This Was Our February

Even with the extra day this year, the month of February flew by. Since I have a few pictures but not the time or desire to create a bunch of blog posts for all of them, I'll catch you up with our February events with one long one.

Probably the most 'exciting' thing that happened during the month of February, was that Ezra learned to crawl, and cut his first 2 teeth. On Valentines Day I felt his first tooth AND on that same day I saw him crawl for the first time. I was excited to tell Armando later that evening about him crawling, and his casual response was "Yeah, he did that the other day too".

Esperanza's preschool is moving locations. Still close to home, just not as close. Currently, it is within walking distance of our house, but still a good trek. We've never actually walked to school before though until the other day. It was a beautiful, sunny day so we loaded up and took off, making it there with a few minutes to spare and no hiccups along the way. I want to try to do this a few more times before the school moves and we'll have no choice but to drive.

We made Valentines for each of Esperanza's preschool classmates for Valentines Day. She has become a pro with scissors. I traced where to cut, and she cut out the hearts. She sprinkled sparkles on some, colored on others, and added a couple heart candies to each.

Our niece Anycia and nephew Antonio stayed with their dad for a couple of months recently. Being so close to us, we were able to have them over to visit often. One of the times, we took a little stroll to the neighborhood park/river.

Ezra has discovered Esperanza's kitchen!

We visited our friends Jessica, Nicholas and Ella recently. We hadn't seen them all winter. Nicholas is a few months older than Esperanza and has SMA (you can read his story here). He's such a sweet boy...so sweet in fact that when he heard that Esperanza did not get the 'Big Woody' from Toy Story she so desperately wanted for Christmas, he offered to giver her the one he received since he doesn't like it. Esperanza loves her Woody, he's a "great addition to the round-up gang" as her Jessie says between yodels. Thank you Nicholas!

Esperanza loves walking around in my shoes. Mostly my old high heel shoes that she dug out from the back on my closet. She also likes my rain boots.

We've had an exceptionally warm and dry winter this year. With the exception of a few days here and there, we've had very few opportunities to go puddle stompin'. We need to get some puddle pants to keep Esperanza dry...she really does stomp!

The kitchen sink is usually full of dirty dishes. For a brief moment though, it was clean at a time that was ideal for a baby bath. Ezra loved it.

Two Front Teeth

After months and months and months of teething, Ezra finally has a couple of teeth. The first showed up on Valentines Day and the second just a few days later.

First tooth

Second tooth

Juice

We've had a juicer for many years, but I pretty much forgot about it until Armando said he was thinking of doing a juicing cleanse several weeks ago. I loved the idea, not just for him, but to add some delicious raw juices to the kids' and my daily intake as well. Armando went a little over 3 weeks with juice as his only meals and is just now getting back into eating 'solid foods'. I think he's even lost like 30 pounds or something (wow, that's like the size of Esperanza). The rest of us are of course not cleansing, but we drink it like it's part of our meals each day. Fresh juice is amazing! AMAZING!!

We don't always have everything I want to juice but we typically have most of it. i end up making a few different combinations since Ezra doesn't get citrus fruits yet and Armando gets things like cucumber which I don't like. Esperanza and I drink the same. So, for Ezra, I add beets, carrots, apple and some greens (kale or spinach usually). Esperanza always asks for orange, pineapple, grapefruit and apple, not wanting any veggies. We rarely if ever have all of those fruits. What she doesn't know though is the flavor of what she thinks is her original requested juice, really has some combination of greens, beets and carrots, some citrus and apple. On rare occasions we'll do some tropical fruits like pineapple and maybe even some berries if I feel like giving up some of my frozen stash. Whatever I end up making, Esperanza loves it but would die if she knew the true ingredients. I add a ton of other things to Armando's since it truly was the only thing he was 'eating'. Cucumbers, celery, collards, spinach, beets, cabbage, beet leaves, carrots, dandelion leaves, bell peppers, apples, oranges, grapefruit, lemon, lime, etc. There was a time or two I even added a hot pepper, broccoli and green beans to his juice.

We juice every single day, with a few exceptions. That juicer has not left the counter top and will never collect dust again, unless ~ heaven forbid ~ it dies. It's such a tastier and healthier alternative to the grocery store juices recently found to be tainted with poisons and toxins anyways.

Ezra's, Esperanza's and Mama's (Daddy's gets a large mason jar - his 'meal' for the day)

My sister keeps encouraging me to use the 'pulp/fiber' the juicer spits out as a filler in muffins or breads. I haven't yet, but hope to and will share a recipe if and when I do. Until then, it all gets added to my worm and compost bins. I'm gonna have some amazing compost and vermicompost this Spring/Summer!

Ezra Is 8 Months Old

At 8 months old, Ezra...

...loves to feed himself and will not let me spoon feed him anything. Ever. I still steam fruits and veggies for him but instead of pureeing them, I just dice them up for him. Still, I've had to get a little creative with how and what I feed him since, 1.) he still does not have teeth and can choke on things that aren't soft enough and 2.) when things are too soft, they are clearly not the ideal finger foods. This means rice cereal is not even an option. Feeding him pureed foods only lasted all of maybe two weeks before he decided he didn't want me to feed him. I had expected to be pureeing for at least a couple of months. Nope. Good thing I didn't invest in any new baby food pureeing kitchen products! Some of his favorite finger foods are broccoli, cooked egg yolk (He loves an egg or two in the morning - LOVES!), cauliflower, prunes, avocado, kiwi, banana and kale (steamed then chopped and rolled up into little balls so he can gum it and swallow - if it's 'leafy' it just gets stuck to the roof of his mouth). He also loves to snack on Cheerios (Apparently Otios are no longer around like they were when Esperanza was a baby - so Ezra gets all that added sugar, salt and starch that Cheerios has to offer).

...poops in the middle of the night. Wakes up to poop. And then wakes up even more when I have to turn on some kind of light to take clothes off and change his diaper in the middle of the night. He does this every single night! At least once, sometimes twice. And no, he's not eating prunes before bed.

...is SO close to crawling. He can get around still a few different ways: the army crawl, a worm crawl (wiggling his butt up and down while legs push him), backwards scoot while on hands and knees and when he's in a sitting position he'll get into a crawl position then back into a sitting position and back to crawl position - before you know it, he's on the other side of the room!

...has finally settled into a fairly consistent and predictable routine for naps and night time sleep. He wakes in the morning about 7 or 7:30, naps from 11-1 (this creates a problem on days I take Esperanza to school at noon), naps again from 3:30 or 4 to about 5 then goes to sleep for the night around 8 or 8:30. He wake several times in the middle of the night to nurse, but drifts back into dreamland easily, most of the time. Of course this will all change now that I've put it in writing.

...enjoys swinging in the outdoor swing, shaking rattles, playing with balls of any size or texture, taking his socks off to chew on, taking baths with his sister, drooling all over himself, laughing and crying in harmony with his sister, nursing in the rocking chair with his super soft white blanket on him and sitting with his sister in the middle of a pile of toys and being entertained by her while chewing on all kinds of tasty things.

Hide & Seek

I tried to encourage her to hide under the table, behind the curtains or in the closet. She had her own idea though. She really does believe that if she can't see you, you can't see her.

Ready or not, here I come!

3 And A 1/2

While we were eating dinner tonight, Esperanza was in an unusually good mood, and very chatty. I pulled out the camera, flipped it to video and began asking her a bunch of questions. The video is way too long to try to upload on my blog, but here are a few of Esperanza's 'favorite things' to remember about her at 3 and a half years old (or at least for that moment)...

Favorite Color: Purple

Favorite Place To Go: Rafa's house

Favorite Thing To Do: Paint

Favorite Animal: Zebra

Favorite Pair Of Shoes: Her Light-Up Sketchers

Favorite Song: She doesn't know songs yet, but I was just curious how she'd respond...She started singing, in no particular language. It was pretty funny.

Favorite Stuffed Animal: The Blue Bear She Borrowed From My Moms House

Favorite Toy: Ezra's Dragon

Favorite Food: Pears

Favorite Friend: Lucy (one of her classmates

Her Weight: 31.5 lbs

Clothing Size: between a 3T and a 4T - true to size as she's always been

Love you Esperanza - Happy Half-Birthday!

Winters First Snow Fall

We finally got snow! It started falling last night just after Esperanza went to sleep and was still there this morning when we got up. It look a lot of coercing to get Esperanza's snow gear on and her outside (remember, she doesn't like the cold). Because the rest of us were going outside, and she didn't want to be inside alone, she finally gave in and came out. Armando set off building a snow man...and then another and another. Eventually he had one big happy 4 person snow family. Esperanza helped put the carrot noses on and I sat and watched, drinking my warm decaf coffee and propping Ezra up in the snow to take pictures. I did put on my snow pants to make a quick snow angel, and failed at trying to convince Esperanza to do one with me. I sure hope Ezra will like cold weather when he grows up so I have someone to make snow angels with in the future.

Jahlani Zaire Roberson-Lopez

Jahlani Zaire Roberson-Lopez, infant son of our very close and loved friend Monique, passed away last week. He was 2 days shy of being 2 months old. The night before his passing, I had just blogged about her visit with us and meeting Jahlani. I will cherish those memories of that day I met Jahlani, not knowing I would never see him again. He was so small, so sweet and so happy. So loved.

Monique, Dre and their 5 children traveled here from Ohio, all 7 of them in a mini-van. They spent several weeks in Portland, Oregon, visiting and staying with family and friends over the holidays. After another few days traveling across the states back to Ohio, they returned home last Wednesday. Thursday morning, Jahlani passed.

I struggle to come up words to describe how heartbroken I am for Monique's loss. Every time I think of her and the pain she must be feeling, I cry. If it hurts this bad for me, I can only imagine the agony she is feeling. There really is nothing that can be said or done to make this sad time any better, for anyone. The pain of loosing Jahlani will never go away, and niether will his memory.

My Aunt Marti wrote the obituary which was published in the Akron Beacon Journal.

Jahlani Zaire Roberson-Lopez, treasured son of Monique Lopez and Andre Roberson, was born November 10, 2011 passed away at home on January 12, 2012.

During his very brief spiritual visit and travels on earth, he blessed family and friends in Ohio and Oregon with smiles and joy that will remain in their hearts forever.

In addition to his parents; he is survived by his brothers, Enrique, Jullian, Elijah; sisters, Adrina, Zhane, Apache; cousins, Silvia and Isaiah. Jahlani leaves many other family members and friends to treasure and honor his memory.

Services will be held at 10:30 a.m. on Tuesday, January 17, 2012 at Stewart & Calhoun Funeral Home. Friends may call on Tuesday from 10 a.m. until 10:30 a.m. In lieu of flowers the family requests contributions to be made to the Jahlani Roberson-Lopez Memorial Fund at any US Bank site.

Almost Crawling

Esperanza didn't crawl until she was 10 months old. I think our little baby boy Ezra might be crawling sooner than that. Here he is at 7 months old getting frustrated and wanting to crawl, getting some of the idea down. Yikes, I'm going to have to start mopping my floors soon!

Say What?

Between the weekend of Christmas and the weekend of New Years, I had my nieces and nephew over for a couple of days. On one of those days, our good friend Monique and her kids (who grew up with my nieces and nephew) came over for a visit. They live in Ohio but came out to Portland to visit family for the holidays, and I was lucky to get to spend some time with them.

Kids really do say the funniest things when you least expect it. And it's funny to us adults only because the things they say are so pure, innocent and just matter-of-fact. What they say is really how they understand and believe things...even though it isn't always they way it is. Usually I only get the pleasure of hearing funnies coming from my little 3 year old, but apparently, older kids say the darndest things too. Keep going for a picture show and a few short funnies (which, I promise, were really funny in person despite how not funny it might be by reading about it):

Enrique, Antonio, Anycia, Ezra, Apache, Jahlani, Esperanza, Elijah and Julian

I was cooking in the kitchen while the kids were playing amongst themselves in different areas of the house. Angelica and Esperanza were on the floor in the living room doing something and I heard this conversation:

Esperanza asks Angelica "you have a gray shirt on?" Angelica replies with a "yeah." After a short moment Esperanza asks her another question, "you have boobies?" This is where I begin paying attention to the conversation. Angelica responds threw giggle,s "ah, yeeeaaah." Then there was a long and thoughtful pause before Esperanza finally asks "you have a baby?"

Angelica and I burst into laughter and responds, "um, NOOO!". Esperanza clearly knows the purpose of boobies!

Somehow Angelica managed to escape all the pictures. She headed home the afternoon that Moniques kids came over and I hadn't busted the camera out yet so she missed the whole gang photo. Here's another attempt at it...this one, all eyes are on the camera!

The newest addition to Moniques family: Baby Jahlani. He looks just like all her other babies I think.

Apache and Anycia with Esperanza taggin' along

Apache and Enrique stayed the night to spend some time with Anycia and Antonio. While we were cleaning up after dinner we all got into the discussion of race and culture. I don't remember the specifics as to how the conversation got to this part, but here's where it gets funny...

Apache says, "I don't have any white friends." I ask her, "Why not?" She shrugs and says, "I don't know." It quickly dawns on me that she does have a very good friend who is white. So I say to Apache, "What about Anycia? She's white." In unison Apache says "oh, yeah!", while Anycia says, "I'm not white!"

We laugh a little, yet we're all a little confused and curious. So I keep it going...

As I continue to wash dishes, I respond to Anycia, "Yes you are Anycia. You're half white and half Mexican." Anycia very matter-of-factly says, "No, I'm not white!" I have to ask, "then what are you Anycia?" Her response, "I'm half Mexican and half Native American." I say, "But your mom (my full blooded sister) is white and your dad is Mexican." One of your parents would have to be full Native American for you to be half Native American." Anycia's responds "My mom is full Native American."

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Family history is, of course, hard for anyone to follow and figure out, especially for a 10 year old. To be mixed cultures, I imagine makes it even more difficult. Though Anycia's comments were comical to all of us, I felt the need to at least attempt to clarify how much of what we have on our side of the family: a little Irish, a little French, a little Native American (I have 1/32...maybe less), a little German, etc. (basically the usual 'white' mix, unless I'm the one who's confused?). Despite my efforts to simplify a complex topic, Anycia is still convinced her mom is full blooded Native American, but confused as to why I am not....to me that was the funniest part. Love you Anycia!

And then Antonio had a good one...

When I came home from picking up Angelica at the train station on Christmas Eve, she walked in and immediately jumped on top of her brother, Antonio, who was on the couch reading. She was messing with him, wrestling around and picking on him. That must be the teen sibling way of showing how much they love and miss one another. At one point, she must have kneed him in a sensitive area because he yelped, "watch it, I have stuff between my legs!" All us girls burst into laughter and Angelica got up off of Antonio. We laughed for awhile and Antonio just sat there and said "what, I got 'stuff' there".

Apache and Esperanza helping feed Ezra

Ezra Is 7 Months Old

At 7 months old, Ezra has proven to us that he is his own little person with a big personality. He is very attached to me now and has a little bit of a fear for strangers.He has sparked an interest in our cat Lucy. Unfortunately for him, Lucy has no interest in him and has already swatted at him a few times when he's gotten a hold of her hair, tail, ears or whiskers. He'll learn, Esperanza did.

He's has had a bad case of diarrhea for about a week now. I'm changing at least 7 or more green-ish runny horrid smelling diapers every day. I've gone back and forth from cloth to disposable diapers for months but now I'm just doing cloth cause I cannot afford that many disposables! Poor kid, I bet his little bottom (and belly) hurt. Other than being a little more fussy and a little more snuggly at times, he had no other symptoms to indicate a serious illness. Catherine said he clearly has some kind of bug, but nothing to be concerned about and he'll get better soon. I stopped feeding him solid food after the first day of diarrhea and now he just gets mamas milk and a couple bites of solid food a day just so I can get lots of probiotics in him. He also loves drinking water from his mini-sippy cup.

He's not crawling yet but will often 'jump' from a sitting position to try to get to me or something he sees and wants. He will rock when he's in the crawl position but eventually his arms give in and he just ends up in a butt up position, trying to push his body around with his legs...which doesn't get him anywhere but frustrated.

yes, he's wearing an old shirt of Esperanza's which is gathered at the shoulders. He's such a pretty boy!

He still weighs about 18 pounds I think but must be longer cause he's outgrowing clothes quickly again. He wore 9 months for a couple months then I pulled out the size 12 month clothes a few weeks ago and they fit him. Then, overnight he seems to have grown out of them already! So, size 18 month clothesHe's a screamer. High pitch! Really high. Esperanza screamed and cried and whined and fussed non-stop for years...but she never reached the window shattering, ear ringing, almost silent high pitch that Ezra does. He's also a yeller. Just like his daddy. He's really just talking to you with a ton of passion, but you feel like you're being yelled at. If he's not screaming or yelling, he does giggle and make softer cute baby talk too now I guess!

He's still teething, but no teeth. It's really frustrating for me, so I can only imagine how he feels. Now he not only is in a ton of pain on a regular basis, he drools so much all day long. I change his top several times a day because I can't keep him dry. I've tried every conventional, alternative, homeopathic, old wives tale, natural home remedy there is and nothing helps. Nothing. Okay, I haven't tried the Whiskey trick, but thats only because I'd feel kinda wierd walking into a liquor store with two kids to buy it.

Christmas At Grandma Angelina's

We went over to Armando's moms house to celebrate Christmas with the family on the afternoon of Christmas day. About an hour and a half into Esperanza's nap, I decided to just wake her up and loaded her into the car. Though our Christmas gatherings may sound the same each year (lots of food, family, friends, Santa, gifts, etc), it's the little details, individual conversations and especially the kids that keep it entertaining and fun. This year, I didn't get very many pictures, besides the Santa ones. But here are a few.

Uncle Tony, his 'friend' Teresa and EsperanzaSanta with Cathy and her little ones Tony and Teresa again
Angelina and Armando's brother Quacky (Jose Juan)

Esperanza and Junior danced to the Wii dance game. It was funny, and she was good at it. And here are a couple of videos of her dancing that are pretty darn cute

Santa Clause Visit

Guess who came to Grandma Angelina's house on Christmas? Santa Clause! And guess who had a change of heart and mind about Santa Clause? Esperanza did!

Santa Clause and three of his little elves walked down the stairs in the middle of our family Christmas gathering on Chirstmas day, surprising all the little kids, saying "HO, HO, HO" and handing out candy canes. He and his elves then made their way to the front room where the Christmas tree was. He sat down on the couch and in front of a huge pile of wrapped gifts. He had quite the following too. Over a dozen little toddlers and young children, including Esperanza, sat down on the floor in front of him, waiting for him to call their name so they could go sit next to him and open their gift. When Esperanza caught on to what was really going on and that each kid was getting to open a present if they went and sat next to him, she made her way threw the crowd , climbed right up on the couch, interupted another kids moment with Santa and asked if he had a present for her. She was no longer scared of Santa!

You can see Esperanzas lil head in the bottom right hand corner...before she figured out what was going onOooh, a big box! Whats in it?Yay! Huggies! Um, Huggies? Oh, but wait, is it really? Nope, something even better A big huge plush pink pillow!!

She liked Santa now, and he had one more present for herBut it was also for Ezra, so he got in on the action tooAfter all the gifts were handed out, and most of the crowd dispersed, Santa sat and talked to Clarissa and Esperanza about his reindeer. It was so cute to watch their faces. They were amazed by the stories Santa had.Thank you Gary....Oops, I mean Santa!