8 months almost 3 weeks late!

Dear Andrew

You have been 8 months for a bit now, but there are so many cute things you are doing i had to write about it.
 You are definitely a free spirit.
You like to do stuff on your own, but of course your attached as well to momma and daddy.
You are standing like a pro, and RARELY are you just still.
You crawl super super fast and you like to get into things you are NOT suppose to.
You and rocky chase each other around the house. Its cute, he likes to lick you, but i have to stop him cause its too much sometimes :)
You like to eat fruit and still enjoy your garden vegetables.
You like blueberries and mangos.
Avacoados and potatoes have been new to you this month along with lentils.
YOu also had baby yogurt and you kinda liked it, but since you were BEGGING, and by begging i mean screaming when daddy and I ate some i wanted you to try some.
You love to eat kiwis and bananas of course.
You are SCREAMING and making all these adorable noises!
When i say YAYYY you say YAYYYY.
We are working on spanish all the time. Sometimes mommy forgets and blurts out in english, but I am trying. We WILL KNOW SPANISH ( or else grandma will kill me)

I love you baby boy!

Friday Fotos ( the spanish way ;) )

latley the rocks and babes have been chasing and "hanging" out more together.
Not that i LOVE the idea of rocky licking his ear * i caught him this morning licking his ear hard core* GROSS> but they are cute together. I love them

Also a RARE happy moment in his car seat.

Have a happy weekend :)

The screams and love and logic

It's that time in a childs life where he is now starting to understand what "no" means.

He is a veryyy stubborn and willful child. Meaning he wants what he wants and if he doesn't get it this face happens.
Well he has to learn to NOT scream when he wants something.
I guess its pay back.
Most people who met me would never think i was such a spoiled only child ( for 9 years)
So hence i threw A LOT of tantrums, and I am DEFINITELY getting pay back already with my 8 month old.
He is clearly an only child right now, and it may or may not be this way forever. I hope we can find the right techniques to control this.
I am currently reading Love and Logic, its kinda weird for me so far.
I feel like its to "liberal" for me.
Its basically you give your children 2 choices, both those choices require them to do what you requested in a good and bad way.
For example if you want them to put their coat on and they say no you say" you can put your coat on inside your warm house or put it on in the car"
If they chose to put it on in the car you have to let them go out in the cold and learn their lesson.
The book is all about letting children choose positive things in life through learning experiences so when they grow up they know how to make decisions and such.
I guess its strange for me because that is not how i grew up, it was you do it now orrrrr elsee...
which i DO NOT like either.
So we will see how i incorporate these ideas. I like their Fighting and Thinking words part, which totally makes sense.
I clearly wasn't able to learn with words i had to get spanked.
I'm not totally against spanking, but at the same time I want to try 1037048 methods before spanking occurs.
So as of now i talk to him like a little adult telling him
"andres do you want to get hurt playing there or do you want to come play here with me"
He is learning, sometimes i see his attitude change, its nice.
Its scary because now true parenthood is occuring.
The part  in which you are responsible for their behavior, for their actions, and for guiding them in the right path.

With a lot of prayer and support from the hubs we will get this discipline down.

The post about race.

This is going to be a very emotional post for me. As you can tell I am married to a black man and I am a hispanic woman, thus we have a "mixed" baby.
I never ruled out any race as a young girl. At the same time I wasn't attracted to a "certain" race. In high school I liked a white boy and he liked me. It was nice to know that I didn't have to "Stay" within my race.
My family isn't racist in any way, but at the same time NO ONE in my family has ever "Mixed" everyone married someone from ecuador and thus I was going to be the one to turn my family around.
They grew up in ecuador, so of course they are going to find someone of their race and culture.
I grew up in America. In my whole life i've had SO Many friend of different races and I NEVER just hung out with spanish people, in fact I have a few spanish friends, most of my friends are white, black, or mixed.
My best friend she is half korean half white, and maybe something else, since her mom was adopted from korea when she was 3 years old. She was adopted to a BLACK family in the SOUTH in the 40's. Yeaahhhhh.
When I went to college, my university was quite diverese. I ended up having a black,white, and hispanic roomate my years in college.
It seemed that black guys were attaracted to me. I don't know why they just were. I in return became interested in them as well. I never really thought about the color of their skin really. I just knew that i also liked them.
Finally my freshman year i met Andrew ( my hubs now). He was a dark skinned black man. It wasn't love at first sight * i don't even believe in that* but it was like at first sight.
He and I formed and amazing friendship. He was such a gentle and sweet man that I just fell for him.
We started dating my sophomore year and i was SO nervous to tell my parents.
See, i know my parents were not going to say YOU CAN"T DATE A BLACK MAN!, i was just scared to a. tell them i had a bf ( he was my only bf) b. bring someone of a different culture home.
They first met him at my birthday when i just told them he was my "friend". HA, they KNEW right away something was up between us.
Finally i told them, he was my boyfriend. They didn't say anything, they just wanted to get to know him more and see how he treated ME.
I was SO SO happy. I knew it was going to be okay, but at the same time i had no IDEA how they were going to react . Remember I'm the ONLY one to bring someone different to my family.
Finally they got to know him and they loved him. To me color wasn't an issue, it never has been. But of course my mom made the point to tell me how important education is to people of color so that NO ONE can say anything bad to them. she told me my kids have to do better than us and even more because the babe was going to be 2 minorities.
I was bothered. I HATE HATE HATE that the world has to be this way. I HATE IT.
Why does it matter what color skin you have?! why!!!
Why do I feel like i have to defend my husband and my son.
AND i have to defend myself too.
I'm a hispanic girl, and of course there is stereotypes and it bothers meeeeeeeeee.
I love my family i love my son.

When our son was born he was VERY VERY LIGHT.
I knew he was going to come out light. Even black babies come out light at first, and since he was mixed i knew he was going to be light.
What hurt at the hospital is that everyone ignored my husband. The doctors the nurse they all ignored him. I WAS MAD.  I HATED That just cause the baby was light that they had to ignore my hubs.
He didn't take it to heart he said he has to be "used to it", which made me MORE MAD! Why do you have to used to it??! WHY!  you shouldn't feel like you are treated a certain way because of your skin color.

I told him its okay they probably think your the nice black man who took me and my son in and i was the whore. haha.

Anyways things have been interesting thus far. Our son is fairly "light" in comparison to my hubs, BUT at the same time he looks sooo much like the hubs there is no denying they are father and son.
Of course people look at us.
Tell us how cute he is
Ask me stupid questions like "is he the dad"
most of the time i wanna slap them but i just say " of course"
I know people are always going to ask, but i just wish in the future thing keep improving with race.
I know we have an interracial president which is amazing, but that by no means eliminated racism in this country. We have to strive to keep teaching our children respect for other cultures and people.

I remember watching that CNN thing in which they asked kids of different age to show who they thought was the "bad" child and they pointed to the black kid. That bothers me. Of course they learn these behaviors at home, kids hear things, comments made about certain races. I keep hoping one day racism will be gone, i know it won't but i hope this new generation is more tolerant of others, and that everyone lets their child fall in love with whom ever they want.

The sleepless monster

So at 6 months we decided to finally sleep train our son. We went with the cry it out method but not in a harsh way. We followed the nightly rules and the first night the total crying time was 30 minutes. After the first night he only cried 5 minutes then he was OUT. He slept from 8 pm to 8 am. I could not believe it.
He had been co-sleeping with us becuase it was the easiest thing for me to breastfeed.
3 weeks of blissful easy sleep and then he started up again.
YOu know waking up once a night.. to now he is waking up every hour.
I don't know if its cause he is teething.
But its been almost a month.
Last night we let him cry for an hour * while going in every 10 minutes to comfort and putting him back down*
and he FINALLY fell asleep.
I was hoping this was it and he would sleep the whole night.
wrong.
he woke up an hour later.
And i just gave up and brought him into our bed.
MOstly cause i feel bad for my neighbors and their kids.
oh gosh. I know he is only 8 months and kids are like this. Which is fine. I just wish it wasn't every hour like it is right now.

Anyways I'm looking for a new place to live for next year when we move to michigan.
GAHH.
i really wish we could stay in our nice apartment that we have here.
I guess we can't :(.

Birthday Time

Okay so his birthday isn't until may but I am now seriously looking in to it. It seems that all the babies born in 2010 have had some sort of "owl"influence to it. It doesn't help that target was selling a whole woodlands creature theme. I know because i have a travel system and play pen along with a bouncer and swing, all dedicated to the "woodlands" creature and owls.
So thus I want an owl themed first birthday. Too bad its not SO popular in party stores so it seems like if i want to get plates and such i have to order them online. which means more money. sigh.
its okay its his first birthday, and i DON'T care when people tell me " he won't remember" hello pictures? hello just him knowing he was loved so much from the start * not that money and parties show love*
PLUS its such a blessing to reach a year old, you know how many things can happen to a baby during that first year? I think its worth celebrating.
so now im looking into everything owl and woodland related.
although i may or may not change my  theme.
its hard not to with a bajillion options out there.
Although to be honest none of them has my heart more than the owls.
Funny in real life i think owls are creepy.
And there is one now "hooting" outside my window.
creepy... maybe it knows I'm talking about its species... who knows.
Its late i need to go to bed.
Adios !!

Friday rainy day

Mostly its sunny about 90% of the time here in Florida,but when those rainy days come i love them.
I love waking up to hearing rain and my son still sleeping because it so soothing ( makes me want a sound machine asap).
But i also feel like im not "missing" out to much during the day. Since im home ALL the time and we have one car it makes it difficult for me to go out. I ALWAYS have to wait for the hubs to come home.. the good thing about that is that it FORCES us to spend family time together ;).
Sigh, im so tired lately.
For 3 weeks once we started sleep training at 6 months he slept through the night. now he has reverted back to his old ways. haha. im not stressing seeing as I KNOW sleep is not going to happen again until he goes to college ( if im not dying worrying that he is ok) but you know i just wish things were easier and he wasn't so stubborn.
Alas, such is live and he is a baby and babies will be babies.
SO next year we are moving to michigan. yes the cold artic.
my hubs is going to graduate school and i also went to the same university for my undergrad.
The on campus housing SUCKS BAD. I mean i haven't heard ONE good thing about it.
But it is affordable and the rent includes ALL utlities. gahh
we'll see.
we are going to be on a SUPER SUPER tight budget next year. like SUPER tight.
I have to just go with it. I know my husband will make his son proud with his masters and hopefully one day his doctorate.

Lets NOT forget about me.
I need to get my masters and start working since im going ot be making more than my husband once i start working.

for now i will be happy in my life and being able to stay home with the little boy i love so much. even if it means no going out to eat or none of that stuff