Melissimplistic

Is not as I had expected it, but at least it's well adjusted and well painted now!

Te quiero mami!  Sos la mejor mamá.  Te quiero como sos.

I took Marcella to the doctor yesterday, because she had a sore throat and high fevers.  She was prescribed antibiotics.  I knew this was going to be a big problem because she hates to take medicines, and indeed, it was a big deal...she threw up as soon as we gave her the medicine.  So I threatened her that if she wasn't able to keep down her medicine, we were going to have to inject her.  To my surprise she said she preferred the injection.  Today we went to the hospital to inject her and she was very courageous, didn't cry, and at the end she said she felt something tickled her.  The nurses were amazed and said she deserved a treat!

Yesterday when Marce came home from school, she said she had a sore throat.  Later on in the afternoon, she got a fever; so, today I didn't send her to school and I'm taking her to the doctor.

Me estoy sintiendo mejor!  Me contaron que cuando Dios te hecha el ojo no te le podes escapar.  Algunas veces sufrimos xque estamos alejados de Dios.  Cuantas veces Dios me ha llamado y yo hago el impulso pero retrocedo nuevamente.  Creo que Diosito me ha llamado nuevamente.  Gracias por esta oportunidad.  Me siento dichosa que Dios siempre ha mantenido sus ojos en mi!

She made this lovely card: And she made these two thigs: A card holder for daddy, and a tea and sugar holder for mommy: And on the act she said the poem by Rubén Darío: Margarita And here is a picture before the act started with some of her friends:

Yesterday and today are one of the saddest days of my life. I am experiencing as much pain as the day I was told Isabella had spina bifida.

I have a new person that helps me take care of the three kids. So that means I have to train this person on how to take care and handle Isabella. This is very stressful for me. I am so stressed out! Plus Roger just started studying Monday nights and I don't know what other day of the week also. So that means I have to bath the kids on my own and put them to sleep. Isabella is getting heavier and heavier each day. And I have a lower back pain that goes down through my hip and leg sometimes and I think it's because I am lifting too much weight with Isabella. I am feeling very tired lately. I think I really need some days off...I am running out of patience. Sometimes the girls talk to me and I can't help feeling bothered by them. Today Marcella was making this noise with this toy, and I couldn't help it and told her to please stop. I felt bad because really she wasn't doing anything bad.

Every day Isabella brings homework home. Sometimes is just tracing words, pasting pictures, learning riddles, and sometimes math. And this math is getting harder and harder. She is now substracting two digit numbers. Today I went to her psychologist Fiorella and we went over substracting numbers because I mentioned to her that the homework problems were getting harder. So, she showed me a method, and I understood the method, but the problem is that Isabella's homework has other variables that we did not go over, and I don't know how to teach her. I feel frustrated...really really frustrated.  We left the homework page BLANK!

Suddenly, when Marcella entered First Grade at a new big school teachers began noticing behavioral problems with Marcella. Usually I was told: "She is so quiet and shy", "She isolates herself", "She speaks so soft", "the entire class was punished today, and she began to cry". I bought a book on highly sensitive children, and I am almost sure Marcella is one of them. The book says higly sensitive individuals are those born with the tendency to notice more on their environment, and deeply reflect on everything before acting, as compared to those who notice less and act quickly and impulsively. As a result, sensitive people, both children an adults, tend to be empathetic, smart, intuitive, creative, careful, and conscientious. They are also more easily overwhelmed by "high volume"or large quantities of input arriving at once. They try to avoid this, and thus seemed to be shy or timid. HSCs are easily hurt by her peers, often don't like...

I'm so glad yesterday rained.

Annissa just gave me my first blog award , Thanks Annissa!

This year Marcella's class said a Poem on the act. This is her gift to us:

Marcella is learning to ride a bike, but she gets unmotivated really fast, and says she will never be able to learn.

I hardly ever go out because I never feel like going out.  But recently I've been in the mood to go out with my husband Roger and  friends.  This weekend we went to Ana's baby shower.  Ana is 37 weeks pregnant and is going to have a baby girl.  They are going to name her Elena.  And then yesterday we went to La Pared Concert at La Casa de los Mejías Godoy.  It was my first time listening to them, they were awesome.  It was nice listening to songs from the 90's and remembering good old times! We had fun this weekend!  I think I'm going to do this more often now.

I'm Scanning Old Pictures, I want to get rid of clutter at home.

The result was a disaster. It was yummy, but it broke in two when we turned it over, and got burned just a little!

In this photo, I'm trying to get the selective focus effect, where the subject is on focus and the backgroun blurry. To obatain this effect I used a shallow depth of field, and used the macro option on my camera.

A couple of months ago I read a book called: Empowering Your Child Who Has Special Needs by Debbie Salter Goodwin. I remember buying several books and remember reading this one last, but as I began to read, I knew this one had been the best choice! One chapter that really helped me as a mother of Isabella was a chapter called "Something to Grieve". Grief is what someone feels when they have lost something. There is a poem called: Welcome to Holland by Emily Perl Kingsley where she makes a beautiful analogy that perfectly explains what it meas to raise a child with special needs. Basically the poem explains how all mothers who give birth to healthy children go to Italy, and those who give birth to a child with disability go to Holland, and in the end although every mother wanted to go to Italy, those who ended up in Holland end up enjoying their trip to Holland as much as they would have enjoyed Italy but in a different way. I like this part of the poem that says: "But e...

A correctly exposed image means that the right amount of light has exposed the image sensor. Up to now, I've talked about using metering modes to control light. Exposure Compensation and Shutter Speed can help determine the amount of light that has exposed the image sensor. Exposure Compensation can be used to make the subject brighter or darker. A positive value means brighter a negative value means darker. Shutter Speed: A longer or slower shutter speed allows more light to enter the image sensor; thus making pictures brighter.

I just learned about the metering options using my point-and-shoot camera. My camera has three options: evaluative, center weighted average, and spot. Evaluative basically means the camera divides the whole frame into several metered zones. It averages all metered zones to decide on how to expose the shot (exposure). Center Weighted average means the camera will take information from several metering points around the frame but will give more weight to those in the center. Finally Spot mode tells the camera to do it’s metering from a very small ’spot’ in the scene, ignoring all others. This is a very useful mode for tricky lighting conditions where the whole scene is either darker or lighter than the point that you want to be exposed correctly. Today, I also learned about a correctly exposed image. This means that the right amount of light has exposed the image sensor. It depends on the aperture of the lens and on the shutter speed which decides how long to leave the shutter open recei...

Marcella got in bad mood this afternoon and she was acting really grouchy with her sister and brother, although much sweetier but still grouchy with her brother. Then she decided on her own to make this beautiful drawing. Marcella is such a loving and protective sister...she really does have a big heart just like the one shown below:

Yesterday I asked a friend of mine who takes beautiful pictures how she managed to make the subject part of a picture sharp and the background blurry. She explained to me that basically what is needed is a shallow depth of field. Doing research in some other place I learned that the depth of field is the distance in front of or behind the subject that will be in focus. So my friend explained to me that in order to get a shallow depth of field I needeed a length with a wide aperture, I needed to be close to the subject, have a long focal length, and of course an SLR camera which I don't have. Then I did some more research and learned that the aperture is the hole of the iris of the camera. And the larger the aperture means more light reaches the light sensor and vice-versa. And since I don't have an SLR camera I researched on how to obatain the same results of a blurry background and sharp subject. I learned I could obtain similar results with my point-and-shoot digicam by using...

Marcella did this picture a couple of days ago. She is learning new painting techniques at her weekly art class.

Yesterday I had really good night sleep.  I guess having a good night sleep really determines what kind of day I'm going to have the next day.  So today has been a nice, stressless day.  I went to the store and bought the food for the week, then bought some other stuff like bread and fruits.  Then I took Roger with me to pick up Mari at school.  Then we had lunch (Mari and me).  Then I changed Mari from her school uniform, put her on her ARGOs, and I went to drop her off at PT at the Hospital.  Then we came back home (Roger and I).  I gave Roger his milk, then I put him on his crib to fall asleep on his own.  Then I went to pick up Marce.  Marce did her homework.  Then we went to pick up Mari at the Hospital.  Now they are both having a snack and then we are going to do Mari's Homework. 

Happy Mother's Day to all those amazing mothers...you know who you are ;).

I just read on one of my friends blog how her son was being bullied at school. Reading about this, just breaks my heart. I think I have been lucky and haven't dealt with bulling with Isabella. Most of the time the teacher as well as Isabella report how her classmates love her and behave in a protective manner with her. There was only one time that she came home and told me some girls called her "big baby". On my Behavior and Classroom Management we had to do a case study on a student and since I am not working, I decided to do my case study on my daughter Isabella. So I acted as if I were her teacher. Our teacher also showed us the video of this song you are hearing right now by Peter Yarrow. Peter Yarrow has been an activist against bulling for many years. Some of my classmates who are currently teachers said they showed the video to their students and got really positive reactions, some of them even cried. In fact in my class, when the teacher showed us the video, some...