Ewa's family
I have been blessed with a wonderful husband and two adorable boys to share my life with. I met John in early 1997 and, pretty much, the rest is history. We were married on May 23, 1998 and you can find out all about that in the wedding portion of the site. In the spring of 2004, Hektor joined our family and made things a little more exciting. We were having so much fun with him, that almost 3 years later, we had Marcus. They are both absolutely wonderful and have made our lives full to the brim. We weren't originally planning on having children, but I changed my mind, and now we've got two boys and are planning for a third (and last) kiddo. Surprised us both, to say the least, and now John is intent on having that third one. I'm pretty excited about it myself and would sort of like to have a girl, although when I think about it, I think another boy would just make things a lot easier. Anyway, you can see some pictures of them and read about them here. Enjoy!
A little about my John
The last version of this site had loads of info on John, but I think I'll pare that down a bit and just stick to what matters to me.
John and I met at Hurricane Harry's in College Station, Texas. It's a country music club/bar, so we just cut that first part out and say we met in a bar. It was January and I had started my 2nd semester of vet school and he was halfway through his Master's at A&M. We hit it off immediately and after some dating we got engaged in October and married in May less than a year and a half after we met. John stuck around B/CS while I finished vet school and then we moved to Dallas.
He works out a lot. I mean that in a sense that's difficult to understand except by people who've lived with athletes. He usually does 2 workouts daily except for the weekends; he saves those for family time. When we first met, he was all about olympic weightlifting, but his focus has shifted to just working out for health and appearance. Yes, he wants to look like he works out and I can't say that upsets me at all. Haven't met a woman yet that had a problem with her husband's body looking hot. He's actually encouraged me to work out as well, and I'm very glad for it. It has increased my endurance, strengthened my body, and makes me feel good too.
My biggest surprise from John is his love and interest in his children. It's an odd thing to write, but when we first me, neither one of us wanted to have kids at all. I changed my mind and he went along with it. To both of our surprise, we love kids and now he's the one pushing for that last third one. I'm still mulling it over slowly.
That's pretty much it about John, without getting too personal. He's a great housemate, a wonderful daddy, and a very thoughtful and loving husband. Never thought I'd find one, but I think I've got a keeper!
And now on to Hektor
Hektor is my first born. He's 4 now and considers himself a big boy, although he can't wait till he's seventeen. Don't know why he's picked 17, but there it is. Not much to say about my first born except that I love him and because of his easy going personality we were more open to having additional children. He's always been an easy kid. He took to sleeping like a champ, he's always stuck to his eating schedule, and he's never been a big crier. All that makes it much easier to be lured into another child.
Since we lived far away from my work and his daycare until he was 3 years old, Hektor got to spend a whole lot of time with his mommy. He got used to going grocery shopping, playing around my house cleaning, and other such things. He's always been able to entertain himself and that has made life much easier. For now, he was also my only pacifier baby and just as everyone said, they don't go to school with a pacifier. Starting at about 2 (maybe two and a half?), he wasn't allowed the paci except at naptime and nighttime, and then at about three and a half we just explained to him that his face was getting chapped and he needed to not sleep with the pacifier anymore. He took it like a champ, gave it up for a week, and then forgot about it. It was a very easy transition and I'm glad we didn't push getting rid of it when he was younger. I would be perfectly happy to have another kid dependent on a paci. I think that's the biggest lesson we got from Hektor, and I think it was a very valuable one.
And last is my Marcus
Marcus is my second born son. He's almost 18 months old as I write this and he's coming along just fine. He was born with Down Syndrome to our shock and surprise. As we look back on the pregnancy, I could see the signs that something was different about him from the start. Both John and I are very glad that we didn't know of his genetics before he was born because it would have made my pregnancy much more stressful and John's ability to bond with his son much more difficult. Since we didn't know, I had a happy, healthy pregnancy and John bonded with his second son even more so from the first moment he held him.
Because of his genetics, he has low muscle tone and a slower cognitive development. He just recently started pulling up on things and has very quickly progressed to crawling up our stairs; a little scary, but true. His slowest progress has been in the eating department. He's still on baby foods to my dismay, but we are working on it and he is making progress. Thick foods that used to make him gag and throw up go down now like nothing to it. We'll have him stuffing Cheerios down his face soon enough!
He's basically stayed a baby longer than Hektor did, but it's not necessarily a bad thing, since he's a wonderful baby! As his caretakers at daycare say, he's one of the easiest ones. Just recently it was the first day of school and there were a couple of new older infants in his room that just wouldn't stop crying. Of course, all the other babies (almost toddlers) started crying too. Marcus sat in the middle of the room looking at all of them with the "Why exactly are you crying?" look on his face. Needless to day, they love him there! They only wish the other kids were so easy to care for.