Building an easy toddler picnic table

A few days ago I went to Home Goods to kill time and take a breath. Many of us may ask how somebody with 4 toddlers have time to kill? But those parents with multiple know better. When we have the small change to get out of the house and take a little time for ourself in the middle of the morning or night when everybody else is busy, we go to stores and walk around just to breath and have a "spiritual" quite time.

Anyway, going back to business, I walked into this little picnic table and it was love at first sight. I set it in the middle of the store floor and ask my older toddler who also take advantage of those quite times to seat and check dimension and functionality. He looks so happy and comfortable that I impulsively decided to buy it. Then I check the price tag, it was 79.99. Then I though hmmm it looks a little clumsy and not very well build but the structure is simple, maybe I can build it for less and a little stronger. So I left the store after I took a few pictures from all angles and I used my hands and body for measures.   I always feel like I am stealing when I do that, I guess is a designer kind of values. But lets face it, this picnic table you are about to see are as common as italian bread.

Back at home I looked at the pictures and I did a little research online and I was lucky I found some plans and dimensions very similar to the one table I wanted.

Since i don't have a big saw machine, I went to Lowes and I picked my lumber and I ask them to straight cut most of the pieces (the angle cuts were made at home with a little jigsaw).

I choose the cheapest pine wood they have which is still nicely finished and I made sure all were straight. The table need only two standard  lumber size: 3"x1" and 6"x1" and some screws to put them together. I didn't know what screw size so I picked 1 1/2" long wooden screws (the good quality golden one)

Lumber Cutting List
	Item	Size / Description	Quantity
a	Legs	1x3 (actual size 3/4" x 2-1/2") 23 1/2" long and angled each end 30 degrees off square. See diagram above.	4
b	Cross member table top supports	1x3 (actual size 3/4" x 2-1/2") x 16-1/2" long. Angle each end. Angle is for decorative purposes only.	2
c	Cross member seat supports	1x3 (actual size 3/4" x 2-1/2") x 33" long. Angle each end. Angle is for decorative purposes only.	2
d	Brace / Spreader	1x3 (actual size 3/4" x 2-1/2") x 28" long (The original table was around 24 inches but I made it larger to gain more leg room and less unused overhanging)	1
e/f	Table top boards	1x6 (actual size 3/4" x 5-1/2") x 36" long. Panel e is straight and f are for angle in side boards only for safety purpose (mark 1" in one side and make a 45 degree mark to cut)	3
g	Seat boards	1x6 (actual size 3/4" x 5-1/2") x 36" long.Angle is for safety purpose (mark 1" in one side and make a 45 degree mark to cut)	2

Directions

1.   Cut all the pieces of lumber using the list provided. I choose to do most cuts in the store then I cut angles at home using a cheap jigsaw. 

2.   On an even surface make up the two end frames. To do this first lay the legs members (b) and (c), i.e. table and seat supports, flat on the ground and then lay the legs (a)in place on top. Ensure the seat/table supports and the legs are as dimensions shown in the 'end profile' diagram above. Fasten together using 4 1-1/2" wood screws at each intersection. 

3.   Stand the two end frames up and fix the brace (d) in place using two 1-1/2" wood screws at each end. Ensure the brace is in the middle of the two end frames and flush with the top. This brace also acts as a spacer for the two end frames. 

4.   Lay the remaining five boards, i.e. two seat boards (f) and three top boards (e), in place on top of the seat and top supports. Check that the overhang is equal at both ends and that all is square 
Fix boards (f) to the seat supports (c) and boards (e) to the top supports (b). Use two 1-1/2" wood screws at each meeting. 

After 1 1/2 hour of labor the table was done, I get  a little help form my father in law holding some of the pieces for me to screw them together and Lorenzo hiding pieces of wood around the garage and playing with small cut pieces. 

We try the table immediately after put together, to make sure height and leg room is good enough for 4. Needles to say they loved it and get it to use immediately. We are still planning to sand the borders since they are a little too sharp and paint it, but that is another project. I will update as soon as it is completed. 

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Walk Lily, Walk!

To celebrate Lily's first walk, we decided to do something special. A video involving all the family to cheer it up for her and our favorite show and show man RuPaul Drag Race The entire video was capture with my phone and then edited in iMovie. It was a lot of fun to do but much fun to watch.

Alfajores de Maizena

Since I can remember, my mom used to make them for my sibling and I at every birthday (we are 7 Kids so imagine we have them very often)  When I got a little older I will help her fill them up with smooth Caramel and then the fun part, running them on shredded coconut for the final touch. For every few I made, one will go magically into my stomach.  This sweet treat was always present during my childhood, they are supposed to be smooth, sweet and a little dry, perfect to eat with a cup of warm chocolate or milk.

Here is the recipe.
Ingredients:

• Butter (room temperature) 7 Oz. / 200 Gr. 
• All purpose flour  1 1/2 Cup / 200 Gr. 
• Corn Starch (this is the main ingredient) 10 Oz. / 300 Gr. 
• Baking Soda 1/2 TS
• Baking Powder 2 TS 
• Sugar  3/4 cup / 150 Gr. 
• Egg yolk 3 
• Vanilla Extract 1TS
• Lemon zest (optional) 1 TS 
• Cognac (optional) 1spoon

Filling:

• Dulce de Leche (look in the ethnic isle) or Caramel (has to be a more solid texture than the regular caramel sauce. Almost like icing consistency. 
• Shredded Coconut 

Step One:
Mix all the dry ingredients in one bowl. Flour, corn starch, baking soda and baking powder.

In a mixing bowl add: Room temperature butter (has to be creamy but not liquid, sugar, egg yolks, lemon zest and vanilla extract. Until is all mixed and creamy.

Add slowly the dry ingredients until they all mix in a very thick dough. It gets really hard to mix at the end that you may need to use your hands to finish.

Lightly flour your table and place the dough on top. Use a rolling pin to flatten the dough into 1/4" thick. Cut into round shapes, like Christmas cookies, using a 1 1/2 inch cookie cutter or be creative and use any shape you like.

Put them into a baking sheet and bake them between 8 to 10 min depends on oven in a medium temperature (350 degrees) the bottom of the cookie should be slightly gold. 

Let them cool off for about 10 minutes and then fill the cookies with "dulce de leche" like a sandwich, when pressing the cookings some of the dulce de leche will get t the sides, roll them into shredded coconut and set them in a tray.

5 minutes of chaos

After "you have your hands full" which is the comment #1 about our family, the question, How you guys doing, it's the most frequent. It's such a wide open question that after thinking a few seconds or many long minutes the answer is always the same: WE DONT KNOW HOW WE DO IT, WE DONT THINK ABOUT IT, WE JUST DO IT. 

 The key to keep our family manageable is to have a schedule and some planning ahead. There are two things our children cant tolerate at all, hunger and tiredness. So if we feed them and put them to sleep on schedule most of the day can go very smoothly until it won't. 

Today somebody decided to save some formula, because, sometimes, they can left one or two ounces or even more. Guess what, you never can save on formula, its a bad idea. You can save at the wrong moment and that can affect the feeding schedule for the entire day.

I was feeling a little slow because I had a visit to the dentist and they numbed my left side of the mouth to do some deep cleaning. So I was half here, half in venus. 

It is about dinner time, kids are in their chairs by the pool, Patrick started to prepare rice (don't ever let a white boy cook rice, ok?) so i said: since they are behind in their schedule, we should start preparing their last bottle now. Patrick said: lets give them a bath first. Here we go... I though... I can see it coming...

Bathing triplets is like factory assemble line. Everything need to be done in an order so you don't forget to clean one ears or wash another's head twice. As soon as we placed the babies in our bed (that is where we start the process) they started to cry, why? because they are hungry.

In the meantime Lorenzo is going thru a new phase, he closes every door he find in his destructive toddler path. So here I am Preparing 3 bottles at light speed, checking on the, now abandoned, rice still cooking in the stove, opening doors that Lorenzo close immediately after I passed them. "Oh no! Lily has a rash in her butt" I hear from Patrick in the other side of the house."Bring me the butt cream with the blue cap" he ask with urgency, I am still working on the bottles, the cereal we add to their night bottle is empty, so I need to open a new box, but Patrick need towels this time, then he question me why the bottle are not ready yet, I run back to the kitchen for the 4th time, I stand in the middle of the kitchen and I think. What am I doing here? oh yeah the bottles, then I prepare the baby bottles. I finish the bottles, wait, these are the wrong nipples! cereal formula require nipples #3, I have to remove the nipples #2, clean the mess of formula spilling all over, put the new nipples (this is all 3X ok, don't ever forget that part), wait, I left 2 babies in the bed with not supervision, I run back to the bedroom, open the door that Lorenzo closed again, babies are ok, they are screaming like little piglets but they are safe, I run to their nursery to prepare their cribs and dispose their dirty diapers, Lorenzo is disposing some new baby hats he found in a drawer (he is so quick) I remove the hats from the trash can, Patrick is asking again for the butt lotion for Lilly, I can't find it. So I am ready to dress the already bathed babies, OMG, the rice! Run over there and just started to laugh, not like a nice healthy laugh but more like a maniac, psychopath kind of laugh. The I hear patrick screaming "Lorenzo get out of here!!! OMG OMG OMG" - he is washing Liam's head in the sink, Lorenzo is "reorganizing" the cabinet underneath- "the baby is peening on Lorenzo head!!!". And it is only 5 minutes since Patrick decided to give the babies a bath off schedule. 


How we do it? You tell me how we do it. And please don't get confuse, we are not looking for advice. Pleeeease do not give me any advise on this. The lady with the black cat that used to do that, was permanently blocked. (referring to my FaceBook page follower)

Right now, Lorenzo is taking a quiet bath, babies are sleeping and the house is very quiet, I am writing this and preparing to see the last season of Breaking Bad.

Tomorrow all these memories are gone and we are already collecting new ones.

Have a good night.

No Hope

A raw personal story about addiction, recovery and surrogacy. 

My entire body is in pain, I am barely walking by the side of the road, and I can feel every single piece of gravel imbedded in my feet, and it hurts. I’m thirsty, tired, confused and awfully lost. I want to get rid of all of these feelings, yet I don’t have any energy left, except for one last impulsive idea; a black, shiny and heavy semi-truck heading my way and nobody watching. For a fraction of a second I think, if I jump now it will stop, all this pain and misery will stop. That was my only solution at the moment, but for some unknown reason I didn’t obey my thoughts. Instead I walked slowly, picked up a half of a cigarette that somebody threw on the ground, lit it up and kept walking. I didn’t feel any relief for not killing myself that night because I knew sooner or later an overdose or an angry drug dealer would do the job. I was hopeless and I was convinced that for me, at 40 years old, my life was over.

I couldn’t understand how I got there. Only a few months ago I was drinking champagne with a friend on top of Montjuic Hill, in the Palau Nacional, in Barcelona, while listening to an impeccable orchestra and thinking, there is nothing better than this! I felt like I was at the pinnacle of the world and nothing would bring me down. But this night, I was walking at the side of the road, lost.

A few days later, after my miserable attempt to finish my life, I was done. I was ready to ask for help and to accept I would never be able to stop using drugs by myself. All I wanted at that point was not to die. I didn’t want my career back. I didn’t want my house back or my belongings back. I was desperate and I didn’t want to die. I went to my first Narcotics Anonymous meeting, and from there everything traveled uphill. This time it wasn’t a materialistic hill, like I had always thought was the solution to any problem. This time it was a journey of self-discovery, and the beginning of a connection with a power bigger than myself.

This time the growing was from the inside out. Something I never felt before.

After two years in recovery, free of Alcohol and Drugs, I met my partner, Patrick. We met like most guys met these days, online. I didn’t have any expectations of finding a partner, and all I wanted was a distraction for the night. In fact, I was praying a few days before, asking God to help me not to get into another relationship. At this time I wanted to take a nice break and enjoy my “solo” time.

Well, once again, things didn’t go my way.

Patrick and I dated for about a year, following the suggestion of my NA sponsor. After a year of getting to know each other, we were ready to commit, and we moved in together. My partner, which is the opposite of me, had a very organized and stable life. One day, he told me he had always wanted to be a father. I heard that like somebody was telling me, one day, I would like to be a Hollywood star.

Three months later, I was helping him paint the new house which he had just purchased, and I found him painting one of the guest bedrooms in a pale green color. It wasn’t a lime-green or rich kelly green, but one of those soft watercolor greens that makes you grit your teeth. I asked him why he was using that color, and he responded softly and quietly. “Oh, because this is the baby’s room. This is the nursery.”

The room spun. I felt like he was pushing me away. I had never considered a situation like this, in any relationship. I was in love with him, and I was hoping for our relationship to last. He was determined to have children. He had a visual board with pictures of pregnant women tacked to it. Rickey Martin and his children smiled back at me, among others.

After meditating, praying, and talking to my close friends, I came to the conclusion that I couldn’t be just a witness of how he would create his progeny. I needed a clear position on the family situation. There were two possibilities:
To leave. To refuse to have a relationship with someone determined to have children by himself.
To stay and to be involved 100% of the way.

My decision was to stay. He is the love of my life, and I am in all the way. He was generous enough to let me into his life, and to share his dreams with me. A few days later we both were learning about surrogacy, egg donors, and adoptions laws. What amazed me the most was as soon as I accepted the possibility of becoming a parent, something clicked in my brain. I started to fantasize about having a son. I thought about teaching him to build tree houses and cardboard houses, (I’m an architect) and it felt good. I was excited!

We both become the sperm donors and we purchased eggs from an anonymous donor, (they should not be called donors since they charge a lot of money) we flew to L.A. and started our surrogacy journey.

A year later, after a series of trips, and a lot of baby gear shopping, I flew to San Diego, and waited until our surrogate called us. Our baby was coming! We rushed to the hospital, excited, scared, and overwhelmed. We waited for hours in the delivery room. It was awkward because by the end of the pregnancy, we were having a complicated relationship with our surrogate. All of us were ready to finish the deal and run away from each other. However, we remained polite and grateful. A group of nurses and doctors entered the room and while they were preparing her for delivery, they asked me if I wanted to receive the baby. I wasn’t sure what they meant, but I say yes. I thought they would hand me the baby, all clean and dressed, and I would smile for the picture. Well… no, I was wrong in the second part, because they handed me the baby but just straight from the womb, a baby still connected to her body by the umbilical cord, a baby time with all sort of fluids and textures.

I almost passed out. As soon as I looked at my son, I cried. I sobbed. I can’t explain my emotions. His birth was a symbolic and emotional rebirth for me. After my partner cut the umbilical cord, they moved our baby to a table where they cleaned him and checked him to make sure he was healthy. From the table he wailed, and I knew it was a good sign for a newborn. He looked so vulnerable. He was alive, yet fragile, and I couldn’t avoid feeling his pain as my own. I put one of my fingers close to his hand, instinctively, to help him and he grabbed it, he grabbed my finger very hard. In that moment I felt a strong connection, an unbreakable connection. I also felt how that little hole I had left in my soul was closing forever. I felt strong and ready to dedicate the rest of my life to the well-being of this child, my child.

Today I believe something bigger than me stop me from jumping into that truck, something bigger than me took me from my path of auto-destruction and place me into a path of recovery and decided that my purpose in life was to rise 4 beautiful children of my own and to have a full life.

Today I have hope.

Our Facebook Page

It has been a while since I seat and write another post. I feel lazy and a lack motivation lately. I rather waste my time crashing candy on my iPhone or reading never-ending discussion on polemic subjects online than writing one word in my blog. I hate to admit it but I am lazy. On top of that I am always been excused by people for the fact I have triplets. They are telling me: you have your hands full, you have your hands full, you have your hands full . So sometimes I act like I have my hands full even when I don't. I lie to myself.

Anyway... I am also busy obsessing about our new FaceBook page, I count the Likes like drops, one by one, checkin the names of those who like the page, thinking on their motive to like it, trying to have a general picture of who like who doesn't, what friends does, why? what time? Jeez I am "incorregible"!

At times I freak out and I wonder if I am not exposing my family too much, putting all my precious babies pictures for everybody to watch. Why do I do it? Is it fame that I want? Is it money? is it just LIKES?

Well you know, sometimes I like to sabotage my own projects, I can have the most negatives observation and perception about myself. Through recovery I have learn that I can not trust my perception o judgement specially when is negatively self critical. I have to remember who I really am, what moves me, what is what make my life worth. I am one of those person that I can't enjoy anything without sharing the feeling with somebody else. I like to share my emotions with people, I like to share my secrets with people. I am extroverted. I can't enjoy a good meal without sharing, it take off the beauty of it. I can't enjoy the best time of my life and not share it with the universe.

Before, I had to hide myself because I couldn't tell who I was. It was not OK to be gay and to tell everybody and to even think in the possibility of having a family. I get used to hide, to change the subject, to distract people before they learn who I really was.

Today I don't feel the same way, I love who I am and who I have become, I love my life and I am not afraid to tell to anybody. I may be a little immature in the way I express myself but I don't care. Eventually i will adjust and act like normal.

So yes I want to scream I am gay!  I am a recovering addict! I am crazy! I have a loving partner! I have a beautiful family! I have my own children! I have a fucking Facebook Page to show the world my accomplishment. God gifts. The result of 4o+ years of going though pain and fear.

There is a superior motive, bigger than fame and Likes, there is me, this is me and this is who I am. I can take some cute pictures and make funny comments and make people follow me.  But most of all I can make for me what others can't do.

Sometimes I fantasize with a Reality Show of our own, but as soon as I visualize myself in front of the camera it scares the hell out of me. I don't think We could handle something like that. Many people told me, you can have your own show and it makes me think about it. But lets be honest. My family is special and extraordinary but is not so dramatic or grotesque or sophisticated enough to produce a show. We are too normal inside our home. People need drama, sorry we have not drama to offer. Just ordinary routine. If somebody can get excited by looking at 30 diapers changes per day or feeding 24 bottles then we have a show!


Now lets get back to business, did you check my Facebook page already? Isn't my son so adorable moving around that couch?