Pictures. Lots and lots of pictures.
OK, here goes….
January:
We finally moved in! And, I am NEVER moving again. This is the house that Tony and I will grow into, set down roots, raise our family, and make amazing memories in.
Our nephew Benjamin was born! This little guy is the sweetest baby ever. Hardly cries, goes to anyone, has the best belly-laugh of anyone I know, and has brought our family a bundle of light and joy that only a healthy and happy baby can bring.
February:
The best decision Tony and I made – besides getting married and buying our first home – was to get a puppy. Meet our pot-belly pug, Sancho Panza Altieri, the light of our lives, and majah kudos to you if you can correctly figure out the Sancho Panza reference. Here’s a hint: He chases windmills.
Sancho is my very first pet.. ever. In the short months we’ve had him, he’s enriched our lives tremendously. When we brought him home, he was a mere 8 weeks old, and slept most of the time – especially in the crook of my neck or on my chest. When he was old enough, we signed him up for obedience class. In no time, he learned sit, down, stay, leave it, and come. Of course, it didn’t happen over night, and we still struggle with his stubborn nature. Sancho will sit when Sancho wants to sit. So, having treats in hand helps, as he’s extremely food-motivated. Aren’t we all? He’s our funny little “dark seeker”, our crazy monkey, and our baby dinosaur. One minute he’s sweet, and the next, he’s sassy. Everywhere we go with him, he manages to turn heads and inspire groups of children (and adults) to want to pet him. He’s very polite. So, it’s easy to fall in love with him. I like to think he knows and understands just how very special he is to us. Tony and I have come to the point where we can not remember not being in our home – nor can we remember our life before Sancho entered it.
March:
We hosted our very first family holiday in our new home – Easter. Tony and I have “claimed” it as “our” holiday. Christmas Eve is at Leah and Mike’s, and Thanksgiving is at Cousin John and Beth’s. I love tradition... And, I love my new family. So Easter was our obvious choice... And I know I’ll look forward to it for years to come. Family, friends, and a handful of ‘orphans’ with no place to go came over on a beautiful Easter Sunday. The house smelled amazing, the Vinho Verde flowed freely, and Sancho managed to nip at everyone he came in contact with. Ah, the joys of a teething puppy..
April:
My best friend Claudia gave birth to the smallest and pinkest baby I’d ever seen. Nigella, and yes, that’s how it’s spelled. At only 5lbs, she was a tiny bundle of pink sweetness. The second I laid eyes on her, I knew I was going to love her forever. Just the most lovable baby-girl ever born, and to see her is to fall head over heels.
With the warmer days, much of the plants surrounding the house have begun to bloom. So, we decided to give a crack at some first-time gardening. We planted some hydrangea, an herb garden, and a lot of annuals in our window boxes. The wisteria has STILL yet to bloom any buds, but the vines are green and lush. The peonies are pink, white, and HUGE, and the roses are yellow and blooming. My friend Robin, the Earth Mother Goddess, came over and named everything growing in front, behind, and along side the house. Apparently, we have lavender, lots and lots of hostas, lilac bushes, and even a couple of chive plants! The surpise sleeper is definitely the azalea bush in front of the house. The flowers are this shocking shade of fuschia, and they envelop the bush entirely. What a beautiful surprise to wake up one Saturday morning and be met with the most flaming pink vision on my street.
May:
The big 3-5. That’s right, I turned 35 this year.. and my wonderful husband semi-surprised me with a great night of family, friends, pizza, and ROCK BAND! Great friends and fellow rabid Pandemonium groupies Chiara, Robb, Bobbi, and Fal rocked out with Tony and I (and Sancho) until the wee hours of the morning. Coming soon to a karaoke bar near you!
My sister-in-law Leah (Tony’s sister) did us the honor of asking us to be Benjamin’s Godparents. It was an honor we instantly and proudly accepted. We love that little boy! I wonder if I can teach him to call me madrinha (Godmother in Portuguese)…
June & July:
The first weekend of June was Sancho’s first Pug Meet-Up. Yes, a “pug meet-up”. A few months ago, a Nestie/Tribie found it online for me. It’s called the Hartford Pug Meet-up Group, and it meets on a monthly basis. This one met at the Happy Tails indoor play yard in Cheshire. Picture thirty pugs of all ages and sizes and colors (black and fawn) playing, frolicking, and chasing each other is mass euphoria. It was most definitely the funniest and most fun dog-related activity Tony and I had ever experienced. And, Sancho loved it too! In fact, he was a hit. He was by far the smallest one in the bunch, but he held his own by chasing and running from the other larger and faster pugs. That morning Tony and I realized how much having another pug to play and grow with might tremendously benefit Sancho. We’re still considering it, but with the new house and the projects we have planned, a new puggy playmate may have to wait just a bit until it’s more feasible for us.
One of the ‘milestones’ when having a puppy is having it neutered or spayed. In Sancho’s case, he was neutered, and ever the over-protective parent, I agonized over it for weeks – only to be pleasantly surprised at how quick the surgery went and how soon Sancho was back to his sassy self.
Summer was the best excuse for Tony and me to finally put our little touches into the house. Here’s the breakdown…
1. Subdued the womb-pink bathroom by painting the walls and ceiling white and putting up some artful touches (thanks IKEA!):
2. Removed the wall paper in the upstairs bathroom, painted the walls a rich khaki, and put up some prints that compliment the plush chocolate brown and monogrammed towels we received as a shower gift from my generous in-laws:
3. Installed crown molding in our bedroom. If you look close enough, you’ll see the hundreds of nail holes filled in with putty and screaming to be sanded, already!
4. Completely made the finished basement that much more cozy and inviting by painting the walls and beams a warm Mark Twain Tan (color by Valspar), putting up artwork, and installing a plasma flat screen TV and surround sound, thank you very much. Tony doesn’t mess around when it comes to enhanced video and audio.
5. Removed all the unsightly brush (overgrown bushes, small trees, and poison ivy) from the back of the yard and gained a 70 feet wide by 10 feet deep mass of area – while at the same time displacing entire families of woodland creatures (chipmunks, squirrels, moles, God-only-knows-what-else) living in it. Gotta love urban renewal.
Our plans for fencing off the back yard and building a paver patio behind the house were placed on hold, thanks to this sh!tty economy. Better to NOT spend a chunk of change right now, as Tony so eloquently put it.
August:
The hottest month of the season was spent mostly indoors. Thankfully, the first floor is enough of an open floor plan to allow for plenty of air flow from the one powerful a/c unit Tony installed in one of the windows in the dining room. The upstairs stayed cool from the a/c in our bedroom, and the rest of the 2nd floor stayed cool from that as well. Granted, the huge, boxy, an semi-noisy units are ugly as all heck, but the alternative – irritable, hot, sticky, sweaty Patty – is just sooo not pretty.
Took advantage of our fancy shmancy flat screen to watch really amazing and entertaining movies, such as Cloverfield, I Am Legend, Little Miss Sunshine, Juno, Into The Wild, American Gangster, 28 Weeks Later, 30 Days of Night, and Dan in Real Life.
We also tuned into the start of the 2nd season of Mad Men, presently the absolute best show on television.
Blue Back Square here in town recently opened a small movie theater. Some of the movies we saw there this past summer are the new Indiana Jones, the hugely popular Dark Knight, the one movie I should never have seen in light of my current paranoia of home-invasion - The Strangers, and the huge disappointment - The Happening. The theater is very old school – it TRIES to be anyway. Large vintage-looking marquis out front, seats that are NOT stadium seating, and even the way they pop and season the popcorn is very authentic to the period it inspires. Yet, as much as they attempt to make it seem vintage, they can’t help but also make it very shiny and expensive. Having gone there made me weep for the old days of the Elm 1&2, an even smaller, family-owned movie theater on the other side of town that was forced to close its doors thanks to the popularity of VCRs, DVDs, and movie rentals. Pour a little out for the Elm, folks, where I saw Annie, Stand by Me, Top Gun, and Dirty Dancing among countless others back in the day. Today, on my way to work every morning, I pass the building that used to be The Elm 1&2. :::sigh::: Alas, it is now a Walgreens.
In the August evenings (on Wednesdays to be exact), we’d venture outdoors to the free concerts at Elizabeth Park, where we’d feast on some wine and a picnic dinner we’d pack ourselves, listen to the variety of bands invited to play, and people watch. We would also bring along Sancho, who’d manage to break everyone’s heart with his playfulness. And, we’d also meet up with our godson Benjamin, who’s growing in leaps and bounds, by the way.
At the end of August, Tony and I made the 2nd best decision in our marriage, and that was to finally get a companion for Sancho. She came in the form of a 5 month old black pug named Petunia:
The second we brought her home, they instantly began to play and chase each other around the first floor – and then, plop down together in Sancho’s bed.
Petunia took to our little household like a champ and quickly bonded not only with Sancho, Tony and I, but also with each and every person that has stepped foot in our home since coming to live with us. She is the text-book definition of a lap-dog. Her face is the funniest, sweetest, and the most expressive I’ve seen, and her snorts sound less like snorts and more like Morse Code. At her most awake, she’s the wriggliest of puppies. So, holding her can be tricky, as she seriously has the strength to fearlessly leap from your grasp. I’m convinced she must have been a cat in her past life, because she springs from couch to couch to rug to couch to lap effortlessly and lands on all four feet with a feline ease every time. Did I happen to mention that her funny face and dome-like head smell like violets, and her chubby paws smell like cornchips? Yeah. She’s our little gargoyle - who perches herself on the backs of our sofas, barks at Toyota commercials as well as at her own reflection in the window, and then cuddles up on our laps to doze off.
Mornings with the puggies are always interesting. If they’re not tackling each other, or chasing each other to get the ONE toy out of dozens they already have, they’re each perched on either Tony’s shoulder (Sancho) or my lap (Petunia), and if there’s only one of us around, they’re both the clingiest of peaches and follow us from room to room – or wherever one of us goes. The downside to their co-dependence of us, however, is that we are now faced with having to repaint our downstairs bathroom door and much of the moldings along the base of the walls. Separation anxiety sure is a b!tch..
September: New job, new boss, new salary… life is full of happy surprises.
October: Wow.. October has sure been a whirlwind of a month. So much has happened already, and there’s still more to come before November arrives.
October 2nd - Rosa’s birthday
October 4th - West Hartford Park Road Pug Parade
October 13th - Patty and Tony’s 1st anniversary!!
Still to come…
October 27th - Bookclub (I wonder how much of Black and Blue by Anna Quindlen I can read from now until Monday..)
October 29th - Petunia’s spay
October 31st - Tony’s birthday!!! And… our very first Halloween in our home.
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