Let The Games Begin

BabyRama, Babystock, Baby Olympics

What ever you call it we had one heck of a first birthday party for the “triplets” a few weeks ago. My mom decided to throw a little get together for her three grandkids who were all born last year within 8 weeks of each other. If you know my mother, she doesn’t do anything half arsed. Yaya, as the grandkids call her, planned a fun afternoon full of cake smashing and baby Olympic events.

First up, the cake smashing. My mom ordered three fondant covered cakes, one for each baby to smash all on their own. It was so funny to see how each one smashed in their own style. Dominick, the first born and already having lots of practice at his bday party, dove right in. He tore of pieces and down the hatch they went.

Samantha, our only girl, was very dainty. She didn’t want to get her little hands dirty so she just leaned forward for full on mouth vs cake action.

Chester, the youngest of the three, was just beside himself! He decided to dismember his cake starting in the middle and working his way out.

We sang, they smashed and they even shared some cake with the grown ups. The room was very festive with balloons and streamers and if you looked closely, you saw little Olympic rings made out of plastic bracelets hanging from the chandelier.

Now on to the Olympic games. Each baby had their own little outfit. There were three events: crawling, dancing and laughing. All participants had been given pre-notice of what the competitions would be, so we all came prepared. We trained long and hard and we were eager to see what the other babies brought to the competition.

We also had an official judge, namely the eldest grandson Zach who is 5. Zach was super excited to be the judge. He had a ref shirt and even a stopwatch and whistle! Several days before the party Zach told Yaya that he really wanted Dominick to win everything. Yaya had to do some teaching about fairness and making sure the best athlete wins. This kid is a riot! Here is Zach with his best bud, Dominick.

The crawling competition was set to start and the daddies were on one side of the room and the mommies were eager to coax their little babies across the carpet. We had a little something up our sleeve… namely… a lovey. Yes, Dominick is 100% attached to a little blankie and he will do anything to get to his lovey.

On your mark, get set, GO!

And they’re off… Dominick comes charging out of the gate, full steam. Wait, there’s Samantha in lane two throwing a huge fit and will not let go of her daddy. Here comes Chester cutting across all lanes to get to the toys. Dominick eased into the finish line and took home the gold. Chester won the silver and Samantha captured the bronze with her stellar dramatic performance. Here's Dominick in his post victory splendor... and clutching his lovey of course.



There were actual metals that Zach and Yaya made – very cute. A nice bottle of wine accompanied each metal.

Our next event was laughing and Samantha had found her event. With the help of her very funny Daddy, she really performed beautifully and took home the gold. Chester got silver with his silly chuckle and Dominick crapped out and was in no mood for laughing. Here's St. John making Chester crack up!

On to dancing and on came some great music! The babies lined up holding onto the coffee table. Samantha decided she wasn’t feeling the music. Chester on the other hand rocked the house! He was popping and wiggling, putting on a great show. Dominick came in at the end with some very spirited moves while we clapped and sang. Our official was having a tough time deciding. Zach said out loud, “Dominick should win, he is was the best dancer.” When we all knew that Chester put on the best show.

Yaya pulled Zach aside and reminded him of their talk about fairness, but he wouldn’t budge. Zach awarded Dominick the gold, silver went to Chester and Samantha got bronze. That’s okay because we all know how the real winner was!

It was a really nice way to end a very eventful year in the Frizell family. We were so blessed to have three new editions join the ranks of our wild and crazy bunch. I can see many baby Olympics in our future.

Here's the whole crew - The proud grandparents: Pop and Yaya; Frank, Dominick and myself; Mike, Chrisi, Samantha and Zach; St. John, Linden and Chester

Cookie Therapy

Baking cookies, not eating them this time.

When planning Dominick’s party I found this really cool cookie recipe online for “play dough cookies.” Basically multicolored cookies swirled up on a lollypop stick. I figured the kids would love to eat these crazy colored cookies.

I decided to make them the weekend before because I knew they’d be really labor incentive. Here’s a step by step.

First you make a whole bunch of cookie dough from scratch. Easy enough. Then you have to quarter the dough and die them four different colors….

Okay, how do you actually die cookie dough? Genius me put the dough in a gallon zip lock bag and added some gel color and squished away. It worked really well. Wish I would have thought of this before I did the first color and ended up with bright yellow palms trying to need it together.

Let the dough sit in the fridge for a few hours. Once hardened, start making little ¾ inch balls out of each color. Now, get ready to sit down and put on some music because this takes FOREVER!

To make the actual cookie, take one ball of each color and roll them together to form on large swirled ball.

Then roll the large ball out into a 1 foot long snake.

Then coil the snake around itself to form the swirled cookie. This is where true clay forming technique comes in. You could so tell my first few cookies… they looked awful. Finger dents her and there, uneven thickness. By the time I rolled out my 40th cookie, I was an old pro. This was one of my first cookies, very lumpy.

Gently insert cookie pop stick and bake. At the end of the night I looked at all my cookie pops and felt they were TOTALLY worth the effort. They looked great.

All the kids loved them at the party. They couldn’t wait to pick out their cookie and take them home. I have to say they didn’t taste all that great, but they sure looked good.

Definitely therapeutic.

The Prince Turns One

On Dominick's actual birthday, he headed into daycare with home made banana bread muffins and bubbles for all his class mates. He wore his special b-day boy shirt. Don't you just love the suspenders?
After school we had a mini celebration on Dominick actual birthday. This consisted of watching him destroy an elmo cupcake. Fun time was had by all. He even had icing down his back!

We had quite the celebration for Dominick’s first birthday party. I’m so glad everyone could join us and celebrate. It was VERY tight and people were all over my in-law’s house. We had about 50 people come and this is just basically my husband’s extended family and a few of my friends and their kids. All in all, we had a great time.

We had an amazing punch that Kristen found online and served gigantic subs, baked ziti, salads, sausage and peppers. We had plenty of food for everyone. I really regret not taking enough pictures.

Each of the kids got to make a foam craft or color. That kept them busy for at least 20 minutes. We had the families who attended sign a commemorative plate and photo mat. We’ll use the plate every year for Dominick’s cake. We had lots of balloons and decorations.

I made a special “smash” cake for Dominick. I made the icing from scratch and I had these high expectations to make the perfect cake with rolled fondant cut outs… Well, I had a little trouble with the icing and it went down hill after that.

In the end, it looked great, but it was a really long night. I still am going to keep my promise to make Dominick’s b-day cakes from here on out! I just need some practice.

Notice anything wrong? Yeah, well, I spelled my own son’s name wrong! That just goes to show you how tired I was! Not sure if you know I am very dyslexic and letters just confuse me. Figures, I minored in English... We didn’t even notice it until the morning of his party. With a little snip, that extra o turned into an i.

Dominick enjoyed his smash cake. And smash he did.

Grammie led the group in a rousing game of Simon Says.

We ended the night with another round of food after everyone left. We had some more wonderful punch and opened all of his gifts. Dominick really made out. One of his faves is this ride on Mickey Mouse airplane! He doesn’t’ actually ride on it, but he walks behind it. Some more faves a pop up Thomas the Train play house and a Thomas the Train Tank that follows you around the house. It responds to your voice command. It’s super loud, but Dominick seems to like it.

We headed home with a very tired little boy and exhausted mommy and daddy.
We couldn’t have done this party with out the love, support and hard work from Frank’s parents and his sister, Kristen.

Looking forward to next year. It will be way less people and a lot more fun!

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.