Time sure is flying!  We love you little guy!

Vincent being the little gassy guy he is, went as a Whoopie Cushion.

We had a late start to the evening due to Vince’s projectile presents (vomit) moments before we were to leave, which prompted a bath.  After a stop to show off the costumes to Grandma, we ended up at a friend’s house in Los Alamitos for a neighborhood Bug-A-Boo mini carnival.

There Dominic was able to walk the neighborhood and entertain all the adults who LOVED his costume.  He was enjoying it and would dance, especially when I’d play Elvis music on my phone for him.

Having two kids to manage on Halloween is pretty tiring and one of them isn’t MOBILE yet!  I can’t wait until next year when Vince is walking around (with Dominic running away) and then the subsequent years when they’re both running away from us while we go trick or treating.

Hopefully next year we’ll get some coordination with their costumes and maybe a return for Lori and I to dress up again though it’ll be hard to top Dog and Beth!

Halloween is ok but I’m REALLY excited for Christmas!

More photos here

This time however we had TWO kids to wrangle (well Vincent’s not mobile yet) and with Dominic being 2+ now, he’s VERY interested in the rides and not so much the photos.

Unlike the previous two years (photos: 2009 and 2008) we made the trip on a Saturday and quickly found out they are BUSY!  So next year we’ll return back to the empty patch that weekdays bring.

We met up with David, Gina and Emma so we had some fun shots of the kids.

It’s fun having this annual tradition and it gives quite a perspective on just how much Dominic has grown up when I look at the old photos.

Check out the full set on our Flickr.  However, I must warn you (and I know I’m biased) there are some images here that may just completely melt your heart!

RAGE!!!

It sure has been quite a challenging month for us!  We have one child who is an increasingly active and independent 2-year old while the other is totally dependent (and lately fussy) infant, lots of learning for all of us!

Overall Dominic is a great big brother and as time goes on he is showing more affection towards Vincent, often wanting to hug or kiss him and occasionally wanting to hold him.  Vincent is even part of Dominic’s night time bed routine, we all say good night to Dominic and give him a hug and kiss.

I have to compliment Dominic because he really is a good kid and is usually pretty even tempered.  He is learning to play more on his own and allow us to tend to the baby.  That being said, he is still a 2 year old and does have his moments!

On to Vincent, who seems to be a good natured baby, when he’s feeling well.  The first few weeks of his life was filled with quite a bit of drama.  One we decided that breastfeeding wasn’t working for him he went full time onto formula.  We figured out that much like Dominic he has milk sensitivity issues, so he was put on soy.

He’s been doing ok in one respect on the soy but we think the other issues he’s having are gas (which is also common to Dominic) and we also think he’s suffering from reflux (much like Dominic the spit up king if you remember) however unlike his brother he’s not a happy spit-upper.

Lately we’ve found him gulping, hiccuping and a few other signs that we can read as reflux while he’s eating, which seems to be causing him grief.  We’re working with his pediatrician and trying different non-medicine methods to see if we can provide him with comfort.  So far, the reflux is winning and we’ll probably be putting him on infant pepcid or zantac soon.

We’re hoping to help him feel better when eating and hopefully he’ll be comfortable and sleep more uninterrupted.  He seems to have potential to be an awesome sleeper much like Dominic.  At night, after his fluke 8 hour sleep one night he seems to be averaging a 4 or 5 hour stretch followed by a 2 or 3 hour follow up.

The sleep, or lack of a decent continuous stretch followed by a day being around an active 2 year old, has been rough on us.  We were both VERY spoiled with Dominic who started to sleep through the night before he was 3 weeks old!  Though, we are confident that once Vincent feels better he’ll fall into good habits.

Initially, we spent a lot of time at home except for trips to the doctor’s office.  I’ve been blessed to be able to work from home which has been helpful to be around and be the extra pair of hands when necessary.  Despite all this staying at home (and going stir crazy) we’ve started to make an effort to get out more and try to normalize our life again, whatever that means.

The 4 of us have out to dinner a few times in the last month and we’ve survived.  Now I know to those of you who don’t have children, that doesn’t seem like a big deal, but it truly is!  Dominic shows more signs of trying to be grown up like us, he’ll often sit in the booth and not use his booster for part of the meal and I think he’s enjoying sitting next to me and being a big boy.

We also finally got a double stroller (which is a strange concept/device) and have put it together.  Next step is to get out and start taking walks to get back to being more active. Speaking of getting out, it sure does take quite a bit longer to leave the house with 2 kids and you’re always forgetting something for one of the kids.  I know it’ll all make sense eventually, it’s only been a month!

Well that is all I can think of for now because I’m EXHAUSTED! I’ve post the first month’s photos of Vincent to our Flickr account.  So now that we’re into the second month I’ll start to break up photos into groups so the next set will cover 1 – 3 months and so on until a year then the gaps will be longer.  I’ll continually add photos to these sets and hopefully remember to point out a few here as I post.  So be sure to check our flickr account for the latest photos.

I still have a few photos to process through and I’m planning on blogging the labor processand then one on how we are doing currently.  I’ve created Flickr sets for Vincent’s First Week at Home and Vincent’s First Month.  For now enjoy this photo of our little guy and know there’s more to follow.

Friday evening was our church’s Good Friday service. I arrived early to setup and run sound check and drama rehearsal. The service was good and we had a lot of people there so it made for a great energy.

Saturday was our church’s HUGE Easter egg hunt with fun, games and free pancake breakfast.  With an estimated 1500 – 2000 people shwoing up, it turned out to be a HUGE event!  They setup 10,000 eggs in 3 separate (by age groups) hunt areas and I believe it took everyone about 3 mintues to fully collect all the eggs.  5 lucky winners found golden ticket eggs and won nice gift certificates.

The event was filled with good times and Dominic got to sit with the Easter Bunny for the first time in his life.  While waiting in line to take his photo with the bunny, he fell asleep in Lori’s arms while sucking on his new plastic egg friend!

Good thing he wakes up happy!

After we came home and let Dominic get his nap on we went into the back yard and took some fun some Easter photos of Dominic. Later in the evening we BBQ’d ribs and corn on the cob. Dominic enjoyed gnawing on his Corn on the Cob.

This morning I went to church to run sound during both services and then after we went to my grandparent’s house to have lunch with my family. It was really good to get together today but also very emotional walking around my grandparent’s house and being flooded with MANY memories of them.

Lunch was great, Dominic self fed himself peas, carrots, (cut up) hand made ravioli and garlic bread, we have a CHAMPION eater on our hands! After lunch we trekked over to Lori’s family gathering for dessert and visiting.

A Busy but good weekend! Oh yeah, tomorrow Dominic is 9 FREAKING MONTHS OLD!! :)

Today marks our 4th wedding anniversary. It’s so crazy to think it’s been 4 years since we said “I do,” had a blast at our reception and then hours later were off to our wonderful Honeymoon in Maui!

Meeting Lori over 11 years ago truly has changed my life for the better. She is the most loving, thoughtful, caring person I have ever met and no one has consistently shown me these qualities quite like her. It is truly hard to remember life before Lori.

Also without Lori we wouldn’t have been blessed with the joy of Dominic and when I look at him I think of her and I am overjoyed with how complete my life is!

However, due to having an 8 month old baby anniversary celebrations this year have been subdued a bit.

Last Friday Grandma Castelli happily played with Dominic for the evening which allowed Lori and I to go out on probably our first date since 2 weeks before Dominic was born (almost 9 months prior.)

We went to Parkers Lighthouse (same place we went to on our previous date) had a nice dinner and then made our way to 2nd street in Belmont Shore. There we walked around and enjoyed each other’s company while we snacked on some Yogurtland.

It was a great evening and while it felt nice to have an evening together, it became a little harder as the evening went onbecause I was missing Dominic.

We’re hoping in a few weeks to have Dominic sleep over at Grandma Castelli’s house while we spend the evening and following day in some city a few hours away (wine tasting in Temecula?) and wrap up our Anniversary celebration.

Here are the collections of photos from our wedding and honeymoon.

 

I love you Lori and look forward to many more loving years raising our family and growing old together.

It’s been an emotional and busy few months so I’ve finally been able to process and upload new photos, here’s an album of photos from his  5 – 7 month photos

It’s so crazy looking at him now, he seems so different from that little (big) guy we brought home. He now babbles a lot when he wakes up in the morning and sometimes while he eats and at random throughout the day. He likes to do the raspberries as evidenced in the previous post’s video.

He can pull himself up pretty well and likes to stand and lean on his toys. He can’t crawl quite yet but he is getting really good at scooting around and pulling himself across the floor while on his tummy. He can also get up on his knees and he lurches forward sometimes but he hasn’t figured out how to coordinate his arms and legs to get an effective crawl.

He eats solid foods at least twice a day and we are beginning to introduce him to more bland versions of our dinners, though he’s still not quite into the texture of the ground up stuff. He plays around with his sippy cup while laying on his back on the floor and also enjoys chewing/sucking on frozen banana in a mesh strainer. He still doesn’t have his teeth but is working on them and we think we feel a few bumps on his bottom gums.

He’s still sleeping well at a very consistent 11 – 12 hours a night. He tends to take one 1.5 – 2.25 hour nap in the mid morning along with two 30 – 45 minute naps during the day and plays in between.

He is quite the happy baby and loves to smile and laugh. He seems to be developing quite a big personality and has us laughing often throughout the day. We are very blessed to have him in our lives, he’s quite the super baby!

So here is link to some more photos of Dominic in his cute little Sailor’s Suit. Thanks mom, I’m sure he’ll be very embarrassed later in life!

Even baby gowns have that pesky problem of catching a draft, though he didn’t seem to mind.

Today he had 3 shots, and didn’t even cry for the first one and minimally cried for the next two.  He checked out well and his current stats are: His weight is 20 lbs 2 oz which means he’s slowed down a bit but is still in the low 90%. His head size is 18” or the mid 90%  His height is a little over 29” which puts him off the charts (above 100%).

We both felt his weight had slowed down and have recognized his height as he often has to wear clothing a few months ahead of him, so we weren’t too surprised.  He’s been cleared to move on to next stage foods and soon enough on to real food.  He will have to go back in a month to get the second part of his Flu Vaccination and then his next set of shots will be at 1 year old.  So for 9 months he’ll just go in to visit with the doctor and get measured and weighed.

Christmas was fun this year with Dominic and I can’t wait until next year when he’s more aware.  I finished editing through and uploading our Christmas Eve and Morning/Day photos.  I took way to many photos and now I feel bad for always giving the shutter heavy photographers a bad time at the award shows for overshooting :)