Purple Party

We decided we wanted to have a birthday party for Francesca, not b/c she wanted one or would remember it, but more for us. I know this and understand that a child's party is more for the parents until they are probably 4, but I really wanted to celebrate Francesca with all of our friends here in Winston Salem that have helped us get through the past 2 years. I wanted everyone that had been a part of her life here in WS to come and celebrate with us.
So when it was time to decide a theme, b/c every kid's party needs a theme, I thought of the 2 things in the world that she loves: Elmo and the color Purple. Debating between the two themes was very simple. We didn't want her to know that there is a plethora of Elmo things out there in the world, so we picked purple. I decided to have everyone wear something purple and I would try and make as many purple foods as possible.
I asked our friend Gina to make a cake and I searched for some pictures to help give her an idea on what I wanted it to look like. And b/c of Francesca's egg allergy wanted it to be 2 layers, one for her (egg free) and the other for everyone else. So with that in mind Gina made an amazing cake for us and I started coming up with other purple foods we could serve. My plan was to have soups, b/c cold weather was starting to set in up here and I knew I could make them ahead of time and just heat them up the day of. Now that I have 2 kids to chase after I have begun to think about things like this when hosting.
So our menu was: Purple potato soup, Coconut Pumpkin Curry Soup, & White Chicken Chili. I made purple applesauce and had purple yogurt for the kids as well as a cheese platter and other party finger foods.
Never could I have imagined what a great time we would have. Francesca, after she woke up had a great time.

Then the time came for her to blow out her candle. We brought the cake into the living room and sang Happy Birthday. We've been working on Happy Birthday with Francesca and she had been singing it and loved singing it. She also had blown out a candle here and there after I would light them around the house. So I didn't work on blowing out the candle............Big Mistake. We should have practiced that. After 5 mins or more of everyone watching her watch her cake and Dom and I coaching from the side lines I finally blew it out.
She had never really liked cake but she loved that her's had dots on in. She did take a couple of bites of the cake, but really just liked eating the dots off of it.
The best part about it was that she continued to talk about her party for weeks. She loved her purple party and would ask to have more purple party. Whenever she would want cake she asked for purple dots. When she talked about her party we would ask her "Who was at your purple party?" And it just depended on what mood she was in as to who she would say. Each time it could be someone new, but always someone who was at the party. I never could have imagined how much SHE would enjoy and remember her party.

Long Time Gone

So after a year I've decided to post some more. Will I post often? Probably not. But I will try to jot a few things down every now and then. A lot has changed with Francesca since our last post. After she started walking we learned that we would be having another little Mastroianni. So she became a sister on April 27th 2009. I will do a separate post of that night's events. More for myself to remember as many details of Dominic Micheal's birth as I can.

Boy has it been a while!!! I guess I just always forget to post all the new things happening. Francesca is a walker now. Mom & Dad came to visit on Oct.24-27 and by then all she was doing was walking. Dad didn't see her crawl the entire weekend.
GOOD NEWS: Francesca is going to be a big sister!!!!

She's Walking!!

Here are two videos of Francesca walking. I will update the blog when I get more time. But she is a walker now. She walks instead of crawls, a majority of the time.

USF 41 NCSU 10

USF traveled up to Raleigh NC to play NC State so we took the 2 hour trip over to watch our Bulls play. Dom realized the Bulls were coming up here about a week ago, and since we haven't been to a game in quite a while we decided to go. I thought it was a great idea and couldn't wait to see some football. Then when I realized it was a 7:30 game I started to worry. What would we do with Francesca? Of course we were planning on taking her with us, for 2 reasons, #1 it would be cheaper than paying a babysitter and #2 she is going through her separation anxiety pretty bad right now and breaks down when I leave her with strangers. I woke up in the middle of the night last week worrying about things. What would people think of me bringing my young baby to a late night game? What would we do if she fell asleep, just hold her? She does get pretty heavy.
Dom had no worries so off we went towards Raleigh. We left the house after she woke up from her nap. I wanted to make sure she got at least one good nap in. The drive over went well. We stopped about mid way at a Target to pick up a rain poncho. We got the last one, but it was nice to have later that night. Once we got to Raleigh we drove around the stadium and had no idea where to park. Dom wanted to meet up with his buddy from MedSchool and we had to meet the people with the tickets. We found the tickets on craigslist. I wanted to sit in the USF section so I put a want ad in the Tampa area and we luckily found some. After resting in a business park parking lot for a while and allowing Francesca to crawl around and be out of her seat we jumped back in the car and found our parking spot. Dom started cooking and I went walking towards the stadium to get the tickets. When I got back Francesca was pushing her toy around the parking lot with Dom following close behind. We tailgated for a little while and then started heading towards the stadium. Francesca wore her USF Bulls cheerleading outfit and was a hit with all the fans on our walk up. She was a in a great mood, smiling at everyone and loved all the people. We were able to meet Dom's friend Jason Kurecki and let them catch up.
Game time!! We went to find our seats and Francesca was so tired on the way into the stadium. I was hoping she would fall asleep, but there were too many people to look at. So we found our seats and watched the opening. Once the two teams came out, everyone started cheering and the fireworks went off she had the deer in the headlight look. I was hoping she wouldn't break bad on me, but she didn't. I thought that if I went back under bleachers where the consession stands were that she might fall asleep. Well after USF drove down and scored on the first drive and then NCSU got a field goal I figured she was not going to sleep. So we went back out to watch the game. After a few minutes it started raining. I thought we might be able to weather the storm but it started getting heavier and I knew she had no business getting wet. This is where it was nice to have the rain poncho. Dom stayed to watch the game while Francesca and I went back underneath with all the other fans. She did very well, but would not fall asleep. At one point I found a place to sit and started reading to her. I gave her a cookie to eat, hoping that would help her sleep. But then the winds changed and the rain started hitting us. We evenually moved. It rained and rained, part of the first quarter, all of the second, through half time, and into the third Dom called and told me it had stopped and we could come out and watch. A lot of the NCSU fans had left during the rain. It was already 27-10 when we got back out there. Dom took Francesca to give my back a break and within 5 mins the girl was out. She was finally getting her nap, over 2 hours after she was initially tired. She took a 30 min nap and was in a great mood for the rest of the game. She seemed to enjoy the crowd and all the cheering. She would smile and flirt with all the fans around us. The game ended 41-10. The walk back to the car everyone was surprise that she was still awake and said that she would fall asleep as soon as we got into the car. Well she didn't. Dom called it, he said that we were about 30 mins from the house she would fall asleep. And that is what she did. She was awake for over an hour in the car before she finally crashed.

Crystals Wedding

Crystal tied the knot!!!

Francesca and I drove to Florida for the first time. We left here on a Tuesday morning and then jumped in a van with Crystal & Jeremiah Wednesday afternoon. Jeremiah was not looking forward to the 6hr trip with Francesca. He doesn't care for all of her talking. To him she is just making noise, so the thought of spending 6hrs trapped in a vehicle with her was not appealing and very discouraging. I was a little apprehensive b/c she doesn't travel well at night, but knew she would be able to make it. We left Columbia in the evening around 5:30ish after they got home from work. Francesca fell asleep about 15minutes into the drive. Her and I had gone swimming earlier in the day, I was trying to wear her out so that she would nap in the car. She slept for over an hour and half (YEA!!) I was so excited. After about an hour of being awake she got pretty fussy and it was time for us to eat dinner. So we stopped at a Beef O Brady's to eat. We let her walk all around the restaurant and hotel lobby(it was connected to a hotel.) When we got back in the car she stayed awake for 45 mins or so before she went back to sleep. I was so proud of her. After all the trash talking and bad mouthing her Jeremiah admitted that she did do very well and it was a quite plesant trip.
The wedding was Saturday Sept 13 at Marineland in St.Augustine, FL. I was in the bridal party so I rode with Crystal and the girls up to Marineland before the wedding. Dom was in charge of dressing Francesca and bringing her up. The girls and I were all across the dolphin pool and I saw Jermaud walk in carrying my baby, Frankie (Jermaud nicknamed her that.) She did well during the ceremony and got a little vocal towards the end. But Dom just got up and walked around with her.
During the reception Francesca spent, what time she wasn't being passed around, pushing her stroller back and forth. It was very warm in the tent so by the end of the night I took her dress off of her and let her run around in the diaper cover. She did dance a little and when they played "Shake your booty" she was on the dance floor shaking her groove thing. Around 11pm she was looking pretty tired so Dom and I took her out to the parking lot so that she could fall asleep. Once she was a sleep we put her in the carseat and waited until the party was over. She slept the entire way back to the condo. But once we got there she was awake and very dirty/sweaty. So we took a shower, which might have woken her up a little more. But she was nasty. Eventually she did get to sleep that night.

Its just a Dollywood Birthday

For my birthday Dom, Francesca and I went to East TN to stay with Missy & Greg & go to DOLLYWOOD, America's Theme park.
Dom had the weekend off so when he got home on Friday afternoon we headed out. Dom and Francesca were both asleep before we hit the interstate. The drive over took us around 6 hours after getting stuck in traffic and having to stop to eat and give Francesca a break.
That night Francesca had a really rough time. She fell asleep not to long after arriving at Missy's but she woke up screaming. Nothing I could do would calm her down. Finally I went out onto the porch area and we watched the fish tank. She would fall back asleep if I was holding her, but if I put her down the screaming would start again. Finally I was able to lay down with her on my chest around 2am.
Saturday morning Francesca and I went with Missy & Greg to Aaron's cross country meet. Dom stayed behind to catch up on sleep, he was getting off of night shift and hadn't adjusted his sleep patterns yet. I loved getting to see a cross country meet and it brought back so many memories of my time running in high school. The course was 2 laps through a great park and there were a lot of places to stand and cheer them on. Aaron did really well. I was so proud of him, I even got a little tear in my eye when he ran by. I guess being a mom brings out emotions I use to not have, but it was a great morning. That afternoon Sam B was in town for Booms Day and we went to the mall and spent an hour or so with him before we headed over to Maryville College to see Sam Howell's dorm and school. He gave us the tour around his dorm and the college. It seems like so long ago that I was living the care free college life.
Sunday was Dollywood day!!!! I've been wanting to go to Dollywood for some time and Missy, who has a season pass, got 2 free guest passes. Greg decided to go with us which was really exciting. Missy planned on watching Francesca while the rest of us stood in line and rode roller coasters. The TN tornado was my favorite. We waited extra to go in the front, my thought is that if you are going to ride a coaster, ride it from the best seat available. So tracks it makes a big difference to sit in the front and others it really doesn't, but this one was worth the little bit of extra wait. It was probably the fastest track I've ever been on. It was really intense. Francesca spent most of her time pushing her stroller around. Francesca rode her first carousel with Dom. I didn't ride b/c someone needed to take pictures, and they make me sick. Lunch was a highly reccommended turkey leg. Sam H. told me we had to get one, when I told him we had tried one at Disney he said "yeah, Disney's can't be that good, we know how to fix them up here in TN." And I do agree with him, it was quite tasty, and the meat fell right off the bone. While Francesca slept Dom & I were able to catch a show. We watched a gospel quartet sing. We figured since we skipped church this would make up for it. Overall the day was great. There are plenty of rides to keep you busy and entertained and a ton of shows that could fill in the rest of the time. I highly recommend it. Like Dom's friend said "It's not Disney and they don't try to be Disney."