One Year - Happy Birthday Dominick

One year ago today we welcomed our little boy into this world. Dominick Frank was born at 10:29 a.m., Tuesday, March 24, 2009. We feel so blessed and thankful we have such a healthy, happy baby boy. Read his birth story here.

Dominick has grown so much this passed year.

He’s gone from 8 pounds, 13 ounces of this:

To 25 + pounds of this:

Dominick is soooo close to walking. Everyone says he’s about to take off at any minute. But he’s just not ready yet to let go of hands, or walls – he’s still cruising. When you to hold his hands to help him walk, he takes off! He kind of looks like walking dead Berny from "Weekend At Berny" - sort of off balance, belly out, but on the go! I’ve felt the mother’s intuition that he’s going to be a handful and I’m pretty sure he’s living up to my expectations. Dominick is definitely a “boy’s boy” He’s very rough with his toys, things constantly fly off the high chair. He’s already climbing on anything and everything. Yesterday I caught him standing on his big plastic truck! That thing could have taken off underneath him, but he stood strong, trying to reach what the extra few inches he had.

Dominick really likes to climb into things... even more reason why I think he'll be all over the place once he starts walking.

Dominick has twelve teeth and eats just about everything. This month we tried Chinese noodles and he LOVED them! The boy just loves his carbs. We also tried kiwi, and he can eat an entire one all by himself. I need to schedule his first dental apt sometime around his first bday. Not sure what they’ll do, it’s hard enough for me to brush his teeth every night. He gets too excited and starts laughing at the tooth brush.

Dominick still doesn't "ride" any of his riding toys. He'll push them and crawl behind them. He'll give his sippy cup a ride, or put things in the trunk.

Our signing is starting to pay off with Dominick. He’s had “more” down pat for about a month and now he’s signing “all done” and “milk” – they both look pretty similar, but we definitely know what he’s trying to say. When I’m changing his diaper, half way through he’ll sign, “all done” and want to get up. While we were eating one night at the table, he was finished and he looks at me and signs “more.” I didn’t immediately give him a taste of what I was eating, so he leans forward and signs “more, more” giving it more umph by leaning in. That had the entire table in hysterics.

Dominick has taken up a new passed time... pooping in the tub! He's done it twice now and I hope to GOD that last night was the last...

We celebrated our Irish side on St. Patrick's Day - yes Dominick Mazzarella may sound 100% Italian, but the boy is pretty much 1/2 Italian, 1/2 Scots Irish. We had lots of festive green attire and I made homemade corned beef. Here's Dominick with his daycare girlfriend, Teresa. She turns one next week.

I’ve put on my super mom hat getting ready for Dominick’s birthday party on Saturday. Working full time AND being a mom does not lend itself to much free time. I've had lots of late nights, but that comes with the territory. We are having local friends and family come for an afternoon celebration at my in-law’s house. I am really looking forward to celebrating making it through the first year.

I never imagined I would enjoy motherhood this much. Sure, it’s a lot of work. Sure, you are constantly feeding someone or wiping something or stepping on that damn Lego piece for the tenth time… but when you see your child, your little angle giggles and smiles up at you… my heart swells each and every time.

Happy Birthday to my favorite little boy.

Double Trouble

Him: “Um… honey?”

Me: “Yes…”

Him: “It’s raining, in our living room.”Me: “Yeah, I know it’s raining… wait, what?”There was a huge sagging piece of drywall that looked like it would erupt at any moment right above our couch! Oh Marrone! (an Italian phrase for ‘oh my goodness’ – I use it all the time even though I’m not technically Italian, I just married one.)

It would drip… then a few seconds later, drip again. But even with those occasional drips, our couch was soaked. Frank broke the water bag in our ceiling so we wouldn’t be surprised with a huge gush… we now have a bucket collecting the drips.

My husband has decided we have a roof issue… so we get his father’s cousin out to take a look. When you’re Italian, everyone seems to be your cousin. Vic (the roofer cousin), decides we need a new roof. Something about flashing. We knew it was coming, we knew when we bought the house that the roof would probably need to be replaced in the next 5 years… and we’re coming up on being in the house five years next October. So, right on time. But it’s still a large $$$$ pill to swallow… ouch.

So, in the same day, I’m not kidding. My husband and I have this conversation:

Me: “Honey, I think you need to take a look at this,” yelling up from the basement.

Him: “One second, I’m in the middle of something.”

I come drudging upstairs with soaking wet socks and find him busy playing mafia wars… ah, again, the life of a wife married to an Italian.

Me: “honey, the basement is flooded!”

Him: “Hu?”

Me: “There is water coming in from all sides in the basement. What part of flooded do you not understand?”

Him: “Let me get the wet vac…”

And down he went to try to keep up with the never ending streams of water trickling to the low part of the basement. We had at least two inches of water converging under the stairs. This was not new to us. We had some water back in 2007 when we had a torrential down pour for several days in a row. We prepared and had anything touching the floor made of plastic. But still, if our sump pump went we were sunk!

We both decide it’s time to waterproof the basement. It’s an ideal place to make into a play room. Dominick is starting to get mobile and his toys are starting to multiply. I’d love to send him downstairs to play when he gets older. So, we’re going to get a French drain installed. Another, very hard $$$$ pill to swallow.

Okay, two huge house costs… is there a third? Usually things like this come in threes… deaths, capitol expenses… Should I do some sort of dance to avoid anything else catastrophic from happening to our house?

I don’t think I can handle one more thing.

Especially two in one day.

Two Birds

I almost managed to avoid two of the grossest "parent's rights of passage" during our first year - the dreaded poop in the bathtub and a diaper eating pooch.

Well, let's just say we killed two birds with one stone last night! Dom took an impressive dump in the baby tub and when I was cleaning Dom up, Ozz was cleaning out the tub!

DOUBLE YUCK!

First Haircut

We took Dominick in for his first haircut Saturday, March 20. This was a week over due since Daddy was working through a case of that horrible stomach virus when we planned to go the week before last. We rescheduled for last Sat and glad we did. I think I needed a few more days to get used to the idea that my little baby is growing up.

The first haircut is a huge milestone and I thought for sure I’d be sad about it. But when we got Dominick in his little four-wheeler barber chair, he grabbed the wheel like a champ and away he went down the forever road of reaching milestones and end of this important first. I wasn’t sad, but happy to be sharing this special moment with my husband.

I didn’t think Dominick would cry. He’s such a happy go lucky type of kid. Nothing fazed him. He was just more interested in looking around than sitting still. We went to All about Kids and Teens, in Clark. The woman that cut his hair, Donna, was great. She was very nice and just went with the flow. She knew exactly when to cut and when not to.
She asked, “how short do you what it?”

Frank says, “Buzz it!”

I say, “Make it look like he didn’t have a haircut.”

She smiles and says, “I see we have a difference of opinion, I’ll listen to the boss,” as she winks at me.

Here are a few pictures from our visit.

Meet Up

There is this website called meetup.com where people with various interests can find each other online and actually get together in person. It’s a great concept, using the internet to actually make face to face connections.

Pre-baby I went to a few meet ups for pug owners. Pug owners in general are fanatical about their pugs, but imagine when packs of puck owners get together… it was a total pug-fest. People showing off their pug’s newest tricks or collars or talking about the best this or that. It was fun, but a total “mine is better than yours”

Recently I went to my first ever official meet up for working moms. Okay, we’re talking about actual babies and their mom’s getting together for play dates and chit chat. I have to say, it wasn’t much different than the pug-fest. Moms were comparing milestones and menus, nap schedules and tantrums. All things we have in common. But our conversations steered clear of the “one upping” each other. Or at least most of us tried. When ever you bring a group of complete strangers together there’s bound to be a few, uh, characters. I’m hoping to find a few good friends and we can start our own play dates. No potentials just yet, but I'm hopeful.

I even started my own Union County Working Moms Group – hoping to expand the opportunities. Our first event is in April and I’m inviting people to my house. I’ll report on that later.

We have a few events coming up. Looking forward to play date in the park with husbands and I may even bring Ozzie.

Play Date With Mommy

This is how Dominick and I usually spend our Saturday mornings...

Just being silly.


He's going for the cat!

I just love how he sits with his little feet crossed -so cute! He does this all the time.

Dominick loves to turn all of his toys upside down. He's got to look at every inch.

He loves to stick his little tongue out when he smiles!

Welcome to baby land... aka our living room.

Here he is, 11 months old. Such a sweet heart.