SHORTER but SMARTER

When I picked up Dominick from daycare this afternoon, I thought he looked shorter than the other kids so I asked his teacher if he was the shortest. I'm always curious to know how tall he will be because to me he seems so short. She said "Yeah, I think he's the shortest and the smartest". Huh??? I asked her what she meant and she said that he is just so smart and he says way more words than any other kid in his class. Of course that made me so proud! I guess Little Man will take after his Momma in both height and brains, hee-hee (just joking about the brains comment!).




I was transferring some home videos the other day and I could not believe Dominick had been home 4 weeks and was just a little bitty chunk and he already knew the sounds for a cow, dog, duck, and sheep. I am just so amazed how quickly these little guys pick things up. The child had only heard Spanish his entire 9 month life and he caught on to English immediately. My mom taught him to do sweet eyes in 15 minutes on our 2nd day in Guatemala. It just amazes me how God creates little ones and makes them so special.





One of Dominick's art projects this week was making a hat. He was sooooo proud of his hat, he ran all over the house looking for his Daddeeee to show him his hat.

The hat created by Dominick

Oh, by the way, Dominick's surgery went great! He was a terror coming out of Anastasia and took a long nap that day, but other than that I pretty much couldn't tell much of a difference in him. He ate and drank like his usual self. However, I forgot about his tongue and must have brushed his bottom teeth too hard tonight and he said "Bo-Bo Momma" and I noticed it was bleeding a little under his tongue. Poor baby! That's one of his new tricks now, anytime he barely bumps himself, he says "Bo-Bo" and wants you to kiss that spot. Sometimes he just holds out his arm and says BO-BO so I'll kiss it. So sweet!

I'm going to my parents house until Monday so I definitely won't be blogging over the weekend. Hope you all have a great 4th of July. I'll probably be at home packing more boxes, fun, fun!

Finally a Haircut!!!

Little Man finally got a haircut. I've been wanting to cut it but Jon really didn't want me to. I finally asked him last night if he'd really mind if I cut it and he said OK. I looks so much better!Before haircut
After haircutDominick likes to be super neat when he eats. I have always kept a wet rag with me when I fed him and I'd wipe his face or hands or tray if any food accidentally got on it so that Dominick didn't end up rubbing it in his hair or something. Well I guess he got used to it and now he holds out his hand after every bite for me to wipe it and then he purses his lips for me to wipe his face. Too funny! Unfortunately he's not that neat outside. He picked up a tiny snail the other day and put it in his mouth, YUCK!

Dominick is ready for tennis lessons.

Looks Like We Are MOVING!!!

Okay, I've been knowing that we might be moving for a few weeks but I didn't want to say anything and give myself bad luck. If everything goes according to plan, we will be moving in 2 weeks (July 6). I'll tell you guys the story of the "bad luck" I mentioned. We had a cute little house that I adored, and then Jon bought another house to fix up and sell. Weellllll, we were paying 2 house notes for over a year while we tried to sell the fixer-upper house with no luck. We ended up having 3 contracts on the OTHER house ( fixer-upper) that fell through because of the buyers having financial problems. That is seriously bad luck, all 3 contracts falling through. So, Jon bribed me and told me that if I would agree to sell OUR house (the little one that I adored) and move into the other house, it would free up some of our money and I could start the adoption process sooner than planned. So that's what we did and we have been living in the OTHER house for 2 years now. We tried to sell it in the Fall of 2006 with NO LUCK. It was on the market for 4 months and only 2 people looked at it the whole time. So we put it on the market again last month and in 3 weeks TA-DAAAA, we had a great offer on our house. We tried not to get excited because of the bad luck we've had in the past. But we really had no choice, we had to hurry and find a house because IF this contract DOES go through, we have to have somewhere to move. So anyway, we found a house that was in the final stages of construction so we are able to pick the flooring, counter tops, faucets, light fixtures, and a few upgrades. Unfortunately, you have to pay for the upgrades in advance and if for some reason the people don't buy our house, we loose all the money we've paid in upgrades on the new house...OUCH!!! So please pray that everything goes OK.

Here's a picture of the new house. It is nothing fancy and quite a bit smaller than the house we are living in now, yet it is the nicest house we will have ever had so we are just so excited!!! Some of the upgrades we added were granite counter tops in the kitchen and bathrooms, a gas lantern on the front porch, a gas hook-up on the back patio for a gas grill, slate around the fireplace and slate on the back patio floor. There is a 4th bedroom over the garage which we will probably use as a computer room.

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Dominick's surgery is scheduled for next Monday. They are gonna put tubes in his ears and cut the skin under his tongue-OUCH! While looking at his tonsils, the Dr. noticed that the skin under his tongue goes a little too far, if that makes any sense. It doesn't appear to affect his tongue but there is a slight chance it could cause speech problems later so it is best we do it now while he'll be put to sleep anyway. Poor little guy, I doubt it will slow him down anyway. He is one busy dude!

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Oh and one more thing...

Mom & Dad,

Hope you have a WONDERFUL and safe time in Nova Scotia. Wish I was going with you. I'll take good care of Tigger and hopefully Jacob will give your plants lots of TLC. Love you bunches and can't wait to see you when you return.

Back from Florida

We had an awesome time in Florida. Dominick got to experience a lot of new things he had never done before such as going to a water park twice, playing in the sand, playing in the beach water, swimming in a big pool, seeing a dolphin & sea lion show, and riding on rides at an amusement park.

My parents and brother and his girlfriend came the last 2 days we were there and helped with Little Man. Thank You Guys! Because of you, Jon and I were able to enjoy a few moments of adult rides and activities.

This was the water park. They had 3 really cool kiddie sections.

Dominick loved this slide! It was the cutest thing, as soon as he'd slide down into the water he would scream to do it again.

This was his 2nd day playing in the sand. He didn't like it the first day but he enjoyed the sand and water more each day after getting familiar with it. One of Dominick's new 2-word sentences is "Eewwww-Daddy". It's hilarious, he says it all the time, even when Jon is not around. You can hear him saying it in this video.

Dominick had a blast at this amusement park. They had a bunch of kiddie rides that he loved. He would scream when they tried to take him off the rides so we would pay for 2 rounds on each ride and then he didn't cry half as bad when they took him off.

On our way home from Florida, we stopped at Jon's parents' house to visit. As you can see, Jon's dad (Pop) is already teaching Dominick to play with your fork and napkin in restaurants. Dominick is well on his way to being spoiled by the grandparents.

This was one of my favorite parts of the whole trip. Jon was sweet enough to stay at the condo with Little Man while the rest of us rented scooters and a 3-wheel car and drove up and down the beach for a few hours. The chicks in the red car (it had 2 wheels on the front and 1 on the back) were me and Becky, the cool chick on the baby blue scooter is my mom (yes, she can even drive a motor cycle) and the guys on the green and blue scooters are my dad and brother (Tio). We had so much fun!

We are leaving Friday night to go to my parents' house and then leaving Saturday morning to go to Florida for the next week so this will probably be my last post until after Father's Day. We will be coming home on Father's Day.

Dominick went to an Ear, Nose and Throat doctor yesterday because he has had so many ear infections and they are going to put tubes in his ears. We don't have the date scheduled yet. I am so glad and hope it works.

The next few pictures are for you Hunnie and Pop.

This is the outfit ya'll bought for Dominick for my baby shower last year. I was surprised it fit him when I tried it in the Spring. He has worn it a lot but the shirt is getting too small so you guys might not get to see him in it.
Dominick never has done well when it comes to smiling for the camera, but now I can't even get him to stand still so I sat him on the kitchen counter for this picture and you can see what he did immediately. Reached for the purse, pulled out the wallet and started pulling everything out of the wallet. This child is into EVERYTHING. Before I can bend down to pick on thing up, he has already gotten into something else. He has been super strong-willed lately and needless to say he has been serving some TIME OUT in his pack-n-play. I keep that stupid thing set up in a spare bedroom for time outs. I usually don't have to use it often, but when I do IT WORKS.
Here is Little Man with a broom in his hand getting ready to sweep. I bought him his own broom because he fights me for mine when I'm trying to sweep but unfortunately it did not work. When I'm sweeping, he wants MY broom of course. I had to put him behind his kiddie gate to keep him out of the kitchen to sweep yesterday because he refused to let me use the broom. And of course he screamed his head off the whole 5 minutes I swept.

I'm OFF!!!

I'm officially off for my summer break and it feels so awesome!!! We are leaving next Saturday and going to Destin, FL for 8 days, can't wait! We rented a condo that would allow us to bring our 2 fur-babies so I didn't have to hear any of my family members complain about babysitting them. The condo sleeps 6 people so of course we invited some family members to help out with Dominick. My parents and at least one of my brothers will be staying with us for 3 days.

Part of my Mother's Day present from Jon and Dominick finally came in the mail yesterday so I will post a picture of it. Jon had ordered it about 4 weeks before Mother's Day but he knew it wouldn't be ready so he had just given me a picture of it. Here it is.

It is a huge blanket with Dominick's picture on it. So cool, I LOVE it!!! Notice my head at the top of the blanket. I was standing on my toes in the picture, the blanket is taller than me. Dominick didn't realize it had a picture on it so Jon stood further back with him for him to see it better and Dominick got a big smile and said "Dee-Dee" which means Diego. So cute!

Dominick will be enrolled in daycare on Monday, Wednesday, and Fridays. I had to keep him enrolled in order to keep his spot for when I go back to work next August. I'm kinda glad I had to keep him enrolled because it will give me a chance to go grocery shopping and catch up on some things around the house and I think it is good for him to be in that environment with other children. By the way the biting issue has been resolved, at least for now. Unfortunately, there ended up being 3 toddlers who started biting and they were doing it up to 3 times and day so the daycare had to dis enroll them.

Dominick now has 14 teeth and 2 more that are about to pop out any day now. He is talking like crazy. I can't even begin to write all of the words he says because he says so many. Probably at least 50 words, maybe even twice that much. He tries to repeat anything we ask him to. Not many of his words are very clear, but I understand just about all of them. He is also saying a lot of 2 word sentences like "bye-bye, da da", "Momma-meee" (he says meeee when he wants something) " Momma-more", "Dada-shoe", Dada-truck" and today at the zoo he said "Bye-bye, crocodile". He also does sign language for the words night-night, more, go, stop, all gone, out, baby, momma, drink and eat. And he counts EVERYTHING. Seriously, he walks around the house, holds up one finger and says "three, three, three" instead of one, two, three. I'm sure that now that I will be home with him for the summer he will learn even more with the one-on-one attention from me. It is hard for me to catch him doing all of his "tricks" on camera and I have a good video of him doing all his sign language in the bath tub but I accidentally got a tiny shot of his pee-pee so I will have to try again so that I can post it.