9 Months

Max recently turned 9 months old!  Ya know, 2 weeks ago.  His 9 month well baby checkup turned out to be a sick baby check up.  (Fever + crying all night = ear infection.)  In this case he had a double ear infection.  Luckily I knew the signs and got him hopped up on antibiotics and ibuprofen quickly and he started to feel better.  I always know when my kids have ear infections when they cry all night.  My boys always sleep through the night unless something is wrong.  (Thank you, Babywise, I owe you my life.)

Max was 20 pounds 3 ounces at his appointment a couple of weeks ago.  Babycenter says that puts him between the 25th and 50th percentile.  He's growing just like Mason did, really fast in the beginning with higher percentiles, then leveling out to average.  I think he is absolutely perfect.

Max is such a happy baby with oodles of personality.  He's just got this sparkle in his eyes, and people stop to tell me how adorable he is everywhere we go.

Max crawls everywhere and pulls himself up on everything.  No matter what I'm doing....the dishes, brushing my teeth, getting something from the fridge...you can always count on him to be be right there crawling to standing up my pant legs.  Basically, any time I move I'm knocking him over.  This is new to me, because Mason didn't truly crawl until he was around 10 months and then started walking at 11 months.  He kind of bypassed the traditional crawling stage.  Max is always moving and constantly grabbing everything and has a ton of energy.

For the past week I've been like, Why is Max doing this funny cry?  Why does he scream whenever I put him down?  Why does he keep waking up during his naps?  Why isn't he interested in eating when I know he's not sick?  Why has he been spitting up so much when, thanks to solid food, we have been past that phase?

Teething.  Yep, all signs of teething.  He got his first 2 bottom teeth in at the same time.  And he was so miserable, I'm like...Wait--do I have a newborn?  Sheesh.  It was bad.  And of course I don't really know what's going on until AFTER the fact and I actually see the teeth.  Duh.  Then I'm like, Poor baby!  Sorry I've been so confused and disgruntled with your behavior!  Mason got his teeth really late.  He turned 1 and still didn't have any teeth.  Then he'd get like 4 of them in at a time.  It was crazy.  For almost everything, Mason was way more difficult than Max, but this time Mason wins.  I don't remember any real problems with Mason and teething.

Max's favorite things to eat right now are yogurt, bananas, applesauce, string cheese, and Cheerios.  To get him to eat avocados or anything else not on this list, I have to mix in yogurt with it or he won't eat it.  In general he's a good eater.  He prefers to feed himself and not be spoonfed.  Which is the exact opposite of my 3 year old. Lol.

Happy 9 months 2 weeks Max!  We are so blessed to have your sweetness in our family.

Wild Animal Park June 2011

Earlier this summer while visiting my family, we went to the Wild Animal Park.
They've since renamed it and made lots of upgrades to the place, but to me, it will always be the Wild Animal Park!

The tram ride is SO awesome!
They made it a lot nicer and you can see the animals so much better while you're out on safari!

Family picture in front of the elephants.  We have to tickle Mason to make him smile for pictures. :)

Mason looooved the petting zoo!
He walked right up to all the big animals to pet them and wasn't even scared.
We were pleasantly surprised.

Classic picture on the rhino!

Mason's most favorite thing by far, though, was the lorikeet exhibit.  It's a large, caged enclosure you walk into that's filled with colorful lorikeets that land on you.  You can buy little cups of nectar (for a pretty penny of course) and the birds land on you as they drink the nectar.  Mason really likes birds and was excited that they landed on him even though he seems stunned in the video.  We just laughed. :) I think he was afraid that if he moved the bird would fly away off of him.  And he wasn't thrilled about the flapping by his face at the end.  But he didn't want to leave, it was so much fun.  P.S. When these birds poop on you, it's clear poop.  So it's not AS gross as normal....and they have very nice washing stations upon exiting complete with soap and paper towels. :)

More petting zoo.  He wasn't even afraid to walk up to these full size deer all by himself.

Marcos and I in front of the beautiful landscape and big hot air balloon.
  We had such a great time!

June in San Diego

While we were visiting my family in San Diego, we of course had to go to the beach.  There was a chilly breeze that day...but that didn't stop us!

 Mason loved using a shovel to fill this big bucket with sand.  It took him a while to get used to the sand.  He doesn't like to get dirty.  But after a while he warmed up to the sand and had a great time!

 By the end of our fun at the beach, his face was black with dirt and sand.  Atta boy!

Mason also got to meet and play with his cousin, Madison.  They were so cute together!  This is basically the best picture we could get with both faces showing, because as toddlers sitting still just isn't in their nature. :)  It was so fun to see them together, though!

5 Years!!!

Back where it all began...

In June, Marcos and I celebrated our 5 YEAR anniversary!!!  That is so crazy to me!  I guess time flies when you're having fun, and being married to Marcos is definitely fun.

We took a trip down to visit my family in San Diego.  Special thanks to my Mom for watching Mason so we could go out and celebrate!  First we went to the San Diego temple, where we got married 5 short years ago.  We did sealings, and it was so incredibly special and a perfect way to celebrate our anniversary!

But the fun wasn't over yet.  Then we went to an amazing Churrascaria for dinner.  It's a very nice Brazilian steakhouse in downtown San Diego called Rei Do Gado.  You pay a pretty penny and then, on top of a salad buffet, you get ALL YOU CAN EAT MEAT that they bring to your table on skewers like this:

Mmmm....

They carve off a juicy piece onto your plate.  They have so many different kinds of meat they bring around to your table until you tell them you're full!  It's such an experience.  We enjoyed trying all the different meats.  We LOVED the bacon-wrapped filet mignon!  I'm not even a big meat person, but I ate so much and had so much fun!  Best meat I've ever had.

Our other favorite of the night were the sweet crab legs!  Marcos also had fun talking with the waiters and waitresses in Portuguese (he went to Brazil on his mission).  It was really fun for him to converse with them and ask them questions about the food and such.  I smiled and pretended to know what they were saying, like the white girl I am. :)

Something he remembered liking from his mission were chicken hearts.  These are chicken hearts.  Marcos asked the waiter (in Portuguese of course) if they had any chicken hearts he could try.  The waiter said it'd be a few minutes to cook them, but he'd bring some out.  I don't shy away from trying new food, so I chewed one.  Notice I said CHEWED and not ATE.  I just couldn't swallow it.  It didn't taste BAD.....it just tasted...WEIRD.  Marcos liked them, though.

This is us before we started stuffing our faces with amazingly juicy and flavorful meat.

And this is us after we're so full we're practically sweating meat juice.  Gross, I know, but if you've ever eaten meat until you're bursting at the seams, you know exactly what I mean.  Marcos ate a TON of meat "to get his money's worth."  He was so full he didn't eat for 2 days after.  Now THAT'S a good meal!

And an exceptional anniversary. :)

Christmas Break 2010

Well, now that it's Spring I think it's time to throw some Christmas Break pictures up here.  We really didn't take to many...too busy visiting and having fun I suppose.  Here are some of the best!


This first set is outside in the rain at our visit to the Oakland Temple.

Touching the temple

Inside the Visitor's Center there were Christmas decorations, breathtaking views, and familiar faces!  My Uncle Dave, Aunt Patty, and cousin McKay happened to be there that day with their ward from Fresno.

Tracy, Me

Here are a couple of our ward Christmas Party with Mason sitting on Santa's lap.  The lighting in the cultural hall wasn't very good, so not many of our pictures turned out so well.  But here are a couple which show the most important thing.....Mason crying with Santa.

"Why are you doing this to me?!?!"

Mason being cute with Daddy and loving his new spinning lights toy from Santa!  We went to Grandpa Louie and Grandma Elizabeth's for the holiday in Fresno, and apparently didn't take many pictures because we were having too much fun!

Harvest Festival

Last Saturday there was a Harvest Festival held at a local farm where they open up their farm to the public.  It was fun to show Mason the animals and feed them!

Holy cow!  Look at that tongue!

Um, cows are surprisingly huge in real life, by the way.

Mason loves tractors and trucks of every kind.  True boy.  Almost makes up for him also liking pink strollers, too.

Poke a goat!

Sad pumpkin boy....lol

Happy pumpkin boy!

Clapping for having such a great time!

I think it's funny that in almost every post, I have lots of happy Mason pictures and at least one really good crying one.  He has the saddest sad face ever!  Such colorful emotions sure keep my days interesting!

Halloween 2010

This year for Halloween we needed easy and budget-friendly.  We went to the local Halloween store to see if they had anything discounted yet (it was the 30th after all!) and of course all their baby costumes were 25-35 dollars.  No way I'm spending money like that on something he's gonna wear once!

But while we were there, we saw a 30 dollar Mario costume and thought, hey, we could totally throw that together ourselves!  So then we went to Target and got a red long-sleeved shirt and some overalls and red socks.  His brown church shoes worked perfectly for Mario's shoes (thanks Amy Duran!) and Marcos tailored a red hat of his to fit Mason and stuck a printed out "M" on it.  The finishing touch?  The yellow buttons.  We just cut circles in yellow colored paper I already had and wrapped them around the existing buttons.  Done!

We thought about drawing a mustache on him with eyeliner or chocolate or something, but the chocolate would get everywhere and I was nervous about putting makeup on my baby.  He still looked stinkin' cute!

The great thing is that he can wear that red shirt and overalls all winter, and they were still cheaper than buying a costume (which by the way, I'll have no problem doing when we actually have some semblance of money someday!).

And I may as well point out since I noticed it's in the picture below...see that white latch to the left of our dishwasher that hooks onto the wood?  Yeah, that's what we had to attach so he'd stop playing with our forks and knives and starting our dishwasher when it's half empty.  It works!

It'sa me, Mario!

Mario crying-power

Tongue-power Mario

Tongue-power Mario 2

Papereating-power Mario

One thing I'd do differently is put some plastic wrap over his paper buttons, because by the end of the night he was already chewing them off!  And he definitely did not want to wear his hat.  At all.  All pictures of him in the hat are against his will.  But they sure are cute!

Cheesy Mario No Hat (he has 99 lives!)

Duck Pond

One of the things we did for Labor Day this year was go to the nearby, beautiful, relaxing duck pond.  Mason really likes to observe the ducks and geese, and valiantly struggles to break free from my grasp so he can walk straight into the water to play with them.  I kindly try to explain to him that the water is "yucky," which I'm pretty sure he interprets as "fantastically fun and forbidden."

Napa: Week 1

Well, we live in Napa now, and so far we really like it (despite the major con of being too far from family!).  But it is so beautiful here....so lush and green with trees everywhere.  And the weather is heavenly and reminds me of San Diego weather.  It's nice, because there are grape vineyards reminiscent of Marcos' hometown of Fresno, and rolling hills that remind me of my hometown of San Marcos.

Today we visited Napa's premuim outlet mall, which is a lovely outdoor mall with lots of high-end shopping outlets....not that I shop at any of these places regularly, but it was really fun to walk around the nice mall.  I did like the Gap outlet, though, and if I had money I'd take advantage of their awesome deals.  We even saw tour buses that take loads of tourists to this outlet mall.  It was a lovely place to window shop and walk Mason in his stroller, and it's less than 10 minutes away from us.

 Our apartment complex has a really nice little playground we take Mason to, and he loves it!  He really likes this wall of rolling wheels.

And this spinning knob thing that barely qualifies as a toy but that kept him entertained for about 15 minutes.

Sliding with Mommy!

Peek-a-boo!

Sliding with Aunt Tracy!

Sliding with Daddy!

Monkeying around on the monkey bars.  Such a fun playground...and it's so nice that it takes us like 2 minutes to walk there.  Looking forward to many fun times here!