Mona Lisa and The Gizzard

Mona Lisa is my beloved dog. I have had her for 13 years through college, lawschool, marriage and the birth of H. She has been an incredible pet and an amazing companion. Mona Lisa has been very sick on and off throughout the years, but we have been incredibly blessed that she always seems to have a little life in her. She really is showing her age, but this is a common look in our house as she guards the cat food can. You may think the photos are the same, but they are not. She holds rock solid for hours with that can in her mouth!

This is Gizzie a.k.a. Gizmo a.k.a. The Gizzard. Nanni and Pa adopted the Gizzard about 4 weeks before we found out Nanni was sick. She is so cute, but she is an old girl who has had a hard life. She has many things wrong with her, but we are so happy that we found her when we did and that she has come to live with Nanni and Pa. We can't imagine her not being here!

The Twins!

H and his Nanni are like twins. They have the same haircut, the same phrases, the same expressions and sometimes they even dress alike. H loves his Nanni and his Nanni loves him. Its a great relationship except when H picks up "Nanni-phrases" like "What the heck" and "Oh, my gosh" which are not quite fitting for a 3 year old boy!

Nanni was the first person to babysit H and watched H exclusively when I went back to work. Nanni was the first person to give H peanut butter - at about 6 weeks not worrying about alergies. Nanni was the first person to give him a Reese's cup and Nanni was the first person to let H sleep on his stomach.

Nanni and H have had many firsts over the past few years and we are incredibly lucky that we live so close to Nanni. Unfortunately, Nanni received a horrible diagnosis a month ago and we are all having a hard time dealing with it - especially H who doesn't understand why Nanni can't play with him. They do still love to take long walks up the driveway when Nanni is feeling ok. H makes sure to give a running commentary the entire way!

Strange Things at Nanni's House

We spend almost every day at Nanni's house helping her with what she needs done and we have noticed some really interesting things in the past few weeks. The most unusual is how the butterflies and lizards (or Zardos as H calls them) are acting. I haven't caught the butterflies on camera yet, so I will have to follow up with that later. However, today I got some really great photos of H's Zardo friend listening in on my conversation with Nanni in the flower garden. Nanni and Pa have a great flower garden outside their front door and Nanni, Pa, H and I spend hours and hours sitting out there each day. Today, Zardo decided to join in!

The funny thing was that I really think he liked being photographed. He never moved and actually the first picture is the last one I took and he let me get right up on him. He stayed after that to add his two cents to our converstation.

The Masked Man

As I continue with this blog, I realize two things...(1) I want to stay away from using our names since this is a public site, and (2) I am getting really sick of not using our names! So, from now on my son will be referred to as "H." Not sure why I think I will like this better, but it is worth a shot.

In case you haven't picked up on it yet, H loves to have his face painted. I think its part of his acting side. Even in the post where is he showing his lion craft, he has a cow painted on his face. Since my brother in law showed me how to download my camera pictures, I have a bunch of backlog to enter. This particular one is from our trip to Disney at the end of May beginning of June right before Nanni got her diagnosis. We were totally oblivious of what we were going to face when we got home and we enjoyed every minute. These are some of my favorite photos of H taming his snake!!!


Can you tell how much H loves this? We were so excited to find that our resort had free face painting, so we took full advantage.

Coming up for a breather.

Up close at the work in progress. What a handsome boy!

H wanted to make sure the painter knew exactly what she was doing...notice his eyes checking her out.

Adding the snake's detail and sitting very still.

The finished product...but, wait...that doesn't look like the face of a snake tamer!

Ta da!!!! The snake tamer in action. H proceeded to go throughout the entire resort attempting to kung foo his snake on innocent visitors.