My First Breakdown

I have never felt super overwhelmed as a mom. Sometimes stressed when I am trying to get things done on a deadline with crying babies, but I can't ever remember feeling completely overwhelmed and breaking down crying. Well, it happened last night. I hit my breaking point. Ethan is such a sweet boy but he is at a very hard age for me. I can handle the busyness of taking care of a young toddler and temper tantrums don't even phase me but talking back, screaming at me, arguing with me and manipulating me are all new things for me and I'm not quite sure how to deal with them. And that my friends, is the stage Ethan is in.

I won't go into all the details (because there are many)of what sent me into breakdown mode, but after Ethan had been screaming for an hour and woke up Ellie while he was at it, I lost it and I shut his door and called Justin just bawling. * Side note: Justin has been out of town for work the past two weeks and won't really be home until this Saturday. 3 weeks of him traveling makes it kinda hard on me sometimes, even though I like to pretend that I'm superwoman. * Anyway, I told Justin that I just don't know what to do anymore, I've exhausted all of my parenting strategies and nothing is working, I had never felt anger like I did to Ethan in that instant and that scared me, and I just felt like a horrible mother. He assured me that I'm not a bad mom and gave me some advice on how to get Ethan to calm down, which was take him to the downstairs bathroom and let him scream it out in there until he was ready to go to bed. Amazingly it worked and after 15 min he stopped screaming/crying and when I went in he said, "Mommy, I'm ready to go to bed. And I won't scream and cry anymore" without me even saying anything. I was so grateful that it worked.

So anyway, I've had my head stuck in my Parenting with Love and Logic book reviewing some principles taught in there that I could apply to his age now but if anyone has any advice on some great parenting books that deal with this type of stuff, I love to read things like that! Just FYI for if you have advice: I'm not a pushover mom and I stick to my guns but that does not seem to work anymore with him. I'm not a huge fan of spankings. He isn't argumentative all the time. Taking away objects or privileges doesn't work with him yet either. He just doesn't care. We have always done time-outs but now that only sometimes works with him. Mostly, he still doesn't care.

So, go ahead. Congratulate me on having my first official parental breakdown. I think all of us moms are bound to and allowed to have them at one time or another, right? Hopefully I won't have another one anytime soon and I can learn how to get this situation under control!

Look Grandma! Fireworks!

I just have to blog about this before I forget it.

While we were gone in Cancun on our little getaway this last December, I was doing my daily check-in with Grandma Smith to ask her a billion questions about the kids, ask about their dietary habits, to make sure they are still alive etc. (I'm not the only mom that does this, right? :) She told me of how Ethan came running down the stairs that day and said, "Grandma! Grandma! Come see the fireworks!!" I'm sure she was very curious as to what he was talking about so she followed him upstairs to find that he had CUT, with SCISSORS a PLUGGED-IN straightening iron and was seeing "fireworks" as he was happily chopping through the cord. It blew a whole in the scissors and I think blew a few plugs in the upstairs area. I think they had a LONG talk about how "Scissors don't cut cords, only paper." Or at least, that is what Ethan told me. I think we felt very grateful that this lucky little boy is still alive.

So anyways, I walk into Grandma and Grandpa Chapman's house today and I saw this picture up on their fridge...

And although what he did should probably be no laughing matter, I couldn't help myself and laughed right out loud! He is holding the scissors and the straightener that he cut. Isn't this picture hilarious? It totally looks like a mug shot with the evidence in his hands and as if he is trying to say, "I didn't do it!"

I sure love this little mischievous boy and I am SO glad that he is still around to brighten our days!

Movie Night

So since my husband has been gone for a while working, on Saturday I decided to have a movie night/date night with my favorite little boy! We watched Princess & the Frog but fast forwarded through all the scary shadow man parts (don't you think those parts are creepy?!), and we ate fruit snacks, stayed up late and cuddled on the couch. I sure do love that I still have a pretty cute guy to watch a movie and cuddle with me when daddy is gone!

Park Day With The Smith Kids

We just love going over to the Smith's house to play. These kids adore their aunts and uncles and we try to go over there about once a week so the kids can play with them after they get out of school.

While we were waiting for them to get home, we jumped on the trampoline and laughed at Ellie who just couldn't contain her excitement playing with the dog. She loves animals!

He main goal was to crawl to the edge of the tramp to find Kutter (pronounced Kooter), and then would laugh and laugh at him. So cute.
Love the static in his hair!

When the aunts and uncles arrived home from school, we went to the nearby park and the kids had so much fun with them.

Aren't my sisters in law beautiful?!

Caryn had Ethan going so high!

He was laughing and laughing and then after a while he got really quiet and looked like this...
Super solem and quiet. I thought he was going to throw up or something but he didn't. It was weird. Maybe he blacked out? It wasn't long and he was back to his old self and was having a ball.

The little lady and I...

Ellie loved taking the sand by the handfuls and putting it on the slide. It kept her mind off of eating the sand for a while.

We love having family not too far away and love having mid-week play days with them!

My Valentine

Justin has been traveling for work for the past two weeks (and will be for the next week and a half) but I was lucky enough to go out on a Valentine date with my sweetheart before he left for this last trip. I asked him if he wanted me to plan it but he said no and that he would take care of it. I love that!

He took me out to eat at the Pita Jungle and then after he took me into Scottsdale and surprised me with a romantic gondola ride at the Hyatt Resort!

I loved it.

Somehow he is always able to surprise me with the coolest dates! I love spending time with him and miss him so much! I am so grateful that we somehow ended up together. I am hopelessly in love with this man. He makes me happy. He makes me smile. He is my sweet (and good-looking) Valentine. I am one lucky girl!

Ellie- 11 Months

Here is an update on our little sweetie!

- Last Sunday she started walking! At almost 11 months exactly. She took about 5 steps in row to start off and now can walk clear across the room! She is very careful and hasn't hurt herself yet. She is working on getting those turns down and becoming quite the little pro! We never pushed her. I guess she just decided that she would start walking that day!

- She now eats 3 big people meals a day and I have her down to only 2 bottles. She eats about toddler sized portions of food and still yells for more!

-She can clap, do SO-big, waves hello and goodbye (she starts waving if I say the word "alright" in the I'm about to leave type way).

-Still not much babbling. If she does, she says "yayaya."

-She doesn't really ever scream but yells at a high pitch for a long period of time. It really, really hurts your ears!

- Her peach fuzz for hair is starting to grow in more? Maybe?

- She loves to dance! If there is music or if one of us is singing or playing the piano, we can always find her shaking her little bottom.

Sometimes we rock out at home and here is a little video clip of her dancing. She was more interested in the toys though so it is pretty brief. But you get to see her walking at the end!

-She loves to take objects out and put them back in again. I'd like to think that she is a natural at cleaning up after herself.

-She had 4 teeth and grinds them all the time. It drives me crazy! But she does have the cutest little snaggle-tooth grin :)

My homemade photo shoots didn't happen this month. These will have to do!

I found her sleeping like this during naptime...

She LOVES her rocking horse that Great-Grandma Sims gave her for Christmas. You can see a video of her rocking out below.

She is just gets more and more fun everyday! We sure do love this little lady!

Gym Observations

Typically, I like to start off my workout at the gym by running on the treadmill but instead of watching the TV right in front of me, I listen to music and people watch. Yes, I am one of those. See, I get way too bored watching the TV and I just cant resist the temptation of watching all the people on the first floor work out on weights and I love to watch a good racquetball game :) Anyways, my point of this post is to write my thoughts about one particular observation that I have had while people watching today..

Today I saw a very obese man out on the floor with a personal trainer sweating bullets and struggling with a moderate weight exercise. He pushed through everytime and finished. I was brought to tears while watching him go from one exercise to another and I just thought of what an inspiration he is. I was listening to Miley Cyrus' song "The Climb" at the time, which probably didnt help to subside the tears :) I've never been obese (chubby, but not obese:) but I can imagine that it is so hard for them to find the motivation to choose to do something like that which must be physically so hard for them. I haven't watched Biggest Loser in a long time but I watched one season long ago and I probably cried every episode at how dedicated those people were to changing their lifestyle and how unbelievably happy and proud they were of themselves once they did.

Kudos to those people like that man I saw. To me, they are more of an inspiration than a multi marathon runner, an ironman or a triathlete. I hope that I can keep pushing through hard things that come my way as well.

See how much you can learn by people watching :)

Funny Ethan

Ethan tries many nights to think of someway to get us back in his room after we put him to bed and every so often he tries this one out on us....

Ethan: "Mommy!"

Me: "Yes, Ethan..."

Ethan: I, I, I just can't yawn. "

It makes me laugh everytime. Where did he learn that from?! I always tell him to keep trying and eventually he will get it. He gets pretty frustrated until he does and then he says. "Ok mommy, I yawn. Goodnight!"

Oh how I love this funny, funny little boy of mine

This funny little boy can also recite his First Article of Faith! Check out the video below!

Peru!

First of all, I just want to thank all of you for your sweet comments and support. For some reason, it means so much to me. Thank you again!

Now, on to happier things... Peru!

Before we were in Peru, the kids and I flew out to Texas to stay with my family for a few days since they were watching the kids while we were in Peru. Justin flew out at the same time we did to Mexico for work. As we unloaded the car to get our luggage out we realized that somehow we left the kids' suitcase at our house (40 min away from the airport) and our flight left in 45 min. There was no way we would make it there and back in time. I know what you are thinking, how could you forget a suitcase?! I have no idea. But we managed to. Justin had to hurry to catch his flight so I was left with both kids at the airport, all alone, and had to figure out what to do. So my sweet mother in law went all the way to our house and brought the suitcase to me (an 1 hr and 30 min trip) while a kind airline attendant got me and the kiddos a later flight at no additional cost. Luckily it all worked out and and the kids were so good to just play for 4 more hours at the airport.

The flight over to TX was horrible though. Ellie has never been very good in an airplane and the fact that she hadn't had a nap all day (it was 3pm) did not help matters. She was super grumpy and cried the whole entire flight. Usually people around you are sympathetic right? I wasn't so lucky this time. I had a lady in front of me who kept giving me dirty looks, ask her husband what time it was and say, "Oh my goodness. I just can't take it anymore!" and would plug her ear with her finger very noticably and then turn her back to me, just like a child would do. It actually was quite comical for me after a while. I couldn't believe someone could be so rude!

Anyways, Ellie finally fell asleep right before we landed and we had a blast at my parents house. I don't know where my pictures went but Ethan had so much fun riding the tractors, playing in the dirt, and torturing the cats. Ellie LOVED all the animals and would spend hours pounding the glass door and squealing with delight at the kitties.

After 4 days at home, it was time to say goodbye to my sweet kiddos and meet Justin in Houston to fly out to Lima, Peru. He had an agricultural expo there for a few days so while he worked, I played :) Sal is the distributor over in Peru and his wife, Silvia, got to babysit me for a few days and show me some of the sights of Lima. It was so fun to chat with her and get to know her better. She is awesome!

I loved how Lima keeps all their parks looking so beautiful! Huge step up from Mexico!

One night we went over to their house, met their two beautiful girls (and rabbit)....

and then enjoyed an amazing Peruvian dinner made by Sal and Silvia. I'm no food connoisseur by any means but Peru most definitely has my most favorite food out of all the countries I've been to. Hands down.

A few days after we arrived, we flew out to Cusco to begin our journey to Machu Picchu. Cusco is 11,000 ft in elevation and actually has the highest amount of UV rays in the entire world. I am now a believer of that after we all got burned from being outside for an hour :)

I love this picture....

Mom and Dad Smith with the Cathedral in the background...

After catching a taxi, we went to Chinchero and saw some ruins seated next to a breathtaking view of the mountains.

This was our tour guide showing us some old Incan water canals. She was actually quite knowledgeable.

We then kept traveling and saw beautiful scenery such as this along the way...

until we arrived at Ollantaytambo.

This was an Incan civilization that dates to the 15th century.

If you look closely right above our heads, you can see the Incan Trail. It was pretty cool. Those Incans definitely lived on the adventurous side of life with those narrow passages and steep drops...

Sal and Silvia

We though these floating stairs were pretty cool. You can find them all over Incan ruins.

After Ollantaytambo, we headed down to the train station (we barely made it on time) to take the 2 hour train ride to Aguascalientes, located right by Machu Picchu.

This river had some crazy rapids. I kept reminding Justin every 5 min or so that "If we fell in there, we would die. There is no way we would live." It was a scary looking river.

We finally arrived in Aguascalientes...

That night we stayed in a cute little homemade hotel and then awoke super early the next morning to catch a bus up to Machu Picchu...

When we got there, it was raining and super misty. That didn't make the best scenery pictures but we did get some good poncho pictures. Those things were so stylish :)

But Dad's was my all time favorite....

Yes, that was actually bought :)

Machu Picchu was AMAZING!

These are some canals that still work today...

Pretty cool huh?

It was so cool to see how they built this place and the ingenious that was behind it. They built trapezoidal windows to balance out the weight and they also had a super cool way of making the rocks fit together so perfectly. It would take too long to explain it. I'm sure you could google it if you are that interested.

This was their sun dial. Apparently, there is a lot of energy in this rock so Justin was getting some much needed energy...

This was our awesome tour guide telling us about these two story lower class houses....

This is how they studied astronomy. They used the reflection of the water. Pretty cool.

This bad boy of a mountain down below is what we hiked. Huayna Picchu. Hard? Probably. Worth it? Oh yeah!

See why it was worth it below....

Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful view of Machu Picchu and the surrounding areas...

Justin scared me to death right here. ..

He arrived at that spot before me and as I came around the corner I saw him do this. I started screaming (with lots of tourist around) "Stop! Justin, what are you doing?! Please stop! Come back, please?!" I was almost hysterical and to the brink of crying. It didn't help when he started to be unstable and look like he was going to fall. He then looked at me, smiled, took off his hat and dropped it off the cliff to the wide landing below that I couldn't see from where I was. I didn't know whether to be mad at him or cry, or both. I'm sure the people around thought I was crazy. He's lucky I'm in love him :)

It was quite the adventure getting there. It took a while and was a semi- difficult climb but it was so worth it! Justin's parents actually did it with us. We were so proud of his dad pushing through to the top. We think we just about killed him, but he did it!

When we got back down, the mist had left and we took as many pictures as we could.

We assumed that the llamas were pretty used to having humans around since we could go up to them like this and take pictures....

Justin and I went exploring and took some pretty cool shots. This place is a photographer's dream...

This is a bridge that the Incas built. I'm glad that it was roped off so my adventurous husband wasn't be tempted to cross it...

As we were walking out of Machu Picchu, we saw this....

Perfect way to end the day.

Needless to say, we were exhausted and slept in til 4am to catch a train back to Ollantaytambo, then take a taxi to Cusco, then catch our flight from Cusco to Lima.

But being the adventurous type, we just had to stop by Moray to see how the Incas used different levels of altitude to grow different crops. It was impressive. I think the height between each layer was over 6ft.

In Cusco, we had some time to kill before catching our flight back to Lima so we went and saw the famous 12 angle rock, Justin got his shoes shined, and....

he also kissed a llama. I love how the llama is reaching in for the kill :)

When we got back to Lima, we had about 6 hours until we needed to be at the airport, so we decided to take an open bus city tour! Silvia and Sal set up the whole thing and it was really neat to do!

We stopped by their HUGE city water park. It cost over 13 million to build and is very impressive.

They had a really cool water show using lasers as well...

We then saw some beautiful old buildings around Lima... I dont remember which ones they were but they were sure pretty lit up at night!


After our tour, we left for our 1am flight back to Houston. We were all pretty tired but had an awesome, amazing, incredible trip! My parents met up at the Houston airport with our kids. I sure did miss them but I am also so grateful that with family's help, we are able to see the world! Thank you to all those who so willingly help us and huge thanks to Sal & Silvia for entertaining us for a week! Viva Peru!