My Boys

I'm so in love with my two boys.

Leo Roman is here

Our little guy made it safe and sound into the world on Wednesday, January 12 at 1:49 p.m. It all happened so fast. We came to the hospital around 9 am and things started happening very quickly. Before we knew it we were holding Leo in our arms.

At birth he weighed 8 lbs 12 oz and was 20 inches long. He passed all his little tests with flying colors and continues to do so. We are excited to be able to bring him home on Friday.

Thankfully Carmella and her grandma were able to get out of the house and safely make their way to the hospital today to meet her baby brother.

For more details of our week trapped in ice please see my parent's blog. http://richnsusan.blogspot.com

Callaway Gardens

Our final major activity of the year was visiting Callaway Gardens, south of Atlanta. They had a lights display that we wanted to see, but with our entrance to see the lights, we got a day pass into the gardens too. Wanting to maximize our time, we left the house around 9 AM to get there by 11, have lunch and see some of the exhibits and shows they offered throughout the day.

Unfortunately, C took off running down a ramp, tripped over her own feet and fell face down on the pavement just after lunch. She scraped up her hand pretty bad and let the world know that she was hurt. The rest of the day was all about her sore hand and trying to keep a band-aid on it. We managed to take a lovely walk through the woods to the butterfly gardens, see a log cabin built in the 1800's and enjoy the beautiful 60 degree weather. After dinner we were ready to see some lights.

[Blowing the butterflies a kiss.]

[This is what happens when you ask C to smile for the camera. Ugh.]
We couldn't believe the amount and quality of lights on this hour-long journey through the park. None of us had ever experienced anything quite like it. It might just become a yearly tradition for our family. Needless to say, the second we finished looking at the lights and drove out of the park, C fell fast asleep in her car seat and didn't wake up until we pulled into our garage two hours later.

Christmas Activities

Having Daddy home for two long weekends in a row has been so great. C won't know what to do when he has to go back to work and she is stuck with a very wiped out, 9-month pregnant mommy. However, since I am due in a week and a half she will get Grandma S. to come and play with her then a week or so later, Grandma and Grandpa V. will take over with fresh energy. So hopefully the two of us will manage to find fun things to do in the meantime.

Over our break Daddy got to see and experience many of the daily activities that C does in a week's time. First we took him to the gym where she takes gymnastics. They had fun going down the big blow-up slide and jumping on the trampolines together.

Christmas morning was interesting to say the least. C got really overwhelmed with all her gifts and became really fussy and irritable throughout the morning. She opened a kid tough digital camera early in the order of presents and didn't want to put it down or open anything else the rest of the morning. We had to simply work around her and let her figure out her new toy before moving on to the next gift. After a few hours she started discovering some of the other cool things she got under the tree.

Then, eventually, she cuddled up with her new pillow pet and sacked out on the couch, completely exhausted.

It snowed on Christmas day and the snow stuck around for two days which was great because we could actually take C outside and go sledding down our little hill in the back yard. She had so much fun playing in the snow, tasting the snowflakes and making and throwing snowballs in the yard.

A shot of a baby brother in his first Atlanta snowfall.

A Preschool Style Sing-a-long

As I have mentioned before, we decided to put C in preschool one day a week. It has turned out to be such a great thing for her and for mommy. She gets to take art and music class every Friday that she goes. She has learned so many things already and had a chance to show Mommy and Daddy all the songs she learned at the family sing-a-long day two Fridays ago.

She knows almost all the words and motions to at least five Christmas songs. Her favorite is Jingle Bells.

What's Cooking?

C was a big help this Christmas making cookies, decorating them and of course--eating them! She loved getting a chance to put on her new apron that Grandma S. made for her and digging in.