Starting to Respond

A few weeks ago, Bella started finally giving us smiles... you know, the real ones that are not gas-related? But we have finally moved on to giggling. This is the first recorded video of the event. I was trying to do this with my phone in one hand while leaning my head in to tickle her tummy. Working on trying to get a better, and steadier video, of the next event. Stay tuned...

It's Already Starting...

This happens to be Ally's first homework assignment. Not anything hard, not really a big deal. Hey, she's in kindergarten. What is pretty impressive about this is the very bottom. If you read the very last line, it says "Signature of grown up helper." The signature reads "Mom." Somehow, I don't see Becky signing off on checks with "Mom." The freakin' kid is already forging signatures on school documents. Ingenious. I didn't start thinking about that until at least Middle School. I can't stop her, I can only hope to contain her.

Quick Tidbits...

Driving down Kiely Blvd. yesterday on the way to Safeway we saw something that totally freaked us out for a minute. We had just finished eating dinner and were plenty stuffed, but in a matter of moments we almost lost our dinners. As we were cruising, pulling up alongside us was a hearst... or so we thought. A dark vehicle passed us on the right and we both held our breath. But low and behold, it was not a hearst but a Lexus IS 300. They may look completely different on the outside, but have you ever seen another car besides a hearst with curtains?... black curtains?... and gathered in the center? I think all 4 people sitting inside this car were alive as the curtains were gathered. I'm sure they'd be pulled closed had there been an actual corpse in there. This was a freakin' Lexus... with curtains! The only other time I can ever remember seeing curtains near a Lexus was when they unveiled there was a Lexus behind curtain #3 on The Price Is Right.

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Bella started smiling this week and they've come at random times. While mom was changing Bella's diaper yesterday, the kid decided to let fly an air biscuit. This one stunk a bit and was accompanied by a smile that lasted for quite a while. The entire time mom was complaining about the smell, the kid just kept smiling. I couldn't complain. In fact, I was quite proud of this prized pupil. Wouldn't you find it humorous if you had just let off in someone's face and they couldn't walk away from it?

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Something to think about... why did the geniuses at Toyota design the Prius to top out at 20mph? And why does there have to be so many on the road that I always end up getting stuck behind one... going 20mph on the freeway?

Let the Games Begin

It used to be where Becky would come home from school with some funny stories about the kids. Now that we have a kindergartner of our own, we're bound to hear more stories. And the first one has come with a blast.

In our house, we don't use the term "fart" for fear that the kid will be walking around in public saying something like, "who farted?" So we started using the term "buffalo" as a code word for a human be-bop. Now that you have a little background, you'll understand the story better. While in the car on the way home from school earlier this week, the conversation between mom and child went something like this...

Ally: Mom, someone was stinky in my class today.
Mom: Oh really. Did someone do a buffalo?
Ally: I don't think so. I didn't hear anything.
Mom: Well, sometimes when people do buffalos they don't make noise and you can't hear them.
Ally: Not in our house!

And now our brand new car is in the shop. Not really, but that just goes to show how good of a driver Becky really is. I love my kids...

No More Lumps

When we bought our house we noticed a couple of things that would quickly have to change; 1) The shower head in our master bathroom ("master" bathroom which is about the size of a porta-potty) and 2) the chandelier in the kitchen were unusually low. The first couple of tries in the shower resulted in me getting down on my knees to rinse the shampoo. Even Becky would have to bend down. Didn't take long for us to replace the shower head with a detachable head. Not necessarily ideal but at least this way we didn't have to rip out tile and redo anything. The chandelier in the kitchen came down to about my left armpit so you can imagine how many times I bumped my head on that thing. I think something was trying to tell me that helping out with the dishes was just bad for my health. We should have known things would be bad when the neighbor across the street told me the previous owner was only about 4'10". Something had to give...

Today was the day that something was finally done. We got us some ceiling fans recently and my brother-in-law Vidal was on vacation this week and came and helped me install a couple. Neither one of us is an electrician by trade but he at least has done this before in his own home. Me on the other hand... I'd probably be smart enough to go and do some wiring while stepping in a puddle of water. So I stuck to the screws and the blades of the fan. We made a great team and got 2 of the fans installed. We still got 3 left to do but those will come later this week. At least for now I can have my oatmeal lumpy and not have lumps after my oatmeal. Life is good... and a little cooler these days.

New Neighbors

We figured when we brought baby home that Coach was going to have a little bit of a tough time adjusting to his new baby sister. We still don’t know if he’s adjusted yet or not. The first couple of days he would circle around us and bark but he’s been pretty quiet the past few days. Our neighbors behind us have been making quite a bit of noise in their backyard all summer and he’s been out there quite a bit barking at them. He’s been out there even more this past week. All he’s been doing is pacing along the back fence from one side to the other.

A couple of weeks ago we could hear a bunch of noise coming from their yard. They had all kinds of power tools going but I didn’t pay much attention as their 3 boys (ages 4-10 or so) are noisy power tools themselves with all their arguing and fighting. It gets worse when Mama Banshee comes out and starts yelling at them in their native tongue.

I went to get Coach out of the garage the other morning and heard some yapping coming from their yard. It wasn’t the kids this time but instead it was some Mighty Mouse-sized mutt. I took a peek out of curiosity but couldn’t see the pint-sized pooch as it was enclosed in a 6’ high cardboard box. As I looked over the fence, that’s when I saw the little cottage against the fence. They had built themselves a freakin’ chicken coop. Everything is starting to make sense now:

• All the power tools went into building the coop.
• Coach paces along the back fence following the chickens around.
• The Census in our area was done a few weeks ago… prior to the coop being built and the new tenants moving in.

I’m wondering how much rent they’re paying for their little cottage? With the economy tanking, egg-laying doesn’t sound like a bad gig right now. You can work from home and get all the fresh air you want. All I know is if I hear a rooster crowing early in the morning, I’ll be singing me some Zac Brown: “You know I like my chicken fried/ cold beer on a Friday night/ a pair of jeans that fit just right/ and the radio up.”

Latest addition... for real this time

We added the new car to our family on Memorial Day and have now added the latest addition to our family: baby Isabella. Here is the birth info of the critter:

Isabella Jeane Caetano (kay-ta-no) Pereira

July 19,2010 @ 10:56am

8lbs. 12oz.

Here is the first photo of the kid after we brought her home.

I did say she was a critter, didn't I? Alright, alright. We have yet to bring her home as mom and child are scheduled to be released on Wednesday morning. Ally is pretty excited to have finally met her little blame-taker. We brought her in last night and she was all smiles and was eager to hold her. She's been practicing at home with our 17lb. supposed-to-be-Pomerainian-but-is-twice-the-size-a-Pom-should-be-wannabe-lapdog Coach. Both mom and baby have been doing well and things are off to a good start with health. Mom's bruised butt-bone is even feeling better. Who knew that the one-shot diet would help relieve so much of the pain she felt on her tailbone. But things are healing fine and mom is getting back to normal as well. Here are some actual pics of the new kid for the world to see. I was kind of thinking of calling her Blanket and shielding her from the paparazzi but then I remembered I'm nobody and it wouldn't matter. Enjoy...

New Addition to the Family

We weren't expecting to add to our family until July, but Christmas came a little early this year. We know that nothing goes according to plan as often we'd like as we never know what life will throw at usalong the way. We figured baby would come in July and we had time to plan things out but things didn't turn out quite that way.



We spent this morning like most Memorial Day mornings: we got up and washed the Ford Escape and drove over to the church for the annual Memorial Day Breakfast. We left the clean Escape at home and took the dirty Jetta instead. Ally left with Grammy without saying goodbye and we figured we had a free playday... or at least a few hours. So we decided to go out looking at cars, not necessarily expecting to come home with one. We at least wanted to check things out and see what was out there. One thing we knew for sure was that with 2 kids we would need something bigger than the Jetta. This is the last time we saw the Jetta...We stopped at a dealer and started looking and found something that we thought we liked. We both took it for a test drive and liked it and decided it was what we wanted. We both had our eye on the Chevy Equinox and had been looking into it a bit. We liked it enough to leave the Jetta behind and walk away with our new addition. So here it is...
BUT... we wen't the only one who got a new set of wheels. Good ol' Uncle Ben got himself a new bike. I'm not sure if he was planning on getting rid of his old one but this one seems to suit him. I love how he's going for what he calls the "on-deck": wearing the helmet over the baseball cap. Gotta give him credit for respecting the mandatory state law of wearing a helmet while on a bike.

At the Speed of Life...

It's been quite a while since our last blog but that's what being busy gets you. A number of things have happened since then and here's just a few:

• Feb. 7- Ally loses her first tooth before the age of 5. Shouldn't be a surprise since she got her first teeth at 14 weeks. 3 weeks later she loses another. She then loses #3 in April and is in the process now of losing #4.


• During Becky's week off in February, Joe took the week off and we headed to a couple places for a quick family outing. We first headed to the Jelly Belly Factory in Fairfield and Ally had a great time... eating jelly beans. We also headed off to the Monterey Bay Aquarium. Ally got to see her fish and we used the trip as a good excuse to check out Rosine's (shameless plug). The food isn't great but this place is all about the deserts. We walk in and see a display of cakes about 12" high. We were going to get a couple slices as we couldn't decide which to choose. We noticed a cake with quite a chunk cut out and asked what the size of a slice was. "You see what's missing out of that cake? That size." Needless to say, we stuck to a single slice and it was great! We'd been hearing quite a bit of this place and we're anticipating the next trip.


• March- we find out that baby #2 is another girl. We're calm as we realize that it will be cheaper this way since we saved a bit of Ally's things. Prior to finding out we asked Ally if she wanted a baby brother or sister. "I want a baby sister. We already have Coach (the dog) so I already have a brother." Precious. It's a good thing Coach's training class graduation diploma lists his name as Coach Pereira. I'm not sure we're allowed to have a baby boy to carry the name otherwise thanks to Ally's selection process.


• April- we got the "Avatar" Blu-Ray... awesome!


• May- Ally turned 5. We ended up getting a much bigger cake for her than we thought so we had a couple people over to help us eat it. We asked for no gifts but of course no one ever listens to me. Ally was opening her gifts and when she got to Grammy's, everyone asked "what is it?" Ally nonchalantly grabbed the bag and before loooking in said, "Clothes, of course." Sure enough, it was clothes. She got the bike she's been wanting and then asked what kind of bike she was gonna get when she turned 6. And we decided to have another girl?

That's been the major events over the past couple of months. Too many little things in between but little time to sit and blog regularly. Maybe one day when we have nothing better to do. At least tomorrow is Memorial Day and we both get to enjoy a day off. Much needed.

Making Connections

Who says that kids have short attention spans and don't pay attention? Ally dropped a couple things on us today that really left me speechless. Kinda hard to do really. For those who are not familiar with it, there's a song out by Jay-Z called "Empire State of Mind" that features Alicia Keys. Part of what Alicia sings goes "New York/ Concrete jungle where dreams are made of/ There's nothing you can't do." That song's been stuck in my head so I happened to be singing that part a couple times here and there. Ally heard that last part and cut me off. "Remember in Princess and the Frog when Tiana asked Naveen if he knew how to cut mushrooms and he said 'I can do anything?' That's like the song." We watched that movie back on Christmas Eve and never once until today has she mentioned that scene. How does she do that? Later on tonight we were reading about someone from the Book of Mormon named Moroni and we showed her a picture of him. He was wearing a helmet with a feather sticking up from it. Of course that caught her eye. She then drops with "Hey, he has a hat like that guy in the song who was riding on a pony." Of course, she was referring to Yankee Doodle Dandy. How does she do that? We still have to help her connect the dots in those kids' puzzle books and yet she can connect something like that? Next thing you know she'll be connecting the Raiders to a Super Bowl in the near future.

Maybe We Should Eat In

Over the years we've had a certainphrase regarding our dinner choices. Every Sunday we head to Becky's folks for dinner, Monday-Thursday we would eat at home, and Friday-Saturday we would head out to dinner. With a kid and a mortgage, we've tried to cut the eating out to just Saturdays. During the week we would ask "What's for dinner?," and on the weekend it would be "Where's for dinner?" Apparently the where's part is getting out of control. One place that we normally go to is Chili's. It's local, fast, reasonab le prices, good food... nothing to really complain about. So we were there last night and Ally ordered her normal thing: chicken platter with a side of mandarin oranges. Most kids grow up on french fries, she's grown out of them. She's never been normal, what can I say. She loves oranges and we always end up asking f or an extra side of them for her. Need proof that we've probably eaten out way too often with her? Once she finished her first side, she turned to Becky and said, "Mom, when the girl comes back and asks 'how was our dinner?' and we say 'fine,' can you ask her for her some more oranges?" I can only imagine how much her kindergarten teacher is going to love this structured little bossy one.

Who Said They Grow Up Too Fast?

We knew we were in for a bit of trouble when Ally started developing very quickly in various ways. One thing that came quickly were her first teeth at 14 weeks. It's been a while since we've read her old newsletters but I'm pretty sure she had all of her teeth before she was 2. Now the real fun begins. Last Sunday in church she asked for a snack and had her mouth wide open. Becky looked over and noticed something unusual. As she looked closer, she realized that there was a newtooth coming in. One of her bottom teeth is wiggling and a new tooth is coming in behind it. Does this have to happen this soon? I was hoping if anything that it would be her 2 front top teeth so we wouldn't get her kindergarten picture next year with a hole in her mouth. We worked so hard to try and be clever about Santa Claus for Christmas and now we gotta figure something out about this whole Tooth Fairy business. The Rock may accept a load of cash and dress up in a tutu and wings but you won't catch me doing ballet.