The Beach Birthday Bash

We had a great, great day at the Casa de Los Lemleys. After trying to decide what to do for Maximo's birthday, we decided on a good old fashion birthday party at home. It's hard to do that here, because the apartments are so small, but we luckily have a yard, so we decided to invite a couple of friends over to help celebrate.

Maximo had a great day and handled everything pretty well - it must be pretty overwhelming for a three year old who is jacked up on sugar (which started by licking the frosting beaters at about 9:00 am) to get a bunch of presents and have his house full of friends.

Here are some of the highlights from our day:

Playing Pin the Tail on the Whale


Happy Birthday to Maximo - he loves this song, and will sing it anytime he sees anything that resembles a birthday cake - like dirt and a stick or when he sees candles!

Happy Birthday, Maximo! We love you heaps and heaps and heaps!

Photos from the Day:

Happy 3rd Birthday, Maximo!

I'm attributing the fact that I am pregnant with a girl with how domestic I became at planning this party. I had a lot of fun planning the menu and we had fun planning our little party at "Lemley Beach". No matter how much I plan and try to get everything done, I swear I never get around to brushing my hair before hosting friends - I did make it in the shower though.

And August is Almost Gone...

I just realized that I didn't have a Picasa photo album made for August. To me, August is like a Sunday, sometimes it's hard to relax, because work is looming around the corner! Last week was busy with us trying to get back into the swing of things. Maximo did beautifully all week at school which was so nice and such a huge change from last year. We had three day of faculty work days and the kids arrived on Thursday. Both fifth grade (which I teach) and high school (John's neck of the woods) have gone 1:1 laptop, which should make for an interesting year. We're both pretty techie, so it'll be nice not to have to fight for resources, but it will change the dynamic of the classes a bit.

Here are a few photos from the week. Our last week with a two year old... at least for another two years:

CAT TATTS:

The cat who was so starved for attention... this cat just doesn't run away

Princess Party - Max had no Prince attire, so he wore a cape!

And requested his toes be painted in blue!

Royalty at the party!

Cuteness Among the Exhaustion

We went to go see a friend this past weekend who just had a baby. The wonderful thing was that she started having complications and went on bedrest around the 24th week, but ended up delivering a baby boy on HER DUE DATE. Oh, I can only dream:)
Here are a couple of pictures from our visit:

Big Sister Kiyona and Soon-to-be Big Brother Maximo sharing a muffin.

A not so happy Toma, after finding out this milk factory isn't open yet!

Yesterday was our first day back at school and while it was nice not to be a newbie and pretty stress free, I was exhausted and felt pretty bad by the end of the day. So for day two and hopefully for the rest of the semester, I'm going to try to drink more, try to sit more and hope that all goes well. The heat is crushing right now. Our rooms are airconditioned, but the hallways are not, so I also need to not hang out there too much too.

I'm going to try to post a couple of short posts while I'm working, so hopefully you won't have to wait weeks between posts. (I'm not promising anything, although I'll try!)

We're Think We're Going to Like 3!

I don't know who likes the ViewMaster more - Maximo or John

The past few weeks with Maximo have been dreamy. He's been so good and quite funny. John and I look at each other and cackle half the time he says something and even find ourselves quoting him quite a bit when we're on our own (yes, a little sad, we know).
Here are some of our favorite Maximo quotes:

"It's heavy." - He uses this whenever anything is too hard, maybe heavy or he can't do it on his own.
"Bust my buffers." - Straight from Thomas the Tank Engine shows.
"Mmmmm. Scrumptious."
"I fine."


Some of the things we hear all the time and aren't our favorites:
"Maximo do (it)." - Seriously this is about 1,000,000 times a day and which takes us three times the amount of time to do anything, but we're glad he's getting more independent.
"No, it's mine."

He's finally getting the potty thing down pretty well. The "special stickers" seemed to do the trick this summer with his poop - that and the fact that he's pretty regular - and it's usually at a time we're at home. He's been so-so with pee accidents. Usually pretty good, but he often forgets when he's playing. But up until this week, we've had to tell him to go to the bathroom and twice! in the past two days he's told us and two other times he just up and did it himself. Whoa! I don't think I've been so excited since John proposed.

Since I'm finally feeling a wee bit better after almost 20 weeks of horribleness, I decided to make a little educational game for Max. He knows all his upper case letters, but not his lowercase... and why not throw in some words!

He seems a little less aggressive with other kids lately, which is nice because it isn't very relaxing to be out with friends with kids with him. He's had a huge boost in his language this summer, so hopefully he can work out his feelings better and talk about sharing rather than hitting or worse, biting.

We put him in daycare last week for three days so we could start getting ready for school and to get him back into the routine and he did GREAT! He walked there with us and was really happy. The senseis said he did well, which was nice. He hadn't played with children almost all summer, so we were a little worried.

He's just a lot of fun to be around. He's easy to take out, well, as easy as a toddler can be! He loves to run around outside and climb at the playground and does much better overall when he has time each day to be physical. So even with the horrible heat, we've (mostly John) been trying to get him out as much as possible.

John and Max got a fish tank and they're both having fun with it!

I'm going to be sad to go back to work. We've had a wonderful summer together as a family.

But in a less than two weeks, Max turns 3! We're going to have a little party at home. I'm getting all domestic (and excited) planning this one. Here's a sneak peek of the invitation:



Two has been an up-and-down year for all of us! Max has been fun, albeit challenging. There have been a lot of changes: a new country and home. Maximo started daycare. We got rid of pacifers, he moved from a crib to a big boy bed, he's potty trained. Wow! We can't wait for #3 with Maximo and the new baby.

It's a Girl, I think...

This is what I've heard from the doctor three times now. Today I had my monthly check up and John got to finally see the little one. It's so different with the second one. John went to every one of my prenatal visits with Maximo, but for this one, he stays home with Max so I can go.

I'm a bit of a worry wart as it is, and this pregnancy is really making my mind spin a bit. I am now just over 20 weeks pregnant, and so far, so... well, decent. The baby looks good and is the right size for its gestational age. There are a couple concerns, although not major at this point:

1. I gained double what I should have this past month - normally it's about a pound a week (1/2 kg). I gained almost 4 kg this month! That's almost 9 lbs, and I thought I was doing so much better with this one!

2. My placenta is sitting almost right on top of my old c-section/kidney surgery incision. My doctor is a little concerned with it adhering to that tissue. She's hoping the placenta will move up and then it won't be a problem. From what I could gather, the main concern is major bleeding during my c-section.

3. This week I started to have some contractions. I seriously was already writing a blog post in my head in the wee-hours of the morning... "Here We Go Again" is all that I was thinking. They didn't seem to be caused by anything, so I just laid low and they've been much better. They seem like they were just Braxton-Hicks and not regular or super consistent.

On a positive note, my cervix is totally closed and LONG, and if you didn't know already, that's exactly how you want your cervix when it's holding a baby in!

So, I wait another month for my next appointment. I'm a little concerned with working (we start back in a week), but I'll just take it easy as best as I can. The doctor told me not to worry too much. Ha!

I wish I could get more of a definitive sex on the baby because I want to go through the boxes of baby stuff I have, but we're just going to go with the fact that it's a girl. With Max, there was no doubt, and with this one there really wasn't anything there. So, the name game will begin!

Here's picture of my bigness: