Welcome February!

First of all, congrats to the Kitsteiner family on the birth of their bundle of joy Elijah Luke on January 31st. He joins his 8 month old brother Isaac and his ecstatic mommy and daddy to make a busy, happy family. Wendi is a fantastic author and has blessed us with her exquisite writings on her blog detailing their journey through infertility, adoption, and now pregnancy and delivery. I am so excited for them! God really works in His own time and in His own way! Their blog is Life in the Polar North Defrosts (www.flakymn.blogspot.com). Elijah is very cute! (and 8lbs 14 oz - same size as Austin was).

In other news....
Well, not much other news. We have had a nice last few weeks. My last rotation actually included some random time off here and there, so I ended up getting to spend more time at home with Austin than I expected. Austin is growing so fast. He is talking so much and has such an adorable personality! He just makes my day with a smile or a giggle or a kiss and I can't believe how lucky I am to have him! Life is good!

Nanny came down for a day last week

"Play in the new kitchen!"
He loves to take things out of his play kitchen, set them on the table, then climb up on the chair and play with them. One of his favorite things is taking our empty spice containers and adding spices to the imaginary meals he is cooking.

Austin playing hide and seek with Nanny.

Trying to be sneaky...but just being cute!

He cracked up...

and threw his head back laughing.

Ah, the joy of a child is infectious!Check out my crayons!
(triangle shaped crayons - then they don't roll away so easily!)Winding down with a few minutes of Veggie Tales.

We tried going out to dinner with Austin since we hadn't done that in a very long time and he is going to go to the Residency Appreciation Dinner with us next weekend. We headed to Carlos O'Kelly's and it was entertaining. Austin refused to sit in his booster seat and was thus climbing free in the inside of the booth seat. He chowed chips as fast as he could, didn't really want any of his actual dinner, kept salt and peppering everything within reach, and spilled his milk all over his seat (and thus the seat of jeans). He did get a balloon from the hostess on the way out and was very excited about it! We'll see how the residency dinner goes!

Then last weekend Nanny and Grandpa came down to Rochester to visit. Michelle and Brian stopped by on the way home from a weekend at Notre Dame, too. It was, of course, lots of fun!

Peek a boo, Grandpa!And reading stories with Nanny and Grandpa.Then, of course, some bath time fun with Grandpa.

This weekend, we headed to the Twin Cities to visit family and get Austin's hair cut at the Kids' Hair place in EP center (since that has been the only way to get his hair cut without screaming, wrestling, and generally terrorizing the poor child).

On Saturday, it was nice and warm (it hit above 40 degrees!), so we brought up Austin's sled and we headed down to the park by the lake to sled. It was so nice that within 5 minutes or so, I had taken off my coat and was down to a sweatshirt, jeans, a scarf and boots. Austin demanded, "Mommy, put mittens on!" so I did put my gloves back on for a bit. It was lots of fun and wore us all out.

On Sunday, we got to visit Nanny's friends Mary, Joni, and Rosie as they prepared 200 cupcakes for their monthly meal to feed the homeless in Minneapolis. They had never met Austin before, so we stopped by to visit. Austin had fun with the dogs, Lucky and Ginger (after Lucky stopped jumping up on him). He even got Lucky to play fetch and roll over. Then we helped Auntie Michelle shop for groceries for her SuperBowl party, then headed home.

Since we couldn't care less about the SuperBowl, and I work on Monday morning, we headed back to Rochester after dinner on Sunday. Steve starts working from home again for the tax season now. I'll be on an elective rotation in infectious diseases, so I'll have some weekend time off again this month and can be home with Austin so Steve can head into work or get some work done from home.

That's about it for us at this point. Austin is thriving and we are so happy to watch him grow and develop every day!