Bubble Fun

This is Naya's current favorite thing to do!  I have just been filling up the kitchen sink with warm water and a bit of dish soap and then throwing in some toys.  Her favorite toys are cups and spoons, etc.  She likes to pour water from one cup to another.  Yesterday I put in some medicine dispensers and she had a good time with those too.  She didn't really pay any attention to regular bath toys like her rubber ducky though. 

Some times my daughter has issues with sensory play (she doesn't like to be wet, dirty, etc) and at first she kept wanting to turn on the water to rinse the bubbles off her hands and arms.  I eventually just gave her a dish towel to wipe on to conserve water.  In the end, she got used to the bubbles on her hands and mostly forgot about wiping them off.  As soon as we were done though, she ran upstairs to change out of her wet clothes! 

This did make a little bit of a mess in the floor, so it may be helpful to put a towel in the floor to soak up any spills.  Wet floors and tiny feet don't mix!

If At First You Don't Succeed...

So I created this blog 2 years ago and didn't get very far, but I am hoping that this go will be much better!  I have more of an idea of what I can share here now and a little bit more experience at being a mommy :)  Now if I can just figure out how to organize my page we will be in business! Wish me luck!

Momma's Girl...

Poor Nayeli (and Granny)... Last night we attempted our first time without Mommy and Daddy and it didn't go as smoothly as I would have hoped.  I went to do my taxes and left her with my mom for about two and a half hours.  Supposedly things went smoothly for the first hour and a half but then the melt down began.  My poor little angel cried for 45 minutes and then fell asleep!  I just feel so bad about the whole thing.  She must have been scared, and my poor mom tried everything to calm her down but nothing worked.  Now I am worried about going back to work!  Is this something she will grow out of on her own, or do I need to help her figure it out through practice?  Any advice on the subject is welcome! 

FINALLY! A Routine!

It has been great to finally get little Nayeli into a routine that is working. She is finally going to bed and waking up around the same time every day. She may take cat naps, but at least they are at the same time every day. I feel so much better and in the groove of things now.

Basically all I did to accomplish this was watch for her normal patterns and then tweak them a little bit. She had been taking a nap every morning 1.5 to 2 hours after she woke up and now I help her wait every morning until around 11am for that first nap. Then another around 2pm and the last one around 5pm. At first she was really fussy and had a hard time skipping her first nap that she would take around 9:30 or 10am but now she is much happier and falls asleep every night around 9pm and wakes up around 8am. The best part?? No more nap time fights! She falls right to sleep without crying! AMAZING! Plus if she wakes up after I put her to sleep for the night she will pretty much fall back to sleep on her own. I am so impressed with my 4 month old. In all she is probably sleeping around 12 - 13 hours a day at this point.

There is one controversial thing about her sleeping and that is co-sleeping. This is something that has really worked for us even though I know a lot of people frown on it because of SIDS. Right now we have two full sized beds in our room: one for me and Nayeli and one for her daddy. Don't worry... he likes it better too because he doesn't have to worry about my sucia feet being in his clean bed, lol. He is the one that moves around a lot at night where as I pretty much wake up in the position I fell asleep in so it works out safer too which was the most important thing. My little girl is just one of those babies that really needs to be close to her mommy pretty much all the time. She is always most content in my arms while I just walk around. My mom and dad would call her spoiled, but I know that she is just a high needs baby and that I am just going to cherish these times now before the day comes that she does not want to be held any more. So anyways, for me and my family, co-sleeping has been the best thing for my baby to sleep through the night and ensure a good nights sleep for all. 

Nayeli the Blue Eyed Latina

I want to use this blog to keep my family and friends up to date and to document raising a bi-racial (Mexican/Caucasian), bi-lingual baby girl. Yes, oddly enough my Mexican boyfriend and I (both brown eyed) produced a beautiful blue eyed Latina. I want to talk about what it's like mixing our cultures and languages in a present day America that has a large and rapidly growing Hispanic population. Will Nayeli find it easy to discover her Mexican heritage, or will it be tainted with a new kind of Mex Amer culture? What will she think of being half Mexican? How can I prepare myself to teach her about who she is and where her paternal family is from? This is going to be a long and interesting journey for our family. I hope you readers out there will find our story worth taking a glance at.



Right now Nayeli is only 4 months old and way more interested in watching people eat and talk than she is with answering these questions. I think our first adventure will be learning both English and Spanish at the same time. A nurse in Harrisonburg told me that her son always speaks to his father in Spanish and to her in English. It seems natural that Nayeli will follow this same tendency seeing as I always speak to her dad in Spanish, but everyone else speaks to me in English. I try to speak both English and Spanish to her, but I'm sure I lean more towards my native language, naturally. I am very curious to see how she will handle it. I just don't want to see her get frustrated when she tries to ask for something from my parents or family members in Spanish when they don't understand her.



The first thing I have realized since moving back to Southwest Virginia is that no one down here can pronounce Nayeli's name. And that's just the first name... no one ever gets past it to inquire of her full name, Nayeli Denise Castaneda Holston. When we lived in Harrisonburg, it was never an issue, because a large part of the population there is Hispanic and her name wasn't too unfamiliar. Down south it's a different ball park. I don't really know anyone personally that speaks Spanish. Not even in the doctor's offices or social services office. I worry a lot about my boyfriend, because is English is definitely not up to par. Maybe people will eventually get used to it, or at least all the important people. If my dad can say it, I would venture to say that any one can.



I have never known how to start one of these blogs so hopefully this hasn't been too awfully boring. I promise I will get better :)