More Kailey Pictures!!

Here are some more pictures of our adorable little girl. It is hard for me to believe she has been here for a week and a half. It seems like so much longer! She is just the cutest and best little baby and we are having so much fun holding her and dressing her up in her adorable little outfits!!


This is a sling that my friend gave me that is just wonderful. Kailey loves being in it and it is just so comfortable!

Can you find Kailey??

Kailey with Ethan

Yes, we've decided on Kailey Ann Nelson.  Heather and I had strongly considered that name for months, but we really struggled with the spelling.  There are about nine different spellings and we just chose the one we like the best.

Heather is doing very well and our little girl is very hungry.  She actually looks a lot like Ethan did when he was born, but she acts a little different.  Notably, she sticks her tongue out ALL THE TIME.  

Even before she was born we could see her on the ultrasound sticking her tongue out at us.Maybe this is normal, but Ethan is tongue-tied, so he's never stuck his tongue out at us including his first few hours of life.  The other different activity is that this baby is much more mellow and subdued than Ethan was.  She's far quieter and much more content to just lie there and look at you rather than needing to do something.  Our fingers are crossed that she'll stay that way for at least a little while.

I'd like to say that these pictures and videos of Ethan with Kailey are from when they first met, but unfortunately I forgot the camera the first time I brought Ethan in.  I'll let Heather gush on in a different posting about how adorable Ethan was when he came in, but it was VERY cute. 

Ethan holding Kailey:

Ethan giving Kailey a kiss:

A third of Ethan with Kailey:

Ethan just saying "Hi":

It's A Girl!!

After a day of thinking she was coming and a few hours of knowing she was coming, she's finally here!  Both Heather and Baby are doing great.  Here's a few of our first photos (and a video).

New videos

We've posted a link to some new videos of Ethan that Grandpa Tolman made while he was with us a little over a week ago (found under Ethan videos). 

Boston

Well, last weekend we took our last little vacation until the baby comes. We ended up going to Boston for the weekend and ended up having a blast. One reason we went is that Brooke has always said that Boston was her favorite place to visit, but she hasn't been there since she was three. So we took her back, to see if she actually remembered anything and if she still liked it as much. Saturday, Eric took us on a driving tour of Cambridge, MA and Harvard's campus. He spent a summer at Harvard taking classes, so he is very familiar with the campus and area. Next we went on a tour of the U.S.S. Constitution, otherwise known as "Old Ironsides."

This is the oldest commissioned boat still afloat in the world and was launched in 1797. Anyways, the crew that takes you on tours is all active duty Navy sailors. The tour we went on was really interesting and then they had a fun museum where you learned all about the ship and what life on a ship was like.

After visiting "old ironsides" we went to downtown Boston and walked part of the freedom trail. Kind of funny, as we were walking along we kept seeing so many gay and transsexual people. I even said to Eric, "I don't remember this many gays in Boston." Well a couple of minutes later we saw a huge arch of rainbow balloons. They were having this HUGE gay, lesbian, transsexual festival, needless to say we kept away from it! Next we we went to Faneuil Hall, which is a big outdoor marketplace with restaurants, shopping and tons of street performers. We ended up watching these black guys break dance for a while and had so much fun. They were really good.

Sunday we ended up going to the Boston's Children's Museum and had an absolute blast. They had so many fun things to do there, in fact I think Eric had more fun than Ethan. There were a couple of rooms that we couldn't get Ethan out of. One of them was a room where you could make huge bubbles, put yourself in a bubble, etc. Ethan loves blowing bubbles, so he thought it was a blast. They also have the cutest little smocks for the kids to put on so they don't get wet! Anyways, we would have taken more pictures, but our camera ended up dying. We just had such a nice little trip and were really glad that we got the chance to get away one more time!

Brooklyn

So, Monday, while Eric was at his Marine Corp board, Brooke, Ethan and I entertained ourselves. We ended up going to Prospect Park in Brooklyn which had a little zoo. When I say little zoo, I mean little. We were surprised at how small the zoo was, but we still had fun.

They had a little nature walk where you could see animals up close. Here are Brooke and Ethan in front of the kangaroos--I couldn't believe how close we were. The only thing separating us from them was a rope, which Ethan tried to run under!

Another fun exhibit was the prairie dogs. They had these tunnels you could climb up in and then peek out at the prairie dogs. That is Ethan and Brooke in one of the tunnels with all the prairie dogs around them.

Here are Ethan and Brooke pretending to be turtles.

I love NYC!!!

This weekend we gave Brooke her first taste of NYC. It ended up that Eric had to be in Brooklyn on Monday for a marine corp board, so we decided to go down early Sunday morning and stayed over with him until Monday. So Sunday, we took her to see as many things as we could in one day.

This is us at Rockefeller Center. I watch the "Today" show occasionally in the morning and was so excited to finally see where it is taped.

This is a bunch of fountains at Rockefeller Center that Ethan loved playing around--kids are so easily amused!

So, it started raining when we got down to the end of the island, but in the back that little statue is the Statue of Liberty. In the picture it looks so small, but it was actually closer than it looks. We also could see Ellis Island from where we were standing.

These are some fun statues in Battery Park from where we looked at the statue of liberty. Brooke always does such great poses. We had a hard time tearing her away from here.

Here is Eric and I in Times Square--notice the huge belly, I don't know how this little girl is going to grow any bigger.

Here is Ethan doing what he does best--EATING!! Not even the rain could deter him--we don't know how we are going to be able afford to keep feeding him!!

So, last week we went to Stamford Museum and Nature Center. We went because they had this really cool lego exhibit and I am sorry we don't have any pictures of it. Anyways, this guy had built all of these sculptures out of legos. For example, he had a life-size fossil replica of a tyrannosaurus rex made out of legos, a self portrait of himself, a bust of a man opening his chest with legos coming out, etc. It was really cool. After seeing the exhibit we walked around the park and found this really cool playground and then went to the petting farm. So, here are a bunch of pictures from our fun time.

This weekend we went to the Stamford Museum and Nature Center. I will post our pictures later, but here are a couple of videos we took (my dad is going through withdrawal and needs us to show him more videos of Ethan). These first two videos are of Ethan feeding the sheep. He could have stayed all day and fed the sheep, he just loved it. I was afraid he was going to get his fingers bit off, but the sheep were pretty good.


This Ethan chasing the ducks and the part I really like is that if you listen closely at the end he says, "quack, quack."

This is Ethan going down the slide, which he absolutely loved.