Graduation Weekend

We're heading into a very busy weekend here in the Rocco household. For that matter, it's likely to be a very busy couple of weeks what with finishing up packing, moving and the like.

Saturday is the big day that Mark walks across the stage and gets to be called "Doctor Rocco," though, technically he is already. They just only have two ceremonies per year and so he has had to wait a few months to do the ceremony thing. We have all sorts of visitors planned for that big day - Mark's Uncle Timmy just arrived tonight and of course his parents and brother will be along as well. It should be a pretty fun weekend.

Speaking of fun weekends, my birthday weekend was also quite nice. We thoroughly enjoyed our little B&B tour in Napa. I totally overindulged....way too much sugar and way too much wheat. I was not feeling so hot the next day at all, but it was worth the experience. Our inn that we stayed in was very nice as well...even if there was a mix up as far as which room we were supposed to be in. As luck would have it, I liked the Winter room which we ended up in better than the Autumn room anyhow! :) Here are a few pictures of the room:





Isn't it nice? It was quite a joy to stay in. I was really glad I'd taken a picture of the bed when we first went up...when we returned after a quick bite to eat the bed had already been turned down.

As for the little tour, it was so neat. It was almost like a little progressive dinner party except there were only appetizers and desserts. It's actually like a kind of party I've always sort of wanted to set up...maybe once we're back to Colorado Springs I'll see if a bunch of our friends would be interested in a fun little tour of our houses at Christmas or something. Anyhoo, probably my favorite house on the tour was the Cedar Gables, but then, that is because the innkeeper there was dressed up as Santa Claus and took a nice little picture with Nicholas. It's the cutest picture ever...and sooner or later, it will be in the 7th Month group of photos on his website. Of course, I have to get the 6th month photos up there first!

We had so many goodies and yummy appetizers. I really appreciated that one of the inns even gave us the recipes for what they served. This was the Old World Inn which is run by chefs. They had some wonderful croissants there that made me happy as a clam. Wine-wise, I had a sip or two here and there of wines Mark tried. Since we decided against using the limo/shuttle transportation provided to tour-goers so that we could ensure Nick's safety in his car seat and because I'm still nursing him, I went easy on the vino. We had a lot of really yummy ones. Mark's favorite typically hails from the area of France where I spent some time back in college, too. Isn't that spiffy?

Nicholas really enjoyed the tour himself. He had all sorts of people fawning over him. We even had the good fortune to have some people take some pictures of us. Following the no Nicholas pictures without a pass rule, here's one that was taken of us while some nice ladies cooed over him. :)


Other than that, Nicholas has been doing great, too. We finished up his formula treatments and we have really noticed a great change in how he's been doing (yea!). He actually is able to pass a lot of his own gas which is refreshing (well, you know what I mean). We still have to help him out sometimes, but not super often. We've tried to introduce some other foods as well, but we're not having much luck allergy-wise. It seems that Nicholas' body doesn't seem to like most foods as of yet. One of the strange parts is that we have tested him on every food we've tried at the grocery store and he'll test okay, but then after we feed him the stuff his body "changes" it's mind.

We get some pretty decent indicators when he's eaten something his body doesn't like - the most prevelant one is that the food doesn't stay down very well. This is quite frustrating for everyone. For me, it is on a few levels...not only do I want the little guy to be properly fed, but I also just really am not a fan of trying to get the stains of out his clothing.

And, that, I guess, is the update for tonight since Mark and his Uncle Timmy who joined us this evening are chatting and I'm going to be social!