Dominic is now over a week old.  It’s just so hard to believe.  He’s a pretty good little sleeper and is just a joy to hold and care for.  Life has been busy with us trying to adjust to his/our routine, which we still don’t have but are working on. I truly love being a father and there is just something amazing about when he looks up at you with his big eyes full of trust.

Here again are the set of photos from the first few days in the hospital and here’s another set with general photos which I’ll keep updating/adding to at random (if you care to, you can subscribe to the RSS feed with google reader for updates).

I’ve also put together a few clips from the first 5 days of his life:

I’m laying here next to Lori and our new baby and all I can say is we are blessed.  He is such a wonderul child.

Here are a just few photos I’ve captured:

I’ve also captured some video and there’s one funny and (potentially) embarrassing clip that lori took of me with little Dominic, be patient with the video updates those take longer to produce and I’m beat!

For now here are photos my best friend Richard took from last night to this early this morning.  He also took more photos this evening and will update the page.

A big thanks to the crew of family and friends who came out to the hospital to show us support, though it was a long journey and we didn’t get to visit much your presence and endurance meant the world to us.

Thanks to all those who sent text messages, emails and posts of encouragement I read them all and your words helped when things felt tough or unchanging.  It’s a blessing to feel loved and encouraged.

I plan on blogging about the labor experience but I just don’t have the rest / mental focus / desire to remember it all yet! :)

Well it was a long one, labor that is. Finally ending in a C-Section. We finally found out why:

Dominic Angelo Alberico Born: 7/13/08 at 05:56. 9 lbs, 20.5 inches.

For now here is a crappy cell phone pic, until I can recoup a little.

Well actually Lori is doing most of the laboring right now, I’m here for support.  It all started at 2am with contractions that woke Lori up.  We made it to the hospital about 7:30ish and in Labor and Deliver triage for about 30 - 45 minutes until they determined we’d be staying and transferred us to the lush delivery room.

I get a decent cell signal in the Delivery room so I’ll keep the twitter feed updated. http://twitter.com/angeloandlori

Will also try to post a quick cell camera shot soon after he’s born.

We’re both so excited and tired still more to go!

Well, it’s offical. Dominic did not make it on his due date so consider him ‘late.’

I didn’t think that I would be as bothered by this as I am. What’s a few more days, right? Yeah well, wrong.  This past week has been pretty uncomfortable - braxton hicks (aka false labor contractions) have been attacking me every time I sit in a comfy chair and my little boy has been enjoying raming his head into my cervix - or as I like to call it - the ol’ ice pick to the crotch! Ouch!  Not to mention that I get a million calls a day from people to see if I’ve exploded yet. I almost feel like I’m letting people down when they utter the words, “You haven’t had that baby YET???!” Uh, no cuz see, I REALLY like posing as a whale, but thanks. In all seriousness I know people are just checking on me because they care. I really appreciate that. But, I promise you will see the Bat Signal with the time comes.

Ah well, I guess I shouldn’t complain, I’ve had it pretty easy. I’ll just continue to watch the clock tick by and watch as much crappy day time television as I can. Sigh…

Hey, I’ll be you BFF if you throw a prayer my way. Thanks.

We’re still waiting for our little guy to arrive.

We had a nice 4th of July yesterday.  Early part of the day was spent watching a few movies and enjoying the AC.  Later in the evening we headed over to the Drobeck’s house to celebrate the USA’s birthday with food, bocce and fireworks.

I have many fond memories (from my younger years) spent with their family and it’s always so fun to celebrate with them.  Steve is a LOL riot and he out did himself again when he pulled out this firework the size of a bucket, I nearly peed myself I was laughing so hard!

This year we also celebrated with the newest member of their family Emma Rose. It was fun to watch her react to the festivities (once she woke up) and then to the fireworks.  I so look forward to having a baby to celebrate our upcoming holidays with family and friends.  I also look forward to helping make many joyful memories for him.

BAH!  I’m rambling and nostalgic.

Here’s the meat of the post. We did the fireworks in the backyard this year, it was nice and private feeling. I setup the camera on a tripod and let it roll to record the night’s fireworks show.  I sped up the video / time compressed it down to a little over 11 minutes.  It’s fun re-watching the 900 times I nearly burned my legs or arms, all in good fun!  This year I saved one of the dogs from jumping right into the about to erupt firework, crazy dog!

I just looked outside the door and saw that some local Lakewood Real Estate agent stuck a flag in our lawn.  We also just finished watching the Nathan’s Hot Dog eating competition, so it’s now officially the 4th of July!

Happy Birthday USA.  Have a good day everyone and be safe.  Lets all make the air smokey with fireworks!

Last night after dinner and yummy s’mores, Lori, Donovan and I decided to play some Rock Band. Lori played the drums… she’s currently 39.5/40 weeks pregnant! For the grand finale song we played “Run to the Hills” which is a pretty hard song. So she played on medium and scored a 92%!

We were hoping by rocking out so hard that maybe it would encourage little Dominic to make an appearance. Apparently he likes Rock music and is still just feeling too comfortable.

I really do have the best wife ever!

Here’s a long story, not about Dominic!  I felt it was good to write about since I don’t see many blogs/consumer stories about good experiences regarding extended warranties.

Almost 3 and a half years ago and just before Lori and I were married we bought a new larger (42”)  HDTV to replace our old 24” friend.

Now If you’ve shopped at big electronics store retailers you know that even if you purchase a pair of $5 headphones they will offer you some kind of “extended” warranty.  Most often I don’t believe in them, however under some circumstances I am all for them.

So when we purchased a 42” LCD Projection TV I felt it was also worth the extra money to buy the 4 year extended warranty (insurance policy) for a few reasons.  LCD (and DLP) projection technology were pretty new and I expected there was a good chance for problems.  It covered the replacement of the bulb which has an average 5000 hour life span and at the time was almost the cost of the warranty.  4 years is a lot of time to guarantee a piece of electronics.

The television served us well for almost 3 years when I started to notice the picture was getting dim and fuzzy.  I called the service center and they came out to service our TV and replaced the lamp.  Good times, the TV felt newish again. Fast forward to a few months ago.

I was reviewing test footage from our new HD camera when I noticed strange spots on the screen.  Thinking it was my brand new camera, I was worried I bought a dud and almost exchanged it for a new one!  After testing the same footage on my other TV and computer screens, I noticed the spots were only appearing when viewed on the TV.  This drew my attention to the TV and I threw all sorts of test patterns at the TV and noticed there were quite a few spots, some the size of a quarter along with a strange light blueish-green color distribution.

Researching the issue, I came up with a few reasons as to why this was happening.  One was probably dust settling on the lens or in the light engine (projector) which is apparently a common issue due the (poor) design of most modern “slim” LCD and DLP projectors.  The other problem was probably due to a light engine (projector) failure.  At some point during all this research it dawned on me that I still had an extended warranty which covered this TV for almost another year!  I called for service.

The technician decided to replace the light engine (projector).  A few days after the new one was installed I noticed MORE spots and one of them was HUGE and VERY noticeable (even if you were watching dark scenes) so I called the service center again.  The technician explained to me they probably sent a bad refurbished part and they’d put in for another replacement.

Now I was starting to grow tired of the repair process so I read through the extended warranty policy and found saw there was a lemon clause and while I was glad it existed I figured I’d allow them to fix the TV and hope he problem would be solved.  The part was replaced, all is well….

WRONG!  The next morning when I turned on the TV I noticed the screen was shaking almost like a flicker.  This infuriated me so I placed another call to the service center and mentioned my feeling about this TV approaching the lemon stage.  They scheduled an appointment for the following Thursday for a technician to come and either repair or issue a replacement authorization.  Thursday came, I waited for my appointment phone call from the technician, it never happened.  I called the service center, they claimed I didn’t have an appointment and was actually waiting for Lemon authorization.  Now I felt better, at least they were being proactive about the situation, though they didn’t inform me.

WRONG AGAIN!  I get a random call the next day service center rep trying to schedule an appointment for a tech to come out and pick up a part to send back to the manufacture for repair.  After explaining to her the technician took that part with him the previous Friday when he performed the repair she was confused and told me to call back the main line and explain it to them, as she was just a scheduler.

So I did and was informed no one needed to come out and pick up any parts, it was a mistake in the system.  He did informed me I needed a technician to come out and evaluate the Lemon claim.  I agreed though it would be at least another week for this to happen. Now I was very angry due to the mistreatment I was getting from the service center phone reps.  I decided to go into a local store and explain my situation to a manager.

The manager was sympathetic and very helpful.  He placed a call to a friend of his in the Lemon department and also faxed my info over to him.  Later that evening (while we’re at dinner for Lori’s birthday) I get a call from the service center saying they would like to send a technician the next day.  I agreed and hoped for the appointment phone call the next morning.

The technician called in the morning and then came over in the early afternoon.  He agreed it was a Lemon, made some calls to get it approved and helped me load the TV into my truck.  Off to the store to do the exchange.  The people at the store were very nice and super helpful.  They informed me since they didn’t have the same TV to replace my LEMON, they would give me full credit back towards the purchase of new one in store.  Pretty awesome!

So we chose the Sony 46” 1080p 120hz LCD Flat panel TV as a replacement.  The new TV takes up about the same amount of space (height and width wise) as the old  but there is more screen due to the speakers being on the bottom and this TV is only 3” thick!  The picture quality is dramatically better than the last TV (even Lori noticed it) and it really shines when watching a BluRay disc!

So after the Lemon return credit, a % off coupon, a few other certificates (thanks for the Kawanza gift Don!) and I of course added on the 4 year extended warranty so we ended up with a brand spanking new, beautiful TV for under 600 US stimulus dollars!  So sometimes it’s worth buying an extended warranty and the hassle involved.

So this is how I feel today…

I’m sure some of you are sick to death of hearing about this impending birth. Ah well, you’ll have to deal. It’s pretty amazing - all of the thoughts and emotions that you experience as you sit and wait for a baby to show up. Angelo and I have already shared quite a few on this blog, so I’ll spare you. Just know that when it’s your time to go through this, you’ll understand the need to blab about it all the time. For example, I don’t particularly like to “blog,” yet I find myself *needing* to do it to keep my head from imploding.

I’m pretty thankful. I have had a relatively easy pregnancy. No complications, no ‘scares,’  just a lot of anxiety - though thankfully that has subsided now that I feel the baby all the time. Yet, with this easy pregnancy, I feel I can now say that “I’m over it.”

I’m over having to pop TUMS 647 times a day because pregnancy heart burn is from the devil himself.

I’m over having to be careful when I laugh, bend down, stand up, ok - breath, so I don’t accidentally, ah hem… have an accident.

I’m over needing a forklift to get me out of bed in the middle of the night for a trip to bathroom. Again.

And finally, I’m over having a million false alarm contractions wondering if this is *indeed* the real thing.

The sad part of all of this is, I still have a week to go. And that’s IF he comes on time. Sigh… Dominic’s worth it, though. All of this discomfort will soon be a distant memory. I’ll soon have other discomforts to blog about - aren’t you excited?!

So for now, I will try to enjoy the last FEW days I have to sleep in, do what I want, lunch with friends, and well.. do what I want… and I will enjoy the last few moments of wondering what this little person inside me looks like…

<pardon… I’m having a contraction………………………… eh, it’s a fake>