Catch Up

Well, with an 8 week old we have not had time to blog very much... so we are playing a bit of catch up. Things around the house have been hectic, tiring and absolutely amazing. We stare at her and know that any sacrifice is worth it, even when she is screaming it is cute. We have been able to get out of the house a bit in an attempt to have a 'life'.

U2 - Two weeks ago we went to the U2 concert in Raleigh. We were suppose to meet up with a large group of friends, but the traffic prevented that and we were just happy to park in time for a short bit of tailgating. We had two friends from D.C. and two from S.C. and we all jammed into 1 car to avoid paying too much for parking. We fell out of the car upon arrival and began the efficient set up of the tailgate (grill, table, music and chairs). Since Angie has not yet mastered the art of 'pump and dump', she had an alcohol free beer and then pumped in the car (yes we saved that liquad gold in a cooler). We relaxed a bit and as quickly as we unpacked, we loaded everything back into the car and began out trek to the stadium where U2 would be appearing with the 'Claw' of a stage. What an amazing show! It really was electrifying on a grand scale. Our seats were amazing and could not have had a better time.

Sandy's wedding - Last weekend we made the drive down to Charlotte for Sandy's wedding. Nervous nelly of a mom Angie tried to relax as much as possible as all of the extended Amisano family met Mattie for the first time and she was passed around. Paul's parents had sanitizer all of the house and we made sure people used it. Sandy also met Mattie for the first time and they hit it off - Mattie did not even spit up on her wedding dress, now that is love! It was really great to see everyone and hear about other people's adventures with their own children. We took notes and hopefully can put their good advice to use. What a beautiful day for a wedding! Congratulation Sandy and John, we wish you the best and hope you are having a wonderful honeymoon!

Date Afternoon

We left the house for the first time in a month without Mattingly yesterday. Paul's parents were in town for the day and Angie went to softball practice and Paul played soccer in the morning. The morning babysitting went so well that we decided to go out together in the afternoon. We went to the movies to see The Informant. The movie was prett funny, but more importantly we were able to relax and not worry about feeding or napping... however, we sure did miss her a lot!

Mattingly Olivia Amisano

As most everyone who peeks at our blog knows, we have been expecting the birth of our daughter and she finally arrived on August 22, 2009... hence the blog silence these last few weeks. (More info about the birth on Angie's blog) Paul has been fantastic helping with everything from diapers, laundry, cooking, cleaning and even feeding little Mattie. She has her good (feeding every 3-4 hours with sleep in between) and her bad days (feeding every 30 minutes with screaming in between). The screaming makes us feel completely helpless, but overall she has been an angel and she is the most precious thing in the world. Our family is very blessed.

We have had many visitors over the last week and a half and have received many gifts and words of congratulations. Thanks to everyone for all of their support! Here are a few pictures, but we will be posting most pictures and stories on Mattingly's own private blog site. Please email us at amisano@gmail.com to be invited to view this protected site.

OBX - 2009

We were at the Outer Banks for a few days on what some call a Baby Moon... that last vacation before the baby arrives. We slept, napped, read books and enjoyed the company of old and new friends. We also prepared ourselves for parenthood by hanging out with five other familes and their toddlers. We even witnessed a real life diaper change! We were able to walk to the beach from a short trail through the dunes in our backyard. One morning we woke up early in order to see the sunset and we took some great pictures. Angie is just about 9 months pregnant... 1 more month to go!

Showers... Showers... Showers

We have had several showers over the last few weeks in celebration and anticipation of the arrival of Baby A. We really want to thank everyone for all the wonderful gifts, the words of advice and their love and support. Here are some words of advice we have received...

* Sleep now!

* You can never be prepared so why even try.

* Always cherish your children... even when the poop is coming up their back.

* Enjoy the year when they are young, before they can walk and talk back.

* We must try to get over the fact that we will never be neat and organized again.

Probably the best advice so far though has just been not to overthink and stress out about everything little thing. No matter how prepared or unprepared we may be with respect to material things, we already have so much love for this little baby that everything will be just fine. Which is certainly a good thing as evidenced by our lack of knowledge learned in our newborn basics class...

Since neither of us have ever changed a diaper, we felt that it was important to attend a class on newborn basics. Poor Paul's hands don't even fit through the tiny clothes for a changing and the instructor had to redo our swaddle (we were the only ones). Apparantly when it is your own child even the poop becomes 'cute'. We hope so, because right now the poop does not seem so 'cute'. We are sure to also have plenty of support from our loved ones following her arrival (and hopefully lots of offers to change a diaper) and so long as she does not grow beyond 6 months, she will have plenty of clothes and toys for the rest of her life! Oh yeah, and we have plenty of BIBS!

Tailgating for Crabs

For Angie's birthday she decided she wanted Maryland crabs from a restaurant called Cantlers located in Annapolis, Maryland. We knew there would be a bit of a wait since it is locally famous, but they did not accept reservations or call aheads for the waiting list. As we pulled up the narrow street to the restaurant we first encountered a wait to park. Paul walked to the restaurant to hear that it would be an hour and forty-five minute wait and put out name on the list. Since this was a birthday event, we had several family and freinds with us for a party of 14, so when we called around to other restuarants to see if we could eat any sooner, the waits all seemed the same. So, since Cantlers is so good, we decided to stick it out. After about 20 minutes we were able to park and the tailgating began. Angie's cousin was a real trooper with 2 small kids and not complaining at all. We all made the best of it with buckets of beer, walks along the water to see the crabs and the boats. After the two hour mark though, the kids and the grandparents started to loose steam. We kept checking with the hostesses to see when we were up and when they told both us and a party of 11 they we were both next, we knew we were in trouble. But Papa Z went completely out of character and saved the day by getting the manager involved. Apparantly the manager, and not the hostess, was able to count to 14 and found us a table where we could all sit together. Although it took almost 3 hours before we were seated, we had a really good time catching up with friends and family. Since we will not be able to tailgate with Erica and Staci at Buffett this year, this was a treat. Oh yeah, and the crabs were great!!! Living in NC these were the first crabs of the summer and they were worth every minute of the wait! Although, from Angie's perspective, there is nothing like a cold Corona, some Md crabs and some friends, she just had to do without the Corona and that was just fine.

The Car Dealership and Farewell to Jeep

It started as a beautiful July 4th... We had decided to purchase a new car which would be a bit more roomy, safer and reliable for when Baby Amisano arrives and we had been researching new cars for several weeks. We had narrowed it down to the Hyundai Santa Fe and the Honda CRV. Our goal for the day was to visit each dealership (different than the ones where we had already test driven these cars) and determine what price we could get so that we could make our final decision and come back for the purchase. We came prepared with Consumer Reports print outs, calculations of what we were willing to pay and a breakdown of all options we wanted. We anticipated spending about 1 and a half to two hours at each dealership and then meeting friends for a bbq.

Six (6) hours later we drove away from the first dealership with a new Santa Fe. The process was a nightmare and they were unwilling to even search for the availability of the car we wanted or discuss pricing unless we initialed a handwritten note attesting that if we came to a reasonable agreement on the car and the price, that we would buy it that day. Well, the attorney in Angie and businessman in Paul wanted to run out of there, but after confirming that our agreement regarding "reasonable" price did not have to be in good faith and in fact we could consider a $5000 price "reasonable" and walk away when they could not meet that, we decided to stay.

We could go on and on about what a miserable experience this was ... from the bureaucracy and run around between the salesman and his boss, the misscommunication about the trade-in and the pregnant woman sitting with NO FOOD for six hours to Paul actually 'yelling' (he calls it raising his voice) at the salesman ... let's just say it was not pleasant.

Then came the saddness of having to prematurely leave the Jeep behind. We had not planned to purchase a new car that day or leave the Jeep. At one point Paul turned to look out at the Jeep and commented that it looked sad, and it did. Like a puppy dog coming to the realization that you are no longer in the mood to play fetch, the Jeep was defeated and looked as if it actually had those same droopy eyes. The Jeep has brought a lot of fun times from Buffett tailgates to Redskins tailgates, trips to the beach and much more, it will be missed. The turn radius of the Jeep can not be outdone and we will no longer be able to 'Jeep it' over curbs, ditches and through mud, but we have moved on to a grown up car that it much more practical for the growing family. Here are some pictures of Jeep... :( (you can see some of the new car as well)

Project 2 of 3: Bathroom Remodel

FINALLY our bathroom remodel is complete and we can move everything from the guest room back into our bedroom and sleep on our bed!!! It has seemed like a never-ending project but the end product is worth it. Below are the before and after pictures. This has been quite an interesting project as we tried to spend as little as possible, but get the best bathroom we could. Of course we are sure we are over budget (our contractor has not given us the final breakdown), but in the end it is worth it and should add value to the house.

Before After

Homework!

We attended our 2nd of 5 birth and labor classes this week. Angie was skeptical about returning after the first class when the teacher actually prompted the class full of pregnant woman to research the rising infant mortality rate in the US after a discussion of C-Sections. However, Paul was eager to return and learn more about how his baby girl would enter the world. And return we did! This week's class involved massages and relaxation exercises. Now it is Angie who is eager to continue to practice these massages on a nightly basis. We have to make sure we get it right, right?!?

Project 1 of 3: Deck Staining

The Deck Staining is complete! Paul worked hard in the North Carolina heat and Angie helped a bit (but used the baby bump as an excuse to avoid the hard work) and the result is a fantastic looking deck. We look forward to getting some grass in the yard and having a few cookouts.

Now we just need to get the bathroom and baby room complete, then come up with other stuff for the house, because a homeowner's work is never really complete!

There's no place like home...

We had a great time in New York this past weekend which pretty much consisted of pizza, bagels, pizza, broadway show, pizza, ice cream, bagels, ice cream, bridal shower, pizza, ice cream and bagels.

We went into the city Thursday night and saw Wicked on Broadway. This was a great show and we really got into it. In general it is the Wizard of Oz from the perspective of the Wicked Witch of the West. There were some inconsistencies which we pointed out to each other the whole way home, but it really was a fun show. After the show we walked through Times Square back to Penn Station. It is so much fun there, if we didn't have a train to catch I think we would have hung out longer and enjoyed all the lights and activity. We had to hurry though so that we would have time to grab ice cream for the train ride back to Long Island... and we made it. Angie's ice cream was the size of her head and yes, she finished it.

We went to Sandy's (Paul's sister) bridal shower on Saturday and in true Long Island fashion there were a ton a people and a ton of food. It was a huge family reunion until the boys were kicked out and the presents were opened. It was so great to see everyone and their growing families. There were a lot of kids and they were so cute it helped get us even more excited for August. The cake was fantastic!!! We are looking forward to seeing everyone again in October for the wedding.

Thanks to Joe, Cassie and Ryan for giving us a great place to sleep (best sleep in weeks) and to all our friends and family who came out to see us during our trip! We would love to be cliche and say 'there's no place like home' but we came back to more bathroom construction, no sleep and we miss the pizza and bagels.

Buffett 2009

Jimmy came to Raleigh in April so this post is a little belated, but we thought we would fill you in: We had a great time at the concert! Angie was 5 months pregnant at the time and this was really the first time we began taking pictures of the 'bump'. Our seats were also amazing... center section right behind the VIP section (not as good a front row in Jamaica... but still pretty good). It is certainly a different experience to tailgate, party and sing along with 'limitations', but the show was very energizing, it always is. We are hoping things are comfortable enough (for Angie) to travel to Charlotte in August to see the Counting Crows. Our seats are front row center (but behind the 'pit'). We will certainly be taking pictures of the 'BUMP' then! Sadly, we will not make it to the Buffett shows Labor Day weekend in Virginia. With Angie due August 30 this just does not seem practical :( - although if the baby was born during the concert we are sure that we would get a shout out from the stage!

The Beginning

As we begin our adventures as parents we wanted to create this site to allow our friends and family to keep track of the fun. After 1 year of marriage we are happier than ever and preparing for a little girl Amisano who will arrive in late August.

Angie is now 27 weeks pregnant and Baby Amisano is kicking/or punching like crazy! We certainly have a little athlete in training. The baby room is just about ready, but we are now sidetracked with our bathroom renovation. As we live in our guest room we eagerly anticipate the completion of the master bathroom and the restoration of peace in our home. We will surely post pictures of both rooms once complete.