Boricua en la Lima

Haven't written in forever, just before the holidays things were absolutely crazy at work with the relaunch of the web site I'm responsible, then we went on vacation for almost 3 weeks. What a wonderful time it was. Warm weather, family, and good food. I've decided that's all you need in life. Of course that conflicts with having to work, and that's the struggle I go through every New Year, when my husband and I ask ourselves "what are we doing here?", "why are we not closer to family?". Every year we make an effort to make those things happen, and every year it seems to slip by without us getting there. But at least we have our immediate family and jobs that are interesting and always keep us on our toes. And this year we were a little extra lucky that we found amazingly prices tickets to go back to Peru at the end of March. So at least that brings us a little bit closer to family, if only for a few days. So for now, Happy New Year and ...

I worked on this project as part of my new job and I'm really proud of it. If you have some last minute holiday cards you need to send go to csdw.pgecards.com or llt.pgecards.com and send an environmentally friendly one! Pass along to everyone you know so that we can keep doing great stuff like this.

We got back from Disney yesterday. It was such a fun but exhausting trip! Kids melting down all the time due to lack of sleep and overexcitement. That's what life is all about! We went to Hollywood Studios on the first day, got totally rained on at Animal Kingdom on the second day, did Magic Kingdom on the third day (Thanksgiving), to be later joined by Jake, Titi Ge and Uncle Tommy for Thanksgiving Dinner. Then on Friday (4th day) we hit Epcot with Jake, and finally on Saturday we went back to Magic Kingdom with everyone to be topped off by dinner at the Cinderella Castle for the grand finale. The kids were exhausted yesterday, Sebastian slept like 14 hours and I couldn't move after 8 pm. Poor Abuela Patty was in bed a good 2 days and not able to go to the parks with us. Everyone is coughing like crazy, and we're home all alone for a few more days until motorcycle Grandpa comes to visit on Thursday.

As some of you know I've had thermal reconditioning done on my hair about 2-3 times in the last couple of years. I really loved the results, I've basically never had straight hair and it was great to wash it and go, literally, and have super straight hair. One day I woke up though and looked at myself in the mirror and I said, that's it, this is not me. I like it but I want my curly hair back. And that's when the very painful process started -- probably since last December. See there is no way to UNDO thermal reconditioning unless you actually grow your hair back out. I asked, can I perm it? NO. Can I get it out? NO. I asked and asked and asked and the only two answers were -- you can either blow dry your hair as the curls grow in so that it's ALL straight, or you can actually blow dry the hair, then curl it with a curling iron, so that it's all CURLY. None of those were viable options for a time-starved, sleep-deprived mother of two. So I did the "mat...

Gabi woke up this morning over the moon excited that it was her birthday. But something funny kept happening. She kept saying to everyone she was the birthday girl, and that she was GONNA be four, but somehow in her quirky four-year old logic, she wasn't four quite yet. I chuckled most of the morning at her logic "hole" but didn't think anything of it. At 3 pm, while I was in a meeting, Jose picked up some donut holes and took them to day care so that the kids could sing happy birthday. (I had originally stayed away from the idea, only because I knew she'd want to take "gooly bags" to all her friends and since the birthday party I'm throwing for her on Sunday is setting me back quite a bit, I decided we wouldn't do anything for her at day care. But when I woke up this morning I felt kinda bad and asked Jose to pick up something simple like donuts and take them to day care at 3 pm just so that they could sing for her, even without "gooly...

Gabi has been taking ballet classes for about 7 weeks now and I think she's making some progress. She's not the best in her class, but she's not the worst either. :) And I think she's got some nice lines so I hope she continues to enjoy it. The teacher is very strict, but I think she's good. I think we'll have to take off during the holidays with all the traveling we do, but hopefully we can pick it back up in the Spring. They're already talking about recitals which is so cute! Now I have to win the battle with Jose about ballet over soccer. I know, I just went there.

People are going to think we've turned into some kind of amusement park freaks but last week we actually had free tickets from work to go to Kings Island and we had enough tickets to go both Saturday and Sunday, and this weekend I was curious about Falloween at Coney Island and I was very pleasantly surprised! Especially since we were almost able to pull off a whole round of mini golf even with the kids in tow. Gabi continues to explore thrill rides (well, for a 4 year old) with mixed results. :) And if it was up to Sebas I think he would actually ride every single ride, but he's still too small to go on most of the rides.

I'm not a huge Beyonce fan but I guess I am pretty big sob queen so I was really moved to see this. Beyonce pulled a girl out of the audience in Australia this last weekend to sing Halo to her. She is suffering form Leukemia. Very moving.

I'm not Oprah's biggest fan, but I'm definitely a fan of Black Eyed Peas and an even bigger fan of dance (especially when it's a gazillion people dancing at the same time) and this is just freaking amazing. What I would have given to be in that crowd!

This is our first time ever joining our neighborhood yearly picnic (which they've been having for more than 20 years to raise money for the park maintenance). Sebas decided, in classic fearless style, to start going down the slide all by himself during the picnic. At least there were plenty of people around to catch him in case he fell! He was also simultaneously disciplining the other kids in the park for playing with their ball in the swing set.

I had a Girls Night Weekend in Miami last weekend, which coincided with my 35th bday (that's another case of "that's a subject for a separate blog post!). When I got home I thought the house was going to be utter chaos but actually it wasn't that bad at all. What was bad was the fact that Sebas was covered in what seemed like mosquito bites from head to toe. Jose had called me when I was at the airport to tell me and my first instinct was to think an infectious skin thing (Rosalea maybe?) that had been going around day care the previous week. Strangely, though, as soon as I came home I started itching as well. While on the plane Jose took him to the ER where they told him they thought it was flea bites. But I guess seeking the quintessential second opinion the next day we went to his regular doctor who said hives. So I forgot about the fleas but made a mental note to ask the vet on Friday since Borges was due for his yearly check-up. Of course I completely forgo...

Daytime Burglar Targets Hyde Park, Mt. Lookout - Cincinnati breaking news, weather radar, traffic from 9News | Channel 9 WCPO.com Posted using ShareThis

I've had many an argument this week about whether the husbands should go play golf every weekend and leave us "golf widows" alone with the kids for 4-5 hours every weekend. This week I got some horrible virus that's going around which had all the symptoms of the swine flu. I went to the ER last Sunday because I was scared that whatever it was the kids would get. Turns out thankfully it was only a virus, but the bad news was that Gabi then got it Sunday night so I had to stay with her in the house Monday and Tuesday. And then Sebas got it Tuesday night so I had to stay home with him Wednesday. Now normally I don't even know how stay at home moms can do it, and this was no exception! But trying to be a stay at home mom, while feeling like crap, while having to work at night to try to catch up with the day (paying!) job, that is just as overwhelming as things get. So when Wednesday afternoon Jose gets a call from a buddy who invites him to yet another golf outin...

What the F**K is Social Media: One Year Later View more documents from Marta Kagan .

I'm looking forward to a day in which we only have two things on the to do list because this is all we had to do yesterday! - Go to Target because Gabi HAD to have a butterfly costume for the butterfly show - Breakfast at Sugar and Spice (in butterfly costume of course) - Kroger - Lunch at Indigo with my friend Maia - Show up at Butterfly Show to realize the exhibit is already over, which was followed by much tantruming (in butterfly costume of course) - Unsuccesful napping attempt - Haircut for Gabi - Running - Web cam with fam - Night at Bootsy's in order to take advantage of free babysitting. Feeling like losers for going to sleep at the same time we do every night (except for feeling very fat and a little drunk). - Waking up this morning to Gabi NEEDING to put on her butterfly costume right away. ;)

That's me breathing a huge sigh of relief after baby's surgery went off without a hitch. I had problems sleeping last night, first because of the pre-night jitters (I felt like the day before my wedding or the day before my C-sections) and secondly because my cleaning lady actually rearranged all the furniture in our bedroom (how she had the strength to do so I do not know) and that just made me feel all weird. It's not a bad new set up, it just felt odd. For those of you who don't know he was getting surgery for an undescended testicle. I'm a little embarrassed to put that on Facebook but I figure if you're here you care enough and I can let you know. :) Oftentimes they do find a hernia though, and he had a pretty big one, so they fixed that as well. That made the surgery last 100 minutes though so Jose was freaking out a bit because he really thought it would be shorter. When they gave him the anesthesia that was probably the hardest two minutes of my lif...