Boricua en la Lima

I don't have any pictures because it was too wet for me to attempt being a photographer, but I definitely have stories!!! I signed up for the Relay leg last year as part of a group wide effort at work. I trained to build up to the miles mostly out of not wanting to let my team down -- since I had signed up with a team of females who are pretty athletic and in shape. I really enjoyed the camaraderie and as an added bonus I lost the majority of baby weight I'd been struggling with after two babies. So at the end of the experience last year I decided the next goal would be to sign up for the Half Pig this year, especially because after training so hard for the relay I hadn't kept up with running and the baby weight had caught up with me again. Someone convinced me to join the Feet Fleet running group which was originally a hassle because of the time commitment and distance from home, but it turned out to make all the difference in the world. I learned things ...

I’m sitting on the airplane on the way back to Cincinnati after an all girls weekend in NYC with my sister. We signed up for the MORE Magazine Women’s Half Marathon in Central Park – I’d been training since February but with the move to Geneva and how complicated things get with the kids I never thought I’d make it. I paid for registration a long time ago since it seems to get sold out pretty quickly and figured I’d just bail if things didn’t work out. I saw my sister a couple of weeks ago as they stayed with the kids when Jose and I went house hunting to Geneva and she finally convinced me to travel so I bought a cheap ticket soon afterwards. Then we decided we should go see In The Heights. I love anything Broadway, anything musical and we figured we needed something relaxed the day before the race. I chuckle as I remember Mara, the queen of hyperbole, visiting me at my sister’s house in Connecticut 2 years ago when Sebastian had just been born RAVING about In The Heights. We ha...

I hadn't really come up with anything "blog worthy" until I read the notes from my house hunting experience during the last couple of days....I beg you to please guess what my priorities are based on this posting. Day 1: 1) Great layout, 4 bedrooms, bathrooms OK, zero closet space. Great kitchen. Need armoires. 2 bathrooms only. Rocks in common area, stairs (hard for strollers). Art store/courses right next door. Big park, close to late. 15 min. walk to school. 2) Not as good set up but 4 bedrooms, smaller bedrooms, nice bathrooms, newer (3 1/2), weird washer/dryer, weird set up but huge dining room/living room. Much more storage. Common areas seem a bit easier to get around. Weird parking/storage/laundry room in basement. Pretty good kitchen although not as comfortable. Pediatrician next door. Park next door. 3) NO 4) Gym, beauty salon. Great kitchen + baths but living room/dining room uncomfortable. 4 bedrooms, OK closet space. 5) NO (beauty salon) 6) NEW!!!! 7) NO...

So last night I'm up for hours and hours reading more of The Help . I just can't put it down. It's 11 pm it's way past my bedtime but I want to keep reading and finish this book it's so good. Every bend on the road leads me somewhere unexpected. But I definitely wasn't expecting the reaction I had to a particular page of the book...It hurts so much just to think about it but here goes... There's a part in the book where Skeeter's mom is telling her about an old nanny they had called Constantine who basically raised Skeeter but unexpectedly left 2 years before and Skeeter doesn't know what happened to her. As the mom reveals all the details of what happens to her she says to her daughter: "They say its like true love, good help. You only get one in a lifetime". And all of a sudden I find myself sobbing, sobbing uncontrollably, like I couldn't stop the tears from coming, never in a million years could I stop crying. I have to put t...

I should really be sleeping right now because Jose is off to Geneva for the whole week so I should be saving up all my energy for dealing with the munchkins for 5 more days all by myself (have I ever said how much I appreciate single moms after having kids?) but I can't stop my mind from thinking I'm in the middle of reading "The Help" and I thought I would be so "been there done that" with another book about civil rights (hasn't it all been written already) but for some reason this book is really getting to me -- it's making me angry, sad and happy all at once. Angry about how cruel human beings can be (not necessarily borne from evil but maybe just sheer ignorance) but it's also showing me that deep down this is a story about humanity and love and relationships just like every other wonderful story that has ever been written and I think that's what has me all tied up in knots. It's about souls in need reaching out to other souls in ne...

This is another effort I've been involved with at work which I'm really proud of. When the Mom stands up from the stands I ALWAYS get teary eyed, no matter how many times I watch it. As a mom I find it so insightful.

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...