Getting ready for our Baby!

So this is the only belly shot of me that has ever been taken. We never even got one when I was pregnant with Max. So, this was a couple weeks ago. I went to the doctor last week and it was a little frustrating. I have been feeling so good lately, barely any contractions, more energy, everything has been awesome and I haven't really been worried about this baby making an unexpected appearance any time soon, but my doctor is still worried, and he gave a me a list of all these things Im not supposed to do anymore. Lame lame. Since then ironically the contractions have gotten crazy go nuts, so I guess he was right although even doing nothing doesn't really seem to help. My mom and Natalie totally had lots of contractions like this too and their babies were born in the normal range (except Maddie and Sophie of course, but they were twins) SO Personally, I think Max was probably just a fluke and all my other babies will probably be late, despite all the contractions. I suppose only time will tell.
My cute visiting teachee has been letting me watch her brand new baby a couple times a week while she tries to finish her degree (bless her) and it has been the most awesome thing in the whole world. I highly recommend babysitting a newborn to anyone who is expecting another baby, especially if you already have kids. Max has been able to get used to babies kind of gradually. In the beginning he was so confused and interested and frustrated with her, that he just seemed nuts every time she came, and then after a couple hours she was able to go home with her Mommy and we could try again in a few days. He is getting so much better every time now. He still loves her, but he's better able to give her a little space. He doesn't expect he'll be able to hold her anymore and scream when I wont let him and he totally gets that he can sit on my lap and she can be on my lap and thats okay. No need to push her off. It has also been really nice for me to adjust my expectations and remember what it is like to take care of a newborn (a little harder than I was remembering). Now when she comes it is just so fun, we don't want her to go home. I think it makes us all excited for our new little guy to come and get to stay at our house.

Max also thinks it is so funny to copy everything she does. I think its funny when he does it too actually. A 2 year old's impersonation of a Baby, Awesome.

The garbage boy!

Little Max has become our dear little garbage boy. He has become so excited about the garbage can that I haven't had to throw anything away in 2 weeks. I just hand whatever needs disposing of to little Max and watch him waddle over to the garbage and toss it in. Its amazing! Especially dirty diapers. He just rolls over after a changing, picks up the stinky one and takes care of it. He also throws tissues in the toilet (everything in its place).

Actually Max has been my little helper in general lately. They taught him the cleanup song in nursery (bless them) and so now several times a day Max will start his tuneless version of clean-up, cleanup and start putting toys away and picking up. This is an excellent development! The funniest thing is the way he tries to help with some of the more deep cleaning. Lately, every time I go in the bathroom, I find the toilet brush sitting in the toilet bowl, and whenever I pull out the vacuum, Max gets his car and follows me around, pushing the car like a vacuum, he makes sure to cover every inch of ground right behind me (as we trip over eachother many times).

The other day, I was enjoying his new helpfullness, and I may have gotten a little carried away. The house was pretty messy, and I just kept telling him, "throw this away" put that in the basket" until finally he sat down on the ground and looks at the trash I was asking him to toss and said emphatically, "No Way!" Then he let out a little groan and rolled his eyes and pulled himself up and threw it away anyway. I died laughing!

Learning Spanish

So Javier always talks to Max in Spanish because we are hoping that he will grow up to be bilingual and be able to talk to his grandparents and stuff. In some ways its slow going, he knows so many more words in English than in Spanish, but we always feel so excited when he learns new words in Spanish. SO far he can say: Agua, Hola, Chao, Azul, Uno, Dos, And Tres, Nariz, Ojo, ñaño, Gracias, Nieve and Tas tas. Here is a video of him playing peekaboo with Javier and saying Hola and Chao:

A bit of a journal entry

So, we spent a long day at the doctor's office yesterday then Max and I ran to Costco because we didn't have an ounce of milk , or a single wipe to our names and we got home at around 7:00 at which point we were all so hungry and tired that I decided to make macaroni and cheese for dinner. Well, just as I Was draining the noodles, Max got into the silverware and in an effort to stop him from throwing it all around the kitchen, I accidentally let go of the lid to the pot, thus pouring a pot-full of noodles right down the drain. Well I had one of those pregnant moments which I seem to have so often where I almost felt like that pot of noodles was just the end of the whole world and I had to sit down on the ground and bury my face in my hands and take deep breaths in an effort not to scream or cry. But then, cute little Max who can always be counted on to relieve the stress in these moments sat right down next to me on the floor and covered his cute little face with his sweet little hands. Well that made everything seem funny again, so I made another pot of noodles and we were fine after all. I'm lucky to have such a sweet little boy. He is a great helper to his mommy. Sweet little funny, what would I do without you?

Javier's illness

First of all Javier has been sick again, really sick, again. So sick that I have been afraid to sleep at night because he was wheezing so badly, and I was afraid he'd die in the night. I might be a little paranoid, but I really was so worried. I don't know if any of you know this but Javier has had a lot of trouble with his lungs since October. He has had some really scary sicknesses, and at the health center we kept seeing different doctors who all thought he had something different. One said he had pneomonitis, then the next time he got sick the doctor said it was pneomomia, then a few weeks later when he was sick again the doctor he saw said the X-rays looked like he had never had either of those things, just Bronchitis. And since then he has been sick off and on ever since, and he's had a lot of crazy asthma attacks, and we have been really frustrated trying to figure out why he has been so ill all of the sudden. We finally made an appointment with a pulmonary specialist a few weeks ago who gave him a steroid inhaler, but he has been sick more often since then.

This time he was sick since Thursday. He was better Friday so we thought it was just his normal day long illness, but then he got really sick again Saturday. We alwasy seem to get deathly ill on the weekends, why is that? SO then we had to wait until Yesterday and luckily Javier was able to get in to see the lung specialist he saw a few weeks ago. At first she didn't seem too concerned, but then he had an asthma attack in the office and that was actually really lucky. Everyone rushed him to a chair and got him some oxygen and put him on a nebulizer. He's been having these attacks all the time so I felt pretty bad when the doctor told me that we should take him to the hospital when that happens. I guess we're lucky that he's alive now and didn't have any major problems during the many times he's had that happen before. So they did an X-ray again and it turns out that he has Pneumonia. The doctor said that she thought that he had probably never really gotten over it the first time he got sick and that is probably what has been ailing him ever since. So she gave him lots and lots of crazy medication but we are both thrilled that there may be an end in sight for this stressful situation and we're hopeful that he can start getting better now. The night before we went to the doctor we said a prayer that he would be alright and that the Lord would heal him. All the sudden I felt so peaceful when I had been so scared just a moment before and I knew that it would ll turn out just fine. I am so grateful to the Lord for watching over us and helping Javier to get well. I have come to appreciate my sweet husband so much through this experience because I have been so worried that I could lose him. He is such a great husband and I love him with all my heart.

Time for a random picture upload!

Dear friends, sweet sisters, thanks for all the support and good advice and sweet offers to help. Of course all your comments were brilliant and you gave me a lot of good ideas for getting started now. I will do it. We got some really good news yesterday which relieved a ton of that stress. We found out that Dell is going to send us some wonderful moving company to pack and load and move and unload all of our stuff for free. That almost seems too easy. So with just that big element gone, and if I try to do as much as I can with the house starting now, I think we'll get through May alright. Maybe its because I gave myself another progesterone shot yesterday, but today it seems so so much more possible and hopeful.

So Im going to upload some random pictures that Ive taken recently. I never did post any pictures from Christmas because this is the only one I have:

We lost our camera the first day we got to Boise and found it again (luckily) just as we were packing up to go home. This picture pretty much says it all though. Max was in dog dog heaven for the whole 2 weeks with my parents 2 dogs and my brother and sisters dogs around occasionally. In case you can't tell, he is kissing the puppy in this picture. Don't mind the puzzled look on his face but my mom gave Max these darling big boy jamies. Aren't they cute?

The other night we were having FHE and Javier was playing the song for us and Max was not content to sit by mama and sing, he climbed right up by Daddy on the bench and they played a little duet. So cute! Max is in major copy cat stage right now, he wants to do EVERY tinything he sees us do. Its pretty fun.

The other day we went up to visit my grandparents. Isn't this a sweet picture of Max curled up with my grandpa. Max loves him! Whenever we go there, Max follows him around everywhere he goes and wants to show him every cool thing he finds. Im so grateful to have family to help love my little guy.

And last but certainly not least: This is the sight which greeted me one day a few weeks ago when I went to use the potty. I wonder who the culprit was...

So I know my life is good...

It is way good. I feel incredibly blessed. But I feel the need to rant a little right now, and the blog is almost the perfect place so here goes. Whenever I think about May, I can't breathe. Why you ask? Well here is a list of things that stress me out about May:

1. I am going to have another baby in May
2. We are going to have to move out of our apartment and move all of our stuff to Texas in May, plus somehow get all the stuff we have in Boise to Texas or get rid of it.
3. We have to drive most of the way across the country with a baby which will be less than a month old and a 2-year-old.
4. We are going to try to buy a house a house in May in order to get the tax credit.
5. Javier is graduating in April and starting a new job the first week in June.
6. plus doing all of that while in the early stages of recovery afetr having the baby.

So what do you think? Can I do it? I know my sister and sisterin law both had to move within a few weeks of having brand new babies and I bet many more of you have done that or something similar. How did you do it? Possibly more importantly: how do you keep from having a mental breakdown while you try to "plan" the whole thing? I would love any suggestions from everyone!!!! Thanks for all your support and excitment about the new baby, it makes it double fun when we can share it with friends!

Booger Sucker!

Thats what I called Javier last night. I said in all honestly that he was an awesome booger sucker when he did such a great job cleaning out Max's nose with a bulb surrenge. Funny how when we were kids that would have souded like a super insult, now its the highest form of flattery. Just had to pass that on...

Take a minute to guess....

We're having another wonderful little boy! We're so very excited! iTs a funny thing because I think I was almost hoping for a girl, but the second the ultrasonologist said it was a boy I felt so excited and relieved and I knew that thats going to be the very best thing for our family!! I can't wait to see our new little precious one! It was sweet in the ultrasound because he gave us three or four sweet little waves, as though to say, "Hi mom and Dad!" or more likely, "Hi Max!" The best part is that he looked perfectly healthy. I'm so glad. Also the docter put me on progesterone shots to hopefully stop all my crazy early contractions. I have to give them to myself in the hip with a 1 1/2 inch needle. Hows that for crazy? I already did the first one though, so its not too scary anymore. I hope it works. Max was 4 weeks early and the docter was just a little worried that sometimes people get earlier and earlier with their babies and my contractions started at like 14 weeks this time. I am just glad that my new docter is taking it seriously. Im sure it will all be fine.

Counting

Max has learned to count ( only in Spanish) but it is the cutest thing. He will point randomly at things and pretend to count them, saying, "dos, dos, dos, dos, tres, dos." If Im ever clever enough to get it on video, you can bet I'll post it.

Thinking about Santa...

Hey there y'all, if any of you have ever enjoyed one of the Abe and Max movies that our dear friends the Marshalls made I am directing you to thier blog again. They just made the MOST interesting post about Santa Claus that I think every parent or future parent should read. Not that every parent should agree with them, I just know that it made Javier and I think a lot and I think its something worth thinking about. Soooo here's the link: http://andrewandariel.blogspot.com/2009/12/do-we-need-santa.html
Its interesting anyway. I read all the like 28 page long comments and those are really interesting too. It appears to be a bit of a sensitive isssue as you might imagine.

What Max does when I am busy.

I dont know how he got this butter off the counter and onto the floor, but when I found him, he was eating it with a little spoon which he found who knows where. By the time I got to him, he had already eaten half the cube! Its a good thing he's a skinny child!

Max LOVES the phone!! If you can never get a hold of me it is probably because our phone is always off the hook because Max is constantly gabbering away with and imaginary Mimi on the other end. I love when he waits as if the other person was talking and then chimes in with "um (smacks his lips and pauses as though thinking)...jabawaja..." HE also likes to hold the phone between his ear and shoulder and walk around the house. He is a pretty observant little monkey.

He loves to climb up on the table and pour out salt everywhere. In this picture he is eating salad dressing.

Of course Max loves to take everything out of our cabinets. I just found 7 out of 8 of our butter knives today in a corner under the sink where they have been stashed for 2 weeks. There is a picture just like this of me when I was Max's age and the other day I was cooking dinner and there he was, sitting naked in a pot just like in that picture. How funny.

On another funny note. Max thinks burps are HILLARIOUS!! Whenever he or anyone else burps he spends the rest of the day growling trying to burp again and pushing on his tummy.

Some people Max loves very much!!!

We spent this Thanksgiving this year in Salt Lake with my grandparents. My parents and little sisters came up as well as some aunts and uncles and cousins. From almost the minute they walked in the door Max showed Mom and Dad and Maddie and Sophie how much he remembered and loves them!!

He kept grabbing my mom's hand and leading her on adventures. He also learned how to say Mimi and he got so excited every time he saw her to shout "Mimi!" I dont have any pictures of him with my Dad from this time, but he crawled up in his lap every time he could. They had a very fun walk around downtown together too! During Thanksgiving dinner Max lap-hopped. He ate all the cranberry sauce on oe plate and then moved on to the next person who would feed him theirs.

He also really enjoyed Maddie and Sophie. I love this picture with sweet Soph! He kept crawling up in their laps and snuggling with them whenever we were all sitting around talking.

Here are a couple of pictures of Max with a super distant relation cousin named Eden. She is two and they LOVED eachother. We couldn't get them to stop kissing eachother this night! She kept saying, "Oh Max!" every time he knocked down her block tower.

And of course Max adores my sweet grandma and Dadu who we get to see every week. Grandma lets him crawl up in her lap and play with her glasses, which he loves. Last Wednesday he sat on her lap and cuddled her for like a half hour. He also loves to follow Dadu around and everytime he finds something cool at their house he always likes to find Dadu to show him what he has.

I am so grateful for family to help love my baby and give him so many rich relationships!

Some recent pictures and true tales

True Tale: Max does Javier's homework (no that one isn't true, but the rest are)

True Tale: Max has randomly started loving binkies again after refusing to look at them for 9 months. NOw of course I really don't want him to get addicted agian so I try to hide them. Unfortunately he keeps finding more. I dont know where. And yes....he is sitting in my cleaning bucket.

True Tale: Max looks sooo handsome in his new church outfit that Mimi got him.

True Tale: I was so sick during the first 3 1/2 months of this pregnancy that feeding Max (let alone myslef) was an extremely taxing chore. I did my best, but my little baby became somewhat of a scavenger too. In this picture, he got this tupperware out of the cabinet went to the pantry and filled it with chips, them brought it to the couch to eat. I was amazed!
More scavenging. The bread was on the table and he was hungry so he climbed up on the table and ate it. He also ate a lot of cereal this way. He can pour it into a bowl even with some accuracy. Pretty impressive. Don't worry though, I am able to feed him consistently again. I never really let him go hungry, but there were times I just saw that he could do it himslef and just let him. As you can see those were messy times in the Bucheli apartment. It is so amazing to be able to clean withuot throwing up again! THe things you take for granted!

True tale: At our local library they have these ingenious computers where pictures flash across the screen but the keyboards are not attached, so little munchkins can play with them as much as they want without damaging the machine. Brilliant!

True Tale: Max and Ruby have had a playdate every week for 2 months and last week was the furst time he looked at her (I think she made him nervous because she is a girl, he doesn't have any trouble with his friends who are boys). They had a lot of fun pulkling oeachother's socks.

Trip to Austin

So a couple weekends ago Javier had his interview with Dell in Austin and I came with him just for fun (mostly because Javier was staying in a really nice hotel for two full nights and they were going to give him food vouchers so we could eat and stay for free). We did have a really fun time! Austin is beautiful and this time of year the weather was heaven (which probably tells me it is going to be miserable in the summer). Here are some pictures of our adventure.
Max loved flying as usual. This time he lioved escaping every time he could get his hand free and running wild through the huge crowded air ports. I used to think that all of you with more than one child were amazing, now the closer I get to 2, the more I think you must be super human!!! How in the world would I have kept Max from dying or permanently losing himself in the airport if I would have had another child to watch. Please tell me it is possible to keep two children alive at the same time. I can't imagine how.

This is the Texas state capital. The grounds were so pretty!

This is the University of Texas where my grandparents went to school. The highlight of the trip for me was seeing this place which I have heard sooooo many stories about. It is huge and beautiful.

We had such a fun time. I was glad that I got the chance to see Austin before deciding we would live there. It is such a pretty city. So you should all start making plans to visit us there next year. I would come in November since the weather was seriously unbeatable then. We would love it!

More good news!

So this must be the Bucheli good news week, because here is some more!

Javier accepted a Job!!

With Dell in Roundrock Texas which is just outside of Austin! We are so so excited about this job! He starts in June, so that wil be about a month afetr the baby is born. The best part about it is that he will have a normal work week, none of this 80 hours a week like I was so afraid he would have to do. Plus Roundrock is the nicest little city. I got to go with him to his interview last week and we both just loved it! It has a warm climate which I think will be so much better for my two little constantly sick boys, so I am thrilled about that too. We will be sad to be so far from family, but I am so glad that if we have to be far (which we do, there were no possibilities remotely close) that we can at least live in a nice city where we can live a normal life. We are thrilled. We feel so incredibly blessed! It is amazing how in spite of how bleak everything has seemed so many times, the Lord did take care of us. We knew he would, but it was hard waiting sometimes.All worth it now.

So, I'm Pregnant!

And Thrilled about it!

I didn't post about it before because I figured most everyone who reads this blog probably already knew, but all the announcing got very confused because my mom accidentally spilled the beans a few weeks before I was going to announce it and then I just started randomly telling people, so now I really don't know who knows, but if you didn't, now you do!

I'm 15 weeks along, and we are very excited. I go back and forth between being just in extasy at the thought of having a little baby again to terror at the realization that I will now be in charge and responsible for 2 little babies. But I dare say we'll survive. I am sure I will look to all of you for much advice as usual.

SO that's our exciting news!

A thought for all you wives and mothers

I heard this story a few days ago about a discouraged young stay at home mom who was feeling like her life was pretty mundane one day. She was reading her scriptures and she read the part where Jesus says we should feed the hungry, clothe the naked and administer to the sick and afflicted. Suddenly she made the connection. Thats all I do every day she thought.

I just thought that was pretty encouraging.

I thought this was a good picture because Max was naked and hungry when I took it.

Halloween!

We went up to Boise this weekend to spend Halloween with my family. Even though we were only there for about a day and a half it was definitely worth it! We had SOOO much fun! Max was Zoro for Halloween.
Maddie made him that awesome sword, which was by far his favorite part of the costume! He loved waving it around and hitting the little trick or treaters in front of him on the head with it.
Here Max is with his little cousin Addie. SHe made a darling little dalmation.

We went in a big pack with all 9 of the grandkids. That made it so much fun!Max's yopungest cousin, Christian was a darling little Mickey Mouse!

We planned on just going to a few houses because we thought Max wouldn't be that interested, but as it turned out, he LOVED trick or treating! He got so excited every time a door opened and he loved waving his little sword all around as we walked to every house. After all the other kids said thank you at each house, Max said, "A-men". We thought that was pretty funny. So Max probaly trick or tre3ated for almost an hour. It was so much fun!

Max's new favorite word is...

NO!!

Once rarely heard in the Bucheli house, it now sounds at least once in every minute (and it is always shrieked). Here are some samples of conversations which are pretty standard in our house these days. Imagine my voice as being my best energetic mommy voice.

"Max are you all done?" "NO!!" "Okay Max, would you like some more oatmeal?" "NO!!" "okay..."

"Okay Max its time to pray. Can you fold your arms?" "NO!!!" "okay..."

"MAx will you give mommy/daddy a kiss?" (you guessed it) "NO!!"

Everytime I try to pick Max up or give him a hug... "NO!!!"

"Max its time to put away the toys." "NO!!!"

The problem is I'm probably totally encouraged this insubordinate behavior because his little skreech is so cute that sometimes I can't help but just laugh and try to give him hugs because he's so funny. I'm sure that is reinforcing behavior...oops. My Dad thinks it is a good thing that Max has discovered "NO!" He says it shows he is developing some independence. That is true. However, I wonder if he will ever be as excited about YES!! ummm... probably not, but I can dream. For now I guess I will just try not to let Max see how hard I am laughing. He really is such a cute little munchkin. He is still really sweet most of the time. I didn't take him to nursery on Sunday because Im paranoid that he will get sick again and he just sat on my lap and gave me sweet hugs all through relief society. Another new (cute) favorite word is "owie" it melts my heart every time he says it (except when he shreiks it along with NO!!! when I am trying to pick him up or something which is totally not hurting him). And he has also learned about 5 animal sounds and where his eyes and nose are.

And here are some funny videos of Javier and Max playing a couple weeks ago. We thought this was funny because Max was totally copying Javier.

Javier and Max love to play soccer, using the piano bench as a goal. Max is a good little player and it is already cclear that he's a surdo (he kicks with his left foot) like Javier.