Almost 1 year

 Okay so as the months pass I just cant believe this kid is soo grown up. I'm convinced he acts way bigger than his chronological age. The last 11 months has changed my life drastically. Two little ones sure do keep you busy. I often find myself wondering what did I do with all my time when I only had one child. I'm not going to lie some days he makes me crazy just trying to keep up with him.

Here's all the new skills and mischief he has learned in the last month:

• Walks holding on to all the furniture or other objects
• Pushes anything that will move around a room to get to what he wants
• dumps everything out and pulls everything in the whole house onto the floor
• Reaches back to pick up an object when sitting
• Becomes excited when a task is mastered...he typically claps for himself
• Acts frustrated when restricted throws a tantrum, arches his back, and cries
• waves bye bye when he doesn't want something

Grossology: Discovery Science Center

One Wednesday we really needed to get out of the house and madison had been asking to see her friend Kylie.  She actually surprised me one day and walked up to me while I was doing dishes and said in a very clear voice " i miss kylie" She has never expressed a specific need or emotion like that before. She pretty much only expresses basic needs. I want cheese, go poddy, i want juice thats mostly it. So I made the effort to get Madison to hang out with Kylie. we took the kiddies to the discovery science center which is one of my favorite places to go. there's always something new to do and the exhibits change every 5-6 weeks. this time it was all about the gross things animals do like poo, suck blood, Sniff eachother's butts, ozz slime, and all kinds of other gross things I didn't even know existed. I didn't learn TONS of stuff while i was there but the one fact I did learn still haunts me. I learned there's a type of sea slug that when it gets scared by another animal it poops out its intestines and then regrows them after it has calmed down. I no longer wanted to learn any more about the nasty things animals do.

 Madison always cracks me up because she almost always finds the computer in the room and plays with it. I love that she is starting to explore more and actually get a little more interested in learning new things.

This was the nastiest and grossest game i've ever heard of. Each one of the animals or bugs or whatever you want to call them and they talk and move and do all kinds of other gross things.

this huge submarine was in the middle of the whole room. it was large and had some cool features inside. the telescope coming out of the top actually looked all over the room. you can see Caleb is headed towards it and he was going as fast as he can. madison loved the slugs mouth slide of course. The wheel Kylie is standing in front of is what turns the telescope at the top and you can see the whole room on the screen above her. Caleb is sitting at the entrance to the slug slide but he never got the courage to go inside and slide down the slide.

 

Upstairs they had this extra room open that we only really see open when schools are around. little did we know there was one around but for almost 30 minutes we pretty much had the room to ourselves. there was so much to do this day too. usually we see one themed activity but they had a bunch of stuff for the kids to do from building blocks to awesome gears toy.

 

 Caleb was actually totally into the blocks they had on the floor

 Both boys did great with the blocks until they found the shiny plates on the floor

 Caleb was a big fan of this gear toy until one of the gears came flying off the metal plate toward him

One of my favorite areas that is recently new but not super new is the "really little kid" area. I someday hope that my playroom will look something like this!

 

Valentines Day 2014

Our day started out pretty busy I made monster cookies for Madison to take to school and some cute Minnie mouse valentines..although apparently I'm the un-fun parent in the group because i only did plain valentines cards with no candy or toy attached. so while madison went to school i did my morning run (which i started doing since she started school) at the park next door. after school i took both kids home and changed Caleb's clothes. its usually is pretty cold that early in the morning but lately its been crazy hot.

After that the kids both had a party/playgroup at a friend of mines house. we took some cute chocolate and sprinkle covered marshmallows and some cute valentines cards.

After Exchanging valentines and playing a little while we went to the park to play with friends for a little while until lunch. I thought it would be fun if Anthony told Madison he was taking her out to lunch for valentines day. We decided on chick fil a because they have an indoor play area and healthy options like fresh fruit for Caleb.

After lunch we headed home to let the kids nap and get ready to go on our date. In the afternoon it was soooo hot outside we went outside and played in the water. My two children were in heaven. I've never seen Madison play so long by herself and Caleb never left the water table.

Caleb was sooo obsessed with madison's bike so i got out madison's old toddler bike and let him play with it. only took him about 10 minutes to figure out how to make it move. I also learned that he has no balance skills and isn't really tall enough without me standing right next to him. This is the result of not standing next to him.

My mom came over and watched the kids for us so we could go out for valentines day. Every year Anthony has gotten Madison a valentines day gift even the year she was 3 months old. so this year i bought for Caleb and Anthony bought for Madison like he always does. We decide to give the kids the gifts right before we left to go to dinner so they would have something fun and new to play with while grandma was here.

Madison got a set of princess dolls and Caleb got an animal farm match up

For our date Anthony got us reservations at north woods in. however, when we got there they said they do not save reservations for the 14th and would not honor it so they told us the wait would be 3 hours. we decided to leave and do something else. we drove back to chino and went to our favorite sushi spot and talked all night about the would your rather questions. these got pretty funny and turned into some good conversations.

After we had dinner we headed over to the chino hills shopes ...we had decided we wanted pinkberry for dessert but neither one of us was ready to eat dessert so we went into the bookstore and browsed around...bought a few books for the kids and a new one for Anthony. It was a beautiful evening and I am so blessed to be married to a wonderful man who truly loves and cares about me with all his heart. Ps for valentines day I got Anthony a patriots hoodie and some patriots earphones and he got me 2 large cast iron grill pans (don't laugh I LOVE THEM).

De La Rosa Familia

About 1.5 years ago a man sent Anthony a message on Facebook claiming to be his uncle from his dad's side. Anthony has known who his dad was as far as his name since he was a child but has never had any relationship with his dad or any of his dad's family. He showed the messages to his biological mom, Teresa but she said she didn't know them and that they were not his family. After that we let it go for a long time. Then, a few months later we got a lengthy email from a woman claiming to be his aunt along with several pictures of their family. One look at the pictures and it was clear Anthony was absolutely the nephew they thought he was. At that point Anthony realized that it was going to be a lot to meet all these people at one time...it was literally a whole family that he knows nothing about. so we agreed to meet with his aunt anita and her husband willy. we had dinner with them and their son...it went very well. and then we didn't hear much for quite a long time. I pushed Anthony to ask his aunt to set up a dinner or something where he could meet his grandparents. I have learned from experience that you should take all the time you have with grandparents because you don't know when the time will run out. so his aunt anita set up a dinner with WAY more people than just his grandparents. Anthony was a little overwhelmed ...but thankfully family showed up slowly and it was only a little at a time.

 

Anthony's Grandma Genevieve and Grandpa Edward

 

Anthony with his aunts and uncles (Madison's and Caleb's great aunts and uncles)

 

Anthony's Sister Daveena