Here's.....COLE! :)

Please welcome Addie's little brother, the newest member of our family. Cole Robert Silvestro was born on 3/12/10 at 6:06am. He is a big boy at 8lbs 6oz and we are absolutely in love with every inch of him!



First minutes of life

After he gets cleaned off, some snuggles with mommy.

...and Daddy :)




And Uncle Dan found a picture of Addie on her first day and a picture of Cole on his first day and put them side by side (Addie's on the left). Definitely a resemblance :)
Addie is excited to meet her little brother and teach him to dance and laugh :)

Thank you to the family for all the congrats and warm thoughts.

Love,
Monica and Steve

Thawing out!

The weather is FINALLY becoming consistently warm enough to play outside. With a light fleece nonetheless. We are celebrating by spending as much time as possible outside.

We put together the tricycle that Yaya and Poppy got Addie for Christmas. She LOVES it.

We met some of our Arlington friends at a huge park about halfway between there and Rockville. Here are Addie and Reese flying a plane :)

Yesterday afternoon Addie and I scouted out this cool lake not too far from where we live. We hung out by the water...

...did some serious searching for rocks and sticks in the field...
...and found "fairy caps" (acorn tops) by the water.

Thank you spring, for coming....you have NO idea how we missed you!!

Sweet Adeline's sweet voice

Well, folks, the due date came and past and still no baby. Trust me, blog-lovers, you guys will be among the first to know!

While you're waiting for pictures of a squishy little newborn, you'll have to settle for the musical stylings of my sweet Adeline's renditions of Where is Thumbkin and the ABCs.

39 weeks belly picture

Yes, I'm still pregnant! :) Baby boy is due a week from today (on 3/6) and apparently my babies like to be fully baked (Addie was 3 days late) because no signs pointing to the baby coming any time soon.


And a short video of our ballerina/yogini

Baby's room transformation

As you all know, when Addie was born, we lived in a rental townhouse and so we couldn't do much to her room--and tack on the fact that we knew we weren't going to stay there long, we didn't want to do much anyway, so we hung some things up and focused on purple with some green and it was fine. And...the house we moved into had a purple room already--score!

But we're in OUR house now, and the baby room had flowers and butterflies on it--cute for a baby yes (there were twin girls residing in this room before we moved in), but we're having a BOY so...you know...no flowers and butterflies for him ;)

Well how's this for a transformation?

This is the before:

Stevo doing all the hard work--taping, primer...

Layer 1 of blue paint...

All painted! But then there's a question of the carpet--it's a lighter blue than the walls, and there are stains...so it's kind of gross. I've wanted to get rid of it for a long time, but you know, with time and money, we debated it. Today Steve rented a steam cleaner to clean up the carpet before moving all the crib, etc back in and he decided to lift up the carpet to see what it looked like underneath (Addie's room is just hardwood floor).

And look what we found!

After a good sweep....gorgeous :)

Happy Valentines Day!

Happy Valentines Day, friends and family! I woke up this morning to this gorgeous crown that Steve and Addie made me :) I feel so loved!


I told Addie we could make valentines day cookies, so we headed to Safeway yesterday to get the stuff we needed. I did not anticipate the time it would take to park (since half the spaces are taken up by mountains of snow) and the crowd inside (of people who are trying to re-stock after the snowstorm) so our shopping trip took longer than I thought. You can't tell a toddler that you're going to make cookies and not follow through, so we did it anyway, despite it getting a bit too close to dinner time...

So here's Addie's lesson on baking cookies.

First your nutrition counselor mommy buys a pre-fab, non-organic, refined sugar, artificial color-filled cookie mix because she didn't want to bother baking from scratch because she's 37 weeks pregnant and tired, darnit.

Dump cookie mix into a bowl

Add one egg (pictured). And an obscene amount of butter (not pictured because mommy melted it in the microwave and the bowl was hot, so she wouldn't let me dump it)

Stir and smile a la Vanna White

Then you get to rollll the dough out

And use heart-shaped cookie cutters to cut the dough.
While it bakes, complain "where my special cookie?" over and over and over again while your mom starts dinner amid the cookie trays and general mess made in the kitchen.

Have your daddy very carefully frost the cookies

Then shake...
...shake some sprinkles on.

Contemplate eating them even though mommy desperately wants you to eat dinner first...
...but they look so good.

Mommy loses. :)
Happy Valentines Day, everyone! Here are Valentines day of Addie's past: 2009 and 2008

Snow Ice Cream!

I had heard of snow ice cream but never made it before. Addie and I bundled up to go watch Steve shovel the driveway (again) the other day, but the wind was up, so Addie was not happy. To cheer her up I impulsively said "do you want to make snow ice cream?" The response was enthusiastic and I quickly googled a recipe and breathed a sigh of relief that we had all the ingredients.

In a bowl, you put milk, sugar, and vanilla. We didn't measure, but I think it was about 2/3 cup milk, 2-3 tbsp of brown sugar and a splash of vanilla. Then you stiiiiirrrrrr it up!


Add CLEAN WHITE ;) snow (about 3 cups?)

Take a tentative bite...

Hey, I like it!