In the blink of an eye...

Wasn't yesterday's date April 1, 2009?  Because it feels that way.  I could have sworn that I just gave birth to Aleczander Jacob Hernandez at 7:51 a.m yesterday morning! Where does the time go?

How did this...

Turn into this...

Overnight? 

It truly is one life's mysteries how a child grows up so quickly and how time passes so fast. It helps put things into perspective on how much time we really do have in this life.  How you should never ever take a single second for granted because you will never get it back and time doesn't slow down for you. 

For Aleczander's 2nd birthday, Alfred and I took a vacation day to spend with our little man.  We took him to the Houston Zoo for the day just like we did last year.  Here is my baby faced son hanging out in his stroller on his 1st birthday...



And here he is on his 2nd birthday...

My little man.

That evening, we had a small gathering of family and friends come by to help us sing happy birthday to Alec and to share some cake and ice cream with us.  We decided to keep the birthday festivities on the smaller scale this year since last year it was such a big event.  Last year I hand made his decorations for his party,  had a custom made birthday cake, we BBQ'd, had about 40 people in our home and stayed up way too late. Maybe for his 3rd birthday we will do that all over again. 

A few things that Alec has picked up on since he turned 2 ten days ago.  He now slams his bedroom door shut when he is about to do something he is not suppose to be doing in there like climbing on his dresser (which causes the drawer to fall out as captured here), climbing onto his changing table or jumping in his bed.  I guess he doesn't realize that the sound of the door slamming does not help conceal his intentions. 

 

 We have started using time out with him, but with a face like this, it's hard to stay mad for too long. 

Clearly, Alec needs a haircut.  My poor son is terrified of the clippers and he absolutely hates it when anyone messes with his head, face or mouth.  The last time we got him a haircut he cried bloody murder, thrashed around and screamed at the top of his lungs the whole time.  It took us over an hour from start to finish.  Alec has received all 5 of his haircuts from his favorite barber and cousin, Vinny, so it's not like he is unfamiliar with him. After his last haircut, I vowed to not force my son to endure that again until he was ready.  It's not worth the bad memories and exhaustion on his behalf just to have a haircut.

 

Next time though, I will be sure to pack some dum-dums to keep him occupied.  He seems to like them these days...

Last week, our house went through some long awaited home improvement.  From the day we purchased the house, I knew I wanted a larger and more useful back porch area so we can enjoy it and that finally became a reality for us. Here are some before reno and during reno photos... 

Before.

After.

And some pics of the new furniture...

I can already see some birthday parties, BBQ's, and family time spent out there, just like we wished for.  Lilly will forever be part of the new addition to our home. When my mother needed to open the back door to hand one of the workers something, Lilly ran out onto the wet concrete and created her own little masterpiece.  She may be fat, but she is fast!  They were able to get rid of some of her prints, but there are 4 little ones that they couldn't remove. 

But yet again, with a face like this...
it's hard to stay mad for too long.

Random thought... did you know that the movie "The Departed" uses the "F" word 237 times?  That movie is on the top 10 for Alfred and I and we watched it this weekend just to count each time the word came out of someone's mouth.  Just kidding. I found that information on imdb.com which I use as a source for all things movies.  If you haven't seen "The Departed" before... do it now!

So, on a totally un-related and sentimental note, I am so thankful to have such an amazing family and such a driven, hard-working, loyal, understanding, giving and handsome husband that has chosen me to share his life with.  I am lucky that he has given me an amazing and charming little boy that has changed our lives for the better and brings us endless happiness and pride. I am so blessed to have the both of them to teach me the true meaning of unconditional love.

Last thought of the day... It doesn't matter how old you are, you're never too old to fall asleep in your mommy's arms...

 

<3 <3 <3

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!