Smell Ya Later, Daycare!

Ok, here it is! It's BIG ANNOUNCEMENT time!!!

TODAY WAS THE DAY I GOT TO GIVE DAYCARE OUR TWO-WEEK NOTICE! That's right - no more sick baby, no more stupid rules, no more nasty daycare staff, no more sniffly noses, no more sick notices, no more stolen binkies, no more $600 a month childcare, no more filthy white socks, no more french fry incidents! We're DONE!

Why this sudden change you may ask? Well, on Monday, Ralph was offered a position with a Wall Street firm in Great Neck, NY that deals in hedge funds. It was a great offer, with a great company, and we would be crazy to turn it down. Ralph's new position will allow me to stop working my 9-to-5 job every day, and to stay home with Jake while I freelance full-time. I am beyond thrilled at the opportunities that lay ahead for our family. We will be putting our house on the market and moving to NY soon. We are actually going to be renovating Ralph's grandfather's house and living there. Jake will be the fifth generation of Ralph's family to live in this house! Very cool!

While Delaware has been the butt of more than a few jokes from me, I do still think I will miss it. I will miss the awesome friends I made (come visit!!!!), I will miss the memories of all the "firsts" that Ralph and I had here. I will miss our cute little townhouse. I will miss tax-free shopping. I will miss Wawa. Most of all, I will miss being so close to all my family in PA. But I am sooo excited and I am happy to share the news with you all. I will keep you posted!!! :)

Worst. Blogger. Ever.

I would like to apologize profusely for my lack of blogging lately, but I promise you there are lots of pictures and a BIG announcement coming soon! :) NO, I am NOT pregnant! Let's just clear that up right off the bat!

I have been busier this past week than I have ever been in my life, so busy in fact, that I had no time to cry about TURNING 30 last friday! Big thanks go out to my girls Lisa and Mary for showing me a great time friday night!!! :)

Also, big thanks to Lisa for being my awesome design "intern" these past few days and nights - I would accomplish NOTHING without her help. We are talking 12 hour days, 4 hours of sleep a night, crazy running around, working myself into the ground (enter sore throat and coughing).

Jake spent thursday night to Monday night at "Camp Grandma" - he and Ruth had a great time playing with Grandma and Grandpa Valentine, Uncle Danny and Jamie dawg. He got to eat all kinds of yummy things, and even clapped after his taste of CHOCOLATE Carvel cake - mmmmm! I got some time to myself - which was sooo nice! - while Ralph travelled with his parents, aunts and grandparents down to Florida to see Chris play vs. Miami.

Jake is growing tooth #5 (bottom lower left), and will turn 11 months old in a few days! (So how does that work when your birthday is the 30th, but the month only has 28 days???) I need to get his birthday plans in gear!!!

Carvel Ice Cream Cake...

...Is apparently Jake's favorite food on earth. (Not that this should be a surprise to anyone, seeing as Ralph and I refer to Carvel Ice Cream as 'the fifth food group.') Grandma Valentine let Jake try just one tiny sample of vanilla ice cream from her piece of our Carvel Ice Cream Cake tonight and he liked it so much that he grunted and fussed until she fed him darn near the entire vanilla part! Then he got some from Grandpa, and a little more from momma too before he had his fill. It was hilarious! If only I had tried Carvel Ice Cream on Jake when he was 4 months old, maybe he would have realized much earlier that this eating thing ain't so bad afterall!

Valentine's Day

We spent the day inside, without power, huddling down to keep warm with all of the snow and ice, ice, ice outside. We were without power for about 10 hours total on Valentine's Day, but luckily my digital camera had full batteries and I snuck outside for a few shots when the sun came out for a half-hour.



Ruthie had to wear a pair of Jake's pajamas because she was shivering - wish I had a picture of that! We bundled up and took a nap on the couch, Dada got a picture of us:



Jake missed his Valentine's party at daycare, I missed being able to use the televison, the internet, or my computer (I had been planning to work from home). I had these grand plans to send out a Valentine's Day email to my freelance clients (my design company is valentine designs) and wasn't able to do it. :(



Luckily, a lot of the snow and ice was cleared out by the 15th, so I was able to go back to work, and Jake was able to go back to daycare. Ralph, Jake and Ruthie were kind enough to have flowers delivered to me at work, and Jake's classmates gave him his Valentines Cards too, a day late but just as sweet.



Hope you all had a nice Valentine's Day!

Babies in Baskets

We had a fun time this weekend with my friend Jen's daughter Emily. Emily insisted upon squeezing into these tiny little baskets that we store Jake's toys in. If figured if she fits, Jake would fit too. So, here are two babies in baskets! Too cute! (More pics of Emily on my Photo Blog).



Emily is showing Jake the basics of cell phone usage. I think she is explaining how text messages are transmitted over a wireless network here. Kids are so technologically savvy these days! We all were lucky enough to get to wear some of Emily's pretty headbands too - me, Jake, even Ruthie!

Visit the Photo Blog, whydoncha!

Just a little plug for my photo blog, where you can see some juicy tidbits that don't always make it onto the baby blog, such as this pic: Jake's baby size 3 shoes next to Uncle Chris' size 16 mens shoe.



Stay tuned for the launch of my new photography website, kellyvasami.com - coming soon!

Babyproofing

Jake recently returned from visiting with his grandparents in NY while Ralph was up there on business. Upon his return, Jake immediately went to work putting the child-proofing items to the test.

Of course, he makes a bee-line to the one drawer I didn't babyproof. How do they know???



This is my typical view of Jake these days:



Giving this lock a thorough examination. (I highly recommend this lock!)



Since he can't play with the Liquid Plumber, Jake decides to play his new game of slapping his hands down on his legs while screaming and laughing. This game can last for 2-5 minutes at a time. He cracks me up!



The other lock, which I don't like as much (difficult to open when you are in a hurry).

HAIRCUT!

Ok, you all waited so patiently... well, everyone except Aunt Marianne! (tee hee)

So here are your haircut pictures...

Now, just so you know, it took four grown adults to cut the hair of one ten-month-old: one person with the scissors doing the actual cutting (Grandma Mary Ellen), one person holding squirming ten-month-old (Kelly), one person distracting crazed ten-month-old (Grandpa Jim) so he would stay still near the sharp scissors, and one person to oversee the whole hilarity of the situation (Ralph). We didn't think to have Aunt Nancy join in the craziness by taking pictures of the ACTUAL precise moments the snips were made, so this is just before and after - no during.

BEFORE: The back is becoming dangerously 'mullett-like'....



BEFORE: Jake sees no need for a haircut...



BEFORE: All sprayed down and about to get trimmed...



AFTER: The final outcome, with a little help from some of Daddy's hairgel...



Bonus pic: I just loved this picture of the stylist extraordinaire - Grandma Mary Ellen. I told her I was just shooting Jake (sorry mom, but it's a nice shot of you!). Photogs always lie! ;)

Sneak peek

Ok yall, I am darn tired and in need of some sleep. I wanna post the pictures of Jake's first big-boy haircut, but I am waaaaay too tired to do a good job. So you get one picture. One measly cute baby picture to tide you over until I can give you the full haircut report. This is a before picture, just FYI...

Enjoy! 'Night!

$300 and five gates later....

I hate babyproofing. And since Jake is now pulling himself into a stand, and crawling all over the place, we MUST baby proof. Time's up. My doctor gave me this genius advice: Get on your hands and knees and crawl around - if there is anything within reach of the baby, your house is not babyproofed. It took all the control I had not to break into hysterical laughter. If the doctor had seen our house, I think she would have declared us unfit parents. Our house is a disaster area. Between Ralph and I both working insane hours and spending most of our free time travelling, we have zero time to clean or babyproof. Add to that a shopaholic wife and a pack rat husband, and you have a recipe for domestic disaster. I joke that it if robbers came to break into our place, they would open the door and say, "Oh, somebody got here first and ransacked it." It's that bad.

So anyway... we are doing our best to play catch-up now. We are trying really hard to put away the dangerous things in our home (Bag O' Glass, Bag O' Nails, Bag O' Sulfuric Acid); as well as throw useless things away, donate all items we can, pack up things we don't use regularly, and make the best use of our shrinking-every-second 1500 sq ft townhouse. We even rented a POD to store things we don't use on a regular basis, but we still want to keep (extra furniture, out-of-season clothing, baby items Jake has already outgrown but that we want to keep for future children).

Tonight I went to Babies 'R' Us in persuit of all things baby-proof. I bought cabinet locks, outlet plugs, soft corners for sharp edges - you name it! But the worst obstacle so far has been finding a baby gate to fit the staircase from our kitchen to our basement. It is an odd configuration - a banister on the left, a wall on the right. I found one gate that I thought would work with this situation, but because the banister and the wall aren't parallel, a five inch gap was left over the open stairs! I just pictured Jake's little legs slipping through, not to mention countless toys that would make their way down there too. I tried every baby gate known to man. Five of them - bought, tried, failed, returned, or relegated to another perilous opening in our house. I have now spent nearly $300 (although some have been returned) on the following baby gates: The Supergate III, the Soft & Wide Gate, the Top of Stairs Gate, the Sure and Secure™ Custom-Fit Gate, and finally, the Hide A Way Gate. If I install one more dang gate, I'm gonna flip. There are so many holes drilled in my poor banister!

Here are a few pics from the one that finally worked, the aforementioned Hide A Way Gate, which works almost like a retractable shade - but can go across at an angle, so it worked for our house - finally!



Some of the tools I used in putting up our 574 baby gates:



The gate that worked next to a gate that didn't:

To All the Kids who Survived the 1930’s, 40’s, 50’s, 60’s and 70’s!!

• First, we survived being born to mothers who smoked and/or drank while they were pregnant. They took aspirin, ate blue cheese dressing, tuna from a can, and didn’t get tested for diabetes.
• Then after that trauma, we were put to sleep on our tummies in baby cribs covered with bright colored lead-based paints.
• We had no childproof lids on medicine bottles, childproof locks on doors or cabinets. When we rode our bikes we had no helmets.
• As infants & children, we would ride in cars with no car seats, booster seats, air bags (or even seat belts!)
• Riding in the back of a pick-up truck on a warm day was always a special treat.
• We drank water from the garden hose and NOT from a bottle of filtered spring water.
• We ate cupcakes, white bread and real butter and drank Kool-Aid made with sugar, but we weren’t overweight because, WE WERE ALWAYS OUTSIDE PLAYING!
• We would leave home in the morning and play all day, as long as we were back when the streetlights came on.
• No one was able to reach us all day.  And we were O.K.
• We would spend hours building our go-carts out of scraps and then ride down the hill, only to find out we forgot the brakes. After running into the bushes a few times, we learned to solve the problem.
• We did not have video games, cable TV, DVDs or CDs, cell phones, personal computers, Internet or chat rooms... WE HAD FRIENDS and we went outside and found them!
• We fell out of trees, got cut, broke bones and teeth and there were no lawsuits from these accidents.
• We were given BB guns for our 10th birthdays, made up games with sticks and tennis balls and, although we were told it would happen, we did not put out very many eyes.
• We rode bikes or walked to a friend’s house and knocked on the door or rang the bell, or just walked in and talked to them!
• Little League had tryouts and not everyone made the team. Those who didn’t had to learn to deal with disappointment. Imagine that!!
• The idea of a parent bailing us out if we broke the law was unheard of.  They actually sided with the law!
• The past 50 years have been an explosion of innovation and new ideas. We had freedom, failure, success and responsibility, and we learned HOW TO DEAL WITH IT ALL! These generations have produced some of the best risk-takers, problem solvers and inventors ever!
• If YOU are one of them: CONGRATULATIONS!