May - June in a nutshell

Fourteen & Fifteen Months snuck up on me. A lot has gone done the past few months. Here’s a down and dirty recap.

Dominick is walking! He’s walking! He’s walking! Dominick took his first steps on mother’s day, May 9 and hasn’t stopped. He likes to walk on his own and will rarely hold your hand, but we’re working on that.

Here is is enjoying some bubbles at one of the many carnivals we have at our hospital.

Dominick has been doing a lot new things lately – some of his faves: shaking his head no, blowing kisses, pointing with his pointer finger, give us kisses – mostly open mouth w/ a little tongue!

He continues to sign: more, all done, milk, and eat and has added juice, book, paci, and please! AND he now strings two words together – “More please” It’s adorable.

He learns so quickly these days. I think he learned how to sign book in just a few minutes. It’s like something finally “clicked.” He just needs to work on the dexterity of manipulating his fingers. A lot of his signs look alike, but we actually know what he means. Juice looks a lot like milk and paci and eat are very similar. But we can usually tell what he’s trying to get at. We’re working on: Ozzie (the sign for O) and his Aunt Kristen taught him to sign the color “Green”

We’ve had another round of croup and a few strange viruses with high fevers. Just this past week he spiked a 103 fever with no other symptoms. He now has a bunch of green sticky boogies – YUCK!

Mother's Day 2010 - no I will not sit in this really cool riding toy! I'll push it, tip it over, but I will NOT sit in it!

Most recent family portrait - Dominick is in the "I will not sit still" phase. He is always on the GO!

We took Dominick to the St. John Vianney carnival last week and he rode the merry go round. He LOVED it! As the horse was going up and down he was holding on to the poll with a smile from ear to ear. This carnival is a family favorite. Frank’s parents have been going for decades. I’m sad to report that the food is getting worse every year. Frozen pizza, stale zepole – just awful. But I think from now on we’ll be going to the rides and not so much the food.

Out for lunch with mommy, Grammie and Aunt Kristen flirting with all the ladies!

We’re gearing up for a trip down to Jacksonville, Florida this weekend for a Wright family reunion. My mom’s side of the family hasn’t gotten together like this in years and it will be so great to see all my cousins and aunts and uncles again. Frank is staying home because it’s department policy to not ask for days off around a holiday – doesn’t that suck!

Dominick, myself, my mom and step-dad and my brother, his wife and two kids are flying out at 6 a.m. on Friday morning, returning late Sunday night. My stepdad is funding the entire trip and made the flight reservations. It’s obvious he has never traveled with small children before, otherwise he would have chosen a more reasonable hour to travel – but my motto this weekend is to “go with the flow” and enjoy every minute I can.

I’m stocked up on new toys for the trip and hopefully I’ll be able to keep Dominick entertained for most of the flight. Here are some pictures from the past few months to catch us up to speed.

June is all about the pool! This kid LOVES the water. He will litterally put his face down into the water - no fear! Catching some rays at Yaya's house - loving the pool!

Samantha not loving the pool so much.

One hot, hot, Saturday in June I went to Metuchen's street fair with Zach, his mom Jen, and my mom, Yaya.

Dominick is the newest member of the Metuchen Fire Department.

Here's my nephew, Zach, trying to eat his ice cream faster than it can melt! It was over 95 degrees out.

I took Dominick to Turtle Back Zoo - it's a small Zoo in West Orange. This is the "what the heck is this thing" look.

Here Dominick is saying "ooohh, oooohh!" at the prarie dogs.

He LOVES to splash!

The little guy was sooooo tired after an afternoon at the pool.

Mother's Day at the Mazzarella's

We celebrated mother's day in grand fashion.

We had a bbq on Friday night and Frank made some mouth watering bbq ribs! To die for!!! They were rubbed and smoked and grilled... yum!

Saturday we just took it easy and I guess Dominick got the memo and he slept in until 9 a.m.! I was shocked! The kid went down at 6:30, got a diaper change around 6 a.m. and slept soundly until 9. Of course, I was up after the diaper change and couldn't get back to sleep. I caught up on my shows that I taped throughout the week. I don't have any time during the week to watch TV, so come Saturday, I have 5 or 6 shows to watch.

We had the plumber come and clean out our pipes. We have constantly slow drains and hopefully Joe the plumber, yes our plumber's name is Joe, won't have to come back any time soon. We are thinking about working the laundry room... that's a whole other post.

Back to mother's day. So the day actually arrives. I'm hoping Frank will spring out of bed at the first peep from Dominick so I can sleep in and maybe even enjoy a leisurely breakfast in bed that he slaved over... oh wait... some one slap me because that is far from what happened. Welcome to the life of a cop's wife. Or anyone who's husband works nights. Poor Frank was wiped out and didn't get to sleep until well after 2 a.m. So there I was up and atom with Dominick. Which I really didn't mind at all. I love spending time with Dominick. I hardly get to see him during the week, so I cherish every minute I can. And my breakfast in bed was a delicious dinner on Friday.

That said, it's nice to have break once in a while. Hint hint.

After I pulled Frank out of bed we headed over to his parents house for brunch. Grammie, as we all call her now, had quite a spread of sandwich fixings, salads, and an egg casserole. Who doesn't love a good egg casserole. Dominick ate a bite of everything and really loved sucking on the bread and butter pickles and spitting them right out. This boy eats more than any other kid his age and thankfully he isn’t picky at all. Sure, he’ll spit out the first bite of something new, but it takes him a second to realize, oh, that was good. Then he gobbles it up.

Here are a few pictures from our day.

Here is Dominick cleaning Grammie's table... he's so helpful.

No, you will not put me on this very cool riding toy, I'll push it around, tip it over but I will NOT ride on it!


Dominick is in the "I don't want to sit still for a picture" phase... we're hoping he ages out of this real soon. But if he's anything like his father, it'll last well into his 30's.



Give the boy a cell phone and he's as happy as a clam.



Isn't his outfit cute! I just had to get this shirt when I saw it and he looks adorable in jeans.