The Latest

This weekend I went to go pickup my two lovely ladies from "Corpitos" after they were spending some time with Grandma and Grandpa Chapa. It was a nice long weekend full of home cooking, a trip to the flea market, and getting to see a few followers of the blog. I just wanted to say I appreciate y'all enthusiasm for the blog and your encouraging words about it. You have renewed my motivation and I will do my best to keep this up for as long as it takes for each of you to move to San Antonio so that you can come on the weekends to see Stella's progress yourselves.

Most people told me having a child was a glorious experience. A few of you told me the truth and said that raising a child would be hard. I have no idea were my free time goes other than to sleep or cleaning. I use to run three times a week. Now I just run to Stella and the fridge.

That is part of the reason I stopped writing. The other part was actually just that I was thought if you can't say something nice then you should just not say anything at all. Seeing as how my plan has always been to print out this blog and make a book for Stella so she knows what her first years was like I thought it would be best not to fill some of those pages with comments about how sleep deprivation makes you hostile.

I knew things had gotten bad when a coworker of mine came into my office and sat down and told me, "Everyone has told me to stay away from you." People recommended that he not speak to me as they were afraid of what I would say about how things would change once his baby was born. I merely explained to him that I would not paint the facade that everyone else told me about raising a child. I simply wanted to do him the favor of letting him know that it was going to _____. It was simple I told him, "expect the best and plan for the worse." I mean sure, Stella was behaving in a manner that only happened every one in a hundred babies, but who was I to tell him that he would not be 101. In my mind I was painting a worse case scenario and anything that was not that would be golden.

With that said, being away from both Stella and Belinda for a while made me miss every sleepless night I have been having these last eight weeks. Life was not the same without them.

So I came back from "Corpitos" excited to get to the computer and start telling y'all my tales again. I should have been typing around 6:30 but instead its 10pm. The standard two hour drive from Corpus to San Antonio was extended to a four and a half hour trip. Apparently Stella did not want to leave Corpus. So she made us stop ever so often to let us know with a crying spell.

Imagine if you will a small SUV filled with all the necessary baby care equipment to the point where no more could fit. I was driving. Belinda was in the back tending to Stella. Going just as fast as I could I was being given death stares by my wife for not pulling over any more so that we could get home before it got any later. It was the first time Stella has ever cried her self to sleep. Belinda tried everything to calm down that little munchkin and it was not working. It was awful. Obviously Belinda was not going to take it out on Stella so guess who got the brunt of the verbal assault. For the record, we were ten miles outside of San Antonio and I made the executive decision to drive and not stop. So before y'all think I let this happen for half the trip it did not. We made it home and all was good in the world again. Ah parenthood.

Tomorrow I am going to work and going to tell my friend that there is a light at the end of the tunnel. It's a long tunnel, but if you squint your eyes you can see the light. If you cant see the light then pour a glass of wine. It makes things a lot easier to handle. Thank goodness Belinda did not give up drinking again for lent.

I'm off to serve myself another glass.

Here are some new photos.

Night.