The pictures I promised

Alex has really enjoyed playing on playgrounds this summer. He has a hard time keeping up with the older kids, but laughs when he see them run by!

Alex is attempting to walk down the stairs all by himself. He would not let me help him. I did have to remind him a few times to hang on, but he did a good job! He has done it few times at home. I now have to watch him a little closer when he is on the stairs.

Nine more days

With just a few weeks to go, I am getting bored around this house. It is hard to do much house work and I just do not feel like just sitting around and doing nothing. What what do I do???? Well Alex and I are spending time having fun! I figured that my one on one times with him will be very limited soon. So I will take advantage of the time I have.
Last week we went to a zoo! This was not a big zoo, it is just a local free zoo. We went early in the morning before there were a lot of kids around and Alex just wondered around. After we saw all the animals, we went the playground next to the zoo and played! Here are some pictures of our morning!

Here is Alex showing you the ducks

We were looking that baby peacocks. He always has something to say! We just do not know what the something is!

There was a huge turkey in this display. But the shade was to dark I could not get Alex and the turkey in. But it is still a cute picture of Alex

I will post playground pictures later!!

Five more weeks

Dave and I have often been asked if Alex has any idea about the coming baby, and my response has been "he has no clue." But this week Alex has shown me other wise. Dave and I have not talked to Alex much about the baby but he has picked up on it. I asked him the other day, " where's Eli?" And wouldn't you know, the boy pulls up my shirt and points to my belly. Later that day, I asked Alex for a hug and then told me to give Eli a hug. And wouldn't you know, he leans over and puts his head on my stomach. What a smart kid. I think I forget how much he understands since he only has one word (yes, the boy still does not say mom or dad!).

Time for an update

With only six more weeks to go, I guess I should update everyone on what is going on in Chicago! That is right, we only have six more weeks to go before we will welcome our new baby home. I am am having difficulty with things shrinking in my closet. I am not sure what is going on, but my clothes go into the closet one size and come back out a size smaller! We have had some visitors in the past few weeks helping do things that I am not allowed to do. My parents came up a few weekends ago to paint Alex's new room and his bunk beds. My parents worked hard that week. Painting the bunk beds was a lot of work....but well worth it. They turned out just like I wanted! Now I have the job of moving Alex's stuff out of the nursery and pulling out all of the baby stuff again! Good thing I am having another boy, less stuff to buy!

And then this past week, Dave's mom came up with Barb and they worked on our landscaping! It looks awesome. Things were looking a little over grown, so we were able to get things under control and clean things up! I will take pictures and post them later!

A name like many others.

This is an interesting fact about myself. I found this website on someone else's blog and thought I would share it with you.

HowManyOfMe.com

There are 48 people with my name in the U.S.A. How many have your name?

Amazing

My pregnancy with Alex was a bit boring and therefore I only got one ultrasound at 20 weeks. It was just as cool to see this new baby's pics at 20 weeks also! It just confirms that their really is something in there!!! But this time they were unable to get all the pictures they wanted to because of the position the baby was in. So, at 28 weeks, we were back in for our second ultrasound. What a difference 8 weeks makes in how this baby looks. This picture I posted was amazing to look at live. His facial feature to defined.....Such a great glimpse at what my son will look like. Wow. That is my baby that I will hold in just 10 weeks! Watch out, this mama may not give him up for anyone to hold. I just may keep him to myself!

So let me explain what you are looking at. He is looking straight at you. His head is at the top of the picture and his chest is at the bottom. There is a shadow covering the right side of the forehead and his right eye. Can you see him?

Insomnia and Earthquakes

One would not think that insomnia and earthquakes go together but when you are pregnant you put a lot of things together that normally are not related in anyway!! So your might be thinking, "how is this crazy pregnant women putting these two things together?" Well, I have been having insomnia problems with baby #2. It is not the "can not fall asleep so you take something to help you fall asleep" problem, but the "wake up at 3am to pee and can not go back to sleep" problem. Then of course I lay there long enough to realize that if I fall asleep now I will be useless with Alex wakes up!! So I just get up and watch the news and get somethings done. Where do earthquakes come into play, well, Friday morning (around 4:30) there was an earthquake in Southern Illonios and it was felt all the way up here in Chicago. The one night that I actually slept all night and was not awake at 4:30, there was something exciting happing, AN EARTHQUAKE! I could have felt an earthquake, but nooooo I slept right through it! That is my sad story!

Spring Break - Day 3

Our final full day in Lexington and I believe it might have been Dave's favorite day. We all got up in the morning and went to Keenland Race Track. All year you can go any morning and watch the horses run through their morning exercises on the track and it is free! They have two racing seasons, one in April and one in October. During those months, on Saturday they serve a $5 breakfast buffet and have some kids activities. This was our lucky month. We ate scrambled eggs, sausage, biscuits and gravy and donuts! We were actually there for opening weekend. We should have taken pictures of some of the people there. This is a big event for some and the way they were dressed showed the importance of the event. Men in suits and women in high heels! Most of the people there were dressed just like us, jeans and a sweatshirt. Of course there were a few who did put their down jackets and scarfs on! That was a little over kill for those of us from the North!

This is a picture of Babaro's trainer.

That evening, we headed over to the Kentucky Horse Park to watch a Polo match. Dave had never seen one and I cannot say I have ever seen one either. So, since it was also free, off we went. It was actually pretty cool! While waiting for the match to start we found a horse for Alex to sit on. These horses had nothing to do with the Polo match, they were there for some other reason and I did not understand what that reason was. Back to the Polo match, it was the Girls final game of this Tournament. It was U Conn vs TCU (a University from Texas).

It was hard to get good picture inside the arena. The horse were to fast and the lighting was not good. But here are a few that did turned out pretty good.

Alex and I enjoying the match

We did not stay for the whole match, Alex got a little hungry and restless! So we headed back to Grandma and Grandpa house for dinner and a good night sleep before heading home the next day. Thanks Grandpa and Grandpa for letting us crash at your place for a few days!

Spring Break - Day 2

Friday was a more relaxing day. We had a slow day in the morning with Grandma and then we met Grandpa for lunch. Lexington has a new resturant called Zaxby's. Upon arriving we quickly found out that Zaxby's is not Alex friendly and Dave ran down to McDonald's for some nuggets for Alex to eat. It is to bad for Alex becuase the food we got was really good! We all took naps in the afternoon (expect Grandpa since he had to work) then outside we went outside to play. Here are some picture of Alex playing.

This season is Alex first experience with grass since we was not walking last summer. He was more then willing to walk on the grass but would not touch it with his hands. This picture of him picking up the leaf . This is the closest he came to touching the grass!

Oh how my boy loves balls. He had so much fun throwing, kicking and just carrying the ball around. At one point, Alex just picked up the ball and started walking down the sidewalk. We all wondered where he was going and how far he would go. Dave followed him right into the neighbor's driveway and then we realized where he was going. The neighbor had a basketball hoop and Alex wanted to make a basket! Unfortunately they had a car parked underneath the basketball hoop so we could not make a basket. Alex cried, for he just did not understand why he could not make a basket!

Spring Break - Day 1

Wheaton Academy had their spring break last week. I told Dave that I wanted to go somewhere warmer then Chicago!! So packed we packed up the car and headed to Lexington KY to visit my parents! All in all, I am not sure it was warmer down there....but I was good to see them. We drove down Wednesday and on Thursday, Dave and I left Alex with Grandma and spend the day together. I found a website that listed 70 free things to do in Lexington. So off we went to find our free things to do!
It was a rainy day. We headed downtown first and spent sometime looking for cheap parking before heading into the Victorian Square shops and found a great place to eat lunch. These shops are connected to the Rupp arena, so walked over there to see if we could get in to see it. But Bill Keightly had died and they were having a memorial for him in the Rupp Arena. He apparently had been part of their Athletic dept for years!! So we did not feel that it would be very respectful for two tourist (camera in hand) to wander into the service just to see the inside of the Arena.
So then we headed to the Old Kentucky Chocolate Factory for a free tour and free samples! Oh the Chocolate looked to good. I just want a little bit. It is a little dangerous to let a Pregnant women into a chocolate factory! This is were all the "covered things" get covered. She talked about their famous Burbon chocolate covered cherries. I did not partake in the sampling of those. Just did not sound very good! Can I just tell you how wonderful it smelled in there. Once the tour was over, we bought some chocolate covered pretzels to share with the family, ate a few more samples and off we went again.
This time to see the scenic view of Horse Country. My dad told us about a ferry a few miles out of town. On the way we passed several horse farms before finding the ferry. If you look at the picture carefully you can see the Captain, dressed up in his captain uniform! I heard that we visited the ferry on the correct day, for the ferry was closed the next day because of the weather. I guess if it rains to much or is to windy, they shut it down. I feel sorry for the people who live on the other side and have to find a different way across the river!. I did brave the weather a few times to get some picture of horses!
We then headed home to see our son! We missed him. More about the rest of the week later. I am off the make lunch.

Sleep over

Alex had his first sleep over a few weeks ago! A friend of mine had a conference for work in Chicago and she needed someone to watch her daughter while she was at her conference. So, of course I was more then willing to help out...I thought it would be cool to have another girl around the house. Lauren is only two weeks younger then Alex, so I give high praise to those who have twins! Timing is everything, and sometimes their timing was not my timing.!We have lots of fun and I will say, it was easier to get dinner ready since they did not need me for an audience since they had each other!

This is Alex's attempt at giving Lauren a hug. They could not figure out how to do it. Since Alex just leans in and Lauren will give two armed hugs, she did not know what to do with Alex. As you can see, she just gave up! Alex's speech therapist came while Lauren was here. So, Lauren joined it. We had a good laugh when we tried to get them to give each other a high five. They just look at each other waiting for the other one to give the high five signal! It was so cute!

There was a point in time in which they were just getting on each others nerves (and probally mine) and we needed to change the environment. So we took a walk. Thanks to Gramma and Grampa Pacheco, we had wagon I could put them in and off we went. Just picture me pulling a wagon with two 18 month olds and 7 months pregnant. What a sight I must have been walking down the street. They really enjoyed it. Alex enjoyed it so much that he cried when we arrived home.

I love the next set of pictures! How many Toddlers does it take to turn on the TV!? Lauren it hitting the correct button to turn it on!

These are just a few of my favorite things

Here are pictures of Alex enjoying some of his favorite things!

Two of his favorite things are in this picture! He loves of play with balls, which is probally why is it still his only word. Making a basket with them is the best thing in the world. It is actually a good distraction for him. There are plenty of times I have been working on dinner and he is whinning at my feet, so I just ask him is find a ball and make a basket. His face lights up and off he goes to find a ball! The story about the hat? He found it in his diaper bag the other day and has enjoyed walking around with it on. He bring is to me so I can put it on him.

He still loves him thumb and he is not a big fan of pants! I am sure he will love the summer when we gets to wear shorts! This is a picture after our nap. He tends not to sleep with pants and I forget why I did not put the pants back on him after he woke up.

As I have written before, Alex loves books and can sit and do this for a good 20-30 minutes! This is what Dave and Alex were doing the other night while I was making dinner. I thought it was a sweet picture! Notice, there are not pants again. This time it was because if a diaper changing accident and he got his pants (that were laying at his feet) wet! The boy has good aim!

Hello, my name is Dave!

It's been so long since I've posted, I thought I would just re-introduce myself. I'm Dave Pacheco, married to Esther, father to Alex & the yet-to-be-born little boy!

Okay, now that we have that out of the way, let me share some cute pictures with you.......no, not of me.......sorry to disappoint you........

We took a bunch of pictures of Alex when we were at my parents house last weekend. Alex is going to be featured in the next Grace Magazine (The alumni publication that goes out to all Grace College alumni, donors, and friends). They do an ad in each issue that encourages people to send in baby announcements, and in return, they will get a "My Very First Grace College T-shirt" t-shirt. Alex is making his big modeling debut.

Here are two pictures that are cute, but didn't make the cut for the magazine.





Okay, compare the picture above with the one below. It's the same picture, only the one above is "touched-up" a little bit. I cropped and color-enhanced it in Photoshop, and I fixed the slice of ball near his left arm that's missing. I thought that was so weird that the original picture had that little slice missing. I think we have some crazy "slice-deleter" feature in our camera. Whatever the cause, I put it back in with Photoshop.



Okay, now here are the two photos that I sent to the Grace Magazine editor, Judy Daniels, to choose from. I like them both, but I told her that she could have some fun in the caption with the basketball picture ("Here's an early basketball signee for the Grace College Class of 2028.").





This picture is one we couldn't use because it really didn't show off the t-shirt enough. It's such a cute picture though of Alex sitting at my parents' piano.



Well, I guess there are enough photos here for one post, but I wanted to share something else cool, at least I think it's cool, that Alex did today. He has given high-fives for awhile now, but today, I got him to do a fist-bump. I've been working on it with him for a while and today he made a fist all by himself and "bumped" his fist into mine. I cried tears of joy....okay, not literally, but I thought it was pretty cool.

One last exciting thing. In the midst of creating this marathon post, Esther told me to come and feel her baby "pooch" (that's what she like to call it). Anyway, Esther has eaten a lot of sugar today (dark chocolate covered pretzels from Trader Joe's). The little tyke was all over that place in there, kicking and punching and being a generally active baby. It's always so cool as a dad to be able to feel that!

I guess that's all for now, hopefully it won't be so long before I post next time!

Let me try this again

Shortly after I made my last posting, Dave called me and said that I did not describe the last picture correctly. Like I said, sometime I don't really see it! I rotated the picture, and I think it makes it easier to see.

(Dave here). Ok, here's how you see it. He is looking straight up at the "camera". There is a big dark spot at the bottom of the picture. Directly to the left of that spot is his right hand coming up towards his chin. If you just keep following that line of sight, you can make out his nose, eyes, and then rounding of his head at the top.

When we were listening to his heartbeat at the ultrasound, I distinctly heard "Here we go Steelers, Here we go!!" You might scoff, but I know what I heard.

Hope you have fun looking at Elijah!!!!!!

The new kid needs some blogging time

So many people have asked me if I am ever going to post some pregnancy picture of me. Sorry to say, I am not going to start today, but rest assure, I definitely have a pregnant belly! No more regular clothes for me! But I will post pictures of the baby and according to what we saw it is A BOY! I was starting to think that is might be a girl because this one moves differently and I have serious heart burn (thank goodness for Tums!). So I figure that I am carring this baby a little higher. This just shows that you just never know! Enjoy the pictures
This is a picture of his profile. His head is the on the bottom left and you can see the side of his nose, mouth and chin. You can see his chest on the bottom right side.

This one is a little harder to see. Sometimes I don't quite see it. He is looking straight at you. Kind of eerie! So the top of his head is at the top of the picture. The round object to the right of his face is a little hand. Good luck figuring it all out!

A Toddler at Last!

He loves his new found mode of transportation. He has already made several thousand trips walking the lap through the kitchen, dinning and living room.
I love the freedom this gives me. Since just walking up the stairs makes me winded, I like that I do not have to carry him everywhere! We may walk slower but at least I am not winded by the time we make it to our destination.

I had to make it up to him

Well, after making Alex pose in the snow for a picture, he was not the same. We came into the house and he just did not know what to do. He wanted held and then he did not, he wanted down and then he wanted up. I did not know what he needed or wanted, he did not know what he needed or wanted. We were just struggling together. Then I noticed that it was 11:00, Barney was on. Here is a picture of him watching Barney. After the show was over, like magic, he was back to normal, a happy, content, little boy! He played for a little bit, ate lunch and then went down for a nap like clock work. Thank you Barney!

And the snow just kept coming!

This is what Dave woke up to at 4:45 this morning! I woke up at 5:15 to him talking on the phone about whether or not to cancel school. While Dave worked, I laid on the coach and watch the news. After Dave announced that school was closed, my job was the watch the bottom of the screen for Wheaton Academy's school closing. It took at least a 1/2 hour to get all to the "W" to make sure Wheaton Academy's was announced. That is a lot of school closings!

It started snowing yesterday (Thursday) morning around 8:00 and never stopped all day. A 1/2 hr trip that Dave has to get home, took 1 1/2 hours! The news kept saying that the worse had not gotten to us yet. I have not heard what offical amount, but it look like we got at least 6 inches!

While Dave was out shoveling the snow, Alex and I headed out to get some pictures. Alex was not to sure about standing in the snow! Just think, next winter this boy will be begging me to go out and play in the snow! While shoveling snow, Dave helped the mail lady get her truck unstuck, and helped the neighbor girl get her sports car out of her driveway.

Thankful Thursday

So, I am not sure how much of a Thankful Thursday this will be but I will try. I am feeling a little like a trapped animal in my house with it being to cold outside I just don't want to go anywhere and yet I just want to go anywhere!!! What am I to do???

Things I can be thankful for......
1. A garage!!! How excited I get when I am on the way home and it is cold outside and I know that I have a garage to pull into when I get home. The other great things is that not everything is frozen when I get in the car!
2. How great it is to have friends who blog. It makes me feel a little more connected with the outside world while I am feeling trapped at home.
3. Bible Study starts this coming Monday. Every Monday, Alex and I will have some place to go and I will have some good quality time with fellow Moms!
4. Public Television is wonderful! We have have very basic cable right now and therefore the only kids shows we get are on WTTW Public Television. They have some great shows for Alex in the morning. Every Mom's know those moments when their kids need a little distraction while then get some stuff done!! Barney comes on at 11:00, Alex will sit in his chair for the full 1/2 hour that it is on! What is it about a dancing Dinosaur that kids love?

A new place to hide

This is Alexander's favorite place to play now. We keep his balls in here and before he would just open up the doors and take the balls out. Now he will crawl in to take the balls out!

The other day I was on the computer and I heard Alexander playing next to me. I look over and did not see him. I looked around to see where he could have gone to so fast. Then I noticed the head popping out of the cabinet. To cute and therefore I had to take a picture.