Happy Valentine's Day

I would like to take a moment and say that I love my darling husband. He doesn't really believe in Valentine's Day, but went out of his way to make it a special day for me. I really appreciate everything you do for me on regular days, too my darling. It's just that it is really nice to see what ideas you come up with on these special days. You're getting better and better every year and I love you! The other photos are of my silly blueberry-faced, scrunchy trouble making-faced, pretty little valentine's day (terror filled demon while at the mall with my mommy) - faced, almost one and a half year old girl!!


Everyone else in my family needs to step it up and update your blogs. I think we should aim for one post a week. I am getting bored!!! You know it's bad when I am posting more than all of you!!!

For xmas this year, we bought sofia some musical instruments. One day while watching Dora, Sofia decided to dance and play guitar along with dora. !We really love this video, especially when she does her special little turn.

Happy New Year

So Sofia is getting big. She is talking so much and pretty much runs around the house like little lightening bolt. For Christmas we got an awesome toy organizer that I am able to use to help keep her toys sorted. I know it sounds geeky but it is actually a very helpful teaching tool. I can tell her it is time to do "shapes" and she goes and gets her bucket with shapes. It is also helping to teach her about clean up (although it would be unreasonable for me to think she would be doing clean-up at this age). Sofia loves animal time, music time, reading time, and especially playdoh/art time.

Some of her new words and phrases are "banana" (her first word other than mama), "hi muma!" (she likes this one when she first wakes up and is looking right at my face), "nuh-night papa" ( after she wakes me up, she points over at Felipe who is still "nuh -nights-ing"), "Melmo" (Elmo), "Memo" (Nemo), Meh-meh (Mimi), Buh bub (bubble), San-na (Santa), Saaaht? (what's that?), pee-pee (self explanatory), ssssssss (snake), "guhhhhhh"-with a rolled h sound that goes on forever as her eyes get really really big (this is her lion, goat, zebra, giraffe sound), and my favorite is the Monkey where she doesn't really say the word, she just puts her arms in her armpits and moves them up and down while she chirps like a bird!

She is also loving to sing lots of songs with me and Felipe. I definitely love this age. Even though she is still very active, at this age I can see her learning. She picks things up so quickly. Which brings me to the Potty. Felipe's parents are in town and have been staying with us. I have been asking his mom lots of quesitons about Felipe when he was little because Sofia seems to be very similar to the way he was. So his mom told me tha the was fully potty-trained at 9 months (which is crazy~ but cool!). So i thought that maybe I would start to introduce Fifi to the pot chair (as everyone in my family seems to be calling it). So I got one of the ones that goes on the seat of our toilet. Everyday this week i put her on the potty and we talked about it, and she got to press the button and it was a really big deal! But, no pressure. I don't expect her to use it. I just want it to be something fun that she gets used to seeing and associating with diapers and bathroom stuff.

So...the other night my mom called and said she wanted to see Sofia- so I dropped her off and I went to the gym. It was a great work out and I felt so awesome when I left. Sofia had kind of been a terror all day, so I was expecting that my mom would say the same when I called to check on her on my way home. So i called and my mom said- : oh i don't even know how to begin to tell you about this kid..." and I said..."why what happened..."

Apparently my mom told sofia to go into the living room, get into her toybox and take out her little boy and little pumpkin toy. So Sofia went trotting into the livning room. About thirty seconds later my mom heard nothing-complete silence - so she jumped up and ran into the lliving room (sofia+silence=trouble). No sofia. So her heaqrt skipped a beat and she ran to the stairway (we have had problems with sofia and the stairs before)....No sofia. So my mom yelled to her and -nothing. Then it dawned on her that she had left the dining room door open. She ran to the dining room and much to her surprise- sofia was in the small half bathroom. Apparently she had tried to get up on the potty, but because there was no little potty seat to catch her, she went rear first into the toilet bowl and was just sitting there hanging out- laughing. My mom had a fit! I laughed so hard! And then I found out last night that after they fished her out of the toilet bowl (which barely had any water left in it) they found the little boy toy hanging out at the bottom. Needless to say, I will be telling her this story when she gets older!

Now the big news.....SOFIA USED TO POTTY FOR REAL TONIGHT! No pressure or anything. I simply gave her an extra milk (her last four teeth are cutting through as we speak and she didn't really have much appetite to eat today) and when she finished we went up to get ready for bed. She brushed and then I got her undressed and put her on the potty and she just started to pee!!! Well, I cheered and clapped and yelled to Felipe's sister Marcela!!! Sofia smiled and then peed a little more...and we cheered and clapped together. I asked her if she had to go anymore and she tried to push more out!!! It was really really cute. Then I gave her the toilet paper to wipe and she did !!! (then she tried to wipe her nose with the same piece!!). Of couse we ended the evening by letting her flush and clapping some more! I was so excited. It's not that I expect her to use it all the time or again for a while...it's just that she caught me off guard totally!!! I had no idea that she was going to do it. i just thought it would be good practice.


Any way i have lots of new pics that I'll post soon. These pics are from one day when Sofia came to visit me at work. She loved the drumset!

A few things off my chest...

I want to be a stay at home Mom and I want to have another baby now!


(just thought I'd say these things out loud even though I know they aren't going to happen)


Hope you're having a great week. I'll post more later...hahah yeah right!

Gift Ideas

The past year of my life has been one of very many changes, from a quickly expanding family and new house, as well as the loss of many important people in my life. Through these changes I have started to learn more about helping others and the good it brings.

I have already talked about A Real Hope for Haiti in earlier posts. Through this website, I found Maggie's story (maggiebixler.blogspot.com). It is absolutely heart wrenching to think of a child my daughter's age, enduring all that she has. I check on her daily and find it so inspiring to see the courage her parents maintain given everything they have been through.


So, I was looking on target.com today and I realized that if you go to this page...

https://www.target.com/lists/portal?ref=nav_targetlist&layersGoHttps=subnavCreateMenuHeader

... you are able to look at and buy for St. Jude's Children's hospital as well as other causes. What an AWESOME idea!

Instead of buying all of the usual odds and ends that we buy to stuff stockings with, or buying an extra big ticket item for a family member, how cool would it be to give a gift in someone's honor?! I think this is a great way to show people you care, and also help out people who really need it at the same time.


I was also reading another person's blog about how a great gift idea is to give four presents to each person you buys for. One gift they NEED, one gift they WANT, one gift they WEAR and one gift they can READ. I think we are going to do this for Christmas this year. The additional goal is to have one things that is used within one of these gift categories.

Boston's Children Museum

This weekend we took Sofia to the Boston Children's Museum and we all had a blast! It was so amazing to be able to put Sofia down and let her run and have fun without worry about her getting hurt. The toddler room at the museum was incredible. She probably would have stayed in there all day if we hadn't wanted to see everything the museum had to offer. These are some photos of our day!!

Photo and video editing at www.OneTrueMedia.com

I haven't posted in more than a month and this is why... I've been busy! And, I really wanted this to be my next post!! So, here it is. I still haven't wrapped my mind around the fact that I have a beautiful, happy and healthy daughter who is over a year old now! The past year really is a blur. But when I look at all of these memories, it makes feel so awesome to know all of the amazing things we have been through as a family. I never knew that it was going to feel like THIS to be a Mom. I honestly don't know if I would ever be the person I am now, without her. I love you Sofia Mae! Happy belated birthday big girl!