Easter Bunny Came Early

So I was going to wait and share all our great Easter pics at the same time but Daddy took these amazing pictures of little Miss and I just can't help but share them with the world. She's just so cute sometimes I can't stand it.

A big thanks to Daddy for his amazing camera skills to capture our Easter Bunny in some of the most perfect shots! All this was done while little Miss was sick so imagine, breakfast, puking, pooping, nap, quick photoshoot, lunch, puking, followed promptly by a nap for everyone in the house...

Okay, Mister Bunny we need to talk about these eggs...

But I don't like that egg, what about if I smile really sweet?

I'm taking matters into my own hands, this Easter Bunny gig can't be that hard...I'll put what I want in my basket!!

So Mister Bunny, I see that I can't fill you're shoes but you have to admit we could make a really great team, right?

Miss Giggles...

As adults we sometimes forget the simple things in life, we get so bogged down with the hustle and bustle of everyday activities like paying bills, cleaning houses, running errands, and sometimes just trying to make it through the day, we tend forget to slow down and just enjoy the moments, the simple things like laughing our asses off - just because. I'm finding that one of the many benefits of being a parent is having a daily reminder, in the form of a two foot tall little girl, who finds joy in all that this big new world has to offer her.  

Everything is so new to her, every experience a chance to learn, but also a chance to enjoy. Everything scene, holds something of interest, sounds fascinate, touches tingle and smells intrigue. Sometimes I just watch her experiencing her world and I'm slightly jealous...to be able to experience life un-jaded by previous experiences, how wonderful that must be. Then I remember, Michael and I get to go along on this new adventure with her for a while so we better enjoy every minute of it!  Children truly allow you to re-experience the world through them, their reactions, the facial expressions, the quirky responses, and eventually their audible tales.  

I was recently going through some video clips we had taken of Abbey over these past months and found one of her taking in the hilarity of our dog BonBon. BonBon was just being her usual silly self, something Michael and I tend to overlook after 4 years of watching this animal root, grunt, fart, shake her toys, roll around on the floor, fall off the couch, snuggle under the sheets with us, amongst many other things, we forget just how funny her behaviors are to those who 1. appreciate a crazy dog and 2. aren't accustomed to her antics.

The following video clip was taken a month or so ago of little Miss enjoying the simple things in life...and it doesn't get any simpler than BonBon...it made me smile today when I saw it again so I hope it does the same for you!

Memory Lane

Is it too soon to take a trip down memory lane? I found an old video that I took of little Miss on her 3 month birthday that I don't think I ever posted.  She's hanging out in her crib waching her mobile spin round and all I can think is, my God the time has gone by in a blink .

She was just learning to gabber and was starting to really check out her world. I think about how different she is now and I also wonder how much different she'll be in another 5 months when she's over a year old. She'll be walking, talking and god knows what else....OH MY GOD - slow down already kid!!

No seriously, slow down...I love watching you grow and develop but the time is flying by!! I guess I better keep taking video clips!!

The Princess of Puke

Welcome to the Germ Factory, owned and operated by the Vincent family. Just for stoping by you'll be eligible to receive your choice of the stomach flu, brochialitis, ear infection, common cold, hacking cough, diareaha, sleeplessness, or any combination thereof.  Can I just say that I have officially had enough of winter already!

Poor Daddy had his first solo vomit-o-roma episode first thing Saturday morning. Not ten minutes after I left the house did disaster strike.  After desimating her crib with vomit, she procceeded to coat Daddy, the floor and possibly BonBon with warm, smelly, ickyness. Other than leaving no bedroom surface or inhabitant without need of washing and disinfecting little Miss procceded through her Saturday like a champ, Mommy and Daddy however did not feel like we were winning the illness war.

I have to give my husband the "Tough Daddy" award for the weekend though. To his credit he handled it like a champ. This is a man who had gone 20 years without vomitting himself, and who on multiple occassions, prior to the birth of our little one, had opted to turn up the volume on the TV downstairs while I hugged the toilet bowl upstairs. I think it may have something to do with the fact that this little girl is the epicenter of his universe (just a guess).

Needless to say we had a poopy-vomiting weekend and the week is not off to any better of a start. Daddy is now sick at home trying to keep up with the Princess of Puke today while I'm at work hacking up a lung on my unsuspecting co-workers. If anyone needs a day off just stop by my little incubator of the viral plague and I'll be sure to pass it a long to you to! No purchase necessary. Multiple winners will be awarded...


But seriously, how can you look at this adorable little germ carrier and want to do anything but love her?

Girls Left to Their Own Devices

The phrase from Bruce Almighty comes to mind when thinking about last weeks misadventures..."Smite Me Oh Mighty Smiter"  It never fails that when Daddy is out of town on business that disaster strikes.

It started like any other Tuesday night...

I pick up little Miss from daycare, head home to begin our nightly routine. On this evening we happen to be minus Daddy so we get home and we're in "go" mode, playtime with Abbey and BonBon, followed by dinner for Abbey, bath, bottle and bed, then Mommy and BonBon can sit and relax.

Well this particular evening took a left turn at Albuquerque that none of us were prepared for! As I get little Miss in the high chair because she's decided she's hungry a little earlier than usual, BonBon decides to swallow a hunk of her favorite bone without chewing it. After less than 10 minutes of BonBon choking and Abbey screaming, Mommy decides it's time to make haste to the emergency vet clinic because there's no getting anything out of BonBon and there's no getting anything into Abbey girl.

A call to Papa Vincent to meet us at the clinic and we speed down the highway. We must have been a real sight coming through the door because the nurse staff was running towards the door to meet us. Abbey crying, mommy crying, BonBon choking the vet comes to take care of at least one of us.

After what seems like an eternity (maybe 15 minutes) Papa arrives to soothe his girls and take little Miss home for dinner. After a few more long minutes and $300+ dollars the vet happily delivers the good news...BonBon has swallowed the bone and it's definitley in her tummy.  Now she's drugged so she doesn't try to puke it up and I collect my groggy, drooling puppy, pay the bill and make my way out the doors.

After collecting little Miss from Gammy and Papa (no small feat getting that child away from the two people who love her as much as a kid can be loved) we make our way home. Needless to say it was quarter after 8 and an hour later than little Miss usually goes to bed so after a 45 minute screaming session she passes out. After an hour + cleaning dog vomit in combination with the general chaos I left the house in and a small screaming session of my own BonBon and I took our sorry selves to bed.

The next day, Abbey is sick again (ear infection and bronchialitis) - needless to say we don't like it when Daddy goes away. Don't do that again Daddy!!

Sunday at the Vincent House

It used to be that Sunday's were spent waking up late, reading the paper while enjoying a big breakfast, followed by a leisurely afternoon, maybe a nap before dinner, dinner, after dinner cocktails, a romantic bath and then to bed we go (no further details will be posted on this subject)...this was the before-baby Sunday, let me paint the picture of the post-baby Sunday...

Wake up at 6:00am to a babbling, jabbering, half-howling baby girl who is super excited to start her day. So out of bed we crawl to put on the goo-goo eyes to welcome our little one to the day. Taking turns brushing our teeth between diaper changing and dressing, we quickly shower and grab a granola bar while Abbey watches her favorite morning cartoon (Special Agent OSO). Playing with the dog and baby to tire both of them out we get ourselves dressed and load the car to be able to take off for up north, timing it perfectly with little Miss's morning nap. Breakfast for Abbey and a bottle - then into the car seat she goes for a nap as we make the drive up north to see cousin Tyler for his birthday, grandpa Monroe because he misses his little girl and Uncle Kevin because he just got engaged. After a few hours, catching up, eating lunch, and another nap, into the car we go to make our way back home... just dying for that afternoon nap we used to enjoy so much.

Home by 3:00pm, little Miss gets her late afternoon bottle, can we get her to take a nap...nope...and no one naps when little Miss doesn't nap so we play, jabber, watch a movie, play some more and then it's dinner time, this is where the fun starts...

After refusing to eat dinner and barfing up the 3:30pm bottle it's most definitely bath time... or is that poop time? How about a little poop in the bath...yes, yes I said poop in the bath... can I just say I never want that to happen again - ever!! I'm going to be spending the rest of her young life paranoid that I'm about to see a turd float by my hand while washing my little ones hair...GROSS!!

To add to the shitty mess, while this is unfolding in the bathroom the dog decides that she can't hold her bowel movements and proceeds to pee and poop on the floor next to her litter box upstairs because she just can't make it the remaining 3 inches to get her ass cheeks into the litter box, no mat on the floor because the mat's downstairs in the laundry. So Michael's cleaning dog poop, while the barf clothes and blankets are in the wash and I'm wondering why there are clumps of dirt in the tub...

I've heard plenty of bath-time turned poop-time horror stories but no story can prepare you to see something brown floating by your hand. My brain is still usually three steps behind where it needs to be so I just couldn't wrap my mind around what was in the tub until I tried to grab it...very quickly my brain started functioning again and I dropped the poop back into the tub and promptly hauled little Miss out onto the rug. I then rethought that idea, worried she may continue pooping on the rug - we already had that issue going on in the bedroom with the dog but there was no where else to put her.

This is when you want three more sets of hands and a ticket out of the situation...unfortunately parenthood doesn't come with a "get out of jail free card" so it's time to clean the tub quickly and draw a new bath to finish my now wet baby whose laying on the bathroom floor rug, eating her toes, giggling...glad somebodies getting a good laugh out of this.

So you get the idea - ultimately the baby got bathed and put to bed, the floor got cleaned, the bathtub got scrubbed and we got on with the evening - which was going to bed to snore the night away. Toto, we're not in Kansas anymore! Thankfully we're hopelessly in love with that pooping little girl as well as our pooping puppy and each other so we can laugh about it as we lay in bed exhausted. One of the many stories we know are sure to mortify our little Miss when she gets older -

Hey kid, every body poops in the tub at least once :-) you're still perfect to us!

St. Patty Abbey

Short of having our very own leprechaun, we have the next best thing...Abbey Jean!  We spent the evening hours with Gammy & Papa Vincent followed by a stop off at Auntie Amanda's house where we got the bonus of seeing Grandma & Grandpa Gardner too - it was a day of being spoiled even more than usual.

And we have the pictures to prove it!!

Click here to view these pictures larger

Watch me NOT Crawl

We're SO close to crawling!! The butt goes up, she does push ups and wiggles the legs, just can't put the pieces together yet to move the whole body forward. She can go round and round in a circle on the mat, roll her way to what she wants or flip onto her back and inch across the floor via her head - not something we enjoy watching as it looks painful and is rubbing the hair off the back of her head, but it gets the job done as far as she's concerned.

Any day now she's going to crawl across the floor and then we'll never stop her...then I'll be blogging about how I wish she would slow down and sit still!  So for now I remain happy to watch her wiggle, stretch, grunt, grumble and be just plain unhappy that she's not getting where she wants to go.

But man is she cute not crawling!!

Abbey's New Trick

So we're driving home from work/daycare the other night and I hear my little motor mouth in the back seat chattering away...then all of a sudden I hear this fart noise like somebody sitting on a whoopee cushion right behind me. I check the rear view and lo and behold my beautiful little Miss is in her car seat, lips pursed, spit pouring out as she spits, sputters and giggles her way through a chorus of fart noises that would rival a 3rd grade boy!

Needless to say I almost peed my pants, came close to veering off the highway, and as soon as I got home, the first chance I got, I grabbed the video camera and she did not disappoint me...she continued her serenade right through dinner. The following video will surely embarrass her to death by the time she's 12. For now, she's just wicked cute!

This is dedicated to our 5-fat-roll-havin-Ha-Lare-EE-Us-raspberry-blowing-little man-Sam in MO...she's right behind you buddy!

Birthday Wishes

And she just keeps getting cuter! We went to cousin Kerrie's birthday party on Sunday and Daddy got some great pics of her before we left...and before she had the chance to drool all over her shirt, barf on her pants or chew on her shoes so here is our picture perfect little Miss, all ready for cousin Kerrie's birthday party!

My favorite smile - ever!

Giggle girl...

Yes, yes I'm cute...take my picture!

Abbey's 7 Months Old

7 months have passed by in the life and times of Miss Abbey Jean Vincent. I still love watching as she continues to figure out this wacky world and she continues to amaze me. Just the smile alone, always happy, always giggling, grunting, drooling and enjoying whatever she's doing with whomever she can do it with. If we could all take a lesson from her book and just laugh through our day, the world would be a happier place!

We now have two bottom teeth, we're just a tad bit longer and although we haven't seen the scale in a month, I have a feeling we're a pound heavier. But after the sickness it's nice to see my healthy happy baby enjoying her day.  Saturday we hung out and enjoyed some quality playtime together followed by a visit from out friends from NJ, Gwen, Tony and Little Man Liam. It was great to see them though we did have to make sure that "Auntie Gwen" didn't kidnap little Miss on her way out the door!

Here's little Miss enjoying her rattle and playtime on her b-day!!

ER Anyone?

Okay, so my little girl is all better - thank God! Now it's my turn I guess. I must say, just because a hospital is closer, does not make it the best option when you're ill. I discovered this the hard way Saturday night.

Let me start at the beginning of my journey. Last Tuesday I went into the doctor to have an IUD "installed" - female issues, gotta love being a woman! Anyway, that did not go well at all. By Thursday I was back in the office to have it removed, then into the hospital to have some tests run to see just how much damage that tiny IUD caused on it's way out of my body.  Thankfully not as bad as originally thought and with some antibiotics and rest I'll be good to go. 

So Saturday night comes and I'm feeling good so we decide to go out to dinner to celebrate our upcoming 3rd anniversary. A nice romantic dinner at Longfellow's hotel/restaurant where we got married.  So we drop Little Miss off at Gammy & Papa's and head to Saratoga for dinner.  We arrive at 6pm and I feel nauseous, I rack it up to too much perfume and the smell of smoke in the air outside the hotel. 6:25, and the nausea is too much and off to the bathroom I go...not pretty...but I feel instantly better. We get to our table and I order a ginger ale vs. the cocktail I was looking so forward to drinking.  Half way through the glass of ginger ale and one bite of calamari later and it's back to the bathroom...round two...seriously?

Feeling okay, I munch on my garden salad, a little more ginger ale and water, dinner arrives, two bites and it's back to the bathroom for round 3 - that's it, pack everything to go I want to die. We have to stop on the side of the road on the way home, then 5 minutes in the door at home and here I go again...now it's mostly blood since I've gotten rid of all the fluid and food...not good.

It's now about 9pm and after two sips of diet coke I'm hugging the porcelain yet again.  Daddy arrives home with a sound asleep Little Miss, I recover long enough to help him get her settled in bed. Back to the bathroom I go...it has to stop sometime right? not so much...so at 10:30pm and after much debate and my husband begging to just pack the baby up and come with me I take my sorry self to the ER. Parents - don't get mad, it would have taken far longer to get you involved than it did to just take myself there.

I was on my way to Albany Med but after having to pull the car over and dry heave on the side of I87 I opted for the closer of the hospitals, Albany Memorial - never again!! By far the most ghetto hospital I've ever been to. Needless to say I was the token white girl - the thought "you're not in Kansas anymore" came to mind. I waited an hour and a half through 3 gun shot patients, 2 OD's and a heart attack, I decided to take my pink bucket of blood/puke to the counter - they finally got the idea that I needed to be seen and managed to move me up on the triage list. It was 2 more hours before I saw a doctor and received any kind of care...fortunately by then I had nothing left to throw up so I just laid on the gurney, nauseous, with a migraine from being dehydrated - awesome. This is how everyone should spend at least one Saturday night in their lifetime to gain a true appreciation for sometime, I'm just not sure what.

So after two bags of IV fluids, two shots of Zofran (anti nausea) and a shot of Pepcid to try and coat my stomach and 7 hours in the ER I was released...home to bed...after battling a 101.6 fever for most of the rest of the day I am now feeling quite a bit better and will be headed to bed very soon.

Thanks to my wonderful husband for taking care of Little Miss all day so that I didn't even breath on her - we don't need to pass this around the house. Little girl, you have an amazing Dad - don't ever forget that! Since Abbey did so well with Daddy today he may be in charge more often, morning and afternoon naps of 2+hours each - I can't even usually get her to do that! I think she just really loves her Daddy and Mommy and knew I was sick so she was even better for Daddy than usual...at least that's what I'm telling myself.

We had wanted to do a photo shoot today but since I look like I've been beaten with an ugly stick we'll be postponing that, maybe next Sunday...so stay tuned for pictures yet to come.

Daddy's Girl

"The father who would taste the essence of his fatherhood must turn back from the plane of his experience, take with him the fruits of his journey and begin again beside his child, marching step by step over the same old road." -- Angelo Patri

As I watch our little girl become big, I watch too, in amazement, as my husband grows right along side her. He was an amazing man, person, friend and even co-worker, that's why I married him but nothing makes me happier than to see the kind of father he is.

As we get ready to celebrate our 3^rd wedding anniversary and 7 years together I find myself more in love with my partner, my friend, my baby-daddy :-) every day!

Too often he is the one behind the camera taking all the amazing pictures of our Little Miss, capturing every new smile, growth spurt and new skill, but what everyone else doesn't get to see are the moments where he's the one making her smile, giggle and howl with delight as they play, dance and snuggle together. I am not the photographer in this family and although the following pics were just snapped quickly I thought that I would post a few of Daddy and his girls together.

My favorite is seeing my sleeping beauties together on the couch!!