Cristina's Birthday

Below are some pictures from my birthday two weekends ago. We enjoyed time with our families celebrating.

My dad came over during the week and we went out to dinner. Here is Sebastian playing with his "Le Lo" as he says Abuelo.

We always do one big Giammarinaro family October birthday since we are all so close together in October. This year, Sebastian made birthday cards for his Uncle Corey, Aunt Kim and Uncle Jeff. So creative!

On the morning of my birthday opening my card from Sebastian. He also got me a massage...mmmm.!

Happy birthday at my mom's house.

Angelica drew me this beautiful family portrait for my birthday. I think it's our first family drawing! We are all wearing "Gators" as she called it and dressed in orange and blue. I love Paul's spikey hair.

Sebastian hearing his Anca read him a story. He LOVES seeing his Anca. He asks about her every single day, multiple times even. It is so cute to see them together because he just adores her.

Busy Weekend filled with buses and planes!

Friday, we went to Playground Pals at the church. Forever ago I blogged about Sebastian's first art project....well, here is the picture finally! It was up on the bulletin board so I had not had a chance to get a picture.

As you can see, he LOVES seeing his "wawa" or bus on the board. The whole playtime he kept wanting to go out to see his bus. He was so excited when we got to take it home too!

Saturday we lathered up with sunscreen and went to the Melbourne air day to see some planes. Sebastian is wearing his airplane shirt from his Abuelo.

Abuelo met us at the airport with his plane. Sebastian liked going inside the big planes, especially this one that he got to sit and co-pilot with his Le Lo.

Flying yet another plane. He was a happy boy!

Sunday we celebrated my sister-in-laws birthday at a park on the beach. The weather was nice and Sebastian was thrilled to find a bus parked nearby!

Playing peek-a-boo with Daddy.

Our cutie. =)

Please keep us in your prayers in the coming weeks as we have our "big" sonogram coming up on October 28. They will be doing lots of measuring and checking to make sure everything is going well! I feel so blessed to be feeling great this time, with only minor discomforts like headaches and backaches occasionally. We'll make sure to post next week with any exciting news!

Funny Sebastian Stories

Since I don't keep a baby book, bear with me as I tell a few funny stories of things that have happened lately...

• At church a few weeks ago we were saying a special blessing for all the catechists. The priest asked everyone to raise their hand as we prayed over them. So Paul and I did it and look at Sebastian between us and he has his little hand raised too. He was quite proud of himself. It was a very sweet moment and of course Paul and I couldn't contain ourselves and laughed the whole blessing. I think God understands...
• We were doing some shopping at SAMs club and as we passed the huge bins of giant pumpkins (everyone knows SAMs has the biggest ones around!) Sebastian points and says....apple! Again, too cute...
• He loves to mimic words, noises and actions. While this can be very cute it can also be quite dangerous!! The other day Paul said "crap" and Sebastian promptly repeated it. Also, whenever Paul burps, Sebastian does an imitation burp. We try to keep a straight face when he does it, but it is so funny that he knows he is up to something. Then we were driving through a icky part of town and I said "sketch" which he said quickly too.
• He is obsessed and I mean crazy obsessed with school buses. Well, any kind of bus really, but school buses are the max. We have to listen to "the wheels on the bus" cd in the car at all times. Finally on Sunday we told him it was Jesus day and we were not going to listen to "wheels on the bus." Thank you Jesus! I even look up school bus videos on youtube for him to watch.

Okay, enough anecdotes and on to the pictures.

Sebastian, my brother and sister-in-law with their new beagle puppy, Lexi.

What a crew. Sebastian with his friends Elias and Michael. I can't believe we managed to get this great picture!
Sebastian with his first friend Finn. The boys are just getting so big!

This was last Saturday - a memorable day because it was the first day Sebastian had no nap. It was brutal. Here we are driving back from Orlando to go home to Melbourne. He can not even keep his eyes open, but he keeps asking for crackers and trying to eat as his head rolled all over the place. We were, of course, listening to "the wheels on the bus" and if we even tried to turn it off because he looked asleep he would catch us and say "wa wa, wa wa!" Wa wa is the word for bus in Spanish. So that was a very long day.

Today was the first time he jumped on the trampoline! I had been showing it to him for weeks and he would never even get near it. But today he just climbed right on. I knew he'd like it!

Loving the ball pit. He spent a good 20 minutes in here today bouncing, jumping and throwing the balls. He LOVED it!

Ahhh!!!!!!!

Sebastian's Hat Parade

Well, the big move is complete - we are now in Melbourne and the big news is that we will be staying in Melbourne until June! Wow! We were surprised with the news we would be staying, but we know that it will be for the best for our family.

Below are some pictures of Sebastian's with his hats on. He has not liked hats since he was about 6 months old, but now he says "hat" every time he sees one and to my surprise, had a good time playing with them the other day.

Wearing Tio Daniel's fireman hat. This play set was

my brother's when he was 2 years old!

Beach bum hat.

Froggy hat.

Safari hat.

This was his reaction to his new "big boy" room. We got some car and truck sheets and put little car decals on the walls. When he first saw it he was sooooo excited and I am glad to report that he slept in his own room for the first time last night until 5:30 am. And he only woke up once! Woo-hoo!

Reading his books in his bed. A favorite activity now.

So cute!

So, I know I don't have any older ages to compare to, but Sebastian is just so much fun right now! He surprises me every day with how bright he is and how much he is learning. Early next week we move to the new apartment so keep us in your prayers that everything goes smoothly and we all adapt well to our new home - even if it is only for a few months. Still no word on where our next move will be, but I am sure we will be finding out soon. Hope with us that we will be going to Raleigh, North Carolina!

Peek a boo! Te veo!

I finally found some peace and quiet in here!

He sure loves his books! He doesn't like to put them down for anything. Here (you can't really tell) he is actually nursing and reading his book. He has even started to want to take a book to bed with him at night....hummm...reminds me of someone I know... =) I guess he got that from Cristina.

He is getting to a stage where he wants to help Mama occasionally. He always wants to help with the laundry - loves to push the hamper to the laundry room.

Hula hooping at the San Pedro Camp side dedication.

He is now starting to get an occasional interest in arts and crafts. Here he is coloring at Abuelita's this past weekend. He looks like such a big boy!

Playing in the tunnel at Lab School.

His first water color work of art. Beautiful! I've decided I am going to try to document all projects with pictures because I don't know where I'm going to put all this stuff!

Waiting for Daddy! - VIDEO

So I know I had mentioned this before, but I finally got a good video of Sebastian's excitement as he waits for Daddy. They are great buddies now in the evenings while I get dinner ready. Turn up the volume!

This Week

Well, I have to cheer for myself - I made it through my first week of really being a stay at home mommy! I had a great time with Sebastian and I find myself valuing our time together even more now that I know come March our world will change again!

Over the weekend we went to Nana and Papa's where Sebastian ate like a piggy. Here he is following up his pasta dinner with a cupcake. Yummy.

Playing with Uncle Corey and Ty before bedtime. Uncle Corey always makes Sebastian crack up.

I put this little stool by the window so that we can watch for Dada to arrive each evening. He knows how to climb up on the stool by himself now too.

On Tuesday, he was on cloud nine because right in front of our building they are doing some construction and there were dump trucks coming and going ALL DAY! He spent a lot of time on the little stool saying "trucks, trucks!" Although it was very entertaining for him, I hope they don't come back because it was very loud to listen to all day.

Sebastian at Ascension Catholic Church's "Playground Pals." We visited for the first time and Sebastian was so happy and had a lot of fun playing with the toys and other kids. He also participated in his first craft project which I will have to take a picture of next week to post on the blog because the leader had to print out the pictures of the kids to complete it. How exciting!I was very happy he did so well at Playground Pals because on Wednesday we went to Lab School, a morning school program for toddlers and parents. I was so excited to go with him but he was a total bear, threw three tantrums, and didn't want to participate in anything. I was so upset! Hopefully he will warm up to the idea soon and start enjoying it more.

We will actually be spending this weekend in Melbourne getting more things organized and praying that Ike doesn't come anywhere near us or Florida!