I figured it was time to add a few videos again, so here goes. Michael is on the move on 2 legs now. Well... he's not really moving to walking exclusively yet, crawling is still much faster. He took 3 steps at the pool on Friday. On Saturday he was playing quietly behind me and I turned around to check on him and witnessed 5 steps across the living room (he didn't see me watching him.) He's been taking 2 or 3 steps more frequently since then and I expect he'll take off by the end of the week. Of course, the little man knows what a camera is and there's virtually no chance of catching any walking with one of those yet. However, he's also quite the proficient climber. Already capable of climbing onto the slide on the back porch, the top of the kids plastic picnic table, the couch (and safely back off)... and I got him mastering the old beach chair on video. Sorry, it's mostly of his backside :)

In other Michael news, he also likes to feed himself with a spoon now. He still needs quite a lot of practice with this new skill.

Scott and Blaise are still keeping busy entertaining me too. Blaise constantly says the most amusing things. 2 examples...

#1- While getting ready for bed a few weeks ago, Cullen had "encouraged" him to hurry up with an exasperated, "Come on, Blaise, get your pajamas on." Blaise looks over at me, dressing Michael, and says, "I'm coming on, because Daddy told me to come on."

#2- After dinner tonight, the boys are all playing in the living room, while I was putting things away. Blaise says to Scott, "Scott, let's do that thing where we hug each other and make us dead." Scott responds, "Okay." And for those that are wondering... here's the video of that thing.

We had our ultrasound yesterday... I guess you could say it went well. It's a baby! What we could see of the baby was perfect and actually measuring a few days ahead (we are 19 weeks now.) The parts of the ultrasound that didn't go so well... oh, the screaming 11 month old big brother who would have rather been actually taking his morning nap, and also the uncooperative baby who was basically folded in half with both legs and both arms up over his head... we have to return for a follow-up in 4 weeks, since they couldn't see everything they needed to see. This is our 3rd uncooperative baby in utero, for the record. (Anyone local want to keep the big brothers for the next one?)

For those that want to play the guessing game with us I started a new game at www.expectnet.com called "chipmunkkeen" Yes... this baby's nickname is chipmunk, as in Chip & Dale and we even have authentic Disney World Chipmunks for the baby's first stuffed toy (since we decided to start trying for this one in Disney World.)

It's June!

Can't say I'm sad to see the end of May. May was a long hard month for us... with a celebration on either end. First B's birthday... then sickness... then more sickness... then bad news... then worse news... then a wedding :)

Okay, here are a few details, but just a few. All 5 of us, yes, even baby Michael at just over 9 months old, had strep throat. Cullen missed several days of work that week. The following week he was out of town and I started a major head cold/sinus infection that I've been dealing with for more than 2 weeks now. While Cullen was out of town, we found out that my dad has a 2 inch tumor on his pancreas. More than a week later, he finally had a biopsy and they confirmed the tumor is cancer. They are still trying to work out details of a treatment plan, but have an oncologist who is setting up chemo and radiation, at the same time as they are meeting with a surgeon to determine if/when surgery will be possible (which would be best case.) PS- if you're not familiar with pancreatic cancer, it's not a good thing, the life expectancy is 2 years at best.

Ah, the fun stuff... the wedding. My brother got married on Saturday. We had a fun weekend with lots of family in town. Scott got to meet his birthday buddy for the first time. He and my cousin Rachael (who lives in Texas) share a birthday. Blaise slept through the wedding. He fell asleep in the car on the way there, we put him down on a pew inside the church and he didn't wake up until the very end of the wedding. Michael enjoyed eating watermelon with my cousins Rachael and Laura... in fact he basically stole Rachael's watermelon, rind and all, and chewed mercilessly on it. He cut a top tooth on Friday and I'm sure watermelon felt great. I got to visit with my cousin Somer, who I haven't seen since Blaise was a newborn. According to Somer, we haven't seen each other since, "I don't know, there were only 2." :)

Sunday morning the boys had a performance at church, for the end of our Sunday school class for the year. They have been doing and ABC Bible Verse class, learning a verse for every letter of the alphabet. Blaise opted out of the performance, but Scott was in rare form. He did interpretive dance the entire time. Never doing what everyone else was doing. Stamping his feet, standing when everyone else was ducking down... it was quite entertaining. I'll be trying to get a copy of a friends video of that one.

One more funny... yesterday Blaise was playing with a toy airplane. It was going down the runway (arm of the couch) and then taking off. After about the 5th take-off, he looks up and says, "Off to Neverland!"

Maybe I'll add pictures later... I'm waiting for them to finish uploading from the memory card.