Dominick's 2nd Birthday!!

Holy Cow, I have a 2 year old.

I was talking to someone about my birthday a few weeks ago and that person asked me if I felt "old". I told them that my age didn't make me feel old. The fact that I have a 2 year old and another baby due in just a few months makes me feel old. I still think of myself as being right out of college. When in fact, I've been out of college 5 years almost. I've been married for 5 years this September. I have a 2 year old. I'm about to have a newborn. I have a mortgage. I have a job.

Holy cow, I'm a grown up. :)

But enough about how old I am, and let's talk about how old Dominick is! He's TWO!

We had his family birthday party on Saturday (a day early). When I picked him up Saturday (he stayed at his Nani's Friday night so Mommy and Daddy could finish the bathroom) I asked him how old he was. He said, "one!". I said, "No silly. Now you're two!". He said, "No two. I'm one!". And then I had to stand down, because he was right! On Saturday he was still one. ;-)

He still doesn't quite "get" his birthday yet. When people showed up at our house yesterday they would walk up to Dom and say, "Happy Birthday Dom!" and he would reply, "Happy Birthday ____!" to whoever he was talking to! It was pretty cute.

He had a BLAST hanging out with cousins and just running around.

We ate brunch first. I had sausage, egg and cheese breakfast casserole, cinnamon rolls, fruit salad, Caesar salad, and baked potato soup. It was pretty good if I may say so myself!

After brunch, everyone just hung out for a bit. The kids destroyed the basement ;-) and the adults talked upstairs. I decided before it got to be too late, we should go downstairs and watch the DVD I made. I don't know if you all remember but Nick's sister and her husband do a birthday DVD of the kids. It shows a picture slideshow set to music and it's really neat. It's like a virtual photo album and I loved the idea. So I made one for Dom's birthday last year. I decided to stick with it and we did another DVD this year too. Unfortunately, when we got Ruby last year, she ate our camera cord (remember that fiasco??) so there were a LOT of pictures that were either Dominick alone, or pictures I took from my sis or my mom. So not a lot of pictures with the cousins. BUT we'll work on that this year for Dom's 3rd birthday DVD! :)

After the DVD we went back upstairs for cake and presents. Dominick got to pick out his cake this year, could you tell? He wanted an Elmo cake. So Elmo is what Dom got.

Henry, Kailey, Addison, Dominick,
Sophia and Cecilia (we were missing a Jilly for this picture).

We got a few pictures with the cousins before singing and cutting the cake and then we sang to the Salami.

He loved the singing. He tried to sing along but didn't know all the words. After we were done he clapped along with everyone else. He blew out his candle (with a little help from Mommy) and then clapped some more. I just love this picture of how excited he is! :)

He LOVED eating his cake too. McArthur's cake is SO good I don't blame him! Nick and I were left with about 5 pieces after the party and let's just say, we weren't complaining!



After cake time, it was present time! He really started to get it this year. He loved opening the presents and handing me the paper each time he pulled a piece off. He got "boring" presents this year, per my request. :) He got SO many toys and things for Christmas that I didn't want him getting any more! I requested he get clothes, books and puzzles. He got a LOT of clothes, a few books and three toys. Perfect if you ask me.

The clothes will be perfect for our ski trip. He got lots of fleece jackets and pants. He also got sweatshirts and jeans and all kinds of good stuff! He also got some clothes for Spring which is nice too so that we won't be stocked for the winter and then have a naked 2 year old in the warmer weather!

He got a few books that he already has but we can leave some books upstairs for Annabelle and bring some downstairs to his big boy room.

For his toys he got a tool set (to be just like Daddy), some Hot Wheels Cars (his favorite right now!) and a Little People car ramp thingy that took awhile and about 4 people to assemble!







I think that he was a spoiled little guy!

One of the best parts about the party was that the bathroom was almost complete. I don't have an "after" picture yet for the bathroom but I will soon. I'll try to do a bathroom post tomorrow. It was great to have 3 functioning bathrooms! With 25 people, you need as much room and as many bathrooms as you can have! :)

I'd say that Dom's 2nd birthday party was a success.


SUNDAY - Dom's actual birthday!

We wanted to do something fun. Just for him on his actual birthday. We woke up and read books and played for a bit and then we got dressed to go to breakfast. We went out to Bob Evans (our favorite place for breakfast!) and though Dom was gonna be bad. He was whining and crying the whole time we were waiting for a table. But as soon as we sat down, he was an angel. And he must be going through a growth spurt because he ate a TON. He ate 3 of his 5 little pancakes. A sausage link. Half of Mommy's potatoes. Half of a biscuit. And a bowl of fruit. And that was after the banana and animal cookies we had at home! That's not like Dom. Typically he's not a good eater! But he was a good eater on his birthday!

After breakfast we asked Dominick what he wanted to do and he said, "Go play at Dommie's house!". So after asking about 4 times if this is what he really wanted to do, we obliged. We took him home and played with his new toys. He took a good nap (Mommy took a nap then too) and then we played some more. He got a bath and then went to bed about 8ish.

It was a good birthday weekend for Dom! His last birthday as an only child! :)

Happy 2nd Birthday Little Man!! We love you SO much!

Sunday Birthday dinner

I have a few minutes so I wanted to write about Sunday.

Nick did an indoor mini triathlon in the morning with his sister at the YMCA in Chesterfield. Kate started at 7 am and Nick started at 8:30. We didn't see Kate start, but we got to see her finish. Since it was an indoor tri, it was timed. Which meant, you did a 10 minute swim, a 30 minute bike on the spinning bikes, and a 20 minute run on the treadmill. You controlled how fast/how far you went and you just had to do the time. So no matter what, you were only doing something for 1 hour. Plus you had 10 minutes between the swim and bike and 5 minutes between the bike and run. Awards were given out for whoever went the farthest (furthest??).

Dominick was a bear Sunday morning. We had to wake him up to go to the tri, and he was not happy. Plus he's going through a major "daddy" stage and didn't want anything to do with me. He kept asking if he could swim with Daddy and I had to tell him no and it made him sad every time. Luckily when Kate finished, she came and hung out with me and Dom and that helped.

Nick did great, although he mentioned that this was one of the hardest things he's ever done. He thought it was harder than the half marathon. Mainly because he has a bad hamstring and he really struggled on the bike but he was exhausted.

He did great though. He did 17 lengths of the pool (down is one, back is two), he biked 9.5 miles, and he ran 2.3 miles. So he did really well.

After he finished, Kate picked Dave up and the 5 of us went to breakfast at Stratton's cafe in Clayton. It was delicious. I was exhausted from chasing Dom so we all had a hearty breakfast!

After breakfast, we went home and Nick, Dom and I all took a nice nap! It was much needed and definitely deserved in my opinion! Dom woke up before either Nick or I did and it was perfect timing really. We got up, got dressed and headed north for my birthday dinner.

Dinner was GREAT. We had cornflake potatoes, a pear and spinach salad, rolls and salsiccia sausage cooked with peppers and onions. I LOVE Salsiccia sausage. Delicious.

After dinner we just hung out for awhile and talked. Then I opened my presents. :)

I got a cookbook stand, which I love. I asked for it and my mom got it for me. It's a nice bamboo wood and has a plexiglass cover on it so you don't get the pages dirty. I love it.

I also got my traditional money from my parents. They give us $1.00 for however old we are. So this year I got a card with $27.00 in it. :) They are also giving me money towards a desk chair or a printer for my new computer.

My sister and Andrew gave me 2- 3 tiered hanging baskets to hang in our kitchen that look like this:




and some K-Cups for my Keurig. They got me Hot Apple Cider and some decaf Hazelnut coffee. It's nice to have some other non-caffeinated options for me!

It was a great birthday dinner! It was finished up with white cake with white icing (my favorite) and some chocolate and vanilla ice cream. Yum!

We even left at a decent time so I was in bed by 10:30. Gotta love that!

Happy 27th birthday to me! :)

Birthday Weekend - and a scary story...

What a weekend it was!

My birthday was Friday and it was a good birthday (for the most part). I worked in the morning at the office, then in the early afternoon, Mike and I went out to our accountants to drop off our year end stuff. After we did that, we headed to West County Mall to grab a quick lunch. I had Chick Fil A. Yum! :)

Then it was time to go home and get ready for our night ahead. I got home, took a shower, dried my hair and got dressed. We picked up Dommie from Daycare and brought him over to his Nani's for a sleepover (score!). Then we headed back home to finish getting ready.

We went to Blue Ocean Sushi for dinner with some close friends and family. We had quite the turnout! Friday was my birthday and today is my close friend, Michelle's birthday. So we were celebrating both birthdays. And technically, we were celebrating Michelle's husband (Adam)'s birthday too. His birthday is Thursday.

Anyway, we had 14 people come to our birthday party! :) It was a good time. And GREAT food.

The night ended a little rough because Nick was tired (I guess that's what happens when you have to get up for work at 5 am and you play XBox Black Ops until 2 am!!) and he was crabby by the end of the night. We fought almost the whole way home. And me being the pregnant, over-emotional person I am right now (and on my birthday!!), I cried and went to go sleep on the couch in the basement.

Quick sidenote here, my basement is really scary at night!! I was not a fan of being down there by myself when it's so dark! I debated going back up, but I had to prove a point, right??

And it worked, about 15 minutes after I got down there, Nick came down and apologized and asked me to come upstairs. I did so very willingly and we both got a good night's sleep in our room. :)

Saturday morning was good. We woke up and the marble people came to install the marble in our shower. YAY! We left for a bit to go to breakfast and I got some delicious blueberry pancakes. We picked Dom up after that and headed home. This was around 11:30. At this point, I told Nick that I hadn't felt the baby move at all that day. She wasn't moving a lot the night before but I didn't think too much of it since I had been talking and doing a lot. But the fact that she hadn't moved at ALL on Saturday was very odd, especially after eating those sugary pancakes.

I decided to drink some juice and lay down for an hour. I laid down until 12:30 and hadn't felt her move once. At this point I was starting to get a little scared. I called the exchange to talk to a doc and my doc was on call. He told me to come in. He said most likely everything was fine but we should be safe and not sorry. So I headed to the hospital. I went alone because it was almost time for Dom's nap and I didn't want to disrupt that. I also figured I would get halfway there (or all the way there) and she would start moving. No such luck. I got to the hospital at 1 and they got me in quick! I was in a room by 1:10!

They had me change into a gown and they came in to hook up the monitors. She found the heart beat right away and that helped me breathe easier. Not 5 minutes later, she started kicking. Of course. Little stinker.

I wished I could get up and go back home and say "Just kidding!!" but you can't do that. So they asked me a million questions and kept me on the monitors. I would look at them randomly and saw that her heartrate was usually in the upper 130's, lower 140's and my contractions would range from 8-16 or so. Nothing to be concerned about. I couldn't even feel those honestly.

The resident came in after one hour of monitoring and said that she was going to do an ultrasound to check growth but everything looked good. The baby was measuring right on time and was 3 lbs. 9 oz. My fluid level was 13 cm (should be over 9 at this point she told me). So everything was looking good. Then she checked my cervix. She said it was starting to thin already but it was still closed and I wasn't dilated at all. She wanted to call my doc and then she'd be back.

After she left, I started feeling contractions. A lot. I get these contractions fairly often. They don't hurt, but they make my stomach feel super tight and I can't breathe. I looked over at the machine and saw that my contractions were in the 40's and 50's. Yikes! She came back in shortly after that and told me I wasn't going anywhere. I had to be monitored for another hour to see what the contractions did. So I waited. And drank some water and waited some more. She came in around 3ish and told me that they were starting to go down a bit but she didn't like how many I was having. I told her that I get these all the time and Dr. Webb knows about them. She called him and he said I was free to go (thank Goodness!). I have to keep a closer eye on my contractions and if I get more than 6 an hour I have to call or go in. I don't think I ever get that many but I don't really count them.

I was sent home with instructions to do fetal kick counts and to monitor my contractions closely. I also have to drink more water. I don't drink enough. And so far things have been great. The baby is moving constantly and I haven't had any contractions. Things are perfect. Like I knew that they would be. I just had to hold off on going to the doc. Oh well. Like he said, better safe than sorry.

Sunday was a busier day (and my birthday dinner with the family) but this post is long enough. I'll write about Sunday later. :)

It was a good birthday.

New Zodiac Sign...?

Well Happy Birthday to me! I woke up this morning a Capricorn and just found out that now I'm a Sagittarius. I'm not sure how I feel about this...

After a lot of reading (yes, I need to know why I changed signs, darnit!) I found out that the tropical zodiac hasn't changed since it follows the seasons, however if you don't follow the tropical zodiac and you follow the zodiac based on constellations (the sidereal zodiac), then your sign probably changed. I don't know which one I follow (some websites say US follows the tropical and others say otherwise), but I know that I'm sure glad I didn't follow a craze and get a tattoo of a ram or other Capricorn related objects on my body!

This article from a CNN blog says that most likely your sign didn't change at all and that Westerners follow the tropical zodiac.

But if you follow the sidereal zodiac or something like that and you are wondering if your sign changed, see below. I have a list of the old dates and the new ones. It's really crazy because my friend Mike told me about this when we got to work and he said his sign didn't change. I looked it up and me, Dominick and Nick's signs ALL changed!

Dominick is now a Capricorn (was an Aquarius - and has an ADORABLE onesie he got from his Godmother that says Aquarius on it...)
Nick is now a Gemini (was a Cancer)
I am now a Sagittarius (was a Capricorn)

I guess it doesn't matter because we follow the tropical zodiac or something, but I'm still not 100% sure about that either...

The Old Zodiac Signs
Aquarius: Jan 20 – Feb 18
Pisces: Feb 19 – March 20
Aries: March 21 – April 19
Taurus: April 20 – May 20
Gemini: May 21 – June 20
Cancer: June 21 – July 22
Leo: July 23 – August 22
Virgo: August 23 – Sept 22
Libra: Sept 23 – Oct 22
Scorpio: Oct 23 – Nov 21
Sagittarius: Nov 22 – Dec 21
Capricorn: Dec 22 – Jan 19

The New Zodiac Sign Dates:
Capricorn: Jan. 20 – Feb. 16
Aquarius: Feb. 16 – March 11
Pisces: March 11- April 18
Aries: April 18- May 13
Taurus: May 13- June 21
Gemini: June 21- July 20
Cancer: July 20- Aug. 10
Leo: Aug. 10- Sept. 16
Virgo: Sept. 16- Oct. 30
Libra: Oct. 30- Nov. 23
Scorpio: Nov. 23- Nov. 29
Ophiuchus: Nov. 29- Dec. 17
Sagittarius: Dec. 17- Jan. 20

So now I need to figure out what being a Sagittarius means...

I know that the Sagittarius is the Archer and it's a picture of a centaur (half human, half horse) holding a bow and arrow. At least that's pretty cool.