Spring Adventures

Hi everyone!  We're overdue for another post about our family adventures.  We have had a very eventful spring, filled with road trips, trips to the farmer's market, picnics, yard work,and even a couple of trips to the crawlspace to seek shelter from storms and tornadoes. 

Henry has had many "firsts" this spring, as well!  He has started eating solid food and really likes it.

Hey, this stuff ain't bad!

We're still working on squash, but sweet potatoes, carrots, apples and bananas have all been successful.  He's also developed more sophisticated tastes in food....

 The lamb chops are divine.

....and in fashion...

I think I look quite debonaire.

He took his first trip to the beach in March.  He dipped his toes in the sand (fun!) and in the Atlantic Ocean (not so sure about that one yet).  He enjoyed the taste and smell of the salt air and the sound of the crashing waves a lot.

Daydreaming of future adventures

He went for his first swim in a pool, and he was a natural.  He kicked his feet to turn his floatie in a circle.  I think we'll be spending a lot of afternoons in the pool at mom-mom's apartment this summer.

This bathing suit highlights my fat rolls nicely!

He's been back to the zoo several times now.  Although he mostly views the zoo as a great time to catch a few ZZZ's, he does like to wake up and look at the animals from time to time.

He even had his first night where he got a little too crazy....

What was IN that formula last night?!

It's warming up now and we're starting to get excited for warm weather rituals.  Peaches are starting to ripen, and the grill has already been fired up several times.  The garden is blooming and we're starting to plan summer vacations.  Auntie Dana is coming for a visit soon, and Grandma Sally and Grandpa Loren will be here in July.  We're lining up a trip to the Minnesota State Fair later in the summer, and Dana may return this summer with Enzo for some whitewater rafting fun.  Hope everyone is enjoying their spring as much as we are! 

Scary Weather Day

It's been a crazy 16 hours of violent weather in central Alabama today.  We wanted to let everyone know we're fine.  Several of our co-workers and friends suffered major property damage, but so far we don't know of any injuries.

The morning started at 6am with an extremely fast moving line of straight-line winds which reached 100 mph.  This caused massive damage across much of the state, including locally.  Many roads and interstates were closed, and lots of power outages and trees and power lines down.  4 people in the area were killed from the morning event.

We were warned that the morning event was just the beginning and to expect worse in the afternoon and evening.  Sally was visiting and was supposed to fly back home this afternoon but after hearing the warnings she was able to get out on an earlier flight.  Schools and daycares closed, so I was home with Henry and mom came over to help.  At 2:30pm supercell thunderstorms started popping up in the state from west to east and spinning off huge tornadoes.  First Cullman (about 45 minutes north) took a direct hit.  Katie left work early and got home safely, then Tuscaloosa (45 minutes west) received a direct hit from a massive tornado.  The Tuscaloosa tornado then headed to Birmingham and passed just north of downtown, about 6 miles north of us.  It was a mile wide and caused a lot of loss of life in Tuscaloosa and Birmingham, but they still have no idea how many people.   All told I think about 20 (update: 66 tornadoes reported in AL on Wednesday) different large, long-lasting tornadoes passed through central Alabama this afternoon and evening.  So far 11 people were killed in our county and 50 statewide (update: 160 deaths in AL so far), though that number will certainly go up.  Apparently UAB and the other area hospital emergency rooms are inundated with patients.

We hunkered down in our crawl space when they got near us.  Henry had a great time hanging out under the house and was oblivious to the danger.  We got lucky today - no loss of power, no trees down, no property damage, and no tornado.  Hoping that it's no worse than property damage for our friends and coworkers, several towns where they live received direct hits.  This is the third major severe weather event here in two weeks.  Today was by far the worst, one weatherman said it was the worst day in 32 years of covering Alabama weather.  Scary day.

Winter Fun

Hi all, it's been a while since the last blog update so we thought we'd post about all of our winter adventures.  Henry is growing so fast and making new progress every day!  He is up to 16 lbs. and over 25 inches long. 

He has spent much of the winter working on his motor skills.  He's getting so good at his neck control, tummy time, grasping objects, visual tracking, and hand-to-mouth skills.  Here are some shots of him in action...

We also had some visitors recently.  (Great) Auntie and (Great) Uncle Paul came to visit on their way to Florida.  It was their first visit to Alabama and we hadn't seen them in a long time.  It was fun to have them here, we all had fun and they are looking forward to visiting again.

They got a rare dose of icy weather while they were here.  Of course, as soon as they left we had our week of 70 degree weather that we always seem to get in February around here! We were able to get Henry out and about and we discovered that he loves to feel the wind on his tongue.  Here he is tasting the wind at the Railroad Park downtown.

(Grammy) Sally also came in for a visit in February.  Henry had already changed so much since her last visit, she had fun seeing him demonstrate all of his new skills. 

Henry is also very "talkative" these days, and he spends lots of time just making noise.  We think he likes the way it feels in his throat. 

One of the more interesting things we did this winter was run in a marathon.  Ok, well, we ran the last 50 feet.  And technically, it was Henry that was the racer, we were just guiding the stroller.  Nevertheless, Henry won his heat and got a fancy medal.  He seemed to think it wasn't such a big deal, but his parents sure were proud!  The first of many awards and recognitions, we're sure!  (we're not biased at all!  :-)

Most recently, we took Henry for his first visit to the zoo.  He was really interested in all the movement of the animals and seemed to really enjoy it.  One of the highlights of the trip was feeding the lorikeets.  Here's Fran feeding them nectar...

Henry seemed to like the colorful birds.  Unfortunately, we don't have a picture of Katie screaming when one of them landed on her head and started nestling into her hair.  We got a zoo membership so he'll be back for many more visits.

Of course, lots of time was spent just relaxing and hamming it up for the camera, two things Henry is very good at!  Here are a couple of shots we've taken recently.

Now, spring is arriving in central Alabama.  The hyacinths came up last week and our pink saucer magnolia tree in the front yard has already bloomed.

We're starting to look forward to the Pepper Place farmer's market, sidewalk dining, planting the flower boxes, swimming, and lots of outside time with Henry.

Hope everyone else has had as fun a winter as we have! 

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!