An August July Entry

That means that I should have posted this entry in July when I wrote it. I have been writing a lot but I don’t have much time to “clean” my writing and then I end up not posting anything. So I apologize for my grammar mistakes found all over these last entries.

I am the Meetings Committee Chair; that means that I am in charge of making the Relief Society monthly meetings happen. This July our meeting was obviously all about pioneers, cultural diversity and heritage. We are pretty good about having our speakers/teachers lined up months in advanced, but somehow this time our speaker couldn’t make it and we didn’t have time to find another speaker. The little talk was about being a pioneer within your family so when we were figuring out who to call everyone was looking at me.

I think I have stage fright. Just the thought of speaking in public makes me nervous and when it is actually happening my voice breaks, my hands sweat, mi knees shake, and I am a total mess. The interesting thing is that I only discovered this since I have been a member of the church. I didn’t know I was so afraid to do it until my first talk during sacrament meeting. The Relief Society presidency knows this and they are super nice; I never have to make announcements or anything that involves speaking in public. So when they all looked at me even I was surprised when all of the sudden I volunteered to do it. What got into me? I don’t know, but I felt like they needed me to do it plus I didn’t want to have to contact somebody in such short notice.

I was super nervous just thinking about it and to find some confidence I went back to read my patriarchal blessing. I was pleasantly surprised to rediscover something written there, it reads, “Your voice will be heard in English and Spanish; open your mouth and your tongue will be loose”. I have shared my conversion story with my ward today and since I have shared that talk a lot I decided to prepare something different. The day came and I did great. I was super nervous still, but I had written everything (even the jokes) because I know that if I was nervous I was going to get all mixed up and forget something important. Basically I shared a little bit of my conversion story but focused on the struggles that I felt were similar to those of the pioneers who crossed the planes. Fear of the unknown, fear of change, faith and sacrifice. I feel that even when times change the struggles of people who choose to follow the Lord and change their lives are very much the same. I also found during my pondering and reading that sometimes we as converts think that our challenges are not the same as those of the people born in the church. I think that being a pioneer means to stand for what you know to be true even when everything else around you tells you differently, and that includes life-time members. Maybe you knew that already.

I also found myself thinking about my temple experience in a different way. I have always known that the sacrifice of having to leave my parents outside the temple the day of our sealing was what I was supposed to do. When I was sharing this experience I realized that because of that sacrifice my daughter won’t have to go through the same, as long as they choose to be married in the temple and I am alive an worthy of course. I still cried my eyes out remembering what I felt seeing my parents so sad, but I am hopeful someday they will decide to go to the temple themselves. I had sisters at the end thanking me for remind them how fortunate some of they were to have their families with them when they were sealed. I hope to see my daughters marry in the temple one day.

I don’t have pictures of that day, but I do have some pictures of my girls.

The End of Swaddling

Mika started rolling over eight days after turning 3 months old. I know because she did it while I was recording a little video of her as an anniversary little present for Mike on July 23^rd. I didn’t think much of it until three weeks ago when she started rolling over to her stomach WHILE swaddled. I thought it was a one-time thing but she kept on doing it. It is kind of scary because once she is on her stomach with both arms strapped tightly to her sides she cannot go back to her back nor she can push herself up. We decided that it was time to stop swaddling her, which is very hard let me tell you.  I wonder if anywhere in the world there are parent who do not swaddle at all. How do they get their babies to sleep without waking themselves up? We   I have had terrible nights ever since she is not swaddled anymore. She had been sleeping from 9pm to 6am, which was glory for me really, and after sleeping that much at night it is horrible to go back to getting up at least twice before 6am. I am not going to even start talking about naps during the day because they are not happening! It has been a struggle, but I think I can now see the light at the end of the tunnel. It takes her approximately half an hour to fall asleep but she eventually is able to do it. It makes for shorter naps but I will take it y’all (see what I did there? I am from the south now)

I love my little girls. While I was pregnant I kept asking myself what I would do with two little girls. Lisa is still a baby to me and I couldn’t imagine my life with two babies. As life goes on I now can’t even imagine not having both of them. Mika fits perfectly in our family. She is a very content little girl. Her dad said it best while giving her her baby blessing, “I bless you that you may always have your joyful disposition throughout your life and that you are able to help those in need because of your peaceful nature.”

I hear all the time that second children don’t get as much from us, and I agree until certain point. Yes I do not spend as much time alone with Mika as I did with Lisa, but at the same time I think I live more in the moment with Mika than I did with Lisa. I am not petrified and trying to do everything perfect. I do try to keep a schedule for naps and meals, but if she is not cooperating I don’t freak out. I am not the most put together mom, my house is not the cleanest and neatest, and I might to be the kind of mom with a thousand things going on and a super busy life, but I make sure that my kids are happy and healthy and as long as I have a semi-clean and safe house everything else can wait. Maybe one day I will be organized and motivated enough to do things other than being a mom to my girls like baking, scrap booking, sewing but for now I want to look back and remember all the time I gave my kids and not the other things going on, I want to remember the time when my baby girl got so big and smart and mobile that I needed to stop swaddling her.

This is when trouble started

Now she sleeps like this and it drives me crazy

Any other moms out there freak out and feel the need to check on their unswaddled babies every 2.5 minutes?

The Man with the Yellow Hat

This is a sad and funny post. Last year when we were preparing to travel with Lisa to Utah for thanksgiving we decided that it would be a good idea to buy a tablet so she could be entertained during our flights. Up until that point I had been very good at not letting her watch any TV whatsoever so I didn’t know what kind of shows or activities were appropriate for her. Mike decided that Curious George would be fine and he downloaded some episodes in the tablet. Ever since we did that Lisa has been obsessed with Curious George and to be honest I can actually tolerate him for a long time.

This semester Mike’s boss decided that it would be a good idea to have somebody from the facility’s administration to be on campus at 6 am to supervise the members of the crew working those hours. Now I don’t know what got into him but Mike decided to volunteer. He says that the other two administrators were super happy. One of them said that he couldn’t have done it because his kids are in school and he helps around the house in the morning. The other said he had done it before and found that he was only working way more hours. Supposedly Mike warned them that if he wasn’t gone by 4pm he would be cranky. When he came home and told me I was very upset. I know Mike; he is a work martyr. The more he works the better. It is not acceptable to work a regular 8 hour schedule. He says he HAS to work at least 9 hours plus an hour for lunch he says. At that time I was ready to take my road test and get that over with once and for all. I have been taking the car to run errands and I know that is wreck less and I am endangering myself and others. In my defense I just go to the gym two or three blocks away and the supermarket close by. I was super excited because with a license I can just drop Mike off at the train station and pick him up in the afternoon night. When he decided to go to work at 6 my plans were crushed. The train starts working at 5:40 and there is no way he can make it to work on time. He still promised to be home early enough so I could go out and do whatever I wanted (grocery shopping, gym, visiting teaching, or just take time away from the kids) but that hasn’t happened.

So the point of the story is that Mike still works pretty much all day. This semester he is going to school Tuesdays and Wednesdays so he doesn’t see Lisa from Monday night until Thursday night and as a result…The Man with the Yellow Hat is daddy. According to Lisa, anyway.

No pictures guys sorry…oh wait. Maybe I can find one of daddy

Here it is

Now for real, I love this picture

Lisa is two

On July 31^st my precious baby Lisa Marielle turned two years old. I (because I am Mexican) wanted once again to have a big celebration for my girl, but Mike (because he is Mike) wanted nothing to do with a party. So like everything else in our interracial marriage this was up for discussion. I have been living in this country for almost five years and while I have been able to assimilate the culture that doesn’t mean I understand or agree with everything. We have both learned that for both of us some things are more important than others. For me it is almost mandatory to have a birthday party every year for my kids and even though Mike doesn’t understand that he tries to be understanding of my feelings just as I try to be understanding when he says he doesn’t think a party is necessary. We both realize it’s a cultural thing and agree on doing something special for her but not too over the top special. We bought her a set of table and chairs for our Spanish sessions since it really helps to have a formal space where she has to sit and listen to mom, Rio 1 and 2, and thanks to Grandma Anthony we were also able to buy her an awesome tricycle. We ate cake and had balloons in the house, we sung happy birthday and had a great time as a family. One of these years she will have a party (remember my wedding party? Well not that big) but for the time being this was just perfect.

We are so grateful for our little girl, she makes us so happy. She and her sister are the light of our lives. Lisa is a very happy and friendly girl as long as we don’t go out of her routine too much. I have found that some things make her really anxious. She has gotten too big for the laundry basket we use inside the tub to give her baths and when we decided not to use it anymore she had a fit. She cried incessantly for the entire bath for about a week; now she only cries when we first put her in the tub. She can’t stand any of us messing with her crib; if we decide to change the bedding we have to do it while she is out of the room just to avoid the tantrum. Potty training? We have tried several times and she just hates everything about the toilet. We even got her a super cute potty training set that came with a step stool, a small soft toilet seat, and a hook. She loved playing with it but as soon as we put it on the toilet she freaked out. So we don’t even know where or how to start since we don’t want to use the small potty; we don’t want to have to transition her again to the big toilet. Besides, it sounds like a hassle if you are out; with the set we got her we have a small portable seat to put on top of any toilet.

I hope these are just normal things that toddlers struggle with. Lisa is my very best friend. I have always felt a little bit out of place here and because of it I am not one to seek to be around people. I love spending time with her. Even when I have had a bad day and I cannot wait for her to go to bed when she has been sleeping for a couple of hour I miss her. Is that crazy? I feel like I want to go see her even though I know I will see her the next day. Baby Lisa is so pretty I still can’t believe how much she has changed. I love her more that words can explain.

Out with the food pouch in with the rib bone.


At two years old Lisa,

• ·         Understands both English and Spanish
• ·         Speaks mostly Spanish (Two-word sentences if we are lucky)
• ·         Loves her dog Ella
• ·         Tolerates sister Mika
• ·         Adores dad
• ·         Loves pasas and “nacks” (raisins and fruit snacks)
• ·         Absolutely hates going to the doctors
• ·         Is obsessed with Curious George and the Rio movies
• ·         Sucks the corners of her blanket (which she calls kee – kee)
• ·         Has to sleep with her kee -kee, Curious George toy, another toy called beast, and a book
• ·         Doesn’t like mom to do her hair in any way.
• ·         Loves nursery
• ·         Helps mom unload the dishwasher and feed the dogs
• ·         Still wears diapers and totally hates the toilet, she doesn’t even like to be without her diaper (lucky us)
• ·         She hands mom or dad wipes and a diaper when she wants to be changed.
• ·         She is in the 57% in weight and 98% in height
• ·         Is VERY stubborn, and throws tantrums at the least provocation (welcome to life with a toddler)

We recently had some family pictures taken and I took advantage of the time with the photographer to squeeze some birthday photos for Lisa. She wasn’t cooperating but at least we got a couple.

These are Lisa's first birthday pictures

These are Lisa's second birthday pictures

The terrible twos captured in one picture

And here are some of the pictures I took the day of her birthday. If I had planned my day better and Mika's naps would've worked out perfectly I probably would have been able to make her a cake. Mike bought the most delicious cake I have ever tasted so it turned out better that I didn't make it. Days like these are especially hard for me since I love being around family. Did you know that in Hispanic cultures kids don't leave home until the day they marry? is normal and expected to live with your parents until then. another thing that I even find a little weird is that we don't move out of state, we stay where our family is unless we are totally forced to do it; that means my brother ans my sister are probably going to stay in Merida, Mexico forever. Interesting. Anyway, Lisa's birthday was fun and we spend some time remembering the day of her birth and how we felt. It was very nice to relive some moments. not the 12 hours of labor though.

In this picture you can see George and Beast

Mika Jolene Anthony

Wow, I don’t even know where to start. I had to go back to my last entry to see where I left off. Our baby Mika Jolene was born on Tuesday April 15^th at 7:35 am. Mika didn’t have a name until we met her. We like to use names that can be pronounced the same way in English and Spanish. It took us two minutes to decide what name to give our first child. The day we went to find out the sex we went to a restaurant after and decided right there that her name was going to be Lisa. We had a hard time trying to agree on a name for our second baby. I read thousands of names and their meanings but every time I would find a name I liked Mike would not agree with it. He said that we both should love the name, and I agree. We were so frustrated with each other that we just stopped talking about names for a while. I had decided that I wanted to name our baby after her dad, but the feminine versions of Michael I could find were Michaela, Michelle, and Micah and I didn’t want to use either. Then I found a different list and one of the names was Mika (pronounced MEE-KA) and I loved it. Then I decided that I wanted a biblical name for her middle name since Lisa’s middle name is a variant of Mary.  I chose Jolene, which is a feminine variant of Joseph. When I told Mike he told me he didn’t like it so I told him that it was okay but that he needed to come up with some suggestions, he never did.

My due date was April 29^th and I wanted if it was possible to schedule a day to be induced so that Sherrie could buy her airplane ticket and be here to take care of our baby Lisa. None of my three doctors wanted to induce because they said it increases your chances of having a C-section and other complications. What they did tell me was to tell whoever was coming to help to come when I hit 38 weeks, or by my actual due date. Sherrie was scheduled to come on the 28^th so we were really praying that our baby would come then.

The last two months of this pregnancy were just awful. Extreme morning sickness, gestational diabetes, pre-term labor, and overall giganticness make me very miserable. Looking back I realized that I had probably been in labor for a complete day, but I was so miserable anyway that it just felt like a particular terrible day. Monday the 14^th was the most miserable day to date; by the time I went to bed I was so tired of being by myself all day that I fell asleep right away. I started feeling contractions at 3 in the morning but since they felt like regular Braxton kicks I kept trying to sleep it off. At 3:15 I finally realized that they were getting stronger but for some reason I kept trying to sleep. At 4:00 am I decided to get up and as soon as I stepped out of bed my water broke. I was in panic because of course I was not ready. I was so sure that I was going to make it to my due date that I didn’t have anything ready, not a hospital bag, or a bag for Lisa in case she needed to go somewhere for a couple of days. I am so grateful that the Sunday before a couple asked us if we had somebody to watch Lisa if I went into labor with nobody here to help and we told them that we didn’t. This nice couple offered to take her if needed. I was especially worried about our dogs. Ella is a very anxious dog and she doesn’t like change, and Bear, well Bear is old. I wish I had had more time, but contractions were getting pretty bad, I could no longer speak during a contraction and we really needed to get to the hospital. My poor Baby Lisa, we had to wake her up at 4 in the morning and it was raining. I am sure she didn’t understand what was going on, or why mom was screaming in the car. I got to the hospital wearing a pajama dress and my ID in my hand, that’s it. Mike had Lisa and the diaper bag with extra diapers and an extra outfit for Lisa, that’s it. Mike called this nice couple from the ward and they picked Lisa up from the hospital at around 5 am. Poor baby Lisa was getting so scared watching me in so much pain. I tried my very best no to cream in front of her but she knew something was wrong with me. The good thing is that Mike called his parents to let them know I had gone into labor and they were able to change the airplane ticket. Sherrie arrived in Atlanta the same day a few hours after the baby was born. I am so very grateful that I was able to have her with me.  It is so good to have her close when I am filling like quitting breastfeeding for good. I sure needed her. Also, Lisa loved spending time with Grandma, she provides Nutella sandwiches liberally.

I had always known that I wanted an epidural. When I had Lisa I had an epidural right away and although I was still in a lot of pain and I needed an extra dose of the medication I could never imagine what real labor pain was like. The best way I can explain it is that I felt my bones and my skin were being ripped open, every couple of minutes. Apparently they need to test your blood before giving you an epidural and for some reason they were not able to get my results back soon enough. I screamed, cried, prayed, and begged for an epidural but all they could tell me was that they were sorry but they needed my lab results first. That poor nurse; every time I saw her I begged her for an epidural, and every time she came to my room I hoped that she would tell me the anesthesiologist was here to give me the darn thing. It didn’t happen. The last time she came she did with a bunch of people and when I asked her once again for an epidural she told me there was no time for an epidural, she said I was ready to push. I had been praying and asking Heavenly Father to please help me get through it but even with all the praying I have done I still felt like I would never make it, I felt that I wasn’t strong enough and I was also extremely tired. Call me a wimp but I really don’t get how some women can get through that kind of pain just making funny noises and meditation. I was ready to pull every single hair out of somebody’s hair.  My doctor wasn’t there and they had a hard time trying to keep me calm, I was out of myself. A doctor I don’t know walked in the room and asked if she could check me, then she said I wasn’t actually completely dilated, I was only an 8 or 9. Everyone stopped getting ready and within 10 min the anesthesiologist came. One of my doctors then enter the room and told me that if I didn’t stop moving around the doctor would not try to give me an epidural because he could miss and hurt my spine. I will never forget the calming voice of this doctor; I said a little prayer and asked Heavenly Father to please help me stay still. He did, I had a contraction while the doctor had a huge needle in my spine and I didn’t flinch. The funny thing is that Mika was born like half an hour after I got the epidural, and although I did feel some relieve I still felt pretty much everything. I don’t think they gave me a full dose, if that is even possible. When I felt the urge to push my doctor was putting on his gloves and stuff and he told the nurse to start me (or something like that). I pushed once and the nurse told me to stop because the baby was right there, another contraction came and I had to push and the doctor yelled that he was putting on his gloves and that I needed to stop, so I tried my best and stopped, then the doctor told me it was okay to push again, I pushed one more time and baby Mika was here. THREE PUSHES PEOPLE!

I can’t believe it all took 3 ½ hours since my water broke. Even today it seems to me like it was an entire day, and although some people, including me, think that I could have done it without an epidural I am so grateful that I at least had some relieve, even if it was only for a half an hour.

Even today I feel like crying when I remember what I felt when I looked into her little eyes for the first time. I wouldn’t change that moment for the world. You know when people say that every baby is different? The really are. Mika was so different since the moment she was born. Lisa was kind of sleepy, and she had breathing problems and had to be taken to an observation room for most of the day. Mika was born and ready to nurse, after they took her measurements and stuff they gave her to me and she started nursing. It all happened exactly like what they tell you in your breastfeeding class. I was transferred to my room and Mika stayed with me the whole time.

Because Lisa hurt me so bad and eventually went away I was expecting the same from Mika. I was expecting to hurt so bad that I didn’t realize how bad Mika’s latch was so eventually she hurt me so bad I bled and had to stop nursing and only pump instead. When I healed enough to stand her nursing again she wouldn’t latch at all and I thought it was because I had been giving her my milk from a bottle. I struggled to make her latch and continued to feed her with a bottle but was so frustrated because I didn’t want to go through the hassle of pumping and then feeding it to her. I didn’t know what was going on. Did I mention that she had pretty bad jaundice? Yeah. We had to put her on that weird looking bed with lights underneath, and by the way you can’t swaddle them. Not fun. By her two week appointment she was off the bed. However, we still had breastfeeding problems. I refused to give up nursing her at my breast although if necessary I would have exclusively pumped as long as I could feed her my milk. Thankfully the doctor found that she was tongue tie and send us off to the ENT to have her tongue clipped. That took care of the problem immediately. They take your baby to a different room and when they bring her back they hand her to you and tell you to star nursing right there. It works! Mika has been a nursing champ ever since.

Obviously this is not the most modest pictures, but the day before Mika was born my mom told me I should have at least one good pregnancy picture and I sent her this one as a joke. Now this is the ONLY picture I have of my belly.

I cried every time they took blood from her precious little feet. I hate Jaundice

I learned that you are not supposed to pump ALL your milk when you are engorged because it can make you produce too much milk. Poor Mika couldn't keep up

Poor Mika also had a bad case of baby acne

Big sister is scary sometimes

Mommy + Me = Broke Daddy