By Lisa Gutierrez on 05/19/2010
With our big move just over the horizon, I’m left thinking of things I may or may not miss about apartment-living.
I will NOT miss sharing a room with toys. My feet are tired of stepping on Matchbox cars. My eyes are tired of seeing little plastic cities all over the place. I want a grown-up room.
I will NOT miss the patio garden. It’s so crampy and I want to put my hands into more dirt than can be contained in a little pot. I want to plant things in the ground. I want some permanence.
I WILL miss the light from the third story window.
I really can’t wait to be out of here. I have tons more packing/sorting/purging to do. I haven’t even started going through toys or clothing. But that’s ok. I’ll suffer long nights of it, if I have to.
Tomorrow is my littlest boy’s birthday. Two. It’s such a nice, round, even number. I like it. I’ll be making my cupcake-of-the-month for him. I hope he loves
By Lisa Gutierrez on 05/12/2010
Yesterday, I made a big dent in sorting/packing/purging. The best part about it isn’t that I’m that much closer to being done. No. It’s that I’ve been able to unearth a few projects that just got lost in the shuffle. One of them was my English paper-piecing project. I originally intended this to be blanket-sized, but when I saw it yesterday, I thought it would look great on a canvas, as a wall decoration. When I picked it up this morning, though, I wanted a pillow. I wanted to be able to cuddle it. So, I got to work. I finished up the corner hexes and then I quilted it to a piece of cotton batting (with embroidery floss). I used some cloth napkins to make an envelope back and sewed it up, early this afternoon. It’s pretty.
By Lisa Gutierrez on 05/10/2010 I should probably stop calling him my baby. He’s the youngest, though, so he might be stuck with the “baby” nickname for all eternity. Or until I’m brave enough to get pregnant again (oh, the VOMIT!).
He’s growing up fast! Because I knew he’d hate the long drive and then the long ceremony, I timidly suggested he stay with grandma while I went out of town. Afterall, daddy was going to take Nathan to his first baseball game and I knew Andy wouldn’t really like that.
It took a bit, but we solidified our plans and I kissed his sleeping face goodbye, early Saturday morning. Later that afternoon, he got dropped off at grandma’s.
And we never heard from him again.
I KID! To my complete and utter surprise, he did wonderfully! Nary a fuss! In fact, when we went over early Sunday afternoon, he was happily riding a bike in the driveway. I asked if he wanted to go and he kinda pulled back. As if to say, “no way, Jose. I’m at Grandma’s!” Alas, we had plans to go to Grandpa’s, so we had to head out pronto. With promises of a prompt return, I buckled him up and off we went for a few hours.
I’ll have you note, it was now over 24 hours since he last nursed! Pretty amazing. We spent a few hours at Jason’s dad’s, where I smelled a magnolia for the first time.
[1] & [2]
My father-in-law got a ladder out and plucked this from his tree. It smelled amazing! A clean, lemony, floral scent.
We headed back to grandma’s in the early evening. We had dinner, opened gifts, played, etc.
and the newly minted “big boy” himself:
It was a pretty swell weekend.
By Lisa Gutierrez on 05/10/2010
Like I mentioned at the end of last week, my cousin graduated this weekend and my mom and I took a little (~3 hours) road trip from Houston to San Antonio to celebrate.
I kissed my boys goodbye early Saturday and we headed out. The ride there was pretty uneventful. We just ran into some traffic in San Antonio because we exited a bit early. We still got there with plenty of time to get dressed up and head to the arena for a good seat. The ceremony wasn’t nearly as boring as I was expecting it to be. The class was a decent size and the speeches were inspiring.
Spot the graduate! Ha! (Get it? They’re all graduates? I only care about one, though.) Sorry, Amanda, but you looked bored throughout the whole ceremony. I SO saw you texting!
She said she made it tear-free throughout the whole shebang, but had to let them flow when she saw her mom’s. They were happy tears. We were all super happy and proud. We wouldn’t have driven 200 miles, early on a Saturday morning, if we weren’t. In four years, we’ll most likely have to do it again for this girl:
She graduates high school in a few weeks and will be attending St. Mary’s in the fall. Huzzah!
AND NOW THE HORROR!
Around 9 pm, about 100 miles outside of Houston, my mom and I pass by a stalled car and I whisper, “that sucks..” My mom agrees with an “mhmmmm…” and literally 2 seconds later, we hear a thump and feel the vibrations of our brand new flat tire. Sigh. I’m a big fat jinx. This is where I whine about not having any money in hopes that I jinx myself and get lots more! yeah! Right.
Anyway, we call my aunt (mama to the graduate) and her (and her family! with males!) are about an hour behind us. We wait there in the dark that hour. See, I have no idea how to change a tire. I would have attempted it, but it was really damn dark! There was tall grass and trees not too far off the road. I think I’ve seen too many versions of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre to self-learn tire-changing in the middle of the night on a stretch of dark Texas highway. The guys had it changed up in like 5 minutes and we were off on our donut. We had to drive the speed limit the rest of the way and we didn’t get home until after 11pm. It was kind of terrible.
I’ll blog later about how my BABY spent the night without me! I’ll just say he did fabulously! Made this mama proud. I get to scratch off TWO things from my 25 before 26 list, #7 & #23.
I hope everyone had a great weekend, especially you amazing mamas!
By Lisa Gutierrez on 05/08/2010 One of my favorite people graduates from college, tomorrow. I’m going to dress up for the occasion. I rarely wear dresses. I have only a few I like, so they get saved for special events. I think college graduation warrants getting prettied up. To get myself used to air touching my legs (ha!), I put on a dress, this morning. It’s a purple pinstripe button down (shirt?) dress. I paired it with my yellow flats and I was good to go. A day of pretty!
 Well, it only lasted about 3 hours. My mom suggested we go thrifting and…well, I like to do that in comfort. That means my Keens. My raggedy, almost two-year old Keens are my most favorite shoes. They’re the most comfortable. I’ve waded through a flooded street in them! The insole could use a replacing and the tops could use a cleaning, but I still love them and wear them whenever I need to do a lot of walking. Needless to say–they would have clashed terribly with my dress. So, I changed and that was the end of my dress-wearing for the day. I drifted back into mommy-frumpiness. At least I was comfortable.
It was pretty while it lasted.
Tomorrow TODAY (~6.5 hrs), I embark on a road trip with my mom. To San Antonio. Jason bought me my first iPod, specifically for this road trip. It’s a used shuffle, found on craigslist, but it’s tiny and pretty and black!
I will probably only get to kiss my babies goodbye. I’ll say a prayer for daddy, who gets to do the morning routine by himself, and for Grandma Linda, who is having a sleepover with Andrew at her house tomorrow. I’m going to miss my boys and a good day of thrifting, but it will be so worth it. It’s a time to celebrate!
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