We started out with a small dinner party on his actual birthday.  Jenny was visiting from CA and she brought a tradition from her family — we put a bunch of items on a tray and the first one Nico picked up was supposed to tell us something about his future.  Items included a book, castanets (to represent music), money (coin and bill), a pen (red — could symbolize teacher or writer), a spoon (for cooking), a carrot (farming?  vegetarian?  it doesn’t matter – he didn’t pick it), a pig toy (again, not sure what it represented, but it didn’t matter because he didn’t pick it).  We thought this was a Chinese custom, but our friend Sam had also told us about his nephew doing this, and they’re Korean.  And we have a neighbor who’s Chinese and her family has never heard of it.  So we’re thinking maybe this is an LA pan-Asian thing and not so much just a Chinese thing.  (Sam and Jenny are both from LA.)  Nico didn’t even hesitate on his choice and he wasn’t interested in all that much other than the thing he picked.  Can you guess what he picked?  Look at the photos to see if you’re right.

Since his birthday was on a Thursday, we had his parties on the following weekends.  The Saturday right afer his birthday we had a morning party and an evening party.  We had initially planned on the morning one being for kids and the evening one for adults, but we had a mix at both parties and having two different ones made it so we were actually able to visit with everyone at both. 

We wrapped up Nico’s celebrations with a trip to NY the following weekend where Aunt Denise and Uncle Robert hosted his family party.  Almost all the family came from near and far to celebrate with him and he had a great time with his cousins.  Grandma and Grandpa got him a cassata cake which he enjoyed throwing on the floor.  Frank’s slices ensured that the cake designed to feed 40 people disappeared in half that many tummies.  Mmmm!

Please excuse all the close-up shots and the multiple cake shots…4 parties means 4 different opportunities to show him getting cake all over his face (or not…).  Enjoy!

Christmas has been fun so far this year, and it’s not quite over for us yet.  We’ll be celebrating a belated Christmas with my parents and Danny, Morgan, and Brady this weekend.  We began with an early Christmas (combined with first birthday party for Nico) on Long Island.  We spent Christmas itself here in DC, enjoying Christmas Eve dinner with Aunt Lee, Uncle Tommy, Matthew and Carrie.  Then we had Christmas morning to ourselves and enjoyed watching Nico open his presents and play with his new toys.  And we went to Sara, Aron, Salome and Cyrus’s house for Christmas dinner on Christmas Day. 

Photos from all of our Christmas festivities are here.  The next post will be all of Nico’s various birthday parties, so stay tuned.

In terms of Nico’s developments in August…he turned 8 months old, ate some cantaloupe, and started grinding his teeth, which is a sound worse than fingernails on a chalkboard!  He also ate some peaches and rice cereal, but got pretty sick when we gave him egg yolk.  At the very end of the month he actually asked for some food by making up a sign; then he successfully swallowed some banana pieces!  That was a huge step.  (He’s regressed some again, but we’re optimistic that he’ll eat someday.) 

Enjoy the photos!

Nico made tremendous leaps and bounds all month long!  Here are some highlights:

• He started the month with 2 teeth and finished it with seven!  4 on the bottom and 3 (plus one about to come in) on the top.  Poor little guy had 4 top teeth pushing and shoving to come in all at the same time, just after 2 had come through on the bottom.  The good news is that there are only 20 total, so he’s getting a lot of the hard work out of the way early on.
• June 8th – Nico had his first babysitter this month.  I had been staying up until 2 or 3 AM writing and then getting up with him around 9 every day and trying to write if he took naps.  But I could see that there was no way I could keep up that pace and also that even with that pace I wouldn’t meet my deadlines.  So I found a babysitter to come for 4 hours a day, two days a week.  I still spent most of the month working until the wee hours, but having her here for 8 hours a week made a huge difference!  And she’s great — she is going to grad school in the fall for speech/language pathology and she knows sign language, so she’s signing with him and spends a lot of time reading to him and teaching him new things.  I haven’t worked up to leaving him alone with her yet, but it’s great to have here there while I work.  An added benefit is that I can just go downstairs if he cries or needs to eat, so I don’t need to pump or anything.  So far it’s really easy and quite a lifesaver for me.
• June 9th – Nico turned 6 months old!
• He makes a ton of sounds now, although it’s way too early for any of them to mean anything.  For a long time “guh” was his main sound.  That was replaced by “buh.”  Those are still his two favorites.  But “dadada” is now a very popular one.  And he says “kuh” “wuh” “yuh” “ha” “fuh” “tuh” “puh” “suh” and “juh.”  Now that he’s got those top teeth, he loves feeling them against his lips so he says a lot of “vuh” and “fuh.” 
• He still won’t eat any food.  At all.  If anything goes in his mouth, he gags and gags and gags until he throws up.  This proved to be a good thing a couple of times when he ended up with paper in his mouth (part of the binding of a board book, part of a paper napkin at a restaurant…).  He gagged and we swept the paper out.  But he really should be eating by now.  We’ll be talking to his pediatrician about this on Friday at his 7 month visit. 
• He crawled backward for the first 2 weeks of June, but couldn’t figure out how to go forward.  On June 14th he crawled forward for the first time.  He still doesn’t go too far, though, even though he can.  He figured out how to sit back up from crawling on June 24th, so now he likes to go a few steps and sit down, go a few steps and sit down.  Mostly, though, he just wants to stand up.  He’ll pull himself to his feet from our legs if we’re sitting on the ground or from anything that’s about 6 inches off the ground.  He climbs up the coffee table and the couch.  And he balances on his own — often just holding on with 1 hand so he can do something with the other one.  He is getting more and more stable every day and we think he’s going to forget about crawling and go straight to walking.  He always has wanted to be vertical… 
• I keep telling him about all the advantages of staying a baby for a while and telling him that the faster he grows up, the sooner he’s going to have to get a job.  But he doesn’t care.  He just pushes those teeth through and tries to stand up and forgets all about being a baby.    It makes me sad — he’s growing up too fast!
• June 14th was a big day for 2 other things too.  He seemed to understand when we said “where’s the cat?”  He’d stop what he was doing and look around until he spotted the cat.  He could care less about “where’s Daddy?” or “where’s Mommy?”  But “where’s the cat?” elicited an immediate reaction without fail, every time.  That day he also showed a real interest in reading.  I was sitting on the floor with him next to a bookshelf and we were reading his all-time favorite book, Pajama Time.  When it was done, he pulled himself over my leg, hung out on his belly on my leg, grabbed a book off the shelf with one hand, and brought the book back with him as he came back to sit on my lap.  An adorable fluke, right?  That’s what I thought until he did it again.  And then a third time.  He was deliberately selecting books and bringing them back to me to read, waiting until the end of the story, and doing it again.  Eventually he was more interested in just pulling the books off the shelf, but he started by wanting me to read to him!
• He is getting much more demonstrative with his love.   He gives real hugs and “kisses” (which are just huge slobbery messes as he puts his wide open mouth against our cheek or chin and holds it there until we are sufficiently soggy).  He’ll often hug my neck, pull back to look at me and smile, and then hug me again.  It melts my heart every time!
• He started having mini temper tantrums this month.  He suddenly gets angry if we take something away from him and cries if we don’t substitute it with something else.  He has also cried if we redirect him from something he wanted to do.  I used to have a hard time picturing him as a toddler having a tantrum (even though I knew it was coming).  Now I can totally picture it — and it scares me!
• My parents came to visit at the end of June, helping with big house projects and watching Nico so I could work.  It was extremely helpful and he had a lot of fun with his Grandma and Grandpa.
• To those of you still reading (and I have been assured that it’s more than just the grandparents who read to the end), thank you for indulging me in sharing these minute details about my little boy and enjoy the photos! 

Nico turned 4 months old in April and 5 months old in May.  Does it make me a bad mom to be combining 2/5 of his entire life into one slide show and bullet list?    Here are the highlights from the 2 months (It’s a long list and we figure the grandparents are the only ones who will read the whole thing!):

April

• He sat up unsupported for the first time at 16 1/2 weeks (April 3rd).  Frank sat him up — he didn’t sit himself up — but this was the first time he didn’t topple over.  You may have seen that video — it happened while my parents were in town for the Cherry Blossoms.
• Because he could suddenly sit up, we put together his high chair on Easter.  We expected to keep the high chair in its box until he turned a year old or so, figuring he wouldn’t be able to sit up.  But at 4 months he was arching out of the Bumbo seat and it turned out that he LOVED the high chair.  Actually, he loved it for a full 2 months.  We could put him in there any time we wanted to get anything done in the house.  (Now he’s on to us, though, and he’ll only hang out there while we eat.)
• He started rolling to his side to fall asleep during his naps.
• He had his 4-month visit with the doctor and weighed 16 pounds, 2 ounces.  He was 26 1/4 inches long.  He surprised the doctor by being able to sit up on his own.  (She didn’t believe me when I said he could, so she took him and sat him on the exam table and he stayed.)  He was due for vaccines at his 4 month visit, but Frank was home sick so she wanted to hold off and give them to him when everyone was healthy at home.  
• The doctor shocked me by telling me that he was exhibiting signs of readiness for solid food (sitting up, being interested in food, and maybe a couple of other indicators).  She wanted us to start giving him things like banana, avocado, sweet potato, squash, apple and pear between his 4 month and 6 month visit.
• I wasn’t ready to start him on solid food this early, but because we trust his doctor we gave him a couple of tastes.  You may have seen his introduction to banana in the videos Frank posted a few days ago.  We also gave him some apple in a little mesh bag.  He didn’t really like either.  (It’s gotten worse now — if we try to give him food he gags until he makes himself throw up.)
• I quit one of my 2 jobs and had my last day at work on April 16th.  He came to work with me at my second job for the first time on April 19th.  Of course, every time he came to the 1st job, he slept for 3 of the 4 hours I was there and was perfectly quiet and still the rest of the time.  My first day at the second job?  He found his voice and shrieked in delight for an hour straight — while I was on a conference call.  I’m pretty sure they all thought I was lying when I told them how mellow he had been at the other job.  Fortunately he’s still allowed to go back there.
• I got a job as a grant writer at another local nonprofit, which I can do entirely from home.  I kept the 2nd job, which I do for 10 hours a week — 6 from home and 4 from the office (with Nico).
• I started doing some volunteer work for my midwives, and of course Nico joins me there as well.  He has very little say in how he spends his days, when you think about it…
• He sucked his thumb for the 1st time in April.  (4/19)  He still prefers the pacifier, though — I don’t think the thumb is big enough to satisfy his need for sucking.
• When he was at my office playing on the floor, I looked over to see him grab his pacifier and pop it into his mouth, and then sit there playing and sucking away.  It was pretty cute.  It’s amazing that he can recognize the pacifier — no matter which one we use — and put it in his own mouth the right way.
• He started bringing his feet to his hands in April in classic happy baby pose.
• His first 2 teeth broke through on April 23rd — at 4 1/2 months.  He got the 2 middle bottoms ones first.  (He has since gotten the 2 next to them and his middle top teeth have been on the verge of breaking through for several weeks.)  He didn’t get fussy until the teeth broke through the surface.  Then he was less smiley and definitely visibly in pain for about a week while they kept pushing their way up into his mouth.  Hyland’s teething tablets help, as do Boiron chamomilla 30C tablets (crushed between 2 spoons first) and ice in his little mesh bag.

May

• I got to celebrate my very first Mother’s Day and it was great!  I got breakfast in bed, flowers from the yard, a trip to the Brookside Gardens (even though it suddenly decided to get cold!), and dinner out.
• He had an off-cycle doctor visit at 5 months for the vaccines he had missed in April.  He got his second round of DTaP and his first rounds of HIB and Polio.  She said she didn’t need to see him again until he turned 7 months now.
• He started getting ready to crawl.  I think one of the videos Frank posted was of him on the bed pushing over his feet to land on his tummy.  He tucks one foot, pushes off the other, briefly goes to one knee and then flops on his belly.  As the month progressed, he got better and better at getting himself into position and started doing a plank pose or a mini downward facing dog.  But he hasn’t figured out how to go forward yet — he just goes in reverse or rolls over.
• We went to my parents’ house in NJ and Frank’s parents came to visit as did Uncle Danny, Aunt Morgan, and Cousin Brady.  The boys had a great time together and the grandparents got their fill of the grandkids.  It was a nice weekend.
• He caught a cold and we had to bring him to the doctor for his second sick visit (the first was in the winter when he got RSV).  This time he acted much sicker than he did that time, and the doctor thought it was that his sinuses were putting pressure on those top teeth. When we started treating the teething pain with the homeopathics, he returned to his normal self right away.
• When he babbles, he consistently makes a “guh” sound.  By the end of the month he had added “kuh” “tuh” “fuh” and “puh.” 
• By the end of the month I couldn’t count on Nico being in the same place I had left him.  He spins, moves backward, and rolls and it’s always a game to find out where he’ll be when I come back.  We have installed outlet covers and know that our days of a non-child-proof home are numbered.

I’m still loving being home with him and feel extremely fortunate that I’ve been able to find jobs that are flexible — both in terms of when I get my work done and in terms of bringing Nico with me.  It’s amazing that I can find such joy in being home all day with a boy who can’t say a word to me.  But he makes me laugh all the time and we have a lot of fun at home, going for walks, and meeting up with friends.

We got to celebrate a bit with Matthew and Carrie too — they recently got engaged and are planning a November wedding at the foot of a waterfall  in Hawaii.

Photos from the dinner are here.

You can see photos from their visit here.  The magnolias were in full bloom at the garden behind the Smithsonian Castle.

Once in FL, we went to the beach, the baseball stadium to see a Cardinals pre-season game, and the Busch Wildlife Sanctuary.  Nico had 2 sets of grandparents spoiling him and he showed off for Grandma Schipani by rolling over for her for the very first time.

Enjoy the photos.

• Nico’s first night alone with Daddy while Mommy went out with the ladies to celebrate Sara’s birthday
• A trip to FL to see the grandparents (those pictures are coming tomorrow)
• His first vaccine – DTaP #1
• His first board meeting — he came with me to PreventionWorks to discuss important things like fundraising and board development
• His first day at work — he came with me to NYAC and was a perfect angel, sleeping for 3 of the 4 hours I was there every time he came
• His first time sitting up for a few seconds unsupported
• A visit from Aunt Marie and cousins, Tara, Nick and Dana (those pictures are coming in a couple days)

I’m going to post a new slideshow every day this week so you can see them all in bits and pieces rather than being overwhelmed.  Of course, if you want to cheat you can go to our website and see everything there — they’re all up.  Otherwise, enjoy your daily blog posts from us this week!

Today’s slide show is from February.  It’s (thankfully) hard to remember what it was like to be buried under all that snow, now that I’m sitting here in a tank top with the windows open.  Nico, too, is much happier in the warmer weather.

Highlights from February include:

• Lots and lots of snow (did I mention that already?)
• Nico’s first visit to the pediatrician since he was born (for his 2 month visit).  He was 13 pounds, 12 ounces and 24 1/2 inches long.
• Nico’s first serious illness — he got RSV but fought it really well.
• Lots of time spent in the Botanic Gardens, soaking up the humidity to help him breathe easier.
• A visit with Cousin Ruth and her whole family at Cousin Matthew’s house
• Nico discovered his feet when we were at Suzanne’s (sweltering hot) apartment.  It was the first time it had been warm enough for us to have him sit around with no socks on!
• With all the snow, our trash hadn’t been picked up for over 3 weeks.  I was feeling very smug about using cloth diapers since our trash wasn’t really piling up….until our washing machine broke, that is!  Fortunately we got a new one delivered within 24 hours and it works like a charm.  So we were not buried in diapers…just snow.

We’ve gone shopping, taken the bus and the metro, and met Daddy for lunch.

On Tuesday this week, we went to Daddy’s hockey game.

We’ve also had some friends over.

And, of course, we’ve taken lots of close-ups at home.

We’ve put together a little slide show with a whole bunch more close-ups and other photos.  It’s overkill in terms of the number of each kind of picture, but it’s so hard to choose just one of each!  This photo set is really for the grandparents (and anyone else who can’t get enough of Nico).

I haven’t put any up from the hospital — his birth photos are here, you’ve seen a couple of videos, and really, the time we have spent with him at home is so much better.  Plus our camera malfunctioned on the last day there and we lost lots of the pictures we had taken.  In fact, when we got home, Frank jumped out of the car and ran inside to get our other camera while I hopped in the back seat to get Nico ready to come home for the first time.  Good thing we had a second camera!  So anyway, these photos start with Nico’s arrival home and move forward from there.

Nico’s Homecoming

It seemed like he was in the hospital for an eternity, but really it was just a week.  We were thrilled to bring him home on December 15th.  And if you look closely at his face, it looks like he was pretty happy about it too!

Nico’s First Week at Home

We spent most of the week staring at him, but we did manage to take a few photos.

Christmas in DC

I wasn’t feeling up to a car trip and we were worried about exposing Nico and his fragile immune system to a lot of people, so for the first time ever we spent Christmas alone in DC.  We weren’t lonely, though!  We spent the afternoon with Billy and Joe and their brand new (one year old) twins.  (For those of you following their story, the adoption is final and the boys are officially theirs!!!)  Then we enjoyed a scrumptious dinner with Gina, Chip and family.

Nico Meets the Family

Since we couldn’t travel for Christmas, Nico missed out on meeting his aunts, uncles, cousins, and other grandparents.  So everyone convened at my parents’ house in NJ because it’s closer for everyone than driving from NY to DC.  Danny, Morgan and Brady came down from Poughkeepsie.  Marie, Frank, Nick, Dana, Denise, Robert, Daniel and James came from Long Island.  And my mom outdid herself cooking for crowds of baby admirers.  It was a great way to spend New Year’s.  On New Year’s Day the 3 of us left NJ and met Frank’s parents in DC. They stayed with us until the 4th and got to spend a lot of quality time with their newest grandson (and their favorite son).  Earlier than this, Nico’s Great Uncle Tommy and Great Aunt Lee came to visit with Cousin Matthew.  Unfortunately we didn’t get any photos of him with them.

May / June

We traveled to Pittsburgh in mid-May to visit the Shar-Bars.  We didn’t take many photos, but we loved seeing their new house and doing all the fun things we always do when we visit PGH.

My parents came to DC for my birthday and helped us paint the trim in the guest room and bathroom.  It’s so nice to have knocked something else off our list of projects to complete!

We traveled to NJ to celebrate a belated Father’s Day with my parents and Danny, Morgan, and Brady.  We played some bocce, had a great dinner, and spent most of our time oohing and aahing over Brady.

Frank and Seda enjoyed making sushi in June and cherry pie in July.  These photos are guaranteed to make your mouth water.

July

We had a 4th of July BBQ on our deck, even though it was little more than a platform at the time.  As usual when we unveil something new, Gina, Chip and Eloisa were here to celebrate with us, along with Sara, Aron and Salome, Eva, Jaime, and Jen.

Eva turned 40 and had a fabulous dinner party for several friends.  (I’m still not sure what we did to deserve a delicious, gourmet meal prepared by the birthday girl herself!)

Tara graduated (and so did her Uncle Frankie) and we traveled to NY to celebrate with her.

We traveled to Sperryville for the weekend with teams Somobright and Hjeltak.  We don’t have pictures of the blackberry picking, but we spent part of one day picking blackberries with the kids and it was great!  The rest of the time we hung out at the cottage and just relaxed and chatted and watched the girls play.

Debbie, Tim, and Gwen came to visit us in DC.  We were very proud of Gwen’s mommy for overcoming her fear of travel without a car seat and letting Gwen ride both the metro *and* the city bus.  Gwen loved both!  We also went to the sad little aquarium in DC.  They have some pretty fish and Gwen seemed to enjoy it.  But it’s dark and small and plus it’s not free.  I’m glad I’ve been once, but I don’t think we’ll go back.

August

Oshapalooza (see below).

We hope to add our completed deck to the August photos.  Mike finished up yesterday but there is still a LOT left for Frank to take care of.  The whole deck needs to be stained/sealed.  Two of three fans need to be installed.  Some sort of screen needs to be devised.  And all of the lattice pieces for the 1st floor railings need to be nailed into place.  It’s looking good, but we’ve still got a way to go before we can take any “after” photos.

Here’s a look at the before:

On Saturday, our contractor, Mike, came over to take a look at the plans and figure out how much he’d charge for the job.  He came back on Wednesday to help Frank with the demolition.  They cleared all of the junk from our first demolition out from under the porch.  Then they emptied off our “white trash porch”.  On Thursday Frank went to work and Mike took down the entire wood structure all by himself.  I didn’t think to get a picture while he was working, but his progress was amazingly fast.  The roof was gone by 11 AM.  The whole second story was gone by 2 or 3 PM.  And the rest was gone, and all the debris cleaned up, by the time Frank got home from work around 6 PM.  Here are photos from the beginning of Friday that show the progress on Thursday:

On Friday, Frank took the day off again and he cleared all the rubble while Mike jackhammered the concrete slab — while it was suspended 4 feet in the air!  We thought, based on the amount of wire mesh that was holding the paved backyard in place, that there would be sufficient wire to help support the structure as he jackhammered it away from the 6 supporting piers.  We were pleased to find that there was rebar wired to the wire mesh, so Mike felt safe enough standing on top while he jackhammered.  At the end of the day, I came home to find this!

Today I had to work again.  When I came home, all of the rubble, including the staircase, was gone.  They were held up a little bit because they found some errors in our drawings.  But they problem solved on their own and determined where the footers needed to be, so they even started digging out the footers.

That 3rd picture is taken from the kitchen door.  It looks like a whole different backyard!  Now we just need to get the inspection scheduled, have the footers inspected, and then Mike will be back to put the deck up.  He doesn’t expect it to take long.  So it looks like we’ll be having Frank’s graduation party on our new back deck!

These same photos and a couple more are on our website.

Photos from the weekend are here.

It all started on Valentine’s Day.  Frank’s sisters, Marie and Denise, came down to DC with their families.  Yep, that’s right — 7 people visiting our tiny little house.  Everyone was worried about there being enough room except for Frank and me.  We know how many people we can pack in to our house.  And there was still room for more, so hopefully next time Tara and Frank A. will join everyone too.    Photos from their visit are here.  We started on Saturday with a BBQ dinner in honor of Robert’s birthday.  It seems we only get to see their friends James and Raylene when Denise and Robert are in town, so we were glad for the excuse to have them over.  On Sunday we all went to the Udvar-Hazy Air & Space Museum out by Dulles Airport.  We had brought Nick there on a previous visit, but he was a good sport about seeing it all again.  And Daniel and James loved the big planes.

After that we headed to Ashburn for a delicious dinner made by cousin Matthew.  As a bonus, his brother Philip was visiting from FL so it was a big cousin reunion.

Monday started off with a game of Trouble and a game of Scrabble and then it was off to a Chinese restaurant for lunch and the American History Museum.  We had fun looking at the newly restored flag that inspired the Star Spangled Banner, the Lincoln exhibit (it was President’s Day weekend), the transportation exhibit, and the kids’ hands-on room.  That night we ate dinner at home and played a couple rousing games of Pictionary.  I feel like I should scan in some of the winning (and losing) drawings, but they’d probably lose something in the translation…  I had forgotten how much fun Pictionary is.  On Tuesday Marie and her kids headed back to Long Island and I went to work.  I believe everyone else went to the zoo, but there are no pictures so I’m not sure.    We had a nice dinner at home on Tuesday night and played some Candyland.  On Wednesday Denise and her family left and Frank got us ready for our cruise while I was at work.

Then, on Thursday morning at 6 AM we left the cold, rainy, yucky weather to go on a cruise!  We almost didn’t make it, though.  Our flight was at 8:30, and we got to the airport by 7 AM so we had a nice relaxing wait for our plane.  We boarded the plane on time and the doors were shut by 8:25.  We taxied to the runway and then sat.  And sat.  And sat.  And sat.  And then the pilot came on to say that the wind had shifted and instead of taking off to the south, we’d be taking off to the north.  But we were too heavy to take off to the north — in DC the flight path rules are very strict and if a plane takes off to the north it has to take off at a steep angle and make an immediate sharp left so it doesn’t go over the White House or the Mall.  So, we were fine for taking off to the south, where it’s a straight shot, but too heavy to go north.  So, it was back to the terminal at around 10:00 AM to offload some weight.  We taxied to the terminal and refueled, but they didn’t unload anything.  And then all of a sudden we were heading back to the runway.  It seems that the wind had shifted again and we could now go south.  But, on our way there, the wind shifted again.  Oh, and it was also raining, so our stopping distance was increased and now we couldn’t take off to the south anymore either.  Agh.  But they “massaged the numbers” (those are the pilot’s words, not mine!) and all of a sudden we were going to be taking off to the north.  Let’s get this straight.  It’s now 11:30 AM.  We’ve been on the plane for 2.5 hours.  No weight has been lost.  We have added fuel.  And we’re taking off to the north, which we weren’t allowed to do 2 hours ago.  Um yeah.  I was not feeling so good about this flight.  But there was nothing I could do but sit and stare at the ceiling and hope we kept going upward.  So that’s what I did, and despite a ton of wind and bumps and lots of sideways motion (which I hate!), we did make it up into the air.  And we landed with plenty of time to get on the ship.

So, after that scary start, we were finally on the cruise ship.  But wait!  More drama!  It seems that in Italy a woman’s official documents all use her maiden name, even if she changed her name when she got married.  So, Frank’s mom’s cousin’s wife has a different official last name than the one we used when we bought her ticket for the cruise.  They weren’t going to let her on the boat!  Frank and I lost track of his family at customs, so we went ahead and boarded assuming all was well.  Then we saw his parents on the boat, but not the cousins!  And the boat was to leave in an hour (at 5 PM).  We did our mandatory lifeboat drill at 4:30 but they still weren’t on the boat.  In fact, Frank and I didn’t know if they had made it at all until we got to dinner at 6 PM.  We were extremely relieved to see them at the dinner table.  It turns out that they were able to call their son in Italy to have him fax over a copy of their marriage license.  Thank goodness he was near their house, had a key, and was able to find it exactly where they told him it would be.  Once the stress had worn off a bit, we were able to laugh at the idea that if our flight had been later and if they hadn’t gotten the marriage certificate, Frank’s parents would have been the only ones on the cruise and we would all have been hanging out in their condo for 4 days without them.

The cruise itself was great (photos are here).  I had never been on a cruise and wasn’t sure if I would love it or hate it.  I think 4 nights is the perfect length of time for a cruise — just enough time to really relax but not so long that you start to go stir crazy.  There were 14 decks on this cruise ship — that’s 14 stories that the passengers use and doesn’t include all of the working levels.  It was enormous!  It had miniature golf, several pools, an ice skating rink, a theatre that was bigger than my high school’s auditorium, a casino, multiple restaurants, and probably lots of things we didn’t ever even see.  The food was delicious (although we ate way too much) and the weather was perfect the whole time.  We had 1 day on land in Cozumel, Mexico.  There we rented jeeps and took a tour of the island.  We saw an old Mayan temple and went snorkeling.  We saw a sea turtle, were close enough to touch a very large barracuda, and saw lots of other fish and some very pretty coral.  All in all, the cruise was a lot of fun and it may become part of our regular mid-winter Florida excursion.

Unfortunately Frank got the flu at some point on the trip, and on Tuesday night he started to get sick.  He spent the remainder of February on the couch under a heap of blankets trying to get rid of his fever.  It finally went away on the first day of March.  But now we know how to spice up February and make it a month we can look forward to rather than a month we dread.  We’ll just make sure Frank loads up on vitamin C.

And with that, we’re all caught up!  Yay!

Happy New Year everyone!!!

The slide show of 46 (many of which feature their crazy kitties) is on our website here.

Dinner

Brady got a little tired of us taking so many pictures.  First he gave us the finger (though he hasn’t mastered it yet…)

Then he stuck his tongue out at Grandma!

I hope to have all of our December pictures up on the site before 2009 arrives.  In the meantime, enjoy the photos of Pre-Thanksgiving, Thanksgiving, and Nick and Dana’s visit to DC.

And here are a couple of photos from our own Christmas at home.

We’ll write more soon.  In the meantime, have a very Happy Thanksgiving.

(Pre-Thanksgiving photos are on their way soon…)

K&F

Here’s a photo of our fall decorations, all of which came from our backyard (including the corn stalks).

I’ll post a picture as soon as I get one.  In the meantime, here are photos from Morgan’s baby shower 3 weeks ago.  Good thing her mom had it early!

Congratulations, Morgan and Danny.  We can’t wait to meet Brady next weekend!

After Debi and David left today, I got some pictures up on our website. I’ll write more later, but here are some links to the new photo sets:

Nisha and Chris’s Wedding (6/7/08)

Mandi’s Birthday and Bon Voyage (6/14/08)

Long Island visit for Father’s Day (6/15/08)

Kristen’s 32nd Birthday at Mt. Vernon (6/18/08)

Father’s Day and Kristen’s Birthday in DC (6/21/08)

Our 3rd Anniversary Trip to Richmond and Visit to Bonnie & Tom in Durham (7/2-6/08)

Photos from our First BBQ (7/27/08)

Visiting Debbie, Tim & Gwen (8/8/08)

Mary & Ben’s Wedding (8/9/08)

Our 4th Uzbek Party (8/16/08)

We’ve got a lot more to come in terms of stories from the past couple of months. But in the meantime, enjoy these photos. Also, Frank fixed the top of the photo pages. So if you go to the Friends page, for example, you’ll be able to use the links at the top to get back to the main website or blog page, or to go to the Family or Travel pages.  (If it doesn’t work for you, add a www. before schipani.org.)

The first batch has lost some of its luster now.  In March we took pictures of our crocuses and tulips and looked forward to posting them on the web to let our northern friends know that spring was on its way.  (And yes, perhaps to show off how early spring comes to DC.)  The crocuses, tulips and daffodils are long gone now.  But they were beautiful while they lasted.  For some reason our tulips came up before our daffodils.  But our daffodils were so pretty that they were worth the wait.  A big thank you, again, to Frank’s mom for planting these bulbs last fall.  We looked forward to their emergence all winter!

The next batch of lost pictures is from Suzanne’s 30th birthday cocktail party.  We made a lightning-fast trip to NY for the event…arriving around 8 PM on Saturday and leaving around noon on Sunday.  But it was well worth the trip.  Check out the pictures of Suzanne’s boots.  They were her extravagant birthday present to herself…and one of them got stuck on her leg!  After about an hour, a skilled friend managed to loosen the zipper enough that Suzanne was able to unzip the boot the rest of the way.  We have no pictures of the process (it wasn’t so funny at the time), but everything turned out ok in the end.  And we didn’t have to cut the boot off. 

The final batch of lost pictures is from a big weekend of visitors.  Marisa came to town from Thailand, which drew a crowd.  Bonnie & Tom came up from South Carolina, Shannon came down from NYC, and Wendy came up from Virginia.  And Mary happened to be in town from Boston that weekend, so it was a great party.  We had a nice birthday brunch for Bonnie and Tom’s birthdays and then went out to the Brickskeller that night.

Enjoy!

The next weekend (actually, Monday and Tuesday of the following week), we were on Long Island, celebrating a belated Mother’s Day with Frank’s parents and his sisters and their families.  On Tuesday we went out to the eastern tip of Long Island (the north fork) and had afternoon tea at a cute tea shop and tasted wine at one of the Long Island wineries.

Photos from the trip are here.

So, finally Presidents’ Day weekend came and we were ready.  We spent the week assessing our equipment, ensuring that we had enough primer and paint, and making a plan.  Saturday morning, we got up and started the final prep work.  Frank patched long cracks that had emerged since we last worked on the walls.  And I spackled parts of the wall that had never been filled in and washed off the sawdust.  Then, all of a sudden, I looked up and saw Frank scraping away the wallpaper near the baseboard.  Evidently it had gotten loose farther up than where we had originally scraped.  But he kept scraping.  And kept scraping.  And suddenly, in one smooth motion, the putty knife and Frank’s arm had traveled up as high as he could reach — scraping off the wallpaper and paint in one clean 2″ wide stripe.  Uh oh.

So, he kept scraping, vowing that he’d stop as soon as the wallpaper seemed to be really solidly stuck.  But soon it was apparent that he needed to go all the way.  Now, we both saw a silver lining in this — there had been huge overlaps in the wallpaper, which left several seams that showed through the coats of paint.  We had tried sanding them out and patching them, to no avail — they were still going to be visible. So, at least this way those seams would disappear.  And it wouldn’t take too long.  Right?

Well, a short while later we noticed that there were actually 2 layers of wallpaper.  Now things started to make more sense.  This house was so solidly constructed that we thought it was very suspicious that some of the wallpaper pieces overlapped by nearly a foot.  It turns out that that was a shoddy job on top of a nearly perfect original wallpaper application.  Our faith in the original workers was restored.  We were shocked to see that we could make out a faint pattern in the original wallpaper.  Suddenly this daunting task became very exciting!

As Frank scraped, I started washing the wallpaper backing off the wall to expose the original wallpaper underneath.  I felt like I was uncovering ghosts as I worked, and revealing a piece of history.  It was actually quite fun.  (Yes, I did just write that.)  As I washed, whole sections of the pattern would emerge and the details were quite evident while the paper was wet.  We decided to preserve a small section, and the rest got scraped off.  So now the wall is down to bare plaster, which is pretty cool looking by itself.

But, as exciting as old wallpaper is, we did eventually tire of this project.  So, on Monday we went out and bought a new car.  Some people might just sit and watch TV or maybe go for a walk.  Us?  We bought a car.

As impulsive as this might sound, it was actually the result of a month-long shopping process.  We found out in early January that the Jetta was finally giving up the ghost.  The check engine light came on, indicating that the car needed all sorts of valves and filters and repairs — to the tune of $4,000 or so.  Plus the $1,400 for the air conditioner that we never fixed last year.  Plus the windows that didn’t go up and down any more.  Plus the numerous plastic parts that had broken off the interior and were lying around on the floor.  Since the car was only worth $3,500 (in perfect condition), and since its registration was due to expire in February and we didn’t think it would pass inspection, we had to say good bye — and fast!  We squeezed in several car shopping trips in January, and finally came home with a new Toyota Matrix on Monday.  We can haul a lot of wallpaper paste in the back of the new car. 

So, our front entry way is still a mix of green, white primer, and raw plaster.  And now the stairwell is raw plaster and old wallpaper.  And we have no idea when we’ll patch the walls (again) and prime (again) so we can paint (finally).  Maybe we’ll just try to find a reproduction of that original wallpaper and restore the hallway to its former glory.  (Probably not, though…) 

But at least we have a car I can drive!

You can see pictures of the wallpaper discovery process here, along with photos of the curtains we made at Christmas and our fireplace (just to break up the monotony, in case you don’t find old wallpaper as cool as we do).  Pictures of the car to come…

On Saturday night we had a delicious dinner at a place called Seasons 52 that serves low-calorie dishes made with in-season ingredients.  The menu changes with each season, although there is something new added each week (thus the 52 in the name).  The atmosphere was great too — the restaurant was right on the water and the inside was decorated in an arts and crafts style with rich woods everywhere.  It was a fabulous dinner and I look forward to going back there on our next visit. 

We were scheduled to fly out on Sunday night, but our flight was overbooked and we volunteered to give up our seats so we could get free tickets another time.  I negotiated round-trip cab fare as part of the deal so Frank’s parents wouldn’t have to come pick us up and drop us off again at 5 AM.  Turns out we rode in a stretch limo — both home that night and back to the airport in the morning.  It was fun in the evening, but I think the effect was lost on me Monday morning.

It was great to be in sandals and shorts — even for just a few days.  And it was really hard to hear the pilot say that it was 19 degrees as we flew back to DC at the crack of dawn on Monday.

A few pictures from our trip are here.

We ate well, played a rousing game of Mexican Train Dominoes, visited the Air and Space museum out by Dulles airport (but forgot the camera), and even finished up some house projects! Photos are online here.

In between pre-Thanksgiving and Thanksgiving we moved the final truckload of stuff out of the condo, patched and painted some final holes in the condo walls, salvaged a bookcase that NYAC was going to get rid of, and unpacked all of our books to make room for another houseful of guests.  We closed on the condo the day before Thanksgiving.  In hindsight, perhaps we shouldn’t have been so hasty to move our closing date up.  My dad tore his plantar fascia in the bottom of his foot before coming down to DC and had to hobble up and down stairs on crutches in order to use the bathrooms.  Had we hung on to the condo, at least he could have relaxed there on one level…  Fortunately he survived the weekend with no accidents on the stairs, although he was very relieved to get back to his one-story house!

Somehow we managed to make the house presentable enough for our crowd of 18 and we even got our heat working in time for the party.  We were pleased to find that the set-up of the dining room and living room is as perfect as we had hoped it would be and that we can fit a whole lot more people into our new space.  We missed a lot of our regular pre-Thanksgiving folks (you know who you are!), but we are confident that we can have a nice big dinner next year — there’s plenty of room for eating AND for sleeping! 

Happy Thanksgiving to all, and enjoy your “other” Thanksgiving dinners!

Not pictured are the toilets and sinks that went in this week.  Yep, that’s right.  No more toilet / multi-purpose sink out in the open in the basement!  Does it look to you like we’ll be moving soon?

Enjoy!

We bought some wine at Benziger and drove across the road to Imagery — a winery and art gallery owned by one of the Benziger brothers. Every year each type of wine gets a new label, designed by an artist, and the original works of art are displayed in the gallery, which doubles as a tasting room. It was an interesting idea and we really enjoyed a sweet wine made by Imagery. It’s called Muscato di Canelli and it was delicious. It was like a dessert wine without being syrupy and it was surprisingly refreshing. So we bought a bottle and headed on our way.

We decided to take route 128 from Sonoma to the coast, figuring that it would save us a lot of time and would be a nice drive. Well, at least it was a nice drive. It was a narrow, winding road that brought us up and down hills (small mountains) in the middle of forests. It was gorgeous, but definitely not a time-saver. When we emerged, though, it was like we were in a different country. Gone were the dry fields and hills, gone were the dense forests, we were on the coast!

We drove through Mendocino and stayed farther north in Fort Bragg. The next morning we got up early and headed straight for the Avenue of the Giants, where we walked among the redwoods. We were amazed at their size and their beauty and could have stayed there for months just marveling at the forests. I hope the pictures will give you a bit of an idea of what we saw there.

Enjoy the photos and stay tuned for pictures from Oregon!

We had a fantastic time visiting Bahar and Satish in San Francisco.  We arrived late on Saturday night, but they had a steaming hot dinner of dal and two other delicious Indian dishes waiting for us when we arrived.  What a great welcome to the city!

On Sunday morning we had a delicious breakfast of steel cut oats, apples, walnuts and raisins — the perfect breakfast for a brisk fall-like morning.  After breakfast Frank and I walked around a park near their apartment in Oakland and then we all headed into the city to see the sights.  We ate in Chinatown, were surprised that it wasn’t freezing on the Golden Gate Bridge (I guess I didn’t need that long underwear after all…), dipped our toes in the Pacific, saw gorgeous fog-free views of the city, and had a garlic dinner.  It was a great day and Satish and Bahar were fantastic tour guides.

On Monday, Frank and I played tourist while Bahar and Satish worked.  We walked the hills, took the cable car, hung out near the water and in Alamo Square park, found a wonderful tea shop for afternoon tea (the Leland Tea Company), and got sunburned from so much walking outside.

We were fortunate that the weather was “hot” the whole time we were there.  (Evidently when you live in San Francisco, you start to think that 75 degrees is hot…)  We loved the architecture of the houses and buildings in the city and had a great time exploring.  And although the cable car is really touristy, riding on it gives you a real sense of how vital it was to the expansion of cities that had hills or large distances to cover.  As I noted in the slide show, our new neighborhood wouldn’t have been built in the early 1900s were it not for the cable car.  Speaking of cable cars…did you know that the name Rice-a-Roni (for rice and macaroni) was named for the staple foods of two important immigrant groups in San Francisco?  (the Chinese and the Italians)

Enjoy our photos and stay tuned for pictures from our visit to Sonoma and the Redwoods!

The end of the stripping and sanding is in sight — we are working on the living room windows now and then have to do the dining room windows and one long board from the master bedroom. Oh, and the railings and newel post. And a couple doorways. My mom came down last weekend and stayed through Monday afternoon — tirelessly sanding and removing paint to help push us ahead. Thanks Mom! There’s no way we will finish all the rest this weekend, but we’re hoping to be done with stripping and sanding by the time we leave for our vacation in mid-August. We’ve decided not to bother with the French doors that we’re putting in the basement — they were relocated from the living room and will just stand as a testament to the green until we get a chance to address them.

It looks like we’re pushing back our estimated date for renting the condo again. We had been hoping for August, but then pushed back to September 15th because of our vacation. Now I’m not sure that September 15th is realistic — we’re probably looking at October 1st now. The good news is that the house has passed all sorts of inspections and pretty soon they’ll be starting to do the finishing work that will make it look like it’s getting ready to live in. The electrical inspection is done, so someday soon we will have outlets (hooray, no more extension cords crisscrossing the house!), working light switches (right now we have a switch for the basement lights and have to use a circuit breaker to turn the living room and dining room lights on and off — there are no other lights in the house), and lights in every room. The plumbing inspection is done, so soon we will have running water and luxuries like sinks and toilets. We also passed the gas line inspection, although they did find a leak right before the inspector came — not sure what’s up with gas in this house! For some reason the gas meter is no longer attached, but we’re sure that eventually they’ll do something about that…

Photos of the progress over the last couple of weeks are now up on the site.  The highlights are that the kitchen door and window have been moved, Frank fixed an old fashioned window, my mom came back to help, and the plumbing was put into the basement.  Enjoy!

A couple of weeks ago we traveled to NJ and we picked up an old sink at an antique shop.  This sink, which would easily have sold for over $400 in DC (based on the sinks we priced here) was just $65 there.  So we bought it and brought it down, hoping we’d still like it once it was here.  On Saturday I worked on rejeuvenating the finish to remove some of the old scratches while my mom and Frank stripped paint and my dad sanded woodwork.  I’m excited to say that the sink looks great!  It’s an old J.L. Mott sink made in Trenton, NJ in 1928.  It’s slightly younger than the house, but I’m really glad to be reusing an old sink — part of both the green renovation and the historic renovation.  In doing a little bit of internet research, it appears that we got a real gem.  J.L. Mott is the “Mott” of Mott Haven in New York and appears to have been well-known for very high quality sinks and tubs, at least according to this link.  Here you can see photos of NYC subway stations dedicated to Mr. Mott.

We’ve added the pictures from this past weekend to the website.  In addition to the photos of the sink, there are paint colors, garden products, and the results of the stripping/sanding process on one door.

First of all, a huge thank you to my parents for coming down this weekend and getting us over the hump.  We have been stripping paint intensively for over a month, and still there’s no end in sight.  It’s been very frustrating…particularly since we still have to sand the varnish and stain off all the stripped pieces of wood, our contractor is pressuring us to have the wood finished ASAP, and each piece of molding takes HOURS to complete.  My parents came and made it so that other work could get done while stripping was still happening.  So, while my mom and I stripped on Friday, Frank and my dad cleaned up the massive amounts of junk everywhere and got us organized (no small feat!).  Then, while I spackled the walls and my dad sanded, Frank and my mom stripped paint.  After that, we took turns washing walls and painting primer, while paint continued to be stripped.  It felt great to have some progress be made both with the paint stripping and other projects that have been lingering.  The best news is that on Saturday we got the compost bin assembled and have begun composting.  Photos of the weekend’s work will be posted later this week — we didn’t bring the camera today for the “after” shots.

Here are the links to the photos we’ve posted.  Of course, you can always access them from the “family” or “friends” sections of the website.

June 10, 2007 – The fruits of our gardening labors
June 16, 2007 – Photos of the kitty cats, house progress, and Debi and David’s visit
June 22, 2007 – Status of the house before we left town for NY and NJ
June 23, 2007 – Mandi’s 30th b-day and our visit to NYC
June 24, 2007 – Celebrating my b-day in NJ with my parents
June 25, 2007 – What the contractor did while we were away
July 1, 2007 – Frank’s nephew, Nick, came to help out

Stay tuned for photos from this weekend — you won’t believe the massive changes in the house!  I’ll post those photos by the middle of this week, so check back soon.

In a more mundane update, we’ve got photos on the website of our house progress.  I split them up into 3 different slide shows.

Progress between April 24 and 27 is here, along with photos of Amy and Zoe who came for a visit.
My parents’ visit and photos of the aftermath of our contractor’s first day are here.
Photos after the contractor’s second day of work are here.  He works EXTREMELY fast!

And, the photo we’ve all been waiting for…

The awnings are gone!!!  And so is the chain link fence.  I can’t wait until we’ve re-done the porch in its original style, with wood railings and big wooden columns.

In other website updates, we posted pictures from our trips to Bull Run Mountain Farm (to pick up the seedlings we planted) and to Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge.

Next on the list at the house:

• getting the chain link fence out of the front yard
• taking down the awnings in the back (the baby birds on the lower awning are about ready to fly away)
• stripping paint inside (we’ll use the heat gun in conjunction with Peel Away — a supposed environmentally friendly paint remover)
• putting up a trellis in the back yard to hide the cinderblock wall and support string beans and climbing flowers
• planting the various flower and vegetable seeds we’ve picked up

The contractor, designer, and cabinet manufacturer all met at the house at 8 AM on Wednesday of last week to make sure everyone is on the same page before the work starts.  The contractor had a great idea — switching the places of the kitchen door and window so the kitchen counter can extend all the way to the wall.  This sent everyone back to the drawing board, but is probably going to be a really positive change.  We are hoping work will start this week.

This means we need to get in gear with paint stripping, choosing new paint colors, and painting.  The contractor can probably have all the work done in 4-6 weeks, and we want the place to be all painted by the time he’s ready to refinish the floors.

We’d like to thank everyone for their thoughtful and wonderful gifts.  We love everything you got us and look forward to eating/using/wearing them all soon.  Kristen would like to especially thank everyone for NOT getting us a chocolate fountain!  We were dreading the thought of having to find a place to store one. 

Happy New Year!  Let’s hope 2007 will be a year of peace for all.

We’ve updated both the Family and the Friends sections of our website, with photos of Thanksgiving and everything we’ve taken pictures of since then.  Tomorrow is our gingerbread house making party (the 2nd annual!), and we’ll post pictures of that soon.  Plus we’re hoping to get to Gina and Chip’s place to see them and hold little baby Eloisa again soon. 

Enjoy the holidays!

Stay tuned for more…we’re gathering pictures of the kitties (who are growing up right before our eyes) and will be posting them soon.  We’re also heading back to Sperryville this weekend to stay in the same B&B that we stayed in for our anniversary in July.  We’ll be doing some more hiking and apple picking there, and hopefully visiting some wineries this time.

Note that we have added a new page on the upper right side of the blog:  Socially Responsible Shopping links.  As the holidays approach, we thought some of you might like to have a reference place for low-impact / high-benefit shopping.  We look forward to getting links to your favorite sustainable retailers from you.

(Not that Frank was slow, but sometimes he gets pretty busy with other things )

You may notice a few “issues” with the new site – things we just couldn’t finish fixing last night. But I promise we’ll fix them soon! Most notably, all the wedding pictures are unavailable and “Travel” on the home page doesn’t link to anything.

(FYI – schipegan.com and schipani.org are the same site)