Our WORLD

Well really it’s just a white bucket from Target, but it makes a perfect photo box for taking pics of little JULES. To Julian though, it’s a caboose. He managed to get it down off the kitchen counter, onto the floor and inside of it yelling, “Choo choo, choo choo”. Toddlers have the most adorable imagination….

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Julian quickly became aware of Mabel. When he was 7 months old Mabel tossed a ball at him - this is what she does to us when she wants to play - and when he didn’t toss it back, she went over, retrieved the ball, backed up and tossed it again at him. Lovebug started to laugh, which of course motivated Mabel to keep doing it.

One day, Julian was playing with a ball, and it was before he could crawl or scoot. The ball rolled out of his reach, and he started to fuss and become frustrated. Mabel, sleeping in the corner opened one eye, looked at me, got up, moaned and retreived Julian’s toy ball for him. She is so patient with him, and they are adorable to watch together.

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This is my friend Lynn holding lovebug at a restaurant in Lanciano (the calf of the boot). During the baptism trip we were able to stay in some pretty amazing places thanks to Lynn’s wanna-be-travel-agent skills and our friend Pasquale who has a casita in Lanciano.
Julian was a fantastic traveler.
Stay tuned…. Elmo is getting little JULES.

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Tony’s has family in Italy. We decided Julian’s Godfather would be Tony’s cousin, Nicola and so we also decided to have Julian’s baptism there. In the mountains above Bari is a town called Cisternino. There are these ancient homes there called Trulys which look like something right out of a fairytale. Tony’s Aunt has one, and we were able to stay there for part of our trip. It was very charming.

Lovebug snuggling with Zia Ketty.

This is the church in Cisternino where Julian was baptized.

Fast asleep during the whole ceremony, Lovebug gets babtized.

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At just 29 weeks pregnant, my water broke and I went into preterm labor. We didn’t even have the nursery ready, or any furniture bought. I knew absolutely nothing about premature babies, or what it meant to have one. I had a c-section 24 hours after my water broke. It was short, and the next thing I knew I was in recovery breaking out in hives from the morphine. I didn’t get to see him after they took him out of me. Seconds after he was born he was transfered through a small window that went from the operating room to the high risk NICU. As far as preemies go, we were fortunate Julian didn’t need to be on oxygen for more than a day and his time spent in the NICU was to grow and learn how to suck, swallow and breathe at the same time. I heard this, but didn’t really absorb it. The entire time Julian was in the NICU, I was frozen with fear and continued that way until he was about 4 months old. These photos were snapped just moments after Julian was born.

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Julian loves books, likes to read and be read to. Today’s treat was an outing to Borders downtown. He spent about an hour deciding on which book to buy. We finally settled on a book about animals.

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Wearing a 12″ little JULES for Baby necklace inscribed with Julian’s name and phone number along with little JULES for Baby Sterling ID bracelet, lovebug plays us an after dinner composition followed by a bow.

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Julian has given up his morning nap. He takes a long afternoon nap just after lunch. Once in a while, he’ll take a mid morning catnap. This morning Elmo joined him. Elmo looks like he’s not very tired. I think Elmo needs some little JULES. Hmmm stay tuned.

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We spent the day at the beach, and even though Mabel is on car restriction (see previous post) we brought her too. There is a leash free dog beach on Coronado Island. Last year we attempted to spend days at the beach, but Julian didn’t care for it.

He’s come a long way.

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