Catching up...

Really?  I haven't posted since October?  Sigh...where does the time go?!

Let's try to hit the highlights.

November was a rough month for us.  Luciano found out that he was getting laid off after  9 years with the company.  That was a pretty rough spot for us to get through.  Fortunately, Luciano found a new job with a local company.  He is WAAY happier and making more money.  He also had a few weeks off between jobs to finish some lingering projects around the house.  So grateful that we have each other and amazing family to get through the hard times!

The holidays were pretty good.  We bounced around the state for a week and a half, catching up with family and friends.  Giovanni now has so many toys that we have given up our living room to be his toy room.  His current favorite is the play kitchen that Papa made for him.  Complete with a dishwasher, kitchen faucet, and stove knobs that turn!

Little Man is still growing like a weed.  He walks runs everywhere and gets into everything.  Most of the time he is adorable, but sometimes he makes me want to pull my hair out.  Or he tries to pull it out for me.  :(  He's also really getting the hang of signing.  More, please, all done, milk, and banana have been mastered (in his own way).  It sure helps when he wakes up screaming at midnight that he can tell me he wants milk rather than my playing 20 questions!  His spoken vocabulary continues to grow, too.  He learned to say "Uh oh" when something falls on the floor.  Or when he throws something on the floor.  Or anytime he feels like it.  This week's favorite word is "outside", helped in no small part by the fact that spring has finally shown up and playing outside no longer involves many layers of clothes.

He's also finally discovered a love of books.  I was afraid we were failing as parents because he was more interested in grabbing and pulling (tearing) book pages than reading them.  But in the past few months, he really loves it.  He doesn't go to bed without a story now and will often drag a book over and sit in our laps for reading time.  The record is 10 stories before sleeping.  Reading time with him is one of my favorite parts of the day!

No Shoes, No Shirt, No Problems!

We also took Giovanni on our first major vacation since his birth.  The first week of January, we boarded the Carnival Liberty for a week of fun in the Caribbean.  We had plenty of help wrangling him from Nana & Papa.  It was so much fun to see him discover new things.  It got a little rough toward the end when he got sick and couldn't keep any food down, but Nana and Papa were such awesome support for us.  In preparation for the trip, Nana made him his first Hawaiian-style shirt.  Here's a picture of him taking it off the other night in preparation for bath time.
 

On to the cute pictures...tonight we enjoyed the beautiful weather out in our yard.  Giovanni ADORES the neighbor boys and was thrilled to bits when they decided to play with him.  I was able to snap a few cute pics.


More posts to come, I promise.  I want to be able to share these stories with him when he is older and my mind won't remember them all if I don't start writing them down!  :)