December already!

Last year around this time, I had a BABY who looked like this:

She was only going on 4 months and was just always on her back or belly.  She loved books and music.  She had just celebrated her first Thanksgiving and was getting ready to celebrate her first Xmas.

Fast forward (and I mean super fast forward a whole year)

This is her today-

She loves. loves. loves books and music.  She can sign 20 signs on a regular basis and is on the run all the time.  She is starting to talk and wants to know what everything is! She is so awesome.  This is the first full month we have not nursed at all and I have grown to accept that.

She is my life, my love, and my everything! Before I know it she will be 18 months! YIKES!!

2 weeks until 15 months....

Here I am updating my readers on the love of my life, Grace Catherine. She will be 15 months on 11/15 and amazes me more and more everyday.  Here is what is going on in her world!

Grace is a walker now.  She is walking/running all over the place and can get into a standing position from sitting.  She is totally done with crawling.  It is amazing to watch her walk like a little girl.  It totally cracks me up and makes me sad at the same time.  She is losing her "thunder thighs" also know as baby fat on her legs.

She has been signing a lot.  I am shocked when she looks at me and signs a new word.  Here is the list so far: please, thank you, eat bear, nice, outside, milk, more, shoes, ball. baby, hat, and eat.  She signs "milk" when she wants something to drink.  She can sign "more please" and"outside please" She is really getting good.  If you are ever one the fence about teaching your baby to sign, it is totally worth it!

As for words, she is saying a couple: mama, dada, cat, car, and duck.  If you ask her what sound certain animals say, she can tell you that dogs go "woof", ducks go "quack", and cows go "moo".  She has been trying to say "girl" or "Grace".  She is making the "g" sound a lot!

Tonight we went out Trick or Treating.  I am crazy about putting her to bed at the same time every night but today she was up a half hour later than usual.  We only went to a few houses but had a great time!

I have to take her to the doctor in November for her 15 month check up so we will get to see weight and height! She might have to get more blood work done to check on her anemia which I am not excited about at all! Last time, I was more of a mess than she was.  She did an awesome job!

Reliving My Moonhoney- Florence (9/5/09)

September 5, 2009
On the road to Florence! We keep having to make stops because of the truck and bus laws.  We had a mid-morning break for 30 minutes and then a 60 minute lunch break.  Hopefully, we will get to Florence soon!

We finally got to Florence around 1:30 and we met our local tour guide.  He took us to the Academy, the home of Michelangleo's David.  Florence is very small, lots of small streets and scooters (400,000 people to 200,000 scooters).  Went into the Academy to see the big site, David.  No cameras are allowed into the Academy so there are no pictures.  Before we saw David, we saw many unfinished works of Michelangelo. Finally saw David and he was amazing! Andre, our tour guide, said that David's hands and feet were disproportioned to the rest of his body.  Afterwards we had about 20 minutes to check out the museum on our own.

We got to see many churches, especially The Duomo.  In the Duomo, I had to wear a plastic sack over my shoulders since I was in a tube top dress.  Patti and I looked awesome!

We went to a few other churches and then had some free time where I bought my new leather bag.  I love it! We went to Basilica of Santa Croce where there were tombs of many famous people- Michelangelo, DiVinci, Machavelli, and Galileo- to name a few of the famous people that were buried there.

We went back to the hotel and had dinner at the hotel that was not all impressive.  We decided to ask at the hotel bar if there were any places that we could get a drink.  Franco was at the bar and he recommended Cafe Baraka and it was right down the street.  We had some wine and beer.  We were in bed by midnight!
Off to Venice tomorrow.  I would have loved to have spent more time in Florence.  Loved it here!

Reliving My Moonhoney- Rome Day 3 (9/4/09)

September 4, 2009

6AM was an early start to the day! We had to be heading off to Vatican City by 7AM.  We met our local tour guide, Chinza, who gave us all headsets to follow her along on the tour.  We got to enter Vatican City an hour early because we were with a tour group.  We first entered Vatican City (it's own county and the smallest country) by the museum while Chinza gave us information on the Sistine Chapel. We first started looking at sculptures and tapestries.  It seemed that many of the characters in the tapestries were following you when you were walking by.  The ceilings all over were amazing! We took tons of pictures of the sculptures and tapestries because no photos are allowed in the Sistine Chapel.  But before we went in the Chapel, we went to the coffee shop and got an espresso!

When we entered the Chapel, it was breathtaking.  The main wall but the entrance was The Last Judgement by Michelangelo.  Chinza told us a story of the Pope's assistant that aggravated Michelangelo during his painting of the chapel.  Michelangelo decided to get his revenge by painting him in hell with donkey ears and a snake wrapped around his body.  I don't think pictures could do this room justice.  It was amazing.  We then got to leave out the entrance that they new pope leaves after her is ordained.  We got to walk down the same staircase! 

Next we went into St. Peter's and got to see where the Pope does all his holiday masses.  It made me think about when I would watch Pope John Paul do the masses on TV. St. Peter's was gorgeous.  There was so much to see and talk about.  There is a statue of St. Peter there that people who rub the foot of for good luck.  Over time, his toes have disappeared!

After we left Vatican City, we went to see the ancient part of Rome.  I was so giddy because I got to finally see the Colusseum! The beauty of it blew me away.  It was gorgeous and amazing.  I took so many pictures of the Colusseum because of its sheer awesomeness!

We went back to the hotel and got to rest before the 2nd part of our day! Dan and I fell asleep for about an hour.  

Around 3:30PM, we got back on the bus.  We were on our way to the Spanish Steps, the Panthenon (perfect circle), the Beretoli fountain, and the Trevi Fountain. The Panthenon was amazing.  The dome was a perfect circle.  We got to see where Raphael was buried inside the building.  We got to spend time by the Trevi Fountain and throw coins in while making a wish.  Dan and I ended up going into this tiny church right by the Trevi fountain.  I ended up making a donation to the church and got a blessed religious bracelet.  There was an adorable Italian priest who would not stop talking to me in Italian even though I had no idea what he was saying!

                                                                      Spanish Steps

Trevi Fountain

Panthenon

Beretoli Fountain

We finally met Franco by the Beretoli fountain for our dinner.  We had to say good by to Chinza which was sad because she was a great tour guide.  Franco took us to the restaurant where we had a great dinner! First was grilled eggplant, zuchchini, & yellow peppers w/fresco salad.  Next, ravioli stuffed with spinach and cheese.  Then fettucine alfredo.  Dan and I got 2 different entrees and shared- salmon w/potatoes and chicken cacciatore with potatoes.  Both had salad.  Last was dessert- fruit salad with strawberry gelato.  We had all the wine that we could drink and the waiter gave the ladies on the tour roses! 

Today was awesome and we got to do and see so much! We are so exhausted! Dan really liked the Sistine Chapel & the Panthenon.  I loved the Colusseum.  I would love to come back.  Tomorrow we leave Rome and head to Florence!

Reliving My Moonhoney- Rome Day 2 (9/3/09)

September 3, 2009

Breakfast was more than I expected it to be.  I thought it would be a continental breakfast with coffee/tea and pastries.  Turns out there was a pretty good selection although the eggs and bacon were a bit on the scary side.  Came back to the room, decided what we wanted to do, and started off to go shopping! We ended up getting some decent bar soap from Sabon and some clothes! 

We were going to meet our tour group for dinner.  Dan and I were wondering what the people in the group were going to be like.  Turned out to be some really nice people that we first met in the hotel lobby. We also met Franco, our tour guide, who was a trip and seemed to have been hitting the wine a little before meeting us for dinner.  We had a really nice bus that took us to the restaurant.  Franco told us that every morning when we get on the bus we have to rotate seats so that we get to sit different places while on the tour.  


We got to the restaurant for the Welcome Dinner.  There were singers, an accordion player, and a piano player.  Dinner was really good- Antipasto, Pasta Fagioli soup, different types of pasta, salad, chicken & veal with potatoes, and tiramisu.  Of course there was tons of wine and we had our fair share of it that night! 6AM was the wake up time tomorrow so we went back to the hotel and go back into bed! 

Reliving My Moonhoney- Rome Day 1 (9/2/09)

Let me start of by saying that I found my notebook that I wrote in during my honeymoon with Dan.  I wrote everyday to remember what had happened, what we did, the people we met, and the fun we had.  We traveled through Europe- Rome, Florence, Venice, Lugano, Lucerne, Paris, and London.  We had an awesome time!

September 2nd, 2009

We arrived in Rome! Our driver, Alex, met us at DaVinci Airport and drove us to the Hotel Michelangelo right by St. Peter's Square.  We arrived a day before out tour group was starting so we could explore on our own! We weren't sure if the hotel was going to let us check in because we got there way before the check in time.  The staff was really nice and they let us check in early! We got into the room and was not aware that they all had twin beds! We were exhausted from the plane ride so we pushed together the twin beds and quickly we knocked out! We laid down around 11AM (Italian time) and ended up waking up around 3PM.  

We decided to go exploring with a map and some guidance from Guisseppi, who worked the front desk.  First thing we did was hit the ATM for some Euros. We walked into St. Peter's Square and was amazed by how beautiful it was! We were holding off on Vatican City because we were doing a tour there an hour before it opened during the trip. We took a ton of pictures! We walked around and checked out some souvenir shops to see what they had. We stopped at a restaurant and grabbed some pizza and sparkling water.  

Before we left the hotel, Guisseppi told us about a street (forget the name) that had a lot of really good shops on it.  We decided to go looking for that which we could not find so we decided to ask for directions.  We found a street sweeper guy who spoke pretty good English if he could point us in the right direction. He told us where to go but gave ME a warning.  I was wearing a Minor Threat T-shirt and he told me to watch out for Skinheads because they do not like straight edge people (First, I am not straight edge.  I just like Minor Threat).  He then told me that there are a lot of Skinheads in the area we were in.  I told him thanks for the warning and was surprised he knew what the t-shirt was about.


We finally found the shopping area and got our shop on! I got some really cute pajamas from a store called Yamamay.  We then stopped at Sabon, which is Rome's version of Lush (they do have some stores in NYC as well).  We found an awesome store that sold pretty much everything. They sold loose bottles of beer and they had a real bottle of Duff beer.  Finally we stopped for some espresso and cappucino on our was back to the hotel.  Time to relax and decided to get ready to go to dinner!

After getting showered and changed, we decided to go to a place that Ethan, Dan's brother-in-law, recommended. It was called Il Cappellaio Matto (The Mad Hatter) .  Ethan told us it was a place that locals went to and they did not speak much English there (could not find a direct website). After a crazy cab ride, we finally arrived.  The menu was all in Italian, of course, so we did our best and ordered.  We got a half liter of red wine, bruschetta, ravioli, scallopini in vino, salad, and a Nutella & banana crepe.  It was super delicious and super inexpensive.  The whole dinner was under 40 Euro (around $63).  Awesome!  Finally got back to the hotel and was knocked out.  We had an early morning the next day! We were going to get breakfast and meet the tour group a little later on in the afternoon!

Update on My Girl! Part 2

There were a few things that I totally forgot when I was blogging about Grace last night! So much stuff has happened over the past month or so, it is crazy! Here are a few things I forgot!


Grace is starting to identify her body parts! She can show you where her belly is.  First, she used to point to/grab her belly but now she pulls up her shirt and shows you her belly.  She can also show you her toes and her nose.  She gets her eyes and ears confused but she is getting there!  She can also tell me where her knees are sometimes.  


There are a few more animal sounds she can do.  When I ask her what a chicken says, she says "Gluck, Gluck".  She still does the dog sound and sometimes yells when I ask her what a sheep says.


She is my girl!