Tuesday, July 7, 2009

Babies on the move

Liam teaching his friends to play nice








The best I'm gonna look next to these kids!
Bill Sheehan and Julia
The Gorgeous Bride and Handsome Groom









Cristina enjoying Liam's fantastic sense of humor




all the babies rockin' out







It's July already. July....like in the month before we celebrate a first birthday. It's becoming more and more obvious that if I can't lobby Congress to get an extra hour or two tacked on to every day, I'm just going to run out of time. We still haven't planned the party. What kind of parents are we? We've been throwing ideas around but nothing seems to fit the enormity of the FIRST birthday. I am usually one to believe things should be understated, but OH MY GOD OUR KIDS WILL BE TURNING ONE and I'm freakin' out!! On the Fourth of July last year, I had too many contractions -- way too many like one every four minutes and I was only 22 weeks. The fear that I felt then and all those days where we just didn't know how this would turn out... well, that has earned us a celebration fit for royalty. Maybe I just came up with our theme... stay tuned. (I started this post so long ago that that now is the theme -- A Royal Celebration -- and the party plans are in the works)



This post is about our very first trip to Wrentham. For those of you reading this saying What the....they were in Wrentham and didn't visit, let me apologize right now. I'll go back to needing more hours in a day than I've got to work with. We came in very late Friday night to Bill, Cristina and Liam's house. They had to stay up past their bedtime just to be bombarded with armfuls of kids and all the stuff that comes with them. I am sure I spent more time getting everything ready to go than we actually spent in Wrentham. Cristina had many of the things we needed so we only had to bring one set of some of the bigger items instead of three. This made it almost easy. Well, the week leading up to this, I made lists; I checked them twice. I remade the lists I lost. I kept repeating my mantra, of "food, diapers, clothes and they'll be fine." So Friday comes and I insist we should leave around four because by the time get to a major city, rush hour is over, so, of course we should get on the road. Of course....well, i didn't consider the weather report of thunderstorms. We got underneath one that so kindly hovered over us from NJ to Milford, MA. Thank you, Mr. Thunderstorm. Very nice to spend the six and a half hours with you. What was supposed to be a four-hour drive came close to being seven. lucky us. The good news is that Julia, Braddock and Griffin didn't seem too bothered by it. They slept early and then I sat in the back and entertained for a solid four hours. They seemed to have a lot of fun. When we arrived, we fed them an extra bottle and amazingly they slept well despite being in a different environment.




Now, the purpose of our trip was a wedding on Saturday night but we'll get to that. First, I really did have some kind of allergic reaction -- possibly to a bug bite -- that called for a prescription of steroids to get the ginormous hives covering my body to go away. Cristina is not only superMom, she's a doctor, so this was very handy at 6:00 a.m. I can't imagine if I had to go sit in an emergency room somewhere. So with that little obstacle out of the way, we had a great day. We even went for a walk to Brian's new house. There we were like Make Way for Ducklings -- a little stroller parade -- right down South Street. The kids loved seeing all the new faces (which we really worried about since they've been having some stranger anxiety lately) and they all seemed to adore Liam. He can crawl and dance and he's very vocal. The babies were in awe of his skills. Some day soon, they'll be there. We had a jam session and that was awesome! Liam can really rock! So we were able to scoot out and go to Erin and Mike's beautiful wedding. Apparently the kids never even noticed we were gone which is all we could have hoped for. All their babysitters said they were very good and they even went to bed on time. We were really worried it would be a total nightmare, but we were so wrong. (and very happily wrong, I might add)



We really can't say thank you to The Sheehans/Cataldos enough. What a treat to be able to go out and not worry for one second that everybody was fine. It was also so special for me to watch my children with Cristina's child. I wasn't much older than they were when we all met on Stoney Brook Lane and began our lifelong friendship. To see our offspring forming their own bonds was the sweetest thing. We've got Liam taking Julia to the prom. If I keep the blog up until then, I'll happily post the pictures.


We have two more trips coming up this weekend and next. Hopefully, the organizing and packing gets to be second nature and we'll sail through the prep phase.


As for updated news -- and there's a lot of it. Braddock started with baby babble. He started with ba-ba-ba and now he's a complete da-da man. Julia is crawling commando-style but it's only a matter of days before she's up and about. She heads for the exit at all times so the running after babies stages has officially begun for us. Now all bets are off. Griffin, interestingly, crawls on his back. He is very quick, too. I'm sure this is not the preferred method of travel for him but I give his kudos for the ingenuity. He's core gets stronger every day and he's nearly sitting. Braddock in the last week is just about sitting, too. Julia's been there, done that. Eating is becoming much easier now and all three seem to love the food I make them. As Julia starts to crawl, we're working in the cookies and cereal puffs. She started using the ma-ma and ba-ba sounds just yesterday. Griffin has his own language that is a complete riot. He was very excited for the fourth of July and told us all about it for a really long time. It's so cute to see them "talk" to each other.


Okay, I'll save more info for a later post. Today we're lunching with Gram's dearest friend Patti and her mother about an hour from here. It will be exciting to see Patti's mom's reaction to them.
















Off I go. More soon.

2 comments:

The Honeymooners-Chris and Noelani K. Miranda said...

So Awesome, I read that in one breath..probably how you wrote it. FUN FUN FUN. They all look so awesome!

anne barclay said...

Hi all,
Looks like your whirlwind trip was a success. I can't believe how much Liam looks like his grandfather, Chip!!!! Could be a little clone. Adorable.
Your three little ones are becoming the seasoned travelers, huh? I'm sure things will get easier and easier as time goes on. Now you know that traveling with three is possible and even pleasurable (if the thunderstorms stay away.)
Say hi to your folks for us! We're on Nantucket and I forgot to bring your Mom's cell # with me. Could you email it to me?