The Blog of Dominic: October 2006

Family Vacation

The other weekend we took a short family vacation, staying at the Solano Beach condo (thanks Redding Auntie!) So we did not go too far, but it was on the beach and it was nice to get out of the house for a couple of days with nothing to do. We went down to the beach a couple of times, neither Dominic nor Joss really likes waves, but Dominic was pretty happy to wade through some of the calmer tide pools. There were some small fish and crabs hiding in the rocks and he liked to chase them. He only stopped when I told them that the fish were going night night. He also enjoyed building sand castles. Joss did not like the sand at all...

DominicsMom and Dominic on the balcony overlooking the beach.

What a gorgeous sunset!

DominicsDad and Dominic building a sandcastle.

Little Princess Joss is enjoying herself at this point.

DominicsDad

More Art

More art!

DominicsMom liked this one (she cried when she read the poem) and it is going to hung up.

The little guy is doing better at pre-school, he only snuffles for a little bit when he is dropped off. He is always happy to see us when we pick him upl

DominicsDad

Homecoming Notes & Conspiracies

Some interesting coincidences about my two deployments:

We found out Deanna was pregnant with Dominic after I had already left California for Kuwait in Feb 2003. She was pregnant while I was gone and so I was not there to help her with the midnight ice cream feedings and funny hormonal changes. I left for Iraq 16 Feb 2003 and came back home on 13 Sept 2003. Dominic was born on 14 Sept 2003, the day after I came home (ok, he was a bit premature, but its still a cool story to tell.)

I found out that I would be mobilized again in October 2005 and DominicsMom was about 5 months pregnant with Jocelyn. Jocelyn was born in late February, about 10 days before I deployed for Djibouti. I missed almost all of the midnight feedings and a gazillion (according to DominicsMom) diaper changes. I arrived home 6 months later on 14 Sept 2006, Dominic's birthday and 3 years and 1 day to the day I came home from Iraq.

Some people may call this a coincidence, I think it is a giant plot. I also think that the mefloquinine that we were given in Africa to prevent malaria has some funny side effects as our bodies slowly detox (they gave us some funny pink pills to take to help us detox, but I think they are just some Motrin pills.)

Oh yeah, we had decided that Jocelyn will be our last child. DominicsMom has decided that because I get mobilized and deployed overseas every time she gets pregnant, we will not have another baby!

Ok, here are some recent pictures of Dominic & Jocelyn at the UTC Mall:

The little guy loves to run around in the fountain and climb on the (fake) rocks in the center. I was not able to stop him in time from taking a drink (probably because I was too busy taking the photo. ) I kept him from drinking any more however. He ran around with a couple of other kids. This is not Dominic's first encounter with the fountain. He had a good time last August also. Having some experience with this, I had a complete change of clothing ready when he finished.

DominicsDad

Pre-School Tales

Dominic started pre-school on a Monday on 11 Sept, beginning just before I flew home. He went for a visit a week before and was really excited to go to his first day of school. He was happy on Monday and Wednesday (he only goes Monday, Wednesday, & Fridays, the days DominicsMom works) and I arrived home on Thursday, so I had him Friday. I took him back to school on Monday for his third day and he was excited to go. But when I began to leave, he began to tear up and ran up to me and hugged me and begged me not to go. It tore my heart but I had a lot of errands to run before reporting back to the drill center the next day. Ever since, he has had a rough time in the mornings as he is dropped off. Things have begun to get better lately and hopefully he will stop crying entirely when we drop him off. I get to drop him off again tomorrow, we are going to try to drop him off a bit later when his favorite teacher has arrived.

Once he is there for a bit, he gets into school and has a great time. He is doing all sorts of crafts, plays outside during recess, and generally gets to do a lot of stuff with the other kids in his class (there are around 8-10 of them.) Here are some pictures of the stuff he has done. Some we are hanging up, but unfortunately the others get circular filed after awhile to make room for more. If you want some, let us know! I'll try to post pictures of all of them before they are 'filed'.