Papa's Days

Last month Papa had 2 special days... Father's Day and his 40th Birthday! The girls and I got together over snack one day to discuss gift ideas. As you can see they took it very seriously.
"How about a picture for Papa's office? I'll hold Ofelia!" Guess who's idea that was.

We went with a picture and a new, customized Rage Against the Machine shirt. We're trying to teach Sofi to say "cheese" when it's picture time (note the yelling below). This turns into everybody yelling random words. The routine is now, "Say queso! Frijoles! Dylan!" Yes, Dylan made it into the line up. Sofi threw that one in one day and we just kept using it.

Here's Papa sporting the new shirt with Ofelia.

Ofelia was getting a little air time. Big sister Sofi joins the fun.

I know you guys aren't really reading the blog to watch Mike and I get old, so I thought I'd throw in some cute bath photo's to keep you interested.

Ok, back to the old guy. This is a shot of Mike on his birthday (notice the shirt?) posing with some chick we don't know.

We went with Matt (Sofi took this pic!) and Rosie to Kona to get some cheap but good happy hour food in honor of the 40 year old.

Rosie holding a sleeping Ofelia.

Hey look a pic of me and Sofi! Thanks Matt!

Mike trying to lean in on Rosie.

Sofi supervising the candle blowing technique.

Another year older, Papa poses with his chicas.

The Big-uh-dee Big-uh-dee 'O'*

Just some more recent pics of Ofelia. I think she's out to prove that she's not always happy.
Even with big sister Sofi shushing her, she still doesn't want to pose for another pic where Sofi is holding her (Sofi's request of course).

I love this picture. Ofelia seems to be calming down, and Sofi is so concerned.

Happy again. We call those teething biscuits "pooh cookies" because of what they look like after a kid has sucked on them for a while. What a great mess they make!

Happily chewing on a hot wheels car. Yes, I know the little wheels are probably a choking hazard.

We were trying to get a comparison shot of the girls before bath time. I think they are just as wide as each other and Sofi has Ofelia in height by about a head -- a big Medina head, that is.

That quickly turned into a mini cage match without the cage. Ofelia seems to use her size to her advantage in these matches. She also likes to pull hair... Sofi's weekness.

And the ref stops the fight before tears start to fall. Winner by technical knock out: The Big-uh-dee Big-uh-dee 'O'!!! Don't tell Sofi.

She's not always a little brute. Here she is after her first hair cut. Yup. We had to trim up the do already. Check out the cute little side pony that only Ofelia could pull off.

*Big-uh-dee was spelled this way to help those of you with pronunciation issues. I don't want you guys to screw up one of my nicknames too.

-O-fell-ee-uh

Happy Birthday Sofi!

This year for Sofi's birthday we decided to have some of her older friends get together for a Build-a-Bear trip and some dinner. Sofi still doesn't get what her birthday is or why people kept singing to her, but I thinkg she had a good time.

She saw Laura (coffee buddy/swim coach) and got very excited. She was even more excited to see the bag Laura handed her.
Gumballs!!! Yes!!!

We went into Build-a-Bear to choose a bear. Sofi and Papa looked carefully at all the animal choices and Sofi chose a bright green frog. Papa chose a black bear for Ofelia (hey, Sofi will probably get a gift on Ofelia's b-day too). All was going well until the stuffing machine started. About 2 seconds after this pic was taken, Sofi was crying her little eyes out in my arms. The machine is quite a bit louder than a vaccuum, and Sofi hates the vaccuum.Tia Rosie (godmother/future employer) helped Sofi forget about the loud sounds by helping her to give her new friend a bath.

Ofelia was excited about her bear, but wondered why Sofi was getting all the attention.

Papa helps Sofi with the birth certificate... it's pretty much blank because there were "way too many damn things to fill out" according to Mike. You can also see the underwear and top Sofi picked out for the frog. Sofi really chose the clothes. It was pretty funny watching her look at all the clothes and think about what would look best on her new pal.

Extremely proud and excited about her new friend, Sofi carried 'Reebet' all the way to California Pizza Kitchen.

Laura, her soon to be hubby Mark, and former coffee buddy (she switched jobs), Elizabeth sit across from the birthday girl.

Mama and Rosie help Sofi look at her new tats.

Doug (Elizabeth's soon to be hubby) thinks Ofelia might be hungry. She did have a cute dress on, but our little party girl took Doug's water and soaked herself.

I know her buddies weren't around, but Sofi enjoyed having her older friends there and paying so much attention to her.

Two years... where does the time go?

Tulum

How hot was it in Tulum? Just ask Pooh (Ofelia's chupon holder). I know this pic is fuzzy, but you can see that his shirt melted.
As far as we could tell Tulum was beautiful. It obviously had a lot of history to it.

But you try pushing 2 kids around in a double stroller in heat that melts plastic on a tour that takes you up and down stairs. We just made up what we thought happened here.

For example, this is the temple from that movie "Apocolypto" where they sacrificed people and then rolled their headless bodies down the stairs. Yes, mom, I'm kidding.

The kiddos didn't complain though. Ofelia was happy to pose with mom for a picture. I'm learning to hold the camera out to take pics of me and the girls cuz no one else (mike) thinks to.

Sofi was fully entertained when she figured out what iguanas were.

Sometimes she seemed to get a little too close.

Oh wait, this is too close! If I had known the guy was going to plop this giant iguana on my shoulder I would have had Mike pose in the picture. No wonder he grabbed the camera so quickly.

Sofi won't touch puppies, but give her an iguana and she's super happy!?

Back to the Room!!!

Even though we had a rocky start to our vacation, things ended up going pretty well. Sofi now cries and complains that we should go "back to the room" when she doesn't want to go home. Of course we had to find some swimming pool alternatives for a couple days.



Here's Sofi's favorite shopping center, La Isla. It had fountains where the water seemed to jump from one place to another. They also had these giant, clear beach ball looking things in the water that kids could get into and try to walk/move around like gerbles. Sofi called them the "bubbles" and we had to see them every time we went. Yes, we went a lot -- can't you see the Starbucks in the picture?!



Ofelia could care less where we went as long as she got to nap.

One of Sofi's favorite places was the jacuzzi bar. Does my kid have taste or what? Ok, she really just liked to play in the little shower that was there to hose off sandy feet. Whatever makes a girl happy, right?

Here's a shot of Papa helping Ofelia to "rub the sexy in"-- and there's a lot of it!

Eventually we made it back to the pools. Look, Sofi is even smiling!

Mama took Ofelia for a swim or two.

All of Mike's chicas hanging out by the pool.

What not to do on a beach vacation

I take full responsibility. As summer rolls in and all you parents out there prepare to take your little ones to the beach and the pool, please take note of what you should not do.


There we were, beautiful beach, four pools, a mellow down for whatever 6 1/2 month old, a toddler who couldn't wait to get into the water... what could go wrong?
I took Sofi into the toddler pool and she couldn't have been happier. She was splashing in the 2 foot deep pool, laughing, walking next to me as I held her hand. Then I pointed to show her the ocean. Unfortunatly, I pointed with the hand that was holding Sofi's hand. In the second or two that it took for me to point to the ocean, Sofi decided to dive onto her tummy and swim like she does in the tub. She sank. She wanted nothing to do with the water. We were there for a week.

Here she is crying at the beach.

Luckily, Ofelia was still happy. One out of two isn't bad, right?

This was Sofi's preffered pool view.

She seemed to be sort of happy when I wasn't dropping her in the water (that's how mike puts it).

Another shot of my carefree child hanging out by the pool.

Things ended up going pretty well. More pics/stories to come.