

Also, another super cute giveaway - baby shoes! :)

http://www.jackandlily.com/

http://frugalmommyof2girls.blogspot.com/2009/03/jack-and-lily-giveaway.html

ok, one more.. cool swimming suits

http://frugalmommyof2girls.blogspot.com/2009/03/tuga-sunwear-giveaway.html

http://www.tugasunwear.com/

Doctors appointments

2009-03-11T15:14:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, I had a doctor's appointment. Among other things, I recently started having pain in my right upper abdomen. I figured it was my liver because I dont have a gallbladder anymore... The doctor ordered some blood work, which I did this morning, to figure out what's wrong..

Today, Bella had her orthopedist appointment. And we got some good news!! He said the x-rays showed her left hip had some delayed growing but he thought her bones should continue to grow normally and since she's walking fine and otherwise developing normal he didn't think we needed to do anything special - i.e. cast or special shoes. PRAISE THE LORD!!! He also said it was ok for her to go to the Toddler's gym class! Which she's absolutely loving!!!

She was 25.4 lbs and 31 in. She's growing and growing :)