February turns into March

Mike bought a new Xbox game tonight (sigh), so I am doing some computer work while he plays. I renamed all my digital photos from October to today (note to self: TRY to keep up with this task before it becomes overwhelming!) and have just uploaded several to our Picasa account. They're posted as a slideshow below. Included are Dominick's birthday photos, so I should give a brief summary of his celebrations.

On February 16, we had a smallish party, his first with friends his age. Everything was great for the first few minutes, until Dominick fell and busted his nose. Subsequent pictures show him with band-aid under nose (more for comfort than function) and blood on clothing. He wouldn't let us clean him up at the time. My cake design turned out very well, if I do say so myself. For months, Dom had been requesting a phone cake, so that's what I gave him. My parents and sister came into town for the party, which was much appreciated. We all played Rock Band Saturday night, except for my mom, who chose to be our fan. Dominick took cookies shaped like 4s to preschool the day before his birthday. He did a beautiful job decorating them with glaze and sprinkles. On his actual birthday, Mike took off work so we could celebrate properly. Unfortunately, I was sick, and the weather was horrendous. We braved the sleet to eat out for lunch and play at Monkey Joe's, which is full of huge, inflatable slides and bounce houses. Dom loved it. We knew he would. That night, we recycled one of Dom's cakes, which had been frozen since the party, and let him blow out candles again.

This morning, Dominick started swimming lessons at the Y. We put him in the Terrified of Water class. We know our boy! It went as we expected. One of the teachers (not his) ended up spending the entire time with him in the pool. Mike and I had gone dressed to work out but were glued to our seats in the lobby, watching him. We could see that he was crying. Why didn't any of the other kids seem terrified? Eventually, Dom calmed down and splashed a little, even laughed, but he told us later that he doesn't want to swim again.

This afternoon, we took advantage of the weather and went to Laumeier Sculpture Park. You'll see some of those pictures in the slideshow. It was interesting to see that some of the sculptures I remembered from last spring's visit with my parents had been removed.

An update on Noel's sleeping habits: I am cautiously optimistic about his progress. After a couple of rough nights, he slept through the night last night, until 6:30. Woo hoo! Dominick has his own nighttime milestone. He's been staying dry overnight, so we've started having him sleep in underwear. It's just as well, considering he's basically outgrown his extra large Fuzzi Bunz. He really seems like a big boy now.

I'll close with some words of wisdom from our birthday boy: "Fake leopards don't get you. They only do nice things."