my latest obsession

children's books!!!! my goodness, it is sooo hard not to go crazy at the bookstore. and even though antonio is only 5 months old, i'm already starting to find favorites. the current frontrunner: tomie depaola. i remember the story of strega nona from when i was a kid and when i looked him up i found several other titles, including a mexican cinderella story. i love his illustrations in particular. fortunately, andres has been able to stay a step ahead of my obsession and yesterday we went to the library as a family where i ended up getting tons of books to read to antonio over the next few weeks. i'm looking forward to each and every tale and picture. what an adventure!!

typo

so when i found out i was pregnant i joined babycenter.com and found a group of women online that were also due with their first child the first 2 weeks of june. over the past year we've become good friends and i've been fortunate enough to meet a few in person. one of them's name is christi. i was posting a comment to her the other day about another group of us getting together again. however, i made a typo in my post. the result: i asked our Lord and savior if he wanted to go to ikea.

the best medicine

i am convinced that if i could bottle antonio's laughter and sell it, there would be a lot less disease in this world. it is impossible to feel anything but joy when you hear that sound.

sense of touch

sometimes i co-sleep with antonio. he just falls asleep in my arms, both of us on our sides, facing each other. as he falls asleep, he reaches out his little hand and strokes my face. it's like he's learning my face with his hands, to feel his soft little hand moving over my lips, or squeezing my nose, or brushing my cheek. it is just the most wonderful touch in the world!!

old saying

whoever started the saying about not crying over spilled milk had not just spent 15 minutes using a breast pump to get said milk.

after waiting at the doctor's office for an hour and a half

you realize how cold 68 degrees really is. you hope that your son's cries during his shots aren't too bad because, for the first time, you forgot to wear nursing pads. you panic that you're doing something wrong because your son weighs 13 pounds and the baby in the waiting room that is one week older than your son weighs 18 pounds. you learn the most horrible sound in the world is hearing your baby scream in pain from his shots. you wish someone had come to the appointment with you so that you could use the restroom. you really wish you were closer to home. you want to cry from realizing how overwhelming motherhood can be.

but then the doctor comes in and tells you to keep doing what you're doing because your son looks great, and everything seems a little better.

Bike Commute on New Frame

I finally was able to ride my new frame today. It felt really good, made the hills easier. My only problem I had was that I guess I didn't tighten down the screw for the saddle enough, because for the first half of the ride, I was thinking how it was really weird, but it felt like the frame was pushing me backwards off of the seat. And I finally got to a point in the road where I could pull over to not have cars zipping right by me, and low and behold, my saddle was almost pointing up. So I had to loosen it, and then fix it, and then tighten it down. The second half of the ride felt much better, but due to my roadside tune-up of the saddle, I almost missed my bus, but was able to grab the very last seat before it left for midtown Atlanta.
-Andres