More pics from Grampa

Here's the last of the pics my dad took while here. There's too many to share, so I've just included a few of my favorites of Z and the birthday celebrants.

Double take!

Quick! Blow it out before he grabs the flame!

Biz (one of Ben's sisters) shared her birthday with our 10th anniversary this year (last Thursday). Even more notable, it worked out when Z was born that we had four birthdays on four consecutive days all within Ben's close family! Happy Birthday, Biz!

Happy Birthday to Jenna and Andy (our niece and Ben's brother)!

It'll be a week and a bit before I post again. Tune in next time to find out why!

All that is One

It's my birthday!

Here I am just 15 minutes old!

Two months!

Three months!

Four months!

Five months!

Six months!

Seven months!

Eight months!

Nine Months!

Ten months!

Eleven months!

Twelve months old!! This was my birthday cake!

This was the day after my party,
I was so exhausted I had to take a break and sit on Daddy's boots!

I don't think anyone understands what I put up with. I actually live with the paparazzi.

Well, hope you all don't mind seeing more pictures of me in the years to come because I don't think they're going to stop anytime soon.

By the way, I am the biggest big boy there ever was, 'cause I'm a big boy walker! I pretty much walk everywhere now. I've been having fun with all my new toys, and mom loves my new clothes and reading my new books to me (I got a lot of presents for my birthday!). I secretly like listening to the stories, but I try not to let on to my mom. I'm a ladies man too. I flirt with pretty girls AND I kiss pictures of babies. It's weird, they look so real. Oh well. Must keep walking...

Pictures by Grampa

My Dad used to be really into photography and paint pictures from his photos. He works a lot and travels a lot and has taken a long sabbatical from both. Then Z was born. He bought an awesome camera (Nikon D80) and has blessed us with a plethora of pictures of our offspring every time he visits (this is their third visit in a year from Germany!). So, he gets his very own post, dedicated to the pictures (unedited mind you) taken thus far during his week long visit. Now, if only we could get him painting again...

Mommy with Z and Louis.
Thank you Chris, Kim, Matt and Audrey for Z's new outfit!

We noticed Z with his mouth open a lot when we played with Louis, then realized Louis' mouth was always open! So, here he is pretending to be Louis!

We all want to be like Louis!

Toot toot!

More fun...

Well, there's a reason it's been a couple weeks since my last post. Yup, Mr. Cranky pants. He's doing better now that we know what the problem is. He's cutting his first molars. The symptoms of this are very different than when he cut his front teeth. It's not a sharp shooting pain, he actually holds his little ears and smiles at us. He was extremely needy though and I can't go too far. So, no blog last week. My Dad arrived Friday night and brought with him Louis, our new Handpuppen from Germany "...echte Freunde furs Leben ." Any translators out there? Z loves Louis, who can hold him, play with him, stick his tongue out at him and even has the same hair color! When Z sees Louis on the table, he claps. It's like he's made a friend. It's kind of sad, actually.

Grampa, Louis and Z

At the park again, on the kiddie train with Gramma.

We went to Columbus for a little reunion of Ben's high school friends. Some of them he hadn't seen since high school, and some we saw last week when we went to a Fountains of Wayne concert together in Cleveland. Yes, it was absolutely awesome and the party was a hoot and half!

Look what's growing in our garden!

Kim and Paul stopped by on their way to Wisconsin. She's 2 cm dilated last we heard. We're all praying she has their baby before Paul leaves for the Gulf for six months later this month. It'll be close.

This is Kim and Paul with all the gifts we bought with money collected from friends and family members. So, to all of you who donated, THANK YOU! They loved their presents!

Fun with Gramma!

Greetings, and happy June to all of you! I bought this red play tube for our dogs a while back, but they were always terrified of how it moved while they were in it. Thankfully, I found somebody else who likes it!

My Mom arrived on Friday from visiting her parents in Iowa. She's here for three weeks then heads back to Germany. We put her in a cage to make sure she behaves herself. Just kidding. We're at Tuscora Park on the Ferris Wheel in these pics. My Mom has been SO helpful and she's only been here a few days. I feel like I'm on vacation! She loves babysitting Z for us so we can go do stuff. We're also knitting dish cloths (just my mom and me, not Ben so much) while she's here.

This is our little grumpy pants. We're not sure why he's been so grumpy lately. He doesn't seem to be teething. He's been up for about 1.5-3 hours a night, which is new. Oh, and you can see in the last two pics his booboo from falling off the second stair onto his face. I was comforting him and looked down and saw blood. Not my favorite "Mommy Moment". I was seriously bothered by that for two days! It's healing now, just cut his lip a little on a tooth and bruised it pretty well. In the picture below he was being grumpy just for the sake of being grumpy.

A little glimpse of what Ben's been up to the last 24 hours...