Linkin, Janet and Cirque... O - MY!

March 3, 2011

Well I have been such a busy body lately, that I can barely keep up with myself.  Let's see... for starters, Alfred and I saw Linkin Park in concert on March 3rd and it was by far the most rockin' concert we have ever ever ever been to!! They put on one hell of a show!  It was Alfred's first official concert, not including Buzzfest and Rodeo Concerts so he was pretty stoked.  We are glad they decided to reschedule their date in Houston after initially cancelling it due to one of the singers being ill.  Our seats weren't the greatest, but with the energy that was in that place, any seat was a good seat.

 

March 4th, 2011

On March 4th, my friend Mimi and I went to go see the one and only Janet Jackson at the Rodeo (an awesome birthday gift from the lovely Ms. Mimi).  If you know me at all then you know I love me some old school Janet!  She is so amazing and her performance was awesome!  She performed a bunch of her number 1 hits and I was a singing fool! 

March 8th, 2011

I didn't want my baby to miss out on the rodeo fun this year, so we got tickets to go see Keith Urban on March 8th.  Alfred isn't a big Keith fan, but I like him a lot.  His song "Memories of Us" was the song I wanted as our wedding song, but it lost to Alfred's favorite "Don't Want to Miss a Thing" by Aerosmith.  Even though it was raining and muggy that night, we still enjoyed ourselves. 

March 13th, 2011

 oVo = <3

Cirque du Soliel never ceases to amaze me. For my birthday back in January, Alfred bought me tickets to see their show oVo under the bigtop at Sam Houston Parkway.  I thought it would take forever for the date to get here for us to go, but before we knew it, it was here!  And it was well worth the wait!!

oVo was the 4th Cirque show Alfred and I have been to.  We have see Verakai (our favorite), Saltimbanco, Beatles Love in Las Vegas and then oVo.  If you have never seen a Cirque show, add it to your list of things to do!  If you get an opportunity to see it in their traveling tents, it is the best way to go.  There is quite literally not a bad seat in the house.  Even though you are not suppose to take pictures inside, I was a bad girl and got this one pic of the stage before the show started...

If there is one thing is to be said about my recent endeavors from hard rock with Linkin Park to old school R&B with Janet to unusual and beautiful creative arts of Cirque, it is that I am genuinely an eclectic kind of person.  I love live theater and live music and I appreciate all forms that it comes in. I wish I had more time and more opportunities to enjoy them. 

So, somewhere in between all of the outings and work, I have become slightly obsessed with a new book series that I am almost finished with.  It's actually a miracle that I am taking time away from my Kindle and reading it right now to do this blog.  The series is called The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins and it is amazing.  I love falling in love with a book and having that sense of excitement and eagerness to get back to reading it and losing myself in it. I started the first book on March 5th and started the 2nd book on March 11th.  By March 15th, I was well into the pages of book 3 and I am about 68% complete with that one as of right now, according to my wonderful Kindle.  I love that I can access my books that I purchased from my Kindle on either my iPad, my phone, my PC or my Kindle.  It makes keeping up with the story nice and easy.  It's even more exciting to know that the books are currently being made into a movie that is suppose to come out next year.  I love seeing a book brought to life, even if it never really lives up to how I pictured it. 

Another book I recently read that is being made into a movie is Water For Elephants by Sara Gruen.  It was an excellent book that I finished in about 4 days as well.  The book's main characters are being played by Robert Pattinson and Reese Witherspoon in the on screen version.  I am a huge Reese fan and Robert isn't too bad to look at so I will be dragging Alfred with me to see that one in the near future. 

Speaking of near futures, someone has a 2nd birthday coming up in a week and a half!! O-MY-WORD where does the time go?!?  Aleczander will be 2 years old on April 1st.  Since we did it up so big for his 1st birthday, we are going to keep it low key this year.  We plan on taking him to the zoo so he can ride the train that goes around Hermann Park.  I can't belive that my baby boy is about to officially hit the terrible 2's but we are ready to see what kind of chaos he is going to bring our way.  He has definitely given us a sneak peek at what's to come.  Let me share a few of those with you...

This one is of Aleczander jumping as high as he possible could in his crib.  He thought it was great fun until he lost grip and hit his head on the rail.  But that only side tracked him for about 5 minutes while he cried, then he was back up and at it again.  

This next one is of Alec strategically removing all of the pillows off of our couch to place them on the floor in order for him to have a safe landing sight for when he launches himself off of the couch.  At least he takes precautionary measures to ensure his safety, right?

Occassionally we are able to get him to settle down to do something productive like play a game of checkers with daddy.

He's such a good kid and I am totally lucky and blessed to have him in my life. MAYBE one day he will make a great big brother but we will have to see what God planned for us as far as that goes. 

Not the first and definitely not the last...

What a weekend!! It started off slow enough with a lazy day the begining of Saturday which included a 2 hour nap for mommy and some much needed rest for a coughing Aleczander.  In the evening, Alfred, Alec and I went to Sugarland to help the Zaybak family celebrate Nicholas' 3rd birthday at The Little Gym.  If you have never been there before, it's a pretty cool place. 

The little dare devil wanted to jump by himself!

Aleczander had a lot of fun and got all worked up for a nice nap for our long haul from Sugarland to Splendora to celebrate the sister in laws birthday with some BBQ and a lot of dancing to Selena music!  All was good and easy going until this happened...

It's not Aleczander's first "run in" with a stationary object and I'm sure it won't be the last.  This time he was scurrying after a ball with and he got a little tangled with another kid and the edge of a door ended his fun.  It bruised immediately and it bumped out, which is good.  If you have children and they ever run into anything and the indention goes inward or doesn't bump out, that isn't very good.  I learned that from the first time Alec had a nice run in with the corner of our DVD case when he first started walking.  That was a hit directly to the head and I was on head trauma watch overnight to make sure he didn't have a concusion.  No fun there. 

Luckily (if you can call it that), his cheek broke his fall this time instead of his head. I thought his cheekbone was broken so we packed our stuff up and left the party immediately.  Thank goodness that I have a level headed hubby who convinced me not to rush our baby to the closest hospital after he did some "post trauma moment" re-evaluations.  Alec allowed us to touch around his boo-boo and allowed us to put a little ice on it and stopped crying by the time we pulled out of the driveway.  That gave us enough comfort to drive home, give the little man a bath and put him to bed with some children's pain reliever, of course.  Here is day 2 and 3 of the damage...

The good old saying "it's going to get worse before it gets better" definitely applies here.  But he's a champ!  Mommy isn't trying to raise a sissy here!! Suck it up, son! Ha, ha.  Just kidding. 

Our new swing set in the backyard has been a lot of fun for the whole family, including our daughter, Lilly. 

 Does this swing make me look fat?

Aleczander is in training to be the first Mexi-rican NBA player and he is doing a great job at it. He usually measures in the 75% for height compared to children his age, so he has that going for him.  Him and daddy love to shoot hoops on Alec's new toy.

Well that's all I have to say for now.  I'm going to see what kind of trouble my son is getting into now.  He's being a little too quiet for my comfort...

Ta-Ta for now!

Swing in for a good time!

First things first.  One of my best friends, Jennifer, is pregnant!!! I am so excited for her new adventure that she is going through and I can't wait to meet baby B. She is due on September 10th which will be here in no time! I know she and Stu are going to make amazing parents!  This is the first of my friends that I have had the pleasure to endure their pregnancy with from start to finish.  My other best friends who have children (and I say children because they are all over the age of 5 by now) were all pregnant while living out of town and one even went through her pregnancy out of the country! Also, she is my first friend to be pregnant since I had Aleczander and I can share some experiences/stories/advice with her since I was in her shoes not too long ago. 

Speaking of my spud, I cannot believe he is creeping up on "the terrible 2's" (although I could of sworn we were already there).  We are only about 6 weeks away from my baby turning 2 years old.  Where does the time go?!?!  This past weekend we bought Alec a new swing set that daddy put together ALL by himself.  I tried to help him, but the control freak, over-bearing, want to do everything/question everything side of me didn't mesh well with the project at hand.  So he took over and voila...

Isn't it wonderful?!?! 

 And I think it is safe to say Alec likes it...

Here is Alec in Alfred's truck just "kicking back" while we were out and about the other day. 

I love his baby Converse shoes.

A couple of weeks ago, Alfred and I had a nice day out with Aleczander.  We took him to the Children's Museum in the Woodlands for a couple of hours and he really enjoyed himself.

He loved the fisht tank! I have been trying to convince Alfred to get Alec a little fish tank and maybe a beta fish, but no go on that idea yet.  The next day was Superbowl Sunday and as usual, we had an impromptu get together at the casa with some of the in-laws and my baby (my big baby) did his thing on the BBQ pit.  While daddy was making it happen on the grill, Aleczander was making it happen with the baseball bat.

That's my future Yankee right there! 

 Look at how he holds the bat!! He is a NATURAL!

A new love of Aleczander's is shooting pool. Ever since Alfred was tall enough to see over the side of the pool table he has been giving his uncles a run for their money.  Well it looks like Aleczander is picking up on daddy's good talents. The other night we had Alec on our pool table in the garage and he was pushing all of the balls into the pockets with the que stick.  He was so proud of himself and he did so well with it. 

My baby loves any game that has a ball! He also loves his "choo-choos" Thomas and Gordon. Those thing are on all day at the house making sounds from some corner or from under some cushion.  If you attempt to turn off the toy at any time, he will find it and turn it back on.  He has to have them on in the background just making their "choo-choo" sounds. 

Alfred and I were suppose to go see Linkin Park last night in concert for our Valentine's date but they cancelled the show.  They rescheduled for March 3rd so we are excited about that.  So since we already had a babysitter lined up, we decided to take advantage of that and went and had a nice dinner instead.  It's rare that he and I get some alone time out and about so it was nice.  He is so amazing to me and an awesome father.  I really do look forward to what life has in store for us.