Posting gap

Aunt April with Joel. He actually fell asleep a few minutes after this was taken.

I'm really trying to get better about posting, but the past two weekends and in between have been crazy.

We had our six year anniversary on the 8th. We went out for a nice long dinner at Lily's Bistro on Magnolia. GREAT food and reasonable prices. It had a very European sidewalk cafe feel about it, Jav and I both agreed. Then Mother's Day was the 9th. Jav and Gabriel went to Mass with Jav's Mom, while I staged a slight protest about having to get up early and rush around on Mother's Day and stayed home with Joel. In fact, I was moving so slowly that I made us late for Esperanza's for lunch and we had to wait in a ginormous line. I felt pretty bad. But it was really fun once we got seated, and they always have great food.

Then during the week Gabriel got sick again. It was kind of a relapse from his earlier congestion and cough, but the cough was much worse this time. He couldn't sleep, and spent a night with Mommy again. He finally was able to settle down and stop coughing around 3 or so. We were both wrecks the next day! We decided to take him to the doctor again, and ended up seeing a doctor in our group that had once seen my brother as a baby! Dr. Scroggie has to be getting close to retiring, but he's still going strong and is SOOOOO wonderful with Gabriel when we've had to go to him. And God bless him, he gave us an antibiotic this time. I'm not thrilled about how often Gabriel is having to take them, but he's been sick pretty steadily for over two months now, and I think he needed some help to kick this.

We had a Baptism class for Joel Thursday night, which I think is a crazy time to have a class for people with infants. We took separate cars in case Joel started to have a meltdown. 7-9 is supposed to be bath and bedtime, not "here's a roomful of strangers and please don't make a fuss" time. I thought there might be a quiet corner where I could feed him during the class if needed, but they had 30 people show up, the largest turnout they'd ever had! So I missed part of the video they show while in the bathroom feeding him, and he still wanted his cereal, so I took him home after the tour of the font. It's not like we haven't done this before, people! We learned that our new priest favors the total immersion approach, where the baby goes in back first and doesn't get his face wet, but the rest of him gets doused. At first this seemed to be going overboard to me, but then we figured that he will probably cry either way, so why not? This is horrible to say, but Jav thinks people like the spectacle of the baby that freaks out as opposed to one who stays quiet during the whole ceremony (kind of like how people go to a Nascar race just to see the wrecks). It wakes everybody up.

I spent most of the week and all day Saturday cleaning my house, inside and out. My side of the family came for lunch yesterday, and it was the first time we've had them over since Gabriel's birthday last September. So it was the first time my house has been that clean since then, too! It was a good dry run for my Book Club meeting next month. I had a sudden burst of energy to clean after I took Bones to the vet Thursday morning. He had been acting like his back around his tail was hurt or something, and his hair had gotten a bit thinner there. Well, the vet found two fleas crawling on him! NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!! I kicked into panic whirlwind vacuuming and laundry mode, with a staging area for every piece of bedding that he had come in contact with for the past week. It took me two days just to wash everything. So far I think we've avoided disaster, only because Bones is so sensitive and completely freaked out as a warning. And I love having the house this clean. I feel like I deserve a week off from cleaning now.

We had a great day yesterday. It was supposed to rain, but luckily had cleared off by the time everybody arrived. We had baked spaghetti, garlic bread and a big salad. And for some reason I was craving Italian Cream Cake for dessert. Simple, but delicious. We had to get the two leaves out for our dining room table for the first time since we bought it. We are a larger family unit now with my uncle living in town, and three out of four cousins sitting at the table now. Once Joel gets old enough for a regular chair we'll have to buy an extra, since we are eleven total. How wonderful is that? I think when we bought the table we never thought that we'd fill it up, let alone need an extra space. We have some major things going on with Cade right now that I don't want to post about yet, and it was so nice to hug both he and Macy, even though I don't get to see them much when we host everybody. I love my niece and nephew soooooooo much!!! And Gabriel set up a lookout post in front of the picture window around 11:00 and couldn't be convinced to come down until they showed up.

Joel is maturing so fast. He is sitting in a high chair now during meals and loves being up off the floor level. He little hands are grabbing at everything, and he's doing this funny lunge for things when he really has to concentrate. The interaction between the brothers is getting so cute. It's almost like Joel finally realized that this bigger whirl of energy that comes at his face all the time is his brother, and now looks forward to seeing him.

I figured out one of the wonderful things about having a baby around as opposed to an older child is the way they look at their mother with just so much love. From morning until night, his little face just lights up every single time he sees me. It's something that Gabriel doesn't do as much now, and I hadn't realized I missed it.

Ok, I am caught up on all of our happenings and ready to move on to other topics.