The firstborn

In the days of two children, it's important not to forget the firstborn. Although, I must say that is truly impossible to do, when he is SO successful at monopolizing one's time and getting his way. Ahh, my strong-willed son.

Also, in true second-born fashion...the pictures of Grace are scarce scarce scarce. Poor thing. I'm convinced now that I need to purchase my own small camera just to get pics of my kids. For example, today we will be heading to the zoo in costumes with friends while Alex is shooting a wedding. Which means that I have no camera to document the fun!

Here are some pics of Caleb and one, not too thrilling one, of me and Grace.




Pensive....not even posed. :)

It's like cirque du soleil at my house when Caleb rides his 'moose'. He typically stands on it and rocks violently back and forth. He never falls - he's got amazing gross motor skills - an athlete in the making maybe?

Caleb is hilarious - his already large vocabulary is really mushrooming - he's so bright! and funny. Grace is doing fabulously - she's just beautiful and precious - there really is something about little girls that just melts a heart. I didn't realize that.

I have begun to feel an intense sense of the importance of these amazing lives that God has entrusted to me. I am humbled by the significance of it - and truly know that I cannot succeed on my own in growing children who will have eternally significant lives. Everyday, many moments that I look at them, my heart and soul is reminded to honor God with my life so that these amazing kids will do the same. They have truly helped me to pray wholeheartedly that my life will be a mirror that reflects Christ to them.

End of Year Special

Sorry it's been a while (why am I always apologizing at the start of my blog posts?)

Anyway, a real post to come...This is too good not to spread the word!!

Abigail Todd Photography (aka the talented chic who documented Grace's birth) has an end of year special for South Florida clients only. She is such a great photographer, but super gifted with families and kids. Now, in preparation for those snazzy Christmas cards - S.Fl. clients can shoot for no session fee!

Check out the details here.

So...what's up?

We are happy to say that we are now a family of FOUR! Grace Fagundo arrived on August 12 at 6:29 a.m. It was an awesome, perfect birth - we arrived at the hospital at 3:30 a.m. and I would say I was really only in labor for about 3 hours before that - and for most of that I wasn't even sure that I was really IN labor.

The last ultrasound we had about a week before she arrived said that she was BIG - almost 9 pounds at that time with 3 weeks to go. However, as per usual, they were off - she was 7 pounds 13 oz and 19.5 inches long. She arrived so quickly that it was totally drug-free. We had been praying for God to give us a good birth and he answered our prayer beyond our wildest dreams. In retrospect, it was really almost easy. Don't get me wrong - it hurt, especially at the end, but it was totally manageable.

We were really blessed because we had a friend and fellow photographer - Abigail Todd - there to document the delivery. She was a client of Alex's about 5 years ago when he shot her wedding, since then she and her husband moved to Louisiana and she started her own photography business. She is very talented and started a unique service there shooting 'birth sessions' which go from pregnancy to delivery. Since she is relocating back to MIA, she wanted to start building business here -- so voila! We had her shoot ours - it is amazing. I mean, I was THERE, but being a central participant who is really focused on the matter at hand - it is so special to be able to see what was going on. Seeing my mom and Alex's reaction through the birth is just awesome.

What you can't see in one picture is that my mom arrived at 6:11 (there is a shot, not shown, with the time) - Grace was born at 6:29 a.m...my mom just made it! (as did the doctor, mind you who got there right after my mom!)

Check it out at Abigail Todd Photography Blog. I believe that there will be one more part after what's posted, so check back again, too!

Vacation continues

So far our vacation has been great! We have spent several days at the beach, just hanging out...only about 100 feet from our beach house! On Tuesday, Alex's sister and her family arrived. You would have thought that Caleb was counting the minutes until his cousins, Isabella and Nicholas, arrived. Even though they are much older and in elementary school - he adores them. He chases them around the house, plays with them - and they totally oblige him. Nicholas carries him and wrestles with him - which is just the best thing in the world to Caleb. He has been having a blast - he must get so bored with mommy and daddy. This makes me really excited for when Grace gets to be old enough that they can play together, because Caleb will clearly enjoy it.

I definitely feel relaxed, but not necessarily rested. I am not sleeping well at night. I've reached the point that it is very difficult to find a comfortable position when laying down. And after much tossing and turning, when I do find that position, I generally have to get up to use the bathroom. So annoying. The house has really soft beds, which isn't really great for me right now, and has made getting comfortable a little more difficult and made my back hurt. I will be visiting my chiropractor when I get home! Also, we've been sharing a room with Caleb...this is not how we usually do things. Caleb has slept in his own room since he was about 5 months old - so this arrangement is not ideal. Several nights he woke up and saw us (read, me) there and screamed for an hour for me. Nothing is wrong w/ him, he just wants to be picked up. After a couple of nights of doing that and having to sit in a chair until he fell asleep - we decided we would do a same-room cry it out method. The first night was about an 40 minutes of crying, and then Alex just laid him down and showed him that we weren't going to pick him up, and finally he went to sleep. Last night, he woke up once around 1:30 and Alex got up, laid him down and did that twice and he fell back to sleep. So that was much improved.

In case you didn't remember - we are in fact vacationing on an island that is only accessible by boat or charter plane. And, there is in fact a tropical storm here around South Florida. So what to do with an 8-month pregnant woman? Tomorrow is our check out day, anyway, but we are juggling the storm trackers to determine when best to leave. We thought about leaving today, but it looked fairly certain that we would end up driving in the storm across the state - not a good idea w/ 40 mph winds. So we are going to leave at our predetermined time - tomorrow morning and hope that the predictions remain accurate with the storm passing us this evening, so that it is in the Gulf by tomorrow morning. Either way, we will have a rough boat ride - it won't be fun. In good weather the ride to the mainland is about 15 minutes - so it will take longer. Hopefully it won't be raining too much that we and our stuff get wet on the way.

I will be happy to be home close to my OB. He has actually been popping up in my dreams somewhat frequently, so on some level I must have some anxiety about being so far from him at 35 weeks pregnant.

Holy cow - 1 month blog lag

Yikes - well let's just skip over the past month, I bullet point the highlights:

• Caleb got sick (as usual), then he stayed sick, then he was hospitalized, then they finally pinpointed some potential causes for his constant illnesses, then they prescribed a bunch of meds for 'silent' reflux (read, no other symptoms) and RAD (reactive airway disease, a way of saying he may develop asthma).
• Since getting out of the hospital about 3 weeks ago he hasn't been the slightest bit sick, no runny nose, no cough, no nothing.
• Caleb is eating like it's going out of style. He's back into a bunch of the foods that he dropped from his repertoire. The other day he ate an entire pint of blueberries by himself in 2 days!
  

We are on vacation now. Alex and I got to pick this one and all of his family (parents, sister and her fam) are in North Captiva Island. It is only accessible by boat or charter plane. The house is gorgeous. There is truly nothing to do here except hang out, go to the nearly private beach or go to the pool. There are no paved roads here and no cars - everyone gets around by golf cart. There are only 300 houses on the island and this is almost off-season, so it's pretty quiet. Alex and I are loving it. It feels really indulgent to have so little to do.

On Sunday, Alex, Caleb and I checked out the 'island' church service. I was expecting something pretty non-specific in terms of worship style. How wrong I was. It was just us and the couple who do the service each week. I would say they are 70 or so. They used to be missionaries in the Brazilian amazon back in the day. The service was in their living room, and they set out chairs, each containing a Bible and a hymnal. The living room contains a little electric organ. The service was very Presbyterian in nature, a prelude on the organ, a hymn, responsive reading, a scripture reading, a hymn, and then a brief sermon, this one was on Mary and Martha. Caleb was pretty good, playing by himself for the first half, but then he got tired and hot as they had all of their windows open for a light breeze, but by 11-ish it was getting warm. That was really Caleb's first official church service. At our church, he stays in the CF (Christ Fellowship) Kids area, not the service.

I'll post more as the vacation continues and when we get home, I'll post some pics of the vacation.

iTithe

I am proud to announce....iTithe. Over the past several months, Alex has been working with developers somewhere in TX to create an iPhone app.

iTithe is an app designed to help Christians keep track of their tithes and charitable giving. It is especially designed to be a tool to help those of us who may not have regular incomes (ie., don't have a paycheck every 2 weeks). If that's you, you know that it can be difficult to remember whether you tithed on a particular job or contract. This was Alex's inspiration - as a photographer he has irregular income and also receives payment on each contract in stages - a deposit, and then usually 1, sometimes 2, additional payments - and then maybe some extra income if a couple wants upgrades to albums or wall art prints or something.

So in iTithe, you can enter an income amount and source and then keep track of when you tithe on it to your home church. You can also, separately, keep track of charitable gifts.

If you have an iPhone we would love for you to download it, the app is just $1.99, and then review it!! You can also check out the iTithe website.

What is a tithe? I'm sure some people are asking themselves that. Well, in the Bible, God commands Christians to tithe. A tithe is a tenth of what you earn. A tithe should be given to a believers church, as opposed to charitable gifts which are given above a tithe and may go to any organization you may want to support. The principle is simple - God is the creator of all things, I believe that all I have is a gift or a blessing from God - so what I have is really His. As such, I want to give back to him the portion he requests - gladly - in thankfulness for what he has so generously provided to me.

If you want to see more - check out the 'Tithing principles' section of the iTithe website.

whew...

Seriously, no one told me that NOT working would be so exhausting. Trust me, it's still WAY better than doing all this stuff AND working which is why I was about to have a breakdown 2 months ago- so I'm not really complaining.

Generally, I go to the child care center 2-3 days per week w/ Alex. I'm very happy because since I've been there we've implemented some positive new practices:

• Our Health Department approved (90% of our kids qualify for free b-fast, lunch and snacks) has been improved - now almost all fruit we serve is fresh- except peaches, which would be too hard to get in ripe and store, etc. The kids get fresh fruit at least once per day and now they eat fresh stuff like: bananas, pears, apples, cantaloupe, watermelon and prunes. So far, they seem to be loving it. These were changes we could make w/out having to get our menu reapproved; it was simply swapping canned to fresh. The next step down the road is to look at the actual cooked meal components. Other food changes include switching ice cream 1x per 2 weeks for yogurt and graham crackers; and swapping crackers w/ American cheese to crackers and cheddar - b/c I don't believe that American is an actual 'cheese'.
• The oldest kids - the pre-k kids (4-5 yrs), now enjoy 'family-style' meals. Rather than sitting at tables waiting for someone to serve them their food - which can take up to 12 minutes for the last kids to be served, now each meal component is in a bowl on the table and the teachers help them serve the appropriate measurement of each component. This has significant decreased meal 'down-time'.
• A friend of mine from my previous life, is the dental director at the Health Department, they have a mobile dental unit. They will be coming one day per week for a month to do exams, fluoride and dental education to the kids.

I think that Alex and I may be crazy. Evidence: are kids will be 18 months apart; we just decided to totally renovate our master bathroom and relocate our teensy closet into a new space (formerly a section of our garage). This should take us into early July- THEN we can move Caleb into a new 'big boy' room - currently our guest bedroom, where Alex and I will be living for the next month or so. Caleb's current room will remain a nursery for the new baby - we will just girly it up a little. By the time Caleb's new room and the baby's room are completed - I should be about ready to give birth.

Also - we have a name for the girl - Grace. How appropriate.