Vince Feeds Fireman Monkey

I captured a little piece of Vince's tenderness towards his stuffed monkey.... making sure he gets some food as well (and then eating the leftovers himself of course!)

click on this link if you can't see the video: Vince feeding monkey

Photo and video editing at www.OneTrueMedia.com

Boston Flower and Garden Show

Today we ventured into the city to attend the Boston Flower and Garden Show. It wasn't much of a toddler play gym, but once we convinced Vince to smell all the flowers instead of trying to pull them out.... well, then we had some fun. It was amazing to see the beautiful displays of ponds and gardens! All inside a giant space not unlike a warehouse! In fact, I was at the same place months earlier for a medical conference, and there were no beautiful ponds or waterfalls to walk by then!

Here's the 'African Display': Vince's favorite with the corn husk Lion

The flower Giraffe: Vince's second favorite

A Day In The Life.....of Vince

Saturday was the day we had all been waiting for here in Boston: it was predicted to be warm, sunny and about 70 degrees!! I know for myself, I have been waiting for good weather pretty much since November. I packed in several activities for the day and here's the recap:

5am:
-Vince wakes up and starts to fuss in his crib
-sleep walk to Vince's room and pat him on the back till he goes back to sleep
-blindly find way back to bed
6am:
-Repeat same events that happened at 5am, this time it takes about 20 minutes
-blindly find way back to bed
7:15am:
-Vince wakes up again, babbling to his crib mates (Thomas Train and blue bear), requesting waffles and milk
-put pillows over head and try to remain sleeping
-finally get up, get out of bed and make requested breakfast. Feed the cat, feed ourselves
8am:
-clean up waffles, milk, and fruit from kitchen floor
-bathe and dress Vince, bathe and dress ourselves
-fill up diaper bag with needed necessities: snacks, drinks, toys for the day, etc.
9am:
-load up the car with dump truck, stroller... and Vince
-head over to the free kindermusik class going on at MamasMove
-mistakenly let Vince play with the trains and train table before the class starts
-pull a crying Vince away from train and table when class starts

9:45am:
-continuously try and keep Vince from running out the door to the train table during the toddler music activities
-pull apart Vince and another little girl that are fighting over a bell shaker, get another bell shaker
-attempt to get Vince interested in singing along with the music teacher and doing the moves and dances.
10:30am:
-load up back in the car and head over to Castle Island to enjoy the warm sun outside at the park!
-find several friends there by surprise and have fun watching the kids climb around the park play set.
-let Vince play until we are both tired out and hungry, then wait in huge line for hotdogs and fries at Sullivan's (yum!).
-Vince and Adam share their fries and ketchup

1pm:
-now completely tired out, get Vince in the car and hope he will nap for the 45 minute drive to our friends house for an afternoon play date/scrapbooking party.
2pm:
-about 10 minutes to go until our destination, Vince finally falls asleep in the car
-we get to our friends house, Vince naps for the next hr and 1/2 on their bedroom floor
-after a nice nap, we file all the kids outside to play in the sand (Vince finds and keeps a death grip on a truck of course!)
-we also try and get Vince used to having a baby sister around, while Fiona has fun crawling after him to try and get his truck!

Don't let her get my truck!!

5pm:
-head home after a long day of fun, friends and sun!!!

Vince Gets a Lesson About Malawi

Today Vince and I ventured up to Lexington, MA to visit a former student from when I was in the Peace Corps in Malawi. Lizzie is one amazing Malawian woman. She was a student at the school of another peace corps volunteer near me in the north (yay Tumbuka tribe!), and every one of us educators that met her immediately knew she had special qualities that set her apart from other Malawian students. She is a very hard working and dedicated student, always asking for help and working late every night. She never gives up, and in spite of the odds of most girls not completing school in Malawi, Lizzie completed all her schooling and graduated with high marks! She was always active with the Girls Clubs activities that we put together, and empowered other girls to work hard and get their education.

Through the help of scholarships, Peace Corps volunteers, and their family members.... Lizzie was able to come and study in the United States! She's been here for over 5 years now .... received her Bachelor's at Hollins University, and is now working on her Masters Degree in Education at Syracuse University in New York. Her goal is to finish her studies and go back to Malawi and work in education to improve the future of young Malawians, she's amazing!!! This week she is on spring break and spending time in MA so we headed over to see her. I couldn't wait for Vince to have a little taste of Malawi!!


While Vince and Lizzie got to know each other, we had fun teaching him some Chitumbuka!! He got a few words under his belt: he figured out yewo chomene pretty easily (yewo=thank you; chomene=very much) and he went around saying 'Malawi' for a little while which was super cute. He couldn't quite get Muli Uli down (Muli Uli=How are you?) although he would try! We knew what he was saying though.


Here's Vince after the long lessons on Malawi and Chitumbuka! Sweet dreams little man, may you be dreaming of Africa! And good luck with your final months of schooling Lizzie! We are so proud of you, Malawi will be lucky to have you back and working to make a better future for all Malawians!! Yewo Chomene!!

First Trip to the Library!

As we continue to celebrate my part time status, Vince and I got up and out of the house early today to go explore the Braintree Library! I can't believe that we've been here since August and haven't even been to the library once yet! It was high time to become members and start reading some new and different books, both Mike and I are pretty SICK of the books we have. Vince makes us read them over and over and over. I have them memorized by now, going to the library for Vince this morning was just as much for me to not go crazy with the same books!

We got there and found the whole top floor reserved for children. Vince immediately found the board books that had Thomas Train, trucks and bulldozers, and Curious George... and he was in toddler heaven... pulling out every book and making an instant mess of the place. It was great!

Here's our little man checking out his first books! We collected a nice bunch of them and headed over to the librarian. He was ok giving them to her to check out but as soon as she took them he'd start whining until she would give them back!



We even made friends while we were there, Vince's new friend Ryan is busy with his favorite books in the background.


After the library we headed over to South Boston to spend some time on Castle Island again, it was such a beautiful sunny day! After spending way too long there, and eating hot dogs and french fries, we headed home and took a nice long nap. I think I can get used to this part time gig! Now we're off to make some dinner, finish up some laundry, and start reading those books that we borrowed! Mike's been away to Toronto on business but we'll hope his flight is on time and he gets home with no gliches!

I'm Officially Part Time!

March 1st marked the beginning of my new schedule at work. I've cut down my hours to 3 days a week, and I'm so happy and grateful to be able to spend more time with Vince!! You'd think now that I'm spending less time at work that I'd naturally have more time to update our blog.... oops. I know it's been a while. We're still here!! We've been busy every weekend with outings and house chores. Trying to make time to sit down and record what's been going on with us is so difficult!! I'm so tired by 9pm every night I just want to crash in bed.

So my first day off was last week Monday, and Vince and I celebrated by hanging out at home waiting for the window company to come and fix our front windshield due to a nice big crack (doh!). It's nice that they make house calls, we couldn't drive the car though after they fixed it so we pretty much were stuck at home all day. But it was so much fun!! We had a great time running around the backyard.

I actually only went in to work 2 days last week as Vince ended up being sick on Thursday! That day wasn't much fun, the poor guy was vomiting through the night and into the morning...... both he and I were wiped out most of the day and just parked ourselves in front of the tv to watch Curious George cartoons (Vince is in LOVE with Curious George). Here's a great shot of our boy relaxing on the couch with everything he could possibly need!!: his milk, some snacks, his cars... and all the while he's chatting on his toy cell phone while watching cartoons:

When did he turn into this little boy!!?

We had some wonderfully sunny weather this last weekend, so it was time to get out there and enjoy it while it was here. We went to South Boston to meet up with some friends, and had fun exploring around Castle Island.

Exploring the Playground at Castle Island

We also had fun visiting the zoo, where there is a nice tractor that the kids can climb around. Vince had some fun 'driving' the tractor: