Christmas 2010

Christmas season 2010 began the same way that we have for the past eight or so years.... by heading out to Beaver's Christmas Tree Farm to find our tree.  Of course, this year we had Henry along for the ride.  I think he mainly enjoyed being warm and snuggly in the cool air.

We picked out our tree and got it home and set up in the basement.  A sea of gifts soon flowed in.

This photo is one of the first times we captured Henry's smile in a picture.  It's still one of my all-time favorite Henry photos!  We accidentally got that really nice background with the tree.

 

Henry loved the tree and the lights.  He would stare at them for long periods of time and whenever he would get a little fussy or bored, we'd just sit him in front of the tree and he was happy.

Soon it was Christmas Eve.  Henry thought he'd try to catch a glimpse of Santa and the reindeer, but he got sleepy and snoozed away. 

When Christmas morning dawned, we got a rare treat in Birmingham - a white Christmas!  It continued to snow all day and also the 26th.

Henry was pretty sleepy through gift opening time, so we took lots of pictures he can look back on later. 

The best part of Christmas is that for the first time in probably 20 years, my sister was able to travel for Christmas!  She normally has to stay home to work the next day.  Since she was able to get off of work, she drove down to our house on Christmas Day with Cesar and Enzo and stayed a couple of days!  It was fun to have the family together on Christmas.  Henry was clearly amazed!

Dana and Cesar had to work out the logistics of handing off a baby.  They did pretty well.

Cesar and Henry meet each other for the first time.

After a great holiday season, all that was left to do was to get the family photo in front of the tree.  Easier said than done!  The best we could do was this "Fran look eager, Katie look REALLY eager, and Henry look like you are afraid of heights" version!  We had fun trying, though! 

Hope everyone had a great holiday and end to 2010!

All is Well!

Sorry for the lack of updates! All is well here in the Fabrizio household. We're gathering photos for our next post and we'll update soon. Stay tuned!

Henry's First Thanksgiving

It's been a while since we've updated the blog, we've been having too much fun with Henry, and there don't seem to be enough hours in the day. (Hence the 2:30am blog update...)  Henry has been doing great, packing on the pounds as fast as we can feed him the formula.  He's over 11 pounds already!  We've put away all the 0-3 month clothes and have moved into 3-6 month territory.  And to think, just a few weeks ago he was in the hospital because he was having trouble figuring out how to eat!

Henry spends most of his days hanging out with Mom, Grandma and Mom-mom.  He's been spoiled with all the lovin' and attention.  He enjoys listening to singing and music, spending time on his playmat, doing tummy time and strengthening his rolling over muscles, bathtime, making lots of faces and noises, and lately, working on smiling and giggling.

Smiles!

We've been taking advantage of the weather to get outside with him as much as possible. We're also trying to figure out ways to become more mobile with him.

Have pacifier, will travel!

Fancy Henry carrier

With Henry being such a good eater, he was naturally very excited about the holiday that revolves around a feast.  The Richards family came in from Minnesota and Arizona to join us for Thanksgiving.  This is the first time Ben, Steph and the girls have met Henry.  They've been having fun getting to know each other.

Cousins

Loren returned after going back to Arizona for a few weeks.  Henry has changed a lot since he was here last!

Check Out How Much I've Grown, Grandpa!

The family has been here a couple of days now.  The weather is unseasonably warm here so we were able to get in some outdoor time finding slugs, climbing trees and tossing the football and frisbee around.  We've also had some rain, so we've hung out inside telling stories and playing games, too. 

Three generations playing Just Dance!

Everyone got in on the cooking action.  Over the past two days, we've cooked a Thanksgiving feast of turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, gravy, sweet potato casserole, green beans, corn casserole, strawberry and spinach salad, pumpkin pie and a peach cobbler, as well as other meals including pizzas, monkey bread, and tacos.

Making monkey bread

Feast Preparations

Eleanor learning the classic - Cranberry-Sauce-in-Can-Shape

The Gravy Man

We settled in for our feast. 

Ada is ready to eat (and hydrate!)

Good lookin' bunch!

Everything was delicious.  Even Henry seemed to sense the spirit of Thanksgiving, consuming way more than the usual amount of formula all day and then taking the requisite post-meal snooze. 

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

Henry's first few weeks at home!

Henry has been adjusting to being at home now. He's going on 4 weeks old and doing great so far! He is eating more than we ever imagined possible and sleeping for 4 hours at a time. He is also putting the Diaper Genie to the test!

Here is Henry taking a bath. Thankfully he is a good-natured baby, because mom and dad were quite unskilled at the whole process. Dad assumed a stiff-armed stance with a very firm grip on the slippery baby. Mom was in charge of the washing and avoiding of the cord. Henry seemed to not notice our lack of skills and appeared to enjoy the water!

We are always looking for ways to help Henry work on - um - releasing some gas. We figured that a tummy-down, head-higher-than-feet position combined with a back rub would do the trick. It didn't really help, but he looked cute in that position. It also allowed for him to bond with dad.

We also attempted to get some photos of Henry in his cute Halloween duds. Photographing a baby is a LOT harder than it seems. Especially when the adult in the picture looks ridiculous.

Now that's better! I think I see a little bit of a smile there, don't you?

Here is Henry showing off some of the faces that he likes to make!

Welcome, Henry!

We are thrilled to introduce Henry Michael Fabrizio to the world! Henry was born at 10:51am on October 6, 2010, weighing in at 7 lbs. 15 oz. and 19 inches in length. Hi Henry!



Mom and baby both did wonderfully and are recovering nicely. Henry arrived a bit early (36 weeks) so he's spending a little extra time in the hospital nursery getting some expert help and training on the whole "eating/sucking/breathing at the same time" thing.

We've spent many hours with Henry at the nursery getting to know each other. His favorite activities so far are being a champion snuggler and trying out all of his new facial expressions. He's also been busy entertaining his grandparents, charming his nurses, and hanging out with his special UAB friends Ginger, Juliet, and Kristy. Mostly, he's been catching up on his sleep. The big day tuckered out the little guy.

Mom is having tons of fun getting to know Henry face to face after all these months together.

Dad doesn't care that he's looking scruffy and sleep-deprived because he's having fun teaching Henry how to burp. As you can see, Henry has a full head of hair already!

Katie was discharged and came home on Sunday. The doctors say that Henry is making such good progress it might not be too many more days before he can come home too! In the meantime, mom, dad and the grandparents are spending lots of time at the hospital with our new family member. Welcome, Henry!

Wedding in New Orleans

This past weekend, Fran and I traveled to New Orleans for our friend Naz and Wes' wedding. Naz is from New Orleans, but relocated to Birmingham to work at the VA after hurricane Katrina. It had been a long time (about 10 years) since we'd been to New Orleans, so we were excited to get back. As expected, it was HOT, so we were concentrating more on staying cool than on taking pictures.

The wedding was in the Garden District on St. Charles Ave. We stayed in a very nice B&B - the Sully Mansion - only a few blocks away. We enjoyed great breakfasts, took a driving tour of the areas damaged by the hurricane (which was about 80% of the city), discovered the St. James Cheese Company, had a picnic at Audubon Park, and shopped on Magazine Street. We briefly went to Bourbon Street, but it was so crowded with people at 9AM that we just turned around and went back to our relaxing part of town.

The wedding was at 7PM and was very pretty. I have been talking with Naz about the wedding planning for about a year, so it was nice to finally see all her planning come to fruition!

What a great looking couple!

What another great looking couple!

Me and Naz took a break from rockin' out on the dance floor.

I really liked the orange dresses!

Overall, it was a great quick getaway! We'd like to go back again in the future...but next time, I think we'll go in the winter. =)

Batch Number Two Has Flown the Coop!

The backyard bluebirds have been hard at work on their second set of children this summer. Another three bluebird babies were growing quickly as mom and dad bluebird flew back and forth to the house with an endless supply of food. This photo was taken on July 3rd.

Then this morning we witnessed the highlight of our bird watching career! We were on the back deck with breakfast and coffee when we noticed a very young looking bluebird in a nearby tree. He had very immature coloring and still had his HUGE baby beak and mouth. He was sitting very, very still. Then mom flew in with a snack and we figured out that the babies must have left the nest this morning and taken their first flight to this tree! By watching mom and dad, we were able to locate a second baby on another nearby tree branch.

For the next hour, we watched the two babies getting used to their wings by stretching and cleaning their feathers, and testing out their perching balance. Every once in a while they would get brave and stand up, but then they'd get wobbly and plop back down on the branch. Mom and dad were coming constantly with snacks, and we think they were visiting the third baby too, although we couldn't see that one. The parents were also super vigilant - they would immediately chase away any squirrels or other birds that got too close for comfort by doing tag team dive bombing runs! We even saw a bigger sibling come in to help out when two squirrels made simultaneous approaches.

After an hour of this, we noticed that the food visits were becoming less frequent and the babies were getting antsy. Finally one of them took a short flight to another branch! We then watched for another 10 minutes as the other baby got up his courage to try out his wings again, and he too finally made a small flight when mom and dad came by to encourage him (or her - hard to tell!) A few minutes later and they were bravely working their way up into the treetop out of sight.

Another successful bluebird generation is airborne!

More Crafty Katie

Katie also made gifts for Mother's and Father's Day for Sally and Loren. For Mother's Day, she made this piece with mama and daughter bird on it (here she is with her friend Christy at their latest craft day).

For Father's Day the theme was a classic woody car, using the car ads as the background.

Very creative, and very thoughtful gifts!

Mini crafts!

Katie has been extremely crafty lately. For our niece Ada's birthday, she decided to create some homemade accessories for her play kitchen. Check out the embroidered mini towels and kid-sized oven mitt!!

Looks like it was a big hit with the girls!