MINIMAN!

Mateo Joseph Seminario arrived on Wednesday, December 3rd 2009 at 3:04 am!

We left for the hospital around 2, checked in a 2:34, and he was here a short 30 minutes later. Thanks buddy for making it quick...I was too tired at that time in the a.m. to last much longer! Fernando was a champion partner and everybody at the hospital dealt with my impatience well. We were blessed!

He looks different (to us!) than the other two...less hair, longer fingers/toes (Uncle Pappy's toes), Katie's elf ear, lots of Seminario other stuff...but he still looks like one of our kids! So fun.

He's been a great eater, got a bit bruised, puffy, and generally beat-up by his quick entrance into the world, and when he looks around he gets so still and serene...even when he's only using his pirate eye!

He's so wonderful and so small, even though he was the biggest of our kids at 7.10. Here I am back at home with the little minimateo...

Here's Mimi's first holding. This is her shmoopy I love him so much I'm about to cry face.

Here's Sammy's first time holding his little bro. Do you think he's happy? He still refuses to call Mateo anything but Miniman or Baby.

We are SOOOO happy and feel blessed beyond measure to have this little person join our family! Welcome Mateo!

melon head

While we're waiting for Miniman to make his appearance, Mimi and Daddy decided to practice. So they made Miniman out of what else? A honeydew. Very cute. And High Quality as you can see from his sticker.


She treats her new brother very carefully...by playing soccer with his head.
But he does look happy, doesn't he?

And loved.

the analysts

Last night at around 8-ish I loaded the kids in the van and we drove to Walmart to pick up my prenatal vitamins prescription and doughnuts. Because they are equally important, you know. Fernando was at a meeting at church so he didn't join. But we're used to hanging out together, the kids and I.

My dad doesn't believe in listening to Christmas music before Thanksgiving is digested.

My Grandparents Baugh on the other hand have it piping through their home cheerily as soon as the first chill rattles the windows. I subscribe for the most part to Dad's philosophy, and Fernando is a staunch waiter for Christmas music, like my dad. HOWEVER, choir is always the blessed exception. I love being in a choir and I'm not ashamed to say it. I love my ward choir but I long for daily choral experiences...is that odd? And being in a choir requires you to break out the Christmas music long beforehand so you can perform it by the first week of December.

The point of that paragraph was to explain how I've introduced the choir exception with my kids in that I know that if they are to be ready to sing a myriad of Christmas carols with me each and every day in December, they need to be in training at least by November! I'm sure the personal benefits of enjoying some of my favorite music of all time while avoiding the guilt I feel by breaking values instilled in me by my dad and supported by my husband are obvious.

So last night on the way to Walmart I decided to introduce what I thought would be a fun carol, easy to learn, and hopefully would even garner a few laughs. I've always appreciated the laughs I've received and I find that achieving them from my kids is particularly rewarding.

So I piped: "Christmas is coming, the goose is getting fat!Please put a penny in the old man's hat.If you haven't got a penny, then a haypenny will do.If you haven't got a haypenny, then God Bless You!"

I waited. No laughs..."Do you want me to sing it again?" I prodded. They did, so again I sang the song, with clearer annunciation so they could learn it quickly and appreciate my teaching them a song with the word "fat" in it.

After I had sung it a few times, I got a response. Boy did I get a response.

Sammy: "Old man's hat??!"

Miranda: "What is a haypenny?"

Sammy: "We can make a hat with a scissors, with a sharp thing!"

Miranda: "What does it mean 'if you don't have a haypenny'?"

Sammy: "A goose?"

Miranda: "I thought it was bad to say "God bless you. Why are they saying God bless you?

Sammy: "Goose gonna get SOOOO fat. A BIG belly."

Miranda: "Why do you put the money in a hat?"

ETCETERA

So I spilled out what I considered pretty apt responses--including references to England and charitable giving--to these questions and they fired back with more and I started feeling like I was in a literary analysis class I had in college where we had to apply deep, line-by-line critique to poems, essays, and songs, and I thought, "Hey, I guess I should feel at home with this." But really I was just hoping to introduce a fun song to the kids that they could sing and laugh about. Oh well. I realize it is a good thing that they feel like they will actually get answers to their questions, even about haypennies.

(As an aside, we had so much fun in Walmart with Sammy trying to keep me on track by using his fingers to count all the things I should remember to get and all of us pushing every button on every Christmas toy.)

((We DID NOT have fun at the checkout when there were like 8 serious-looking middle-eastern people (nothing implied regarding that by the way, just trying to paint the picture of the experience) behind me in line trying to exercise patience, and the checkout lady had to wait to ask her manager about one of my items, and the kids were being rambunctious in the basket and leaning over so I thought they might fall out or at least destroy the candy or magazine displays, and then the gift cards I was trying to use up wouldn't go through the card reader, so the checkout lady had to try 50 ways to get them to run, and then once they were all run I slid my credit card through to pay the balance and the machine wouldn't take it and so she had to void my transaction and help the middle-eastern people who were steaming, I'm sure, at that point, and then I called my credit card place to be like WHAT is going on and they said "You just entered the wrong zip code" which was the same as saying "Hey, are you 9 months pregnant and your brain stopped working at least 2 months ago?" so then another lady had to open up a register and re-run all of my stuff including the gift cards which she had to fish out of the garbage below the previous register and did I mention it was almost 10 pm! at this point and the very tired people in my cart were crying and trying to touch and smash each other and then telling on the other one for "touching me!" and even CRYING and I'm sure everyone in the store is looking at me with my HUGE belly and leggings and thinking how irresponsible that I'm having another one when I have two toddlers that I clearly can't control already and/or that I have no husband and I'm like octomom or something. AND I'm having serious contractions the whole time thinking I am going to pull a high-class moment here and actually have my baby in a Walmart!

Yeah. and Walmart was out of doughnuts.))

a rolling stone gathers leaves

Did you know you can just give your kids old grocery sacks and let them go gather leaves and they love it? No fancy entertainment necessary. Of course you'll have to keep the sack of leaves for at least a week, longer if your kids' memories are like steel traps. "Where are my leaves?" and then you'll have to pull out the sack from the corner with the old, molding leaves to show how much you care. But it's a small price to pay for childhood bliss and my kids knowing I value their contributions.

My kids like to wear boots. Miranda won't wear socks with hers and Sammy LOVES these green boots and wants to wear them constantly. When we catch a whiff of them...plasticky stinky kid feetness...Fernando says we should hide them but I can't bring myself to do that because soon he'll outgrow them and I'll miss him in them so much.

We actually did make a nice centerpiece that day with leaves in a glass bowl. So the harvest did not go unappreciated.

Miranda lasted longer at gathering than Sammy.

They are growing up. I think Sammy will feel the biggest change when Miniman arrives, but he is so giddy about the arrival that I think the transition will be swallowed up in the excitement. He likes to hug the belly and talk to his brother in there. I have to do the voice of miniman talking back, of course. He's really funny.
I think it will be fun for Sammy to have a brother. He'd be a fun big brother to have, in my opinion.

And Miranda will be a big help too. The other day my Grandpa Baugh noticed her roaming around at a family gathering and said, "She's looking like a girl now."

You can see it in this picture. She is.

Then on Sunday Fernando helped her put her hair in a ponytail (I know! A dad who can do a ponytail?! Nice.) and then she looked like a girl again, not a toddler. So he started getting a little sad about it, and then of course I'm pregnant so it didn't take much before I was crying and even Fernando was getting a little man-emotional about it. And of course then we started talking about when she was a baby and before long she was crying too and saying, "I'll always be your baby!" like we were in a movie (she is really good at absorbing and dispersing emotion)(I call it Emotional IQ on some days and dramatics on others). The only thing that dried us up was when I said, "But you know what, I'm really glad you're so mature because you'll be the biggest help when we have miniman," which led to a discussion about being the oldest (by all three of us who are all the oldest) and we were able to pry ourselves out of the loss we felt for our little baby girl who is now getting to be a real big girl.

And speaking of BIG girls...

Miranda took this picture. Sorry about the saggy pants. I'm not ready but I think I'd better have this baby one of these days. With these big kids around I hope I can remember how to take care of a litte tiny one!

true purpose of a leaf blower

We borrowed the leaf blower from my parents. We said it was so we could clear the leaves off the grass before the rain came....but Fernando and the kids figured out something more useful to do.

I had to stop filming because my husband turned on me!!! You can see it in his eyes he is about to open fire on a defenseless expectant mother! The kids could have played like this for hours. Especially the one wielding the leaf blower.

not even a month ago we were here...

It was pretty breezy and cool but these guys didn't care.

They loved being in the water (more than I did!) (luckily their daddy was brave enough to dive in), and they didn't mind getting all sandy and sticky at all.

Getting buried was another story...

Pre burial (notice Sam's apprehension):

Panic is starting to set in. GET ME OUT OF HERE! Miranda was better at coping. They both lasted 1.1 second max.

They must have some Californian blood...they love the beach.

copycats!

and even though their bacon and eggs have bling on them, it's nice to know that the stars also peruse the internet for "couples" costumes, just like us.