Memorial Day Tributes Cont'd: ticks

Well I can honestly say this Memorial Day Weekend has been a 'memorable' one. It just kept getting better around here as the weekend went by. See previous post for the re-cap of the first half... and as for today, well it started out with Mike finding a tick attached to Vince!! yuk!!

The thing was as tiny as the head of a needle, we are thankful that Vince is so fair skinned-as it made it easier to see. It was a nymph deer tick, which are plentiful around here in the Northeast.... so I am naturally completely freaked out of Lyme's Disease. I know the risk of contracting the disease is basically zero unless the tick is attached for over 48-72 hours, but when the blood sucking arthropod is on your own son... well, there's no stopping the panic. We are pretty sure he got it from our own backyard (which makes it even more frustrating), as that's the only place we've been for the past 2 days!! We had so much fun running around and playing in the pool yesterday..... I never realized you have to worry about ticks in the grass. I thought they pretty much just stuck to the brush/bushes/wooded areas. Anyone know if spraying your yard for ticks/mosquitoes works?

Well I got the tick off in one piece, and kept it in case we'd need it to identify. We called our medical provider just to give a heads up, but they weren't too worried. Now we just know to make sure and check for ticks every day.... oh yeah, and watch to see if he develops a rash!! I think I'll die if that happens! Turns out we didn't need to save the tick, so I decided to suffocate it... and then make it drown. So I put some water in the cup it was in, and watched it slowly sink to the bottom. Unfortunately I just left it there after wards... little did I know it wasn't dead.

Ok, so we think we're over the tick debacle, and things are looking better for the rest of the day. I convinced some friends of ours to come over with their boy Max (Vince's viral rash is totally gone now) so we could have fun in the pool... which was up to about 83 degrees today!! I'm telling the tick story and my friend wants to see it. So I go up to the kitchen and look for it floating around.... and it was gone! Oh gosh, I started going nutty with thoughts of a tick on the loose in the house. Then my friend Danielle comes up and also starts obsessing about having a tick on the loose, and we both just stare blankly onto the counter. Danielle starts actually looking for it on the counter (crazy). The thing was smaller than a poppy seed and totally blending into the counter!! Well, I couldn't believe it but she found it (totally crazy)!!! The tick had escaped and was crawling around the counter... nice. I tried to squash the thing to death and that didn't work either... I finally flushed it down the toilet. I'm so thankful that she found it!! I swear, between the weather here and worrying about ticks the rest of the year... I'm wanting to go running back to the West Coast!

Chilling out in the bulldozer raft

On a happier note, our friends gave us their old sofa and love seat... so now our living room isn't full of patio furniture anymore! As we are enjoying the pool, we've moved everything outside to the backyard anyway. The living room was pretty empty and needed some help.

So as we approached the evening, Mike helps me get ready for dinner by turning the oven on.... then he heads out to help our friends get the sofa and love seat to deliver to our place. I had the task of trying to get Vince in from the backyard, changing him, and then finishing up dinner. In the span of the next five minutes everything went downhill: I have to practically drag Vince indoors as he's having a tantrum to stay outside, I strip him out of his wet swim shorts..... meanwhile the cat escapes out the backdoor (she's an indoor cat), and Vince having been naked and diaper-less for only about 2 minutes... has already pooped and peed on the carpet near our bathroom. I can't leave him without a diaper for even 2 seconds! He goes around squirting bits of pee around the house as if he's a dog marking his territory. He'd never actually pooped before today though. Ok, back to the story. Vince is pointing to what he did on the carpet and saying 'uh oh, uh oh' and I start smelling something totally burning in the oven. Hmm... I thought Mike only turned the oven on to preheat it for me? I run upstairs and open the oven to find a left over pancake from this morning... smoking like a charred piece of coal! (I put our pancakes in the oven as I'm making them to keep them warm until we eat). Ok, get that blackened charred pancake out, run back downstairs and clean up the carpet before Vince tries to do it himself, get a diaper on the poor boy, and try and chase the cat back in the house before she collects the rest of the ticks in the yard on her fur and brings them in the house. Everything eventually got done, and we had our dinner, and now have some new used sofas. Wow I can't wait to get back to work tomorrow.

Nothing like warm sun and popcorn after a swim

Memorial Day Tributes: Viruses and Hot dogs

We are in to day two of Memorial Day weekend, the weekend I'm paying tribute to viruses and hot dogs. Why viruses? We are largely in quarantine over here as Vince recovers from his hand,foot, and mouth disease (coxsackie virus). He's basically back to normal, eating and drinking fine, no more fever. He still has a mild rash on his hands.... none of them are open, they are all healing and fading away nicely, and have been since Friday. We tried to bring him in to daycare on Friday in the desperate effort to keep Mike and myself from having to miss work and use sick time, but they turned Mike away at the door saying he'd need a Doctor note. So..... off to the Doctor they went. Well, they told us he could be contagious for the next 7 to 10 days! Doh! I'm skeptical about Vince still being contagious at this point. Maybe if his rash was still as it was last week.... Is it terrible if we try to put him in daycare again Tuesday!?

Anyway, all the friends we wanted to invite over to come swimming are steering clear so their little ones don't end up getting Vince's virus (can't blame them). We'll see about tomorrow though, maybe his rash will be completely gone. We spent yesterday playing in the pool ourselves, and having fun in the warm weather (of course before it rained). Mike is almost finished with the baby's room-it just needs one more coat of paint.

We quickly learned the basics of taking care of a pool; and the chemicals and cleaning that's involved! It's going to be lots of work (mainly for Mike at this point)!! But it sure was nice to take a dip and float around yesterday! It gives my pregnant body a break with the nice feeling of being weightless, which I certainly cannot say I feel when I'm on dry land!!

Here's some photos taken yesterday while enjoying our backyard

Mike having fun with the pool vacuum

Ok, so why the tribute to hot dogs? Well.... Vince is slipping back into this 'I won't eat anything' phase... and he's mainly been surviving on hot dogs. The kid is going to turn into a hot dog for how many he's eaten. So this morning, we all got up and went into the kitchen to have breakfast. What does Vince see on his tray from last night? Well a few slices of hot dog (I know, gross... I should have thrown them out). That sends him into a tail spin of wanting nothing other than hot dog for breakfast.... as he quickly and effectively deflected any other option I tried to present. To his side, he did eat some applesauce too... and he at least will still eat tomatoes, and blueberries (which are both 'superfoods'-whatever that is!) As I was cleaning up the leftovers from last night, I noticed that there were a few missing slices of the hot dog... there was only one piece left. I was SO hoping that Vince didn't eat the yucky ones left out all night! So I didn't think too much of it but was still wondering if maybe Mike started throwing them away and then just got side tracked.

Well after a few minutes Mike starts calling from the basement that there's vomit on the floor with whole hot dog pieces in it! We found our culprit ha ha! Our cat Animal must have stolen them off Vince's tray! Isn't that nice... and she left a present for us in the basement. That's what we get for not cleaning it up last night.

We'll see what's in store for the second half of Memorial Day Weekend!

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

THINGS WE WANT TO REMEMBER
- when Vince gets on the phone... he's lately been screaming the phrase: "A thousand Dollars! That's ridiculous!!" (complete with hand waves through the air as he says it)
-demanding to hear Bob Marley in the car, and singing along to Buffalo Soldier: "ay yaya, ayya ya ya, ay yaya ya yaya yaya" he sounds like an old jewish man "oi oi oi..." (but so does my husband when he sings it)
-when he holds up his fist at dinner and says "that's a spicy meatball!"
-reading Vince books at night, and having him "read" us his truck book because he knows it by heart.
-getting Eskimo kisses from him.
-singing "Twinkle, twinkle, little star," complete with the sign language. The song starts and ends the same way, but Vince can't tell the difference, so it's always the beginning and the song never ends...
-his freakish knowledge of all the Thomas and Friend characters.
-the way he sings the firetruck song: "Firetruck, Firetruck, wa wa wa wa firetruck" (read:firetruck, firetruck, I want to ride on a firetruck)

THINGS WE WANT TO FORGET
-he's currently going through his first (and hopefully only) diagnosis of Hand, Foot, Mouth disease. They say it doesn't last long, but the poor kid is grumpy as ever, and doesn't want to eat or drink anything.
- that we ever introduced him to DVD movies of Thomas Train, because now every day is a fight with him wanting to watch movies and us wanting him to play or do something more constructive.
-the frequently increasing episodes of 'meltdowns' where he gets hysterical and just throws everything and pushes you away, screaming wildly (is this the start of the terrible two's?)

Luckily there's more we want to remember than forget!

Nonna's Birthday

Over the weekend we traveled to New York to join in Mike's Mother's birthday celebration. It was a fun filled weekend of Vince being able to visit his Nonna and Pop-Pop as well as his cousins and Aunt and Uncle from Atlanta!

Vince and Nonna playing Patty Cakes maybe?

Sitting next to cousin Andrew, they aren't the best of friends yet. They mainly stare at each other and then fight over toys now, but we predict big potential between these two!

Uncle Neal trying to give his boy some wine haha!

Popsicle Time!!

Put your Popsicle high in the sky!!

Vince's cousins Amelia and Melina live in Mamaroneck as well and are always excited to have cousins come visit! They especially love when cousin Noelle comes up to visit from Atlanta, and they usually run around holding hands all day! When Vince and Andrew are a little older there's probably going to be some interesting wars between all of them! Here's some pictures from our day at the park. I think Vince is taking a nap already.

Left to Right: Vince, Melina, Noelle, Amelia, and Andrew (with Lisa rescuing him)

Pop-Pop with his two boys

Another Beautiful Mother's Day

It's hard to believe this is only my second Mother's Day. It feels like I've had many more, and I can't imagine life without Vince anymore! I received a Mother's Day present that Vince 'made' at school this year, it's the cutest little potted plant that had a note attached: "made with love for mommy, love Vince". It made me cry! Now if I can just remember to water it....
I can't wait to keep getting hand made gifts for holidays, they just make my heart melt.

This year we went once again to the Lilac Festival at the Arnold Arboretum for Mother's Day, and it was once again a beautiful sun filled day (but chilly), with rows and rows of lilacs for us to put our noses to. This year was a little different, as Vince was mobile and could run around from Lilac bush to Lilac bush. He would run and hide under the trees, smell all the flowers he could, and run over to the ponds to watch the ducks. It was a beautiful day of relaxing and enjoying the sunshine.


We ended the day by having some friends over to help us break in our new grill! We are very excited about the new addition to our backyard, and can't wait to have many warm nights outside grilling some good meals. Between three toddlers and six adults, we went through enough burgers/dogs/grilled veggies to make us full and happy for the rest of Mother's Day.

Vince's Sibling

..... hasn't gotten much blogging attention for the past 7 months, so I figured it was time for a tribute. My pregnancy has been going along pretty well, I've been feeling really tired but now that I've succumbed to taking iron supplements (I just hate what it does to my gut), I do feel a difference in my energy levels. It's still hard finding the energy to keep chasing after and picking up a toddler while my belly keeps getting bigger! Reading to Vince before bedtime has become a joke, he practically slides off my lap because there's no more room! His little elbows go straight into my belly as he tries to keep making room.

Zoë at 18 weeks in utero, think it looks like a girl?

We've been told that we are having a girl, so that's exciting! What do you guys think, should we put the umlaut over the e, or scratch it? I'm playing around with the idea of having it on her name, but I know it'll probably just get dropped eventually out of laziness. So.... should it be Zoe or Zoë?

I had to get used to the idea of a girl, I was so set that we'd just have another boy. But now I started buying all sorts of pink stuff so they better be right! Vince will come over and kiss my belly and say hi to Zoë, but all in all we think he has no clue what he's in for. He tends to say 'bye bye' or 'all done' to things once he's had enough... or dislikes something, and we laugh picturing him saying 'bye bye' to Zoë, but that won't be an option little man!

Vince giving his sister some kisses

Painting a picture for (or rather, on) his little sister

Only about 2 months more to go, my due date is July 7th... and we still have no furniture and need to paint her room. Not sure how/when all that is going to happen either! Life is too busy! Between now and then we have birthdays, weddings, and our anniversary to get through. It's going to be busy!

31 weeks pregnant