Remember When???

Remember when it was easy to take a picture of Michael for his month to month scrapbook???? I do!

Perhaps like this....



Or this....



And now we have...


Or this...



Or maybe this....(Yes, that is a Topsy's popcorn tin and yes, it probably his favorite thing to play with out instead of one of the hundreds of toys he got for Christmas)



And my personal favorite....crawling away from the camera at warp speed and dragging clean clothes that I had just folded with him.




This was month 8 and I've got to say....we did month 9 last week and he cooperated even LESS!!!! He just makes me giggle every day!!!

Holiday Wrap Up

I absolutely LOVE the holidays. I think it has a lot to do with how much I love being with my family. My siblings and I are in place where we (finally) get along most of the time and now that I am parent myself I have nothing but the utmost respect and admiration for my parents who raised 4 kids and lived to tell about it. I think the best part for all of us this year was having Michael here. He just brings an a new level of joy/excitement to everything and I'm not sure what we ever did with out him! So here are a few of the highlights!


Santa??


My handsome boys on Christmas Eve after we went to St. Ann's for the Children's Mass!


My super cute parents with Michael on Christmas Eve


All this for me???


Cutie in his "My First Christmas" outfit!


Getting his picture taken before we hosted our Annual Castillo Family New Years Day Brunch for our family and friends!!! So many babies were there this year!!!

Halloween

I have to admit it....we played hooky on Halloween. I stayed home from work and I kept Buggy home all day! It was great! I got home super late on Sunday night from a business trip, so we all slept in and then spent the day playing around the house! We finally dressed Buggy up, took some pictures and then he had enough Halloween fun so we got into our PJ's, watched a little of the Chiefs game and headed to bed early! Uneventful, but I LOVE every minute I get to spend at home with my boys!



Our little puppy!



Nunny stopped by for a picture before she headed to work!



Two peas in a pod! Uncle Ky came over for some dinner and a few snuggles!



What a day!!! Ended up in my Halloween Jammies!!

Just Do It Already.....

So I have come to the conclusion that I will most likely never be a regular blogger and every time I see that cute commercial where the Dad emails the newborn daughter so that she can read them later I feel the sharp pang of Mommy Guilt that Michael won't have an internet record of his childhood....seriously, since when is a scrapbook not enough????? I think where I get stuck is finding something profound to say, I mean, he is a 6 month old, it is not like we are curing cancer at our house!!! I mentioned this the other day when I was at lunch with a co-worker who blogs all the time and she encouraged me to try keep it simple. So I am going to TRY to take a couple minutes and just post pictures or whatever high jinks our little family has been up to. ANYTHING to avoid that nasty Mommy Guilt!!! Here we go!!!



Back in September we took Michael to his first Bearcat Tailgate! We had a blast hanging out with our friends and Michael did fantastic! I am thankful all the time that Michael is such an easy going baby, it makes it so much easier to go places and hang out with our "non-kid having" friends!



Our little Buggy LOVES to be outside. He gets that from his Daddy! So this swing has been a lot of fun. He giggles so hard when you swing him high....he is all boy!!!!!




One of the many traditions from my family that I plan on continuing is the 6 month cupcake party! On all of our 6 months Birthdays my Mom got cupcakes and we got our first taste of icing! Buggy was no expection and we all enjoyed the treat as well. Note to self: white icing is MUCH easier to clean up, his lips and fingers were all blue from the icing and we had to scrub to get it all off!!!

Well that is all for now....maybe later I will back track and upload a few more pics from his "early" days!!!! This was easier than I thought :)

Sometimes I Even Surprise Myself....

So from the moment I found out that I was going to be a mom I wondered what that would actually be like. Everyone I have met seems to have a different way of explaining it, but it all boils down to the most amazing thing ever. I'll be honest, I was skeptical. I have been around kids for as long as I can remember, long before I became a teacher I was running a pretty swift hustle in the babysitting market of Johnson County. I have always loved kids, I just was not sure that I wanted any living at my house or calling me mommy. I mean let's be honest, kids are needy and selfish. They ask about a million questions, they don't listen well, when there is more more than one they will inevitably get into a fight about something crazy. They require A LOT of maintenance and I'm no financial wizard, but I'm pretty sure they are high risk, low return investment financially speaking...(for the cost of diapers alone, I could have a vacation to somewhere pretty sweet) So, as someone who is aware of all this, I was pretty sure that this whole having kids thing was going to be pretty tough but everyone kept saying, "it is so different when it is your baby" to I which I would respond in my head, "Yeah, yeah, yeah" But now that Michael is almost 7 months old, I am finding that it is so different. I've never loved anything more in my life. I don't think I could ever list out the million reasons why I love being Michael's mom but here are a few!

* I love that the first thing Michael does in the morning is lay in his crib and "talk". It is like he is psyching himself up to greet the day, while also giving me a 10-15 minute warning prior to wanting to be tended to....I love laying there listening to his sweet little voice!!!

* I love how happy he is all the time. Brent and I often feel like we hit the baby lottery. From Day 1, Michael has been easy to please, as long as he is dry, full and feeling attended to, he never really cries. I ask myself no less than 20 times a day just how we got so lucky!

* I love his smile and laugh. There is no sound in the world that compares to baby laughs! I have found that it is impossible to be in a bad mood whenever I see that million dollar grin and hear that sweet little giggle!

* I love that being a Mom has made me a better person. I am more patient, less selfish, more understanding and less judgemental.

* I love that I worry less about what I don't have and spend more time just being thankful for what I do. If the only thing I ever had was a healthy and happy family I would have everything I ever needed!

* I love rocking him to sleep. Getting to cuddle him and sing him to sleep is the hands down BEST way to end a busy day.

* I love watching him learn something new. My favorite part of teaching is what we call the "light bulb moment." Being witness to the instant where a student understands a concept and is able to put it in practice gives me a lot of joy. But oh my goodness, watching your own little person put all the pieces together is nothing short of amazing!!!!

Mostly, I just love all of it. Love that our house looks like a baby store exploded in it, love that I never sleep soundly because I am always worried that he is not breathing, love that when I walk into a room Michael reaches for me with a huge grin on his face, love that I have such an amazing husband to share it all with. While I have no doubts that there are days in the not too distant future where my patience will run thin and some of those not so cute childhood behaviors will start pop up, I hope that I always think back to these days where my heart was just so full of love!But just in case, I will offer this disclaimer to any future parents: Maybe what people really mean when they say "it is different when its your baby" is that "my baby will always be my baby and all the annoying things that my baby does are just fine with me..." Here's hoping!

The worst blogger on the block....

I cannot tell you how many times during the months while I was pregnant that I thought, "tonight, when I get home I am going to sit down and write something on that blog...." Well, every time I would get home I would find myself too sleepy to care about a blog and before I knew it, we were heading to the hospital to have the baby and my opportunity to blog about being pregnant was over. So here are the highlights:
**The worst part of being preggo for me was the heartburn. (I know, I'm so lucky!)

**I had no morning sickness at all, not once.

**The day that I finally noticed my ankles swelling I cried in the bathroom for 15 minutes. Lucky for me this did not happen till month 7!!

**The most eventful part of my pregnancy was at the end when my blood pressure elevated slightly and I got put on a modified work schedule....8 months preggo and I get to sleep in till 11:00 a.m. every day, yes please!

**I was convinced for a short period of time that the baby might be a hermaphrodite and would be born with pearl teeth. Insanity, I know. To make matters worse, I would email or text Brent no less than 3 times a day regarding said concerns until we went for the sonogram where we could have found out if we were having a boy or girl. When the day finally came, the technician asked me if we wanted to know the sex and I told her all I wanted was confirmation that the baby was not in fact a hermaphrodite, she looked at me crazy, told me no one had ever asked her that before and assured me that the baby was not a hermaphrodite. Brent just shook his head.

All in all, I had the most uneventful pregnancy of all time, (which I am thankful for every day). Honestly, I don't really know what I would have written about, so I feel like I saved myself a lot of time by being a blogging slacker. I am going to try and be a better blogger though, if nothing else, maybe it will force to me to spend a little time reflecting on all the amazing blessings I have...including my beautiful little boy!!!

Just Call Me Mama!

So the secret is finally public knowledge… Brent and I are expanding our wolfpack. Yep, our (my specifically my) ego is preggo. As this news comes as a shock to many, including us, I thought I would take some time to address some questions that I have been getting asked every time we tell someone.

Were you trying?
Actually, no we were not. I hate to go all “16 and Pregnant” on everyone, but we were definitely not trying. See if you can follow me….we were talking about when we would start thinking about seriously talking about trying….We came up with sometime in the next 10 years and apparently the big guy upstairs only heard part of the conversation and he thought we said “Yeah, now would be great…” After a few days of total shock and freaking out, we could not be happier and we feel extremely lucky! We are smart enough to know when we have been given a blessing and this baby will be one of the most amazing gifts we will ever receive.

Are you going to find out the sex?
We are going to try really hard to put aside the curiosity and wait to find out what flavor Baby Castillo will be. Brent and I agree that it is a really awesome surprise to look forward to and let’s face it, what surprises are really left in life???? Also, knowing me and my lack of pain tolerance, having something to work for might come in handy come delivery time. Either way, boy or girl, we will be happy to have a healthy little nugget!

Do you have names picked out?
Yes and no, we have some names that we like and we have middle names picked out for a boy and a girl. First name seems to be where we are hung up a little bit. Both of us want an easy to pronounce, semi-traditional name for Baby Castillo. I think because we have both had to go our whole lives spelling out and slowly pronouncing our names for people, it is even more important for us to have a “normal” name for our little nugget. That being said, I don’t want my kid to have the same name as 50 other kids in his/her class either….ahhhh, the parenting dilemmas begin!

Are you going to quit your job?
In a word, NO!!!!! I love what I do and I can’t imagine my life without my work. I know that it is going to be REALLY REALLY hard at the beginning and that I am going to have to make some MAJOR adjustments to how much extra work I take on. Personally, I really think that in order to be the best mama I can be I have to be the best person that I can be and for me, my work and scholars make me a better person every day. My company provides a nice amount of maternity leave, so I am going to enjoy every minute of being at home and then begin navigating the world of being a working mama!!!