Back in Honduras

We have been back in Honduras since April 4th! It has been challenging to settle back into things and to adapt with the new baby and establish a routine. We're still working on a routine...

After Lucas was born, we spent a week more in Dallas before heading to Stillwater, OK to my sister's. Then we skipped back to Edmond to stay with Joni and Terry before heading to my grandfather's in Arkansas. After spending a few days with them we completed the trip to Nashville! It was a whirlwind time trying to pack, unpack, pack....nurse, feed bottles, and see everyone we wanted to see. We had a health scare also to deal with - Lucas's newborn screening test came back abnormal and we had to leave my Granddad's early to take him to the ER in Little Rock where they did additional blood tests and assured us that these tests have a high false positive rate. Of course the results came back within normal ranges and we were told to follow up once we got to Nashville just to be sure. In the end everything was fine, but we were scared out of our minds and exhausted from all the rushing.

It has been nice to finally be back in my own space and not living out of a suitcase! When we got back, however, the house was a mess! It was so dirty and dusty but luckily my sister in law had come to clean the day before. Still it was messy. And we had mice. Again. There weren't any when we left...but the people "taking care of" the house never cleaned I guess, so that was definitely not a fun realization. We killed THREE!

We also had to delay unpacking somewhat because we had so much junk to get rid of. I think we cleared 5 boxes of stuff to throw or give away! Then we had to buy a few things - a water dispenser, a bouncy chair for the baby, and just recently a new fan! Marcos found a good deal on a portable AC/fan that holds 7 gallons of water and has an ice chamber; so the fan blows cold air like an AC. It's pretty nice, and blows cold even without the ice! He also bought Leyla a swimming pool since she LOVES water and it's so hot anyway.

The other issue was whether or not to hire a maid. I have been so stressed trying to clean, take care of Leyla, take care of the baby, cook, and have some time for myself in there somewhere! It has been especially difficult with Lucas not wanting to nurse. We have had issues from the beginning and I have been trying desperately for about 3 weeks now to wean him from the bottles and get him back to exclusively breastfeeding. He is doing a lot better latching on correctly and my milk supply seems to have increased somewhat, but we are still not all the way there! He is down from 25 ounces of formula a day to 12 ounces, and is seemingly still gaining weight and doing fine so we will keep on trucking. :)

Anyway, we finally found someone to come twice a week and clean. So far she is great! She comes and starts right in and leaves everything clean when she leaves. She does a very thorough job and it takes the stress off of me for the rest of the week - I can do dishes and light sweeping, knowing that deep cleaning is done. Before I pretty much always lightly cleaned what was visible, but the dust and the corners never got cleaned...and that drives you crazy but there was just no time to deep clean!

Trying to nurse, pump, and feed bottles - and cook, and clean, and answer Leyla's every request, and rest, was NOT working!! Plus no rest and all the stress wasn't helping my milk production. I was doing so much to increase my supply and felt like it was taking way too long and not doing anything - so I've realized that stress and rest really do affect it. Just in this last week I have really noticed a difference so I am a lot more hopeful and positive about it now.

Lucas is 10 weeks old now and weighs around 12 pounds (he's a chunker!!). Leyla is doing better but still not speaking any Spanish. I think she is understanding a little more now though and at least participating (in Church) and having fun. She plays in the water all day long and changes clothes 3 times a day, almost always choosing a "beautiful" dress. She has really liked having her mantequilla and beans back!

 Before leaving TN, we went on a walk at my dad's - Lucas slept the whole way, thanks to this sling from Tia Fide!!

 Leyla and Lucas with Mama-Dena before leaving!

 Lucas at Mommy-Me's in Nashville - this outfit doesn't fit him anymore! He was probably a month old or so in this picture.

 Lucas asleep in his cute crib in Honduras!!! He actually won't sleep there for more than 5 minutes. I have GOT to sleep train him - but with all the stress from nursing I don't want to add anymore. Once he gets a good feeding routine going, we'll work on the sleeping.

 The two of them asleep on the couch! I love this picture! They look so much alike!

 Smiles!

 Swimming at Iguana's water park - Leyla had so much fun!

Lucas had a lot of fun :) Kidding! He slept the whole time.

Science Museum

Boy am I on a roll with posting! This is like my 3rd post in a week, I think.

First we started the day off with homemade biscuits, sausage, and boiled eggs. Leyla loves to help bake so that was something fun we did together.

Then I took Leyla to the Perot Science Museum here in Dallas. It was in the low-60s today so I thought an indoor activity would be a good idea. I looked up several places like discovery museums, jump and plays, parks, go-karts - before deciding just to go to the science museum. There was a neat jump and play place but the open jump for toddlers is only on Wednesdays and Thursdays so that wasn't going to work for today.

Luckily, I learned from Chuck-e-Cheese and wrote down step by step directions to find the museum. And I only got lost for about 15 minutes, when I hit downtown. But I didn't have to call anyone or ask for directions and found my way to the right place...haha.

 The top floor of the museum was a dinosaur exhibit. She enjoyed seeing the bones and recognized a few from one of her kiddy TV shows, but the mammoth scared her! It had huge tusks and there was a stuffed bison beside it too that I think she thought was real. But she was fine really after we looked at it together.

She thought it was cool to sit in the dinosaur footprint.
Each floor had a different exhibit but for her age it was a little too much reading and explaining and in-depth. Plus I wanted to walk through quickly since I knew we'd be there awhile and we had 4 floors to get through! On the geology level though, she liked looking at the pretty crystals in the caves AND we got to experience a fake earthquake - she laughed at that when she couldn't stay standing!

 So we headed down to the lower level to the Children's Museum. They had a river-dam station where the kids could play in the water with boats and cups to measure and pour.

 Then there was a farmer's market where you could "unload" the truck with the groceries and stock the produce in the store. And of course buy and sell the groceries. Leyla just hoarded all the baskets.

 There was a construction site where you could build with these foam blocks, transport them on conveyor belts, crawl through tunnels and go down slides, etc.

 THEN she realized there was a sandbox outside. I am so lucky I have a child that doesn't like feeling dirty! She chose to sit at the table and build a castle instead of sitting in the actual sandbox. One kid was sitting there covering herself with sand...and another throwing it in his hair....ugh.

 It was getting close to 4:00 by then so I started getting Leyla ready to leave - we headed back upstairs one last time because another mom told me there were some interactive exhibits I had missed. They had an exhibit where you could build a robot, play with kinex, remote control cars, and other mechanical things.

 They had a little music studio too, so we played the drums!

All in all it was a good day and I think money well spent - she enjoyed it and got to do some new things. We were there from around 12:30 to 4:30! And of course she fell asleep in the car. I really want her to get to do some fun things while we are here, explore places she can't in Honduras (like the zoo and the museum). Hopefully it'll be warm enough later this week that we can go to the park and feed the ducks at the pond. And if I don't go into labor soon, we may get a chance to go to the aquarium too.

I was secretly hoping all the walking at the museum would bring on some contractions....but nothing yet. :)

Mommy-Daughter Date Night

Saturday night, Beth and Cliff had an elder's dinner/meeting so I decided the best way to keep Leyla from driving us all crazy, getting in the middle of things and making a mess, was to have a date night! I really wanted to go to Chili's and get a chocolate cake so I found one close by we could go to. Then I looked up restaurants in the area just to see and found out there was a Chuck-e-Cheese's! I really wasn't in the mood for pizza and figured it wouldn't be the best quality but I thought it would be something really fun for Leyla. So I decided to go to Chili's first for dinner and then to Chuck-e-Cheese's to play.

Dinner was great and Leyla helped me eat the chocolate cake - she wouldn't let me take a picture of her eating it though. So here she is drinking her milk.

She was pretty good during dinner and the food came amazingly fast so that helped!

Now here's where the "fun" started. I had looked up the Chuck-e-Cheese but I didn't really pay attention to the address. I knew it was on N Central Expressway around McDermott. **Note to self: READ the step by step directions!** The Chili's was on McDermott, by hwy 75. So I got back onto McDermott and drove until I hit what looked like an expressway and looked around for a Chuck-e-Cheese! The problem is, it was already dark, and drizzling. I really couldn't see and not being familiar with the area, couldn't drive and look at the same time! I had driven and driven and didn't see one anywhere. So I finally decided to call my mom and she looked it up on her computer. I knew I was at McDermott and (what I thought was) the expressway, so I just needed her to point me in the right direction. 

Well. Her map says it's only 6 miles from Beth's house. I didn't know for sure but I KNEW I had driven way more than 6 miles. I was so confused. I realized the "expressway" was some other highway - but I couldn't see to read the signs so I had missed that. And, in this part of the country, all the roads are split by the highways and run one way next to them and you have to do a million u-turns to get in the right direction. So, I had pulled over by this point, and then got back on the road and did a u-turn to go back the direction I had came.

And suddenly I am in the middle of nowhere. Taking a u-turn should put you going the opposite direction, right?!? Not so apparently! I had no idea where I was and I was NOT going back the direction I had come. I was so tired and upset at this point because it was getting late, I was wasting all my gas, Leyla had been so good and was patiently waiting to play, and then fell asleep. And I just wanted her to get to have fun and believe me that I really was trying to find this place for her to play!

So after being really frustrated - Mom AND me - we finally figured out roughly where I was and which direction I was going and I was able to get back to some roads I knew. Then Mom tells me that it looks like the N. Central Expressway runs parallel and right next to Hwy 75. This is where the story gets good. The "expressway" is the stupid FRONTAGE RD FOR 75! So guess what. The Chuck-E-Cheese was on the frontage road literally a quarter of a mile around the corner from the Chili's I had eaten dinner at an hour before, on McDermott. And it took me an hour to get there...

I woke poor Leyla up and decided she was GOING to play, ha, if I had to drag her in there. No really, I knew she would wake up as soon as she saw all the games and toys and kids (she did). I figured, we didn't really waste her playing time, because she could only play for as long as I had money. So the only thing wasted was gas and it was already past her bedtime. But she still had fun.

 The games for toddlers didn't involve many tickets and were really only rides like this one. I took her over to the basketball and bowling games and she had fun but couldn't throw the ball hard enough to score. So I turned it into a watch-mommy-and-pull-out-the-tickets game. Every time I scored a ticket would pop out and she would exclaim, "Mommy, look, ANOTHER ONE!!" :)

 It cost $10 for 40 tokens and we ended up with 150 tickets that she turned in for prizes - she chose a ring, a toy rubix cube, and a blue crazy straw. Those were her picks. I'm glad she had fun even though it took us an hour to find it. She even told me, "Mommy, you found it!" What an adventure....

Here she is playing on the playground today at the park, after church. It was really nice out and we were both able to get some exercise, walking around the pond, chasing the ducks, and swinging :)

Oh, and baby still doesn't seem to want to make an appearance. Stubborn boy.

Two weeks to go!

Well I am 38 weeks pregnant now and had an appointment a couple days ago that was a tad depressing. No changes. Not dilated, at all, yet. I have been a little concerned though because I keep "measuring small" even though they go on and on about the baby having a big head and being big. So I had to have another ultrasound to check his measurements. At 38 weeks I should have measured 38 cm but was only 33. Odd. But according to the ultrasound he is still on target and is now 7 pounds, 2 ounces. He gained an ounce. I however gained 2 pounds, ha. I'm okay with that though - I'd rather him not gain much more. Still it's odd that I would measure so small, and I don't feel like my stomach looks any bigger than a few weeks ago, and definitely not as straight out as Leyla was. They said it may just be his position, or that he is all curled up in a ball. He still moves plenty. Yesterday right at my belly button I had this very strange tiny round pointy thing pop-up. It was so strange and freaked me out because that's normally where his butt is!! The only thing I can figure out is it may have been a heel. Although I'm not sure why it was at my belly button - unless he has dropped lower and his butt is now lower so his feet are lower. He's just a strange little thing...I can't figure him out! I don't have that bowling ball feeling yet but Beth said she thought I did look a little lower. Who knows!!

 Here is Leyla and a couple kids from church in a 60's corvette :) Some friends of Beth and Cliff's brought it to church to show off - apparently he had been working on it for a few years. Pretty nice!

 We had home-made chicken pot pie one night and Leyla got to help Beth roll out some of the dough. She made heart "cookies" with her dough, then we made the pie. I caught her eating the leftover part of her dough, though! You can probably guess that after that she didn't eat much supper, ha.

 

 Here's my cutie-pie on the rocking horse in the bedroom. She puts a hat on herself and the horse and says she's a cowboy!

Still Pregnant

So I was 36 weeks two days ago and had my first doctor's appointment her in the USA. My dad drove us to Dallas Wednesday and we moved into Paula's house. I met Paula while I was working at Predisan and we have had lots of fun staying with her. The appointment was Thursday morning and unfortunately, the ultrasound technician was sick so I was unable to have an ultrasound still. I did see my doctor which was most important!

Dr. Salter is wonderful. I met him at Predisan also, during one of the brigades. I translated for his surgeries and observed a couple of them. He was super nice and offered to attend me in my next pregnancy, after I told him my story. So he gave me his information and when I found out I was pregnant in June, I let him know! It was great to see him and have some questions answered. He has a very calming effect! My blood pressure was still low and they tested my urine for protein too (there was none). So that is GREAT. He did not do an exam, so I don't know if I've started effacing or dilating yet, but he did measure the height of my uterus and said I was measuring small. It could be though that the baby is already low, dropped, or just sitting low. At every other appointment I was right on track so it doesn't worry me. His heartbeat was 160!

Now I just have to figure out last minute details, where the hospital is, maybe tour it, and figure out the whole insurance business. Since I delivered Leyla in Honduras I really do not know the processes here in the US at all so some of it is a bit overwhelming. But I am confident things will go well and I couldn't have a better doctor!

I have felt a few things that I didn't feel with Leyla, like hip and general pelvic pain or soreness. It makes me wonder if he has dropped, is in the process, and if that means I may have started dilating OR will dilate on my own. I don't know what to expect since I was induced with Leyla before I had started dilating on my own! I am excited though to find out, I have my next appointment WITH ultrasound on Wednesday. :)

I told her to "smile for Daddy" in order to get her to smile, and it worked! So, this was for you Marcos!