Zoo Fun

Sunday, June 28, 2009

Emma insisted on her and her neighbor friend Kenner holding hands.

Stuck in the stroller.

Playing at the Zoo's Riverbank.

Ben liked the fishes.

One of the zoo monkeys got loose!

Kid Compare: Father/Son

Sunday, June 21, 2009

Ben, 8 months.











Emmanuel around Ben's age being held by his oldest sister, Laura.

So the good news is...

Thursday, June 18, 2009

I have a majorly huge cucumber plant (8 feet long!) who produces delicious slicing cucumbers all for me to eat (nobody else in this house wants them). I am so proud of this cucumber plant because I grew it from seed. It's like my third child that way haha. It tasted delicious chilled with a little lime and salt.

And the bad news is that the beans and peas aren't doing too well. I was talking to this gardening buff lady who said it's been a super hard year to garden because of the irregular temperatures and rainfall (lucky me!). We'll see if they can survive the drought now.
The other things producing now in the garden are basil, thyme, parsley, rosemary, serrano pepper, roma and celebrity tomatoes. The first fruits of the tomatoes had bottom rot. But I got this calcium stuff for the soil and hopefully the second round will be alright. The cilantro plant dried up and I got a TON of seeds (it's not a summer plant). So if anybody wants some leave me a comment and I'll save them for you. I am for sure planting them in the fall, fresh cilantro is the best!

Benjamin Bounce Bounce

Wednesday, June 10, 2009

Ben is almost 8 months (fhewww time flies!) and he's more alive than ever! He is crawling all over the house exploring with his hands and mouth. He's eaten a sticker (which came out perfectly in his poop) and a small ball of homemade playdoh, which made him break out in a rash. My floors have to be immaculate or he finds it!

He's still super happy and easy-going. Most of the time he's independently exploring or getting rolled on by Emma. Ben always makes Emma laugh. The two of them are developing a beautiful friendship.

A couple of times I've caught Ben lifting himself up and even trying to climb. On the stairs a couple of times, on Emma's TV chair, on Papi's guitar case. He's not wasting any time! Days after he got the crawling thing down he was lifting himself up!

He weighs around 20 lbs. and is taller and has bigger feet than Emma did. We've been letting his hair grow out just to see, and it's curly like his Dad's!

Ben is our jolly ball of sunshine.

Emma

Thursday, June 4, 2009

The other day I was about to scold Emma for taking so many baby wipes out of the container. Then, instead of doing so I decided to follow her and see what she was up to. I found what is pictured here: 1 "baby" per step, face down, with a baby wipe on each of their backs. She told me she was putting her babies to sleep. I proceeded to let her take as many wipes as she wanted for a couple of days, until I could no longer stand the waste :)

My sweet Emma is super creative, a star to her brother, and Mami's little helper. But she's been pretty sick. That's the reason I have been inactive from my blog for 2 weeks now.

As some of you may know, Emma has a slew of food allergies. It was my understanding that they were a passing thing and that I shouldn't pay too much attention to them and they would go away. Well, that advice was wrong. Emma had diarrhea for about 2 months before I took her to a specialist. After some extensive testing, we found out the good news and the bad. She does not have celliac disease and her allergies are likely to pass. However, she has a moderate allergy to wheat, corn, soy, and rice, among others. What that means is that she can't have any one serving of those grains twice a day, and for the more severe ones, not twice in 3-5 days. For those of you familiar with celliac disease and the gluten-free lifestyle, most alternatives to wheat all have corn, soy, or rice in them.

Needless to say, it's been a hard couple of weeks for Emma and I. It's a horrible feeling to have your kid crying at you because she's hungry while your mind is blank at what to feed her. We still have those moments, but hopefully they are mostly in the past. I am happy to say that in the 2 weeks her diet's been changed, she was only sick once, whereas before, it was every day. Unfortunately though, since the change in diet, her eczema has flared up horribly. Emma is my jigsaw puzzle. Together with the Lord, we're working on it.