At first, I wanted to get a better picture of Ezra reading his book. However, when I looked at this one closer, I thought it was cute because it shows him trying to turn the page (which he's quite good at). Of course he only uses the cardboard books with the thick pages. He's getting at least one tooth. It's on the right side of his bottom teeth and it's almost poking through. There may be others as well. It's kinda hard to get him to let us look in there, but I think his gums look a little swollen in a couple of places. He's been a trooper though. Another funny thing he's started to do is bounce. Not jump--his feet don't leave the ground, but he bends his knees to bounce up and down. The best thing is that he can do it when we ask him to. I love that he recognizes words like "Give Mama a kiss" or "Can you bounce up and down?" It's the greatest.








Here's a picture of baby #2 (still no headway with names, thanks to my husband who doesn't like to discuss it--grrrr). I thought black was supposed to be slimming.... My face looks fat too. Could it be the turtleneck??























Here's a very bad comparison picture. I hope you all love me enough to appreciate the fun of the comparison, and not be too critical of my current state. The pic on the left is me at 19 weeks with Ezra. The second pic is me at 19 weeks with this baby. My mom made me feel better when she stated that my muscles are stretched out this time around, so there's nothing to hold back the baby (and all my other inside that are getting pushed around). So true! I read that I should have gained about 10 lbs at this point, and my my calculations, I might be just a tad over that. So I'm pretty ok with that stat. I can tell he's getting a lot bigger because today during church I could feel him kicking on my side. Previously, the movement was pretty much isolated in my abdomen area. Those little limbs are getting longer. My BIG ultrasound is a week from tomorrow. So excited!

Ezra's 11 months. We worked on "kissing" this week. Mike was trying to get him to kiss, but he was pretty much just putting his open mouth on Mike's face. While we were eating yogurt one day, he was smacking his lips and I said "Are you kissing?" and I kept trying to emphasize that the smacking sound was "kissing". So now he's will make a smacking sound when you ask for a kiss. So cute!


















Baby #2 is 19 weeks. The baby hasn't really learned to do anything new. ;) Except I think he can "eat" amniotic fluid now and produce waste. Yea!

Today Ezra is 11 months old, and his brother is 18 weeks old.

Ezra is getting much more confident is his walking abilities. He now takes up to 6 or 8 steps at a time.

He also loves to crawl through the cubbies on our coffee table. In the first picture, you can see I used to keep photo albums in the cubbies, but I have since had to relocate them.

Here is Ezra plays peek-a-boo under the curtains.

Ezra LOVES Skyla. The feeling is not always mutual, but she is very good with him.

Right now, Ezra is contentedly reading his books. I read to him every day, and he likes looking at the pictures on his own. What a smart boy! ;)





























In this picture, I look a whole lot bigger than I feel. Mike even said, "Are you pushing it out or something?" Maybe I had an extra big lunch. The point is, I think this picture makes me look bigger than I am. BUT, I am almost half way through. The baby is about 6 inches long and 1/2 a pound in weight at this point, so I guess that's all gotta go somewhere. :)

Ezra already loves his baby brother bunches. I just hope he doesn't mind sharing Mom and Dad too much.

I'm 17 weeks pregnant today. A lady at the grocery store said, "I looked so cute with my little belly". Bless her soul. Then she asked when I was due and I told her June and she said, "Oh! Well, with your second you pop a little sooner." Ugh. But I don't think I look too much bigger than some other ladies that have their pics on various pregnancy sites. Anyway, I'm feeling lots of movement and Mom and baby are doing great. I'll have my next appointment/ultrasound at 20 weeks.






Ezra has begun to take some steps. On Friday night, I was running water for his bath, and Mike was disrobing him in the living room. Ezra knew he was getting ready for his bath which he loves. When I came in the living room to get him, he acted like he was really ready to go, so I made him walk to me. I kept backing up, and he kept walking. He took about 6 steps or so and then I ran out of room and had to let him catch me. Since then, he's been taking steps here and there, and even twice has taken 4 or so steps from one piece of furniture to the other with no motivation from Mike or me. He just wanted to get from point A to point B. Yay! We were also notified when we picked Ezra up from the nursery this morning that a little girl had kissed him. He's already breaking hearts. :)

Happy New Year! We traveled to Zurich, Switzerland to ring in the new year! This picture was taken at the beginning of our road trip.
We had planned to watch the fire works over Lake Zurich. After relaxing in our hotel after the 6 hour drive (it would have been shorter but for a lunch stop and some trouble finding our hotel), we got bundled up and ventured downtown to find something to eat. There was a shopping/restaurant street where there was lots of options, but on New Years Eve, they were all packed. We walked up and down the street a time or two and then Mike settled for some sausage and I had (horror or horrors...) McDonald's. I don't even like McDonald's in the States, but as nasty as that sounded to me, it sounded slightly better than the mystery meat sausage Mike was eating. We still had about 3 hours to kill (the fire works didn't start until 12:30 am. Why? I don't know. We did a little more walking and then stopped in for some Starbucks coffee (almost the highlight of my trip). We warmed up and then ventured back out into the revelry. We finished walking down the river to the lake. There was a carnival like atmosphere across the last bridge where many booths were set up selling all manner of food, drink, and trinkets. There were also several "disco" tents where people were dancing to loud music. We tried to stake out a good fire-works-watching position on the bridge, but quickly realized it was even colder on the bridge than walking around. We decided we couldn't just stand there for an hour and a half. There was a little more walking around, but then Ezra, despite his adequate bundling (or so I thought) got too cold and too tired. We tried everything we could think of to console him, but we felt like the worse parents in the world for having our wailing baby out at almost midnight, in sub-freezing temperatures. After crying and more crying, we decided to call it a night and head home (walk back through town to the train station, 4 stops on the train, walk to our car, drive back to the hotel). Luckily, after almost an hour of crying, Ezra finally passed out a little after midnight right before the train arrived to take us back to the hotel. We celebrated the passing of 2007 and the beginning of 2008 on the bottom level of a train station in Zurich. Not quite what we had pictured, but I suppose it makes for a memorable New Years. It was getting kind of ridiculous in the crowd anyway. We witnessed several people vomiting in the streets, and there were already two puddles of barf on the train. Gross!! I'm sure it would have only gotten worse as the night wore on.
This is Ezra in his first train station on New Years Day.
On New Years Day, we bundled up again and headed back down town. We went to the street with all the shops on it, but they were all closed of course. Most of the restaurants were also closed. Ezra has had a cold for close to a week, and Mike and I were getting sore throats and runny noses. It was just too cold to do much of anything. It was DEFINITELY too cold for seeing the city by foot. We hit the high lights the night before (some churches, the river, the old town...). Therefore, we got some more Starbucks (God bless Starbucks), and headed back to the train station where all the shops were open. The train station pretty much had a mall in it, so we were able to stock up on Swiss chocolates (something I was very much looking forward to), postcards, some souvenirs and eat some lunch before heading back to the warmth of the hotel room where we spent the latter part of the afternoon and the evening. Wednesday, we took one last drive through the city and started our trip back home.
The trip home also took a little longer than it might have otherwise on account of driving through snow for about an hour. The picture of the snowy trees was taken as we were driving very slowly through the snow. But the drive both ways was beautiful. We just barely missed going through Lichtenstein, but nobody was really in the mood for a detour, no matter how short. Some other trip perhaps. We did go through Heidiland though. :)