meet little buggie!

I guess it is way past due that I announce the little one growing in my belly. Yup, I am pregnant, just finished my 18th week. I guess that makes it a little over 4 months pregnant. I am already showing as my belly bump poked out after week 16. It is still very small, especially to everyone, but since I am not used to having a bump like this it feel a lot bigger to me. There is a funny disconnect of what people see and what I can see, but of course I am the only one that knows what my body feels like.

My first trimester was a good one, nothing to complain about besides some minor discomfort. I never got any morning sickness and most of the other symptoms that are common I never got either. The one change I did feel is that I would get bloated quite often and this was uncomfortable, but luckily those days are over...(or I just got used to the feeling, who knows!). Again, I never got food aversions and my cravings are very mild and not too crazy (mangoes and healthy food). Honestly it has been a pretty easy ride thus far.

So how did I get pregnant? Well...the PG version, Tony and I (actually I did as he had been ready for a long time) decided to get pregnant in June after the birth of my little niece princess Michayla. I realized how I would love my child to grow up with Michayla and the more I waitied, the bigger the age difference. So during our one year anniversary dinner I told Tony that I was ready and we pretty much spent the whole time talking about the idea of having kids and making plans for this change. We were going to wait until September to start, but then we thought maybe, August...no, but that conflicts with....on and on it went. Honestly, there will always be reasons why not to start having kids and so we decided to not let life dictate to use when to start and to just go for it and adapt to the change. And so we did; we had to wait until July to start as June was almoust half way done.

July came around and guess what? Tony got deployed to New Orleans for a month! How were we supposed to get pregnant?!? Luckily his mother had a plane ticket that she decided to give to me so I could go visit Tony in New Orleans (she did not know about my plans to get pregnant). I decided to go during the time I thought I would be fertile, pretty much I was taking a chance but hey, we were on a mission. We had a total of two full days of trying (half of Saturday, all of Sunday and half of Monday)...and no, that is not all we did, we got to explore New Orleans during that time too. it was such a fun trip and we both were on cloud nine. I came home wondering if it was a successful mission and decided to buy my first maternity magazine to read on the plane. Those next few weeks of waiting were driving me insane as i wanted to know am I or am I not?

Then came the day when I tested. I needed to do it together with Tony but since he was in New Orleans we decided that the best way to do it was on Skype using the video camera. He was able to see my reaction and I was able to see his. The first test I took was unclear. I thought I could see an extremely light line but was not sure if I was imagining it or... just was not clear at all. Decided to do it the following day and again, the line was not that clear and I was not sure what it meant. Decided to try another brand to test and again got unclear results. Decided to make my friend who was visiting, Mayra, take the test to see what a real negative looked like. I still did not feel like it was clear enough for me to celebrate (however Tony on the other hand could not hide his emotion and showed it in his face. An hour later he was at Barnes and Noble purchasing his first daddy book, What to Expect for Expecting Fathers). The following day before going to work I decided to do the test one more time, this time it was pretty clear that it was possitive, I was for sure with no doubt pregnant! Now I believed it too. I guess I had done the other tests a little too early to detect the pregnancy hormone.

We decided to share the news with my family the day Tony returned home from New Orleans. I threw him a "surprise" welcome home party and invited the family to come over for lunch. Five minutes after arriving he announced that the suprise was not for him, it was actually for the family as we wanted to announce that we were expecting a little one. I swear, there was silence in the room for a few seconds. No one believed it and they were all confused. They knew that I did not want to get pregnant at all and so they were not even aware that we were trying. After a few seconds we had the first response from my brother who asked, "wait...you are pregnant? really?" and then the cheers began from Lindsey and Vicky after they realized what we had just told them. My mother and mother-in-law in the other hand were in shock! They kind of did not believe us and though we were playing a joke on them. Only time allowed them to believe it but it did not take long, only one day. Anyways, the rest is history. I write too much and have noticed that this post did not escape my many lines...sorry for the length.


Buggie at 7 weeks and 4 days. By the way, Vicky nicknamed the baby Buggie...


Buggie at 11 weeks and 2 days. Look, he/she is giving us the peace sign with his hand, already such a Berkeley baby!

Buggie at 12 weeks and 4 days, this picture is clear because it was done through the ultrasound machine...the one we will be using from now on. The previous pictures were done with another machine. I am so excited, on October 18th I find out the sex of Buggie, I just can't wait!!!!

six out of six: personal growth

Before I go into this post I must ask why does life get so busy? It is so hard for me to slow down and write what is going on and I feel as if I always have to play catch up. Well, lets just hope that I can find a balance in my life because I am definitely craving to slow down.

Ok, so this post is on personal growth. Honestly, I don’t remember what I was thinking when I decided to include this on the list. Thus, I will make this post on personal and professional growth. Back in May of this year Vicky, Radha and I launched our own photography business, Alarcon Muakami Photography. Honestly I am so proud of all our hard work that went into launching this business. We have applied for business license and so we literally are a legit business. We were also able to get a business loan so that means....we need business to pay it back! Vicky and Radha are the Photographers and I am the Creative Director. Luckily we all three have lots of experience working together as we used to have our own dance group back in middle school and high school. This dance group was successful for many years, we rented a dance studio, we fundraised to purchase our costumes and we held large performances for our families, friends and the community. There was no way that we were going to let that group spirit go to waste and so we have now decided to pursue another love of ours, photography.

Honestly, this has been a lot of work because we all have our own jobs and thus we have to work on the weekend and at nights. We are still working on our official website, should be up in two weeks and finalizing our blog. But we have created a business brochures for marketing and have already started donating to fundraisers to help give back to the community. What we need to work on more is publicity. We need to get our name out there and keep promoting the business. We also need to push on getting more clients. All it takes is time and effort. I give it one more month to get everything set to go and then the three of us will work on pushing this forward. Will keep you updated with how everything is going, but as of now I am so happy we have decided to start this adventure…and it truly has been one!

Please check us out at:
http://www.alarconmurakami.com/
www.alarconmurakami.com/blog
http://alarconmurakami.instaproofs.com/

Minutes before we went live, such an exciting moment!

Our work on display at the gallery.

Delicious food at our Wine and Cheese event.

Announcing the company and thanking all that helped make this posisble. Special thanks to Tony for all his hard work and support. Thanks Honey!

So many wonderful people came to support us!

five out of six: special projects

I have slowed down a bit when it comes to special projects as my life has gotten busier with a full time job. However, to stay sane and happy I DO have to work on something creative and thus try my hardest to continue one of my passions to create colorful things. I have worked on a few chairs That I will display the pictures of once I am ready and painted a few pieces of furniture that I will also display later in the month.

The newest things that I have dipped my toes into is baking. For some strange reason I have been wanting to learn how to bake and have already made my first cake from scratch and cupcakes from scratch. The cake I made for my coworker Angela on the day of her birthday. I made a chocolate cake with chocolate morsels, raspberry mousse filling and chocolate mousse frosting...I don't know what else to call it. It came out AMAZING! I am not a chocolate person and definitely not a cake person but I happened to create a delicious treat for cake/chocolate lovers, who would've figured! For the cupcakes, I made banana cupcakes with cream cheese frosting. These were done very healthy, but next time I will most definitely go with a different recipe as I know I can make some better tasting banana bread. Well...we will see what I come up with next? Mexican cupcakes with a little bit of spice and chocolate? I don't know, something crazy like that!

No pics of my cupcakes :(

four out of six: family growth

I have been dying to write this post as this one has been really exciting this year...or the past few years. Our family in the States is really small as all my family resides in Guatemala, but little by little it has started growing with all the amazing additions to the family. At first they were family friends, such as Jaye, Susan and Larry that were added when my siblings and I were younger. They have made our family such a strong family and have brought a different flavor and spices to our family pot. The next additions to our family have come through marriage, such as Lindsey through Herbert and Tony through me. These additions have been so great because they come with families of their own that have become part of our little clan. The family gatherings have become much bigger (and louder) as we all have great personalities and we all

want to talk (pretty funny). The good thing about the family is that we have built a strong support system where we all chip in to help each other.

Now...the latest addition to our family has made everyone gone wild as she is the one that has stolen the spotlight from everyone. Michayla Simone was born on May 1st, 2010 (on her daddy's birthday). She is the first addition to the family that is blood related as she is the daughter of my brother, Herbert. This little angel has brought so much joy to the family and our main goal is to spend as much time possible with her. Both Herbert and Lindsey have become amazing parents in such a short time and will now be the wise ones when it comes to child bearing and raising kids.

I have to say that from the moment I laid eyes on Michayla I fell in love. I have never fell in love so quickly with anyone or anything in the world this quickly before, so it was so strange to feel the tidal wave of emotion take over me in less than a second. Imagine, if I felt this way how did Lindsey and Herbert feel? I guess I will know one day....

The day Michayla was born. It had only been 20 minutes or so. She looked so beautiful.

Proud Parents! 2 weeks after being born, she was so tiny....

So excited to be carrying the little one!

She has such gorgeous eyes.

Meeting Kuma for the first time.

She is already daddy's little princes!

three out of six: love and married life

I heard someone today say that once you get married everything changes because of money, kids, etc… I can’t even remember the list. I sat quietly and thought of my relationship with Tony and tried to reflect on how our relationship has changed. I came to the conclusion that yes, our relationship has changed but for the better. I feel our love just gets stronger and stronger…you may say this is cheesy, but I am being honest. We have become a family and we both appreciate what each has to offer. In terms of money, we both decided to have one joint account (*everyone gasps*). There are some that think that they are losing their independence if they have a shared account and so they choose to keep individual accounts and pay a percentage of the bills. Whatever option works for your relationship is fine, but for us we decided that having a joint account makes life easier for both. Actually, this helps us feel more like a unit and allows us to make decisions that are best for the family as a whole. What I love best about our married life is that we have goals for the family (besides our own individual goals). Our short-term goal is to pay off all our debt (minus the mortgage) in 3 years to be able to achieve our long-term goal of purchasing a bigger house in Berkeley. Tony and I get so excited to see our debt number decrease with every paycheck we get and we can’t wait for it to reach ZERO.

But back to married life, I have been married for a year and 2 months now and I have to say I love being married and love being Mrs. Avila. It can be a little challenging that most of my friends…virtually all, aren’t married. They spend their free time going to clubs, dating…pretty much going where the wind takes them. It is fun but I have to say that I am done living my life that way. Actually, getting married did not create the idea that I am now chained to a life of homemaker. I am still very free to travel, to do what I want to do in life. Tony supports me in every decision I make. I will say that my mentality has changed though; I now make decisions that are best for the two of us and not just for me. It feels nice to think that we have started our own little family unit.