Happy spring!

Everett is learning so much that it's almost hard to keep up with him these days. Below is a picture of him making "fishy face," but he also now routinely makes "grumpy face," "happy face," and "surprised face." Sometimes he makes a face at us when we're least expecting it, and we all end up giggling at each other. His rate of language acquisition has accelerated to the point that he's learning new words every day--today he learned how to say "rhino," and kept saying it all day long. He also now says "poo-poo" to indicate that he needs his diaper changed, and sometimes even before the event happens--which makes me think potty training may be coming up soon for us. On one such occasion when he said "poo-poo" I sat him on his potty, but he just cried and never did anything, so it was a false alarm. We'll try again some other time. Most notable, though, is the fact that he can now communicate with us fairly effectively, so this has eliminated some of the frustration (both his and ours) that occurs when he's not getting what he wants. We can't wait to have more conversations with him, but for now it is good enough for us to be able to talk about juice, cars, bubbles, apples, and Elmo with him. We also got our big boy a new bed (twin mattress that lays on the floor) and have put it in his room so he can get used to it and see it as his furniture. We plan to take his crib out of the room soon, and we are hoping this makes his transition a little easier. He likes it, but has never slept on it, so we'll see how it goes. Of course, this transition is being driven by the fact that we need to use the crib for our new baby girl soon. We're starting to get excited about our new addition, and I hope that because both Kyle and I bring opposite perspectives (I identify with the first-born, while Kyle identifies with the "baby"of the family), we will be able to balance the needs of both children as we adjust and become a family of 4. This summer we have some fun things planned--we'd like to take Everett to a Tincaps game in Fort Wayne, where we can get 2 lawn tickets for $10 and hot dogs for $1 each (cheap entertainment), and we also can't wait for pizza at the farm. We also hope to visit Cincinnati and see family more often since we anticipate being less able to travel in the late summer/fall. We also hope to do lots of playing at parks (Everett loves the teeter totter) and to visit the zoo so he can keep learning his animals. I only have 2 more weeks of classes--time has flown by, and we can't believe that we haven't even lived here for a year yet, and are already planning for the summer!