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)