Our Move to Suburbia

First of all, let me say.... I'm totally exhausted. They say moving is the second most stressful thing that can happen to you after the death of a close one. I don't know if I'd go that far, but it's been pretty hectic around here for the past week! Packing up our condo for the move happened over a period of several weeks, and therefore may be why it didn't seem so much work as it does now that we are unpacking all our belongings. Where's my phone charger? Where's that pair of shoes I want to wear? Where's my t-pass?!

View of the house from across the street

Our Family Room


Going to the backyard from the family room


From family room up to the kitchen


The kitchen


View from the sun room




The living room (our art gallery for now)

The actual moving day went off without a hitch for the most part, with one small exception. I had used my ATM card to pay for the 200 dollar deposit. So when Mike just told them to charge the rest to the same card.... well, let's just say I'm overdrawn by a nice hefty amount. That, and I didn't know it, so I've been using my ATM card all over the place! May I just say that I had phoned the movers and told them not to charge anything else to my card. Well, I forgot to tell my husband about it so oh well. Bank of America better reverse their charges once it's fixed. The movers were wonderful however, and even went so far as to carefully wrap Vince's hairbrush in wrapping paper nice and tight! I almost chucked it thinking it was empty paper.

Our first night in the house consisted of swimming through a sea of boxes and paper wrapping, trying to get somewhat organized while also trying to keep Vince from falling down the three different sets of stairs we now have. He's learned the phrase "turn around, then go down" and does it most of the time now. We are working on getting all the gates we need.

Getting lost in a sea of paper wrap

Practicing going down the stairs

Ok, moving on to our first morning and our first commute to work from our new place. Mike is now taking Vince on a 35 minute train ride to get to daycare. So we packed up his bag with food, milk, water, toys and books.... all to keep Vince entertained and busy during the ride. Well, everything was going great until they reached about midway through the ride. I'm pretty sure Mike was overfeeding Vince with milk and cheese, because Vince totally puked all over Mike when they were about 10 minutes from their exit. From the story Mike gave me (and the smell when I got to Vince) It was a rather large amount that went all over Mike, his backpack, and Vince and his changing pad/bag. I had just gotten to work, received the call from Mike that daycare wouldn't let him come in today as 2 other babies had been sent home for vomiting. Vince was cast out of daycare for 24 hrs, and as a result I was cast out of work. So I left work after being there all of 5 minutes, and headed out to pick up Vince. He was fine the rest of the day... and now we know not to overfeed him during the train ride. Poor Mike had to make do with puke ridden pants the rest of the day. I was told that only a few people made some comments about rotten milk when Mike would walk by.

Moving on to tonight's dinner, when we found out that we cannot have the kitchen light, the sun room fan, and the microwave all on at the same time as apparently that's too much for this old house to manage. We blew the fuse about 3 times before we figured it out, it took the first blowing of the fuse to figure out that we hadn't unpacked (or located) our flashlight yet either.... it's a comedy over here!

The one thing that's remained beautiful is the pool. Vince loves swimming with us and has now taken to standing on the edge and falling into our arms while we are in it. It's so nice to take a swim after work, and it's also so great to have a yard to be in. Our cat is pretty happy exploring around as well, we've put a cat door in for her to be able to escape into the basement when Vince terrorizes her too much.

It's certainly a huge change going from a small 2 bedroom condo to a 4 bedroom house. I have 3 toilets I have to worry about now! And we have this living room that is totally empty except for artwork and pictures, and will remain furniture free for a while. Mike has this idea about putting up our artwork/photos/pictures around the living room and putting one bench in the middle of the room.... and it will be our art gallery. Opening soon, we'll offer wine and cheese as you peruse through our collection!

Among our busy schedule which included moving, we also attended Adam's first birthday, and Beth-Ann and Jason's wedding... more pictures to come later. Here's some shots of Vince having fun in the pool at Adam's birthday

UH OH!!!

For those of you with children, did you ever feel like you have a little parrot following you around copying everything you say and soaking up new actions/words with every gesture or comment you make?

Vince will watch us and our movements, and start copying us. The funniest one is when he sees us eating, and then starts moving his mouth and pretends that he's chewing on food... so funny!! he'll have this big grin on his face while he's doing imitations of us chewing. He's also started copying things we say, but adding his own little twist to the words.

Here's a video of his own little version of 'uh-oh'.... of which he hears all the time these days. It comes out during dinner with food flinging onto the floor, every time he drops his sippy cup, toys, etc.

to see the video, click here or press the play button below

Make video montages at www.OneTrueMedia.com

The Last Few Weeks....

... have pretty much been a blur. We signed all the final papers for our house, and have been spending our weekends working towards getting all our belongings out of our condo, and into our new place (this is with a compact VW Passat that has a baby seat in the back, mind you). It's provided for long trips with only a few boxes at a time being able to be transported, but surprisingly enough we have made a good dent in getting things out of the condo. We are trying to get ahead of the actual moving day, which is next week Tuesday.... with the brilliant idea that if we move a lot of our stuff now, than the moving bill won't be so big because they won't be working on our move for so long. Never mind all the extra gas while driving 30-40 minutes each way....

Ok, so maybe we haven't spent ALL our free time worrying about moving. This last weekend was loaded with events ranging from swimming at our house with Bibi and Joc, buying a new lawn mower and (yipes! watch your toes) weed whacker, mowing the lawn for the first time, sawing off master locks that we don't have the keys to, going to Adam's first birthday party, attending a co-worker's surprise baby shower, and going to our friends house for a bbq. Here's a couple of pictures from our backyard/as well as at our friends house.

Vince and Dad, after a couple hot dogs off the grill

We were able to visit our friends Marcus and Amy, and spend most of Sunday at their house despite the huge amount of work we are supposed to be doing to get ready for the move.... our excuse was the ever so VERY important fantasy football draft that Mike is a part of, which of course takes precedent over any chores of moving.

Vince got to hang out with his buddy Aaron

They got to ride together around the pool in a sweet radio flyer wagon

Back at our new house, we enjoyed the warm weather... and Adam and Vince were at it again with pushing each other around

It's getting down to the nitty gritty with getting the house packed up for next week, and we're starting to freak out a little bit as we'll be out of town for the weekend because our friends Beth-Ann and Jason are getting married! We're super excited for the two of them and can't wait to celebrate their wedding at a beautiful honey farm in Western Massachussetts! (pictures to come after the wedding).

I've received many requests for more pictures of the house, and I promise they'll be coming soon. Seriously, just picture a super 1970's house that pretty much hasn't been updated since it was built in 75. Think wood partitioning sheets in the basement, flowery light blue tiles, and lamps in the bathroom that are actually almost cool enough for me to think about keeping them. Someone reminded me that 60's style is popular again, and we can just wait a couple years and then maybe the 70's will be back in style again, then we won't have to do anything to the house!

We Own a Pool!.... oh yea, and a house too

After signing approximately 30-40 pages of paper..... the house is finally ours!

The only hitch was after the closing when we were waiting on the corner to cross the street and our lawyer ran to catch us. He wanted to know if Mike has a middle initial (he doesn't), because a Michael J. Silvestro had a bunch of bankruptcy filing in Norfolk County!

We signed the papers, grabbed the house keys and got out of there...... heading straight for Braintree.

Some celebratory jumps off the diving board into our pool once we got there

Here's the story... of a man named Michael... uh, Silvestro that is, no not Brady. Although our house is in Brady Bunch land!

Vince had fun crawling around the house exploring. Here he is sizing up his new bathtub... in the super 70's bathroom. The house definitely needs some cosmetic help, we have our work cut out for us

Visit From Uncle Joe

Mike's brother paid us a visit from Florida last weekend, as he was up here for one of his many cigar related business outings. Joe works for Thompson Cigar, and anyone who knows Joe..... will have had cigars, or other Thompson paraphernalia, handed to them by him on at least one.... or 20 occasions! Mike's brother is extremely generous and always gives so much to his family. I can say that right now we have cigars tucked away all over the house (big gnarly ones for Mike, small dainty/flavored ones for me), we have a top notch humidor for said cigars.... and even Vince has his own humidor! (and some cigars with his newborn face on them). You can bet that most of Mike's family has similar stories to tell about their households.

Three Silvestros, two old and one new

Anyway, Joe's career in the cigar business has earned him many interesting stories of where he's been and who he's had to deal with.... including getting family members involved, such as during this trip to New England. On Friday Mike left work early to drive up to New Hampshire, as he was invited to a boxing match... of which Joe and many of his cigar business buddies were attending. I was told it was the type of fighting that was 'almost illegal' for people to participate in. After hearing that, I stopped asking any more questions. The only story I got out of them was that there were bikini clad women in the boxing ring holding up announcement cards, and that the night was wrapped up in a Denny's Restaurant at 2am, eating plates of food with some 84 year old Italian cigar king named Sal. Indeed Sal is featured in Cigar Aficionado Magazine's 2007 summer issue. We received a complimentary issue.

We played tour guide for Joe, who had never really explored Boston before. It was so nice having Mike's brother come to visit! We had a good time showing him around, and he spoiled us with italian ice and restaurants! Thank you Joe! We'll have to pay everyone a visit in Florida very soon I think, especially if the weather in Boston stays as it has been the last 2 months.

Visting the public garden to see the Swan Boats

Vince loved his first taste of Italian Ice!

Hanging out near the frog pond

A photo opportunity in front of the old state house, the balcony where the Declaration of Independence was first read

Umm.... Please Remember to Keep the Bathroom Door Shut

Vince wreaks havoc in the bathroom whenever we forget to shut the door. (I won't even go into the times we forget to put the toilet lid down, luckily not that much). Here I found him, post- lots of fun with the toilet paper, and pre- flushing of the toilet repeatedly.... we still need to teach him about water conservation :)