Girl Mom

Back from a hiatus– I had baby Xenia a couple of weeks ago! If Jamal knew I was writing this instead of napping or cleaning, he would call me crazy… But, sleep depravity = loss of memories, so things must be documented before it is too late!

In the past few weeks, Xenia was born by induction at the local hospital 5 minutes down the road. It was a new experience having a baby in our little home town. We actually already knew our nurses from personal experience (I did ballet with one of them, and Jamal knew the other from playing soccer in high school). There were some things I did not appreciate about labor… This hospital is a little less friendly for a natural labor than the one that we were at previously, but the fantastic thing about hormones is that once Xenia was here and safe, I didn’t care half as much about the bad things that happened.

Sofia has been adjusting to having a sister so much better than I anticipated! And I am adjusting to having two and recouping from labor way better than I was anticipating! I’ve truly been tossed in the deep end… Jamal only had 2 weeks of paternity leave, 3 days of which we were in the hospital. But I am proud of myself for keeping both girls alive and happy and myself sane. Unfortunately, the house is a terrible mess… But you can’t expect to accomplish everything perfectly week one by yourself watching 2 under 2.

Xenia is a sweet sweet little baby. She sleeps A LOT. And when she is awake, she tends to be very anxious, spit up, and get the hiccups, unless you snuggle her. I do not remember Sofia being that way– I remember her being more awake, and enjoying wiggling around on her own in the crib, and never ever spitting up, but I could be delusional and not remember her first few weeks because I was sleep deprived… Xenia has very curly hair, like Jamal (just like I was hoping!) and she has LOOONGG feet. I love her. I’d snuggle her, and Sofia all the time if I could and if they’d let me (Xenia would let me, Sofia likes 2 second hugs and to be let down to explore).

I’m enjoying this. Though, I am tired and bloated and lean over from nursing all the time, and want to go for a walk and have a clean home… I think we will get there eventually though.

I Have a Very Tidy Husband…

I just realized that Jamal refolded all of my shirts yesterday. And all of my socks. And all of my underwear… I haven’t checked the pants/shorts drawer yet, but it’s very likely all of those are refolded too. This is not a completely irregular occurance. Poor Jamal has a wife who is not as neat as he is… but I’m improving. Before we got married the clothes were not folded in the first place… they probably weren’t even in the drawers!

When I was in high school I was extremely messy. There is even a video about it… And even though I had my best friend Katelyn as a roommate in college, that didn’t make me much neater… We were just messy together! But 4 years ago, I fell in love with Jamal. And I knew that Jamal was a very clean guy: didn’t go to bed without having the dishes hand-washed, clothes folded perfectly and put away, wiped down and swept the kitchen every time he cooked… And so, I’ve been making changes. He has been making changes too — Ha! He even uses the dishwasher now.

“Am I even Puerto Rican anymore if I use the dishwasher?”

Ever since I started staying home with Sofia, I’ve been doing more of the housework than I used to– which means I do about 80% of the dishes, 70% of the cooking, 60% of the laundry, 50% of the animal feeding, and 10% of the vacuuming.

Usually Jamal starts most of the laundry loads (because I don’t think a load is ready to be started until you can barely shut the washer, lol), and I tend to put *most* of the loads clothes away once they are washed. I fold my clothes, but not with the same care and intent that I fold his. I want him to be nice and happy and proud of me when he opens his drawers; but with my own clothes, I honestly just don’t care that much! But.. on the rare occasions that Jamal ends up putting away the laundry, it is very likely that my drawers are going to get a makeover!

I suppose it would make me a super good stay at home wife (and mom, but Sofia definitely does not care what my sock drawer looks like…) to start trying to fold my own clothes super neatly too, but I’m not quite ready for that step in the “becoming more tidy” proccess. Maybe next year.

Giving Baby Xenia a Little Hype

I’m not positive this is how we will spell her name. There are so many options! Xeña, Zinnia, Xenya, etc… But regardless, we love her. And she is due to get her surprisingly soon– it’s really sneaking up on us! She is due August 31st. Our lives are about to change a lot with our practically Irish twins.

The other day Jamal said to me, “Xenia doesn’t get enough hype! Sofia got way more hype when you were pregnant with her”. And he’s right… but we are just a little more distracted with an almost 1 year old running around than last year when it was just us and the cats. Plus, I have a feeling little Xenia might have a little more of a calm and chill personality than Sofia. She moves a lot, but she does not have as large or as jabby stabby of movements as Sofia did. I think Sofia was trying to break out of the womb using her elbows her entire third trimester… There is also the fact that this pregnancy has been comparatively super easy (praise God!!), and that last time around everything was brand new.

“Welcome to being the middle child”, as my sister Katie (who is the middle child) says.

We are excited to meet her though. And I don’t think she’ll mind that our attentions are a little more divided than when there was just one kid, because she won’t know the difference, and she will have a big sister to hang out with (and share with, and fight with, and snuggle with, etc.).

I tried to plant some Zinnia flowers in her honor, but as expected, the dog ate them (or perhaps just sat on them?). So this post will have to serve as a little hype for her for now.

Scrabble: Surprisingly Actually a Fun Game.

Scrabble is kind of a joke game on my side of the family. The joke is that we all hate playing it except my dad.

I grew up playing a lot of games, especially card games (Spades, Rummy, Crazy 8s — in my family you don’t let children win. They must learn not to be sore losers, and actually learn how to be strategic players!). It was usually just my mom, my sisters, and I though. My dad was not much of a game player (he is still alive, but I’m using past tense, because he is getting better about this and I want to give him due credit).

There was one game my dad would play though: Scrabble. And he was very good at it too. I can remember 6 year old me… “I have the word ‘cat’ on double word! 10 points for me, woohoo!”. Dad: “my turn? I’ve got the word ‘squeezy’. I believe that is 90 points.”.

We never really had much fun playing Scrabble. It also lasted an eternity. I’m pretty sure we decided we weren’t going to play it anymore before I even turned 10 (sorry dad). But, this week, I played it again for the first time in at least 15 years. And I have to say, it’s been a fun time.

When Jamal got the game last week and I read on the box that the game is supposed to last 30-60 minutes, I literally LOLed. I’d still say this is a game you shouldn’t play unless you have no other obligations for at least the next 2 hours. But I am truly shocked at how pleasant it has been to play with Jamal. Maybe I am more okay with sitting down for a long time than I used to be… I also think that I am much more competetive a player (I’ve won 3 out of the 4 games we’ve played so far).

My tip for a fun Scrabble game: bring something else to occupy yourself when it’s not your turn. I’ve been doing Duolingo and Jamal has been reading Plato’s philosophy (nerd.).

—

I definitely googled the best scrabble words in order to try and make this post accurate for people who actually play scrabble regularly, and “squeezy” was the only word I actually knew. I guess I need to read my dictionary more. I did find out that the word “zax” is a word, which I think I might be able to really use to beat Jamal again next time we play. I think we may take a break tonight though. We may finally be a bit scrabbled out…

Not Cabbages!

My poor husband cannot tell the difference between a cabbage a head of iceburg lettuce. Or, perhaps he can tell the difference, but has them confused with one another; because, you’d think that if someone can’t tell the difference between the two, they would pick the wrong one 50% of the time. Jamal picks them wrong 100% of the time.

I’ve gotten the chance to observe this phenomenon a lot more often lately, as Jamal is only enrolled part time in school this summer and he has been cooking a lot with the extra time. Specifically a lot of Mexican food. More specifically, a lot of tacos. It’s pretty fun… we’ll spend Sofia’s nap time making home-made corn tortillas together. He does the dough making and the shaping, I man the cast iron. Now, I think that there is too little room in our tiny corn tortillas to be wasting valuable space on iceburg lettuce… but, Jamal is a big fan of the iceburg lettuce on a taco — perhaps it’s the slight crunch it adds? I guess I can’t judge; I am a big fan of some iceburg lettuce on a sub sandwich, for some reason I can’t specify…

We are that strange family that likes to go grocery shopping together. It’s a fun, weekly activity for us. So, I get the joy of watching Jamal pick out “iceburg lettuce”. I don’t help him. Perhaps that’s mean… I wait until he’s over there perusing the cabbages, and then I catch his eye and raise my eyebrows or give him a wink. That’s when he knows he’s gone wrong.

Sometimes, I wait all the way until he’s put the cabbage in the grocery cart, and then I say “what do we need a cabbage for?”. He gets very flustered. It’s pretty funny. But I never let him go so far as to actually buy the cabbage (though honestly, I think I’d prefer a zesty slaw on a taco than the lettuce…).

Poor Jamal had one of those rare occasions of being at the grocery store without me this past Monday — he was the Memorial day chef, and I was hanging out with Sofia at his parents house while he was getting the necessary ingredients. There was a lot of pressure on him, and unfortunately the pressure pushed him towards failure instead of success.

“Jamal… I’m sorry to say this… but you bought a cabbage.”

“What?!? NO. I thought really hard about it. Cabbages are usually wrapped up, and lettuces aren’t right? It’s the other way around?!” *curse curse curse* *mumble mumble mumble*.

Fortunately, we like cabbages! So I will cook it up with some potatoes one of these days.

I think I’m going to make Jamal some iceburg lettuce vs. cabbage flash cards…

How I Found My Cat This Morning

Snuggled up under the covers. After we woke up, but before I made the bed. I don’t even remember him going through the door. Sneaky. Don’t tell Jamal — the cats aren’t supposed to be in our room, let alone under the covers!

Monotany

Once upon a time, I made a promise to myself that I would never be ‘bored’ again.

Now, I’m sure that everyone is guilty of breaking promises. I’m sure I’ve broken plenty in my day, (‘Dad, I promise if you get me a little poodle puppy I will feed him and water him and be the one to take care of him every day!’ – 6 yr old Ruthie. Didn’t happen).  But I don’t think I’ve broken the ‘never bored again’ promise yet.

When I was a kid, I felt ‘bored’ all the time. I made sure not to alert my mom to this, because she’d ask me to clean my room; but internally, any time of monotony I was wishing was spent with friends, becoming a celebrity on Disney channel, or falling in love with the boy of my dreams and going to the ice skating rink with him. Time to myself to relax and refocus? How terrible!

But then college hit.

And school got harder for me.

And the social life got crazy.

And I started working a job.

And then two.

And then three.

And it was at that point I made the promise, ‘I will never feel bored again’. Because any unplanned moment  I had to myself was a true miracle.

It’s slightly stupid to make a promise based on feelings. I’d say that to a degree, feelings are impossible to control. But somehow the hectic-ness of previous parts of life still leave me truly enjoying each open moment or afternoon I come across, where I have no specific plans at all. Perhaps I’ll read my Bible and have a mug of peppermint tea. Perhaps I’ll take a walk. Perhaps I’ll play 2048 online. Perhaps take a funny photo and text it to Katelyn. – It’s a blessing.

Today I walked in circles outside and made some pasta out of green lentil noodles. Afternoon well spent.

It’s hard sometimes to balance the busy-ness and the monotony — I feel that perhaps it’s about striving to serve the Lord with your life, knowing that time to recharge and refocus on Him is crucial/attempting to plan accordingly, trusting that He can get you through everything you face, and enjoying the little moments of rest that come throughout the day (e.g. beautiful sunrise over the river on the drive to work, enjoying an afternoon pudding cup). That’s all the wisdom I’ve gained so far on it 🙂

Here’s to enjoying all seasons of life and to putting an end to making promises that aren’t keepable.

Because You Can’t Be Boring and Have a Frog-Retainer; Those Are Mutually Exclusive

I’ve had this blog for 5 years now…

At times, I’ve been a heavy poster. At other times, I’ve been a little incognito (and then my Grandma reminds me to post more often).

The fun thing for me about having a blog since freshman year of college is going back and reading what I wrote — getting a glimpse of my old thoughts/struggles or reliving great memories; my ‘drafts’ section is a great place for that too. Funny thing is, many of my posts are about slowly becoming an adult, trying to figure out what to do with my future, aspiring to always be young at heart & carefree. And now I think I’ve finally reached it. I’m an adult. I have a 9-5 job that I can support myself with, I have a 401k plan, I’m saving for my next car, I get sleepy early, and I think I might not be quite as exciting or adventurous as I used to be…

But then I have to take a moment to remember. I sit on an exercise-ball as my office chair. I still take random trips to Asheville and sometimes go to Waffle House late at night. Sometimes my co-workers and I take little breaks to stand on our heads in the office (just to get the brain-juices flowing). I can now give more to organizations that do impactful things. I am learning much and am able to help many people with my job. I still wear my retainer sometimes, and it is lime green with pink polka dots (looks like a frog); how can someone with a frog-retainer be boring? It’s impossible, truly. Yeah.. I’m a grown-up now, but I’m a grown up my freshman college self would probably be pretty proud of.

Now to keep growing and to stay that way 🙂

Ruthie’s Day of Errands

Once upon a time, Ruthie had a weekday off of work.

“Time to do all the errands I have been saving up!” she thought.

On the ‘To Do’ list was getting the tires rotated, getting new brake pads, giving some clothes up for consignment, getting the oil changed, getting her hair cut, and withdrawing all her money from one very unused bank account.

Looking back at it, the vast level of excitement Ruthie had about doing these things makes her feel a little bit like a very lame adult… But joy in the little things, right?

The day started out wonderful, after breakfast and a shower, it was time for an early morning oil change + Jiffy Lube coffee (yum!). It was a wonderful experience. The sweet man who helped her out not only made her feel like her car was a gem, but like she was a gem as well:

“May I say, you look ravishing today ma’am!” – random nice worker at the Jiffy Lube in Aiken

Yes sir, yes you may say that! Thanks! I certainly am ravishing, aren’t I?

After the oil change it was time for a hair trim at a beauty salon Ruthie had never been to before.

She looked for her phone so she could pull up Google Maps.

She couldn’t find it in  her GIGANTUOUS purse.

Oh goodness, what is a millennial supposed to do without her phone on a day of errands??

But Ruth had confidence in herself. She was pretty sure the hair salon was near Food Lion.

So she drove to Food Lion. And drove around Food Lion. And drove around all the parking lots of all the shopping centers around Food Lion. And she had no luck. And she was already 1 minute late for her appointment.

So she went to the place she knew someone would help her: Herbal Solutions.

Earthy people who use many essential oils must be helpful and understanding of a girl accidentally leaving her technology device at home, right?

And they were helpful. You should shop there. Ruthie did; she bought some Castor oil, because she felt bad walking into their establishment and not purchasing something. But the price was much better than what she saw on Amazon, so hey!

The Herbal Solutions people pulled up the address of Ruthie’s hair salon on their Google Maps. It was by a Bi-Lo, not a Food Lion. Typical.

They also called the place for her to tell them Ruth would be late.

So sweet.

They even Ruthie a nick-name when she was rushing out of the door to make it to her hair appointment,

“Hey, Scatter! You left your Castor oil on the counter!”

‘Scatter’ – has a nice ring to it.

Ruthie, or Scatter as we shall now call her, made it only 10 minutes late to her hair appointment. They were so nice to receive her late, and did a wonderful job! Get your hair cut at the Beauty Shop in Aiken!

About 30 minutes later, Scatter pulled up to her Aunt’s consignment shop  (should shop at Upscale Resale in Aiken). She was a little early for opening time, so she leaned on her car in the parking lot and decided to kill some time.

She brought out her GIGANTUOUS purse to get her planner out and start drawing some pictures or something.

As she was pulling the planner out, she noticed something… her phone!

Oh, irony.

The rest of Scatter’s day isn’t worth recounting in detail, but it was a very lovely & wonderful day for a lame adult like herself. The biggest perk was that she found out her brake pads didn’t need exchanging; evidently humidity creates squeaky brakes! Who knew?! Oh wait, the people at Tyler’s Tire in Aiken know. You should shop there.

What I’m Looking for In a Marriage

Looking for someone who can handle this.

As a 22 year old female, I can’t help but occasionally have the thought of marriage cross my mind.

Okay – that’s an unfair statement. I’m sure there are 22 year old females who do not think of marriage at all. But the thing is, I’m a 22 year old female who is ME. And I do have hopes to get married one day and have kids or something.

Through my minimal experience of living life, dating, making friends, and talking to people, I’ve come up with a nice long mental list of qualities I am not looking for in a marriage partnership and a nice short list of things I am.  Call me jaded if you’d like – you wouldn’t be far off. I’m not about to type out that mental list for you, because that would be embarrassing, and honestly probably some of it is prideful and wrong and unrealistic and isn’t deserving of being typed out in real words to be remembered forever.

But the other day, I did see something that captured what I’m looking for should I ever get married. Captured the good and true and honest of what I’m looking for. And I’d like to share it with you.

It was a Sunday afternoon, and I was up in Greenville visiting my wonderful friend Hosanna. She had recently started going to a new church, and we were invited to go to lunch at a sweet older lady’s house.

We went. It was nice. The food was good. There were multiple older people, 60+, and then me and Hosanna. Everyone was very sweet. We talked of chickens and coops, how college campuses seem so dangerous these days, and of various Bible studies in the church.

The conversations kept going on, and somehow the topic came up of how a certain couple in the group had met. The husband was a tall sweet white-haired man with light blue eyes. He was a retired Doctor, wheelchair bound in his older age.

“It really is a great story I think. If you don’t mind me sharing it,” said the Husband.

“Oh yes, please do,” said the rest of us.

And so he began to tell us a story of when he was in medical school in Charleston. He was dating a girl and she broke up with him, because she felt convicted that she was a Christian and he was not and they were unequally yoked. She threw a bunch of Bible verses at him. His pride was hurt, because he went to church on occasion as a kid, he wasn’t any other religion so he must be a Christian, and because he didn’t know if any of the Bible verses she was spewing at him were really in the Bible. So he went home and searched for his old, rarely looked at Bible, and he read multiple verses and chapters and started to feel convicted. And then months later he went to his parents house, and he went upstairs to where he knew his dad had a shelf of Christian books, and he began reading one by Billy Graham. And he thought to himself ‘this is so dumb’, but he couldn’t stop reading. And then the last chapter talked about the Roman’s road and had a little sinners prayer. And he believed. And he felt like all the weight of the world came off his shoulders. And he realized that though he thought he was the smartest most brilliant med student in the world, he was really just a sinner who needed Jesus.

“I was so prideful, and thought I was so smart.. But God saved me,” said the Husband.

“And here I was thinking you were going to tell the story of how we met,” said his wife with tears in her eyes.

And then he proceeded to tell a brief, but cute, story about how he and his wife met at a campus ministry event at med school.

And that is a little picture of the spirit of the marriage I can only hope to have one day.