Widdie and Algae

Its been a little over a month since Elsie was born and we have had lots of visitors and have enjoyed having James off of work for a full month! Elsie is a great baby- she sleeps wonderfully at night and eats like a champ (hence the double chin and fat rolls at 4 weeks old in these pics). Louis has dubbed her Algae. We think she's pretty cute.


Louis has started referring to himself as Widdie this last week. We are confused by this because his pronuciation of other words is remarkably coherent. He has a hard time with the S sound, but has no problem with L, so we're stumped at where he came up with Widdie. He even proudly pats his chest with one hand and solemnley declares "Widdie" when we ask him what his name is.
Louis has had the hardest time out of all of us adjusting to the new baby. He vasilates between intense love and extreme jealousy. Unfortunately, both emotions are extremely physical and must be demonstrated by intense hugging and kissing or slapping and poking. I know it will just take some time for him to adjust, so after trying lots of different methods to curb his behaviors, I'm opting for patience. Luckily, we've noticed a difference the last couple of days. Instead of trying to cover her face with his hand while riding in the double stroller today, he lovingly put his hand on her cheek and left it there for almost the whole ride.

To help Louis we tried to do a lot of activities he might enjoy this month. One of them was the zoo so that Louis could see all of his favorite animals. He loves bear, lions (roars), monkeys, birds and goats. He thought he was so bad checking out this bear.
Also at the zoo James decided to show him this monkey mask. At first Louis was just a little confused by his Dad in a monkey mask.

Then he was a little worried.......

Then he was outright terrified.

Of course we didn't stop after the first time he freaked out, I had to dig the camera out of the bag to take some pictures. The reaction the second time around was the same. Ahhhh the joys of torturing your young children.

Emma, these are for you....

Since we stole them from your box set, we thought you should at least see the results.

Baby Elsie

On June 5th we welcomed baby number two into our family. Melissa had a very fast (making up for all of extra waiting we had to endure) and pretty easy labor (her words, not mine) that literally lasted less than two and a half hours. We barely made it into the birth center before the baby was born! Melissa was amazing. Some people call her tough and "Pioneer Womanish" and I would have to agree. True to form, when our midwife asked how she was feeling after the baby was born she answered, "Without all those contractions, I feel great." In response to this the midwife asked are you ok to move, to which Melissa replied, "Oh yeah I could walk home with my baby." Don't ask me why she would choose to say that but I can say that I've heard some of the best quotes from her right after labor. After laboring with Louis it was the same. That time she said after having Louis "Whew, that was it...(cracking a smile), that wasn't so bad." Both times she had the nurses and midwife rolling.

At 6:22AM we were pleasantly surprised to welcome a beautiful little girl into our family (we hadn't found out before hand what the gender would be). We named her Elsie June Tehani Faustino. Elsie meaning God is my Oath, June after June Oberg Melissa's amazing grandmother aka Grannie and Tehani meaning caress or scent of a flower. To our surprise she was more tan, a whole pound and six ounces heavier, and had more hair than Louis if you can believe that. Lets just hope her thick beautiful wavy hair doesn't thin and fall out like Louis' did after a couple of months when he had the sparse and mangy old man comb over hairdo going. We'll have the sense to cut it this time if it happens to Elsie, instead of parading around a little brown Benjamin Button look alike as we did with poor little Louis.

Elsie has come home to a lot of love - her older brother just cannot keep her hands off of her, and Mom and Dad are of course thrilled with her too. She is a good eater, sleeper and generally content baby. For any of you who were around us when Louis was a newborn, you know this is a big deal and we appreciate it fully!

I attached some pics for your viewing enjoyment. I don't have too many uploaded so sorry for posting the two baby announcements.

James, Melissa, Louis and Elsie Faustino

At long last......

Elsie June Tehani Faustino

June 5, 2009, 6:22am

8lbs, 12 oz 21 inches long

Details and better pics hopefully to follow soon, but most importantly she shares a birthday with my wonderful cousin Heather, Kenny G and Marky Mark - sweet action Elsie.

Taken for a Ride

Since we have no baby news yet, I figure I'd post something for those who might be checking this thing for updates.

Being that we do not know what we are having, (I speculate that it's a girl) a couple months back I thought I'd give Melissa a sneak peak as to how cute a little Faustino girl would be. Here's what Melissa came home to see. What do you think? Will we have a cute baby girl ;)? It may just be another boy though...who knows. I was fine with not knowing up until, umm about 4 days ago when we were due. Now it just ticks me off.

Needless to say Louis was not happy and when he took this picture. Recently when he saw this picture he said "EWWW, SICKKK...". Two of his new favorite words, used especially when getting his diaper changed. This has consequently led us to buy him a potty because he does not like having a mess in his pants.

Anyway its been a long month of anticipation. With the last pregnancy it was a long nine months of anticipation but having little crazy man Louis around this time has made the time go by a lot quicker. I guess I just grew accustomed to all the craziness that the implications of being pregnant and adding another baby into the mix didn't fully register until recently. I am really excited to meet the new little one and I am sure it will shake our lives up a little more.

Its strange to look back over the years and see how we have grown and what we have become accustomed to. The life of a parent, the pace and culture of New England, the ward and Church out here, and not having family around here (sadly) have been things that we've grown accustomed to. Transportation has also been something that we've recognized that has ideologically transformed for the good within us. Be it through driving our own car, using zip car, hitching a ride with a friend, using the T (train), bus, scooter, bike, or getting around on foot we have grown accustomed to the variety and culture of transportation by living in the Boston Area.

I suppose that Louis has also developed a familiarity to riding on various things as he climbs (or tries to climb) on anything he sees or deems he can ride. The list includes the typical things like toys, balls, slides, carousels, etc, and then there's the not so typical things like smaller babies, any four legged animal (dogs, cats, horses, deer, rabbits, turtles), and as you can see the "Make Way for Duckling" statues in the Boston Common. Regardless of shape, size or velocity all of these "rides" are accompanied with yelps of "WEEEEEE" and "COOOOOOL"!


Here's more of Louis' duck and bird pictures. These pictures might give off the impression that he is a bird man fan (real birds not Chris Andersen of the Nuggets), but he just loves animals.

Unsolicited Advice

Today is my official due date for this baby and I'm still sitting here. House is clean, bags are packed, meals are in the freezer and since I've 'made it' the whole nine months, I feel the urge to give some unsolicited, probably really bad advice to the rest of you preggies (and there are a lot of you out there right now).

1) If all of your sisters have always been late having their babies (every single time), don't secretly think you'll be the exception to the rule. Its just disappointing.

2) Do not go shoe shopping. The size of your feet at the end of your pregnancy and beginning of the summer will just be shocking.

3) Do not think bowling is a perfectly acceptable physical activity to engage in the day before you are due. You will quite possibly pull a muscle you never knew existed and end the evening in such extreme pain you can hardly walk.

Here are some good do's:
- Post some pictures of you pregnant two months ago and pretend that is how you look right now. Seven months pregnant is pretty cute actually and no one that lives far away will ever know.....
- Do resist the urge to karate chop anyone who tells you that you look like you are about to explode, pop open, rip at the seams, have a whole litter or waddle that one out.

So there you go, happy pregnancies to the rest of you. Look for some really bad newborn parenting advice in the next week or so. We're a hotbed for that too.

Man Up or Man Down

I figure I better get some newer pictures up before this thing becomes inundated with pictures of the new baby - whenever it decides to get here. The due date is officially this Sunday, but we really hope it comes sooner than that.

Here's a few pics of an excursion we did down to Fall River and Mount Hope Bay. We toured Battle Ship Cove and also found a nice quiet little beach that Louis absolutely loved because he could throw rock after rock without running out or being told to stop. He threw rocks for nearly a half hour after which I am sure his arm was sore. Melissa even got a little nap in without being interrupted by the little bug, which really says something about how he loves to throw/catch things, be it rocks, balls, toys, and of course food.

Aboard one of the many Battleships. They also had destroyers, submarines and other decomissioned Navy assets that we got to run around on.