What A Birthday

Wow. It would take me about a month to write about everything that went down during the last week so I won't. I think most everyone who reads the blog is pretty much familiar with what we went through and I don't know that I'm in the mood to go into it all again. The good news is Luis is home and is doing really good and that's all that matters.


So, in the midst of our most stressful week ever, Mason had his 5th birthday. That I will write about. This was the first year we have had either kids party someplace other than our house or Yaya's so it was exciting for all. Luis and his friends conviened at Bullwinkles in Wilsonville for the big event. There were plenty of games and fun to be had by all.


Here's Mason learning to play Skeeball...
And climbing through the kids play area which seemed to be everyones favorite. Mason's second cousin Berren got through this in short order, aside from occasionally getting his foot stuck in the netting.

Presents were of course a hit too. Mason got some nice new clothes, some Speed Racer toys, some other car toys, and some cool art supplies. He was a happy boy.

And of course this year we had to get him a Speed Racer ice cream cake from Baskin Robbins. The car on top now is permanently parked on the shelves in Mason's room by his radio - per his request. All cars have their proper place after all.

Mason lead the crowd in the singing of the birthday song to himself...he might say La Bamba is his favorite song, but I personally think the Happy Birthday is his favorite.

This is Mason the next morning playing with the new paints his second cousins Ellia and Berren gave to him.

Siena loves them too!

The kids have painted a TON of pictures in the last few days.

Course, Mason has spent plenty of time playing with his new cars too. Here's Mason with the '57 Chevy that Yaya and Papa Ron gave him.

That's the birthday highlights. While I'm not trying to gloss over the lowlights, I do want to thank everyone for their positive thoughts and prayers this week. I know Luis does too. We're all doing good now and just getting into our routine again.

Mother's Day, Strep Throat, and some other stuff...

We know its been a hectic couple of weeks when not only does it take me 2 weeks to update the blog, but Siena has taken to putting herself to bed:
The best place to start is probably Mother's Day last weekend. We had the Cruz family over to our house. Not only did it not rain but the weather wasn't horrible either. We got the patio furniture out of storage and fired up the grill with Luis at the helm. His brother Jr. was supervising.

The must have done pretty good because Mason approved.

Since we have no backyard to speak of, the party was out front. This was perfect because the kids could get out their bikes and the '57 Chevy. Baby Tristyn loved it!

Not sure why Mason's on Siena's pink bike. Must be that cousin Andre commadeered his.

The adults among us were a little more low key...that's Jr. and Joel for those unfamiliar with the Cruz clan.

And Tristyn with her abuela Gloria.

So in the week following the lovely Mother's day celebration, all hell broke loose. It started when Siena was having trouble going pee pee without pain. She had a big rash. Luis too had been sick for the whole week. On Friday, I too woke up with a sore throat. We finally decided to take Siena in to have her rash checked out, thinking it might be a urinary tract infection. I downed a bunch of Tylenol and tried to go to work. Luis took Siena to the doctor so this saga is told as relayed to me from Luis.

They got to the doctor at 9:30 Friday morning. It was obvious to the doctors that she had some sort of infection in her netherregions but a urine sample would be needed to determine exactly what. They gave her a can of apple juice that Luis helped her to drink down. A half an hour later, nothing. Then he gave her another half can. The problem was, as much as Siena needed to go pee at that point, she knew it would be painful and was therefore holding it with all her might.

Luis tried negotiating with the doctors by saying that eventually she'll wet on the floor. Can't they just use that? No. Well, she'll get some on herself, how about using that? Nope. After half an hour, the only solution they could come to was a catheter.

Luis and one nurse had to hold down Siena while the other was tasked with inserting the catheter. Of course Siena was screaming like a banshee at this point. Mason, who was with them throughout this whole ordeal, was straining for the best look he could get. Finally they got the catheter in and got their sample. When they removed the catheter, Siena apparently hadn't completely voided and therefore sprayed pee all over the exam table.

After running the test on the long soughtafter urine sample, they were able to determine that yes, there was an infection but they didn't know specifically what. From there they decided to check out the rest of her for signs of other symptoms. Siena hadn't complained of any other symptoms but upon looking at her throat, they quickly descerned that she had strep throat.

After hearing the story, I felt so bad for my little Nannies. I've had catheters put in before and it is NOT pleasant under any circumstances. Its too bad they couldn't have given her a once over before putting her through all that.

While Luis, Mason, and Siena were enduring the urine sampling from hell, I was at work feeling like my throat was on fire. Course, I just thought it was the start of another cold which I was not at all pleased about seeing as how I was just getting over a cold/flu thing a week before. I finally got to the point where I felt so bad I just couldn't work any longer and went home. A couple hours later, Luis got back from the doctor's and dropping the kids off for their Friday visit to YaYa's. He came in the door and announced Siena's strep throat diagnosis and that he made an appointment for himself as he suspected he was suffering the same thing. I knew right then that I had it too.

So after Luis and I paid our visits to our respective physicians (I had to go to the urgent care facility given the time of day), we each had our strep diagnoses and 3 different antibiotic prescriptions. We also bought a lot of popcicles and Chloroseptic.

We're all getting better. We even managed a blueberry waffle breakfast, which miss Siena managed to wear more of than eat. Since it was also the nicest weekend of the year so far (a fact which made me very unhappy about being homebound all day yesterday) the Cruzes decided to do an afternoon picnic. We packed up the bikes, folding chairs, and went on out.

Joel came with bubbles in tow. They kept Tristyn entertained.

Mason was bike boy again.

The chef with his new bbq. It was so new that the box it came in was discarded behind a tree at our picnic site.

Papi and son...eating.

The other kids finally notice the bubbles!

Siena discovers baseball. She got a hit on her very first pitch at back. She's a natural!

Mason put his bike helmet on my. Being the wonderful mother I am, of course I complied enthusiastically.

This was the only way to get Siena off the playground - happily.

Tia Sara tried out Kendra's cool new retro bike.

Kendra and Dulcina chillin'

Since this wasn't what I'd call the smoothest week ever, I have to at least end it on a happy note. Here's a short clip of the Cruz kids jamming. I definitly sense two budding little rock stars!

The Sniff, Sniff Top 10 List

Back by popular demand...the Cruz top ten of the week. This time I've added pictures after the myriad of complaints at the lack of pictures last time I did a top ten list.

1) Last night we had Mason and Siena's favorite dinner - SUSHI! Nope, I'm not joking. They love it. Course the only 2 things they eat is the crab salad and the egg roll. Still, makes for a tasty dinner!
2) Due to a cold (see below), I stayed home from work on Thursday. Since there is nothing on television during the day and there is a wondeful invention brought to us by our cable provider called DirectTV, I watched the first 3 episodes of Harpers Island. So far so good. I may stick with it (note that I am generally a slow and reluctant adopter of new TV shows).
3) Luis finally caved (or got tired of me asking) and hunted down the ellusive red Rudy Fernandez jersey for me. I wore it for 3 days straight. I Rudy!

4) So a month ago my brother-in-law Junior solicited me into running in the Cinco de Mayo race downtown. Fast forward to today - I ran in the race by myself. Junior wussed out. I did the 5K and ended up finishing with a time of 29:33 - 174th overall. This was out of a field of 429 total. I was 75/268 in my gender. Both are rankings and standings I feel pretty good about. I'm going to keep doing these thru the summer - hopefully 1 per month.

5) Mason is pooping like a pro! Now he just marches in there, no tears or fuss, and takes care of business. Siena does as well. The only problem we have with Siena and her pooping is that she poops what can only be described as a softball. Said softball has the tendency to clog the toilet. Yup, the youngest, smallest person in our house is the toilet-clogger.

Clearly its time that we emptied the garbage in that bathroom...

6) The Blazers playoff run is over (I didn't say that the top 10 were all good things). Game 5 in Portland was a lot of fun to watch. I tend to get worked up watching Blazer playoff basketball in ways I don't for anything else. This is also a team that is so darn likeable that its hard to not to love them.

The game 6 loss was sad, though not unexpected. I threw a pillow at the TV at one point and cussed numerous points (don't panic, kids were in bed) but they lost nonetheless. It was fun seeing them in the playoffs again and I think the saddest part for me is having to wait another 6 months to see them play again.

7) So on the advise of some iPod techie in India, Luis undertook some "project" to move all of our iTunes files to a different folder. This caused all sorts of issues to my iPod, and more importantly, my ability to download and sync my favorite podcast - Never Not Funny. Finally on about Thursday Luis got the glitch fixed and I was back in business with Jimmy and the gang (Jimmy Pardo, below, is the host).

For those unfamiliar with Never Not Funny, the format is Jimmy, his producer Matt, and a guest comedian every week basically shooting the breeze. There are no bits or contrived pieces however it is always funny and entertaining.

8) There is now a Sonic in Wilsonville! My coworkers Jay, Jonathan, and I have started making a weekly pilgramage there. Their burgeres are fabulous and I tried some sort of mango-limeaide contraption on Wednesday that was likewise quite tasty.

9) I have the swine flu. Okay, I don't. Siena though managed to pass on her cold to everyone she came in contact with over the last week and I was no exception. A week into it, it's still hanging around. Luis keeps telling me its the swine flu...

10) There was enough hail and torrential rain yesterday that we considered breaking up our deck and building an ark. It didn't come to that, fortunately, because construction is not our strong suit.

Bonus: 11) I finally watched the clip of Susan Doyle on YouTube and am now a huge fan! I'm such a sucker for these feel good stores. If you haven't seen it, here ya go: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CR_N9iljeMk