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Well, it’s been a couple of weeks now, but Miles has started eating some solid food. So far he’s only had rice and oat cereal, and he’s still not too sure about either one. I’m only giving it to him about every other day because I’m not really sure if he’s ready for it. He seems really interested in what we eat, but when it’s his turn, he’s not really sure what to do. One day he’ll eat really well and the next day he acts like he’s never eaten before. So I’m taking it slow with him, giving him only a few bites and stopping if he’s not into it.

Miles eating cereal for the first time

Two weekends ago we headed down to the ski jumps. It was cold, cold, cold outside, so Miles was really bundled up. He was awake for maybe an hour and then fell asleep and slept the rest of the time we were there, all toasty warm in his sled. Greg got some pretty cool pictures, including one of my dad and Miles with Steve Mariucci.

Grandpa Russ & Miles with Steve Mariucci

Last Friday Miles finally had his shots, and I was worried ahead of time because of how upset he was the last time. This time was totally different. He only cried during the actual shots and was totally fine afterward. He slept most of the afternoon and was pretty sleepy all weekend, and also ran a mild fever on Sunday and Monday, but he seems to be fully recovered now.

Greg’s brother Steve came up on Thursday, though I think Greg will write about all of the stuff they did while Miles and I stayed home.

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Since Steve will be deployed in a few months, he decided to come up north for a few days to hang out and do some ice fishing. We headed out on Friday morning to Lake Independence in Big Bay (30 minutes northwest of Marquette) and did pretty well. The fish were biting pretty good in the morning and then picked up again later in the afternoon. We caught a total of 4 walleye and 2 northern pike and brought home 3 of the walleye for dinner. On Saturday, we headed to Negaunee for our little cousins’ (Jacob & Caleb) hockey game. Watching 6 & 8 year olds play hockey is quite entertaining. The older one, Jacob, ended up with 2 goals during the game and their team also won! Later that evening we headed over to their house to check out their homemade luge run through the woods. Pretty dang impressive and fast! On Sunday, we went ice fishing at Sporley Lake, which is about 10 minutes from our house. The weather was great and we caught 3 splake (lake trout/brooke trout cross) but none were over 15″ to bring home. In the afternoon we went down to the Skandia Township pavilion to play hockey with Jacob and his dad, Ken. After 2 hours of skating and playing 2-on-2 hockey, we were whipped. Steve headed back downstate yesterday but we’re hoping to make one more trip down below before he is shipped out. Miles also enjoyed Steve’s company and was even giggling for him.

Leah & Miles

Steve displaying the pre-cooked walleye dinner

Leah making Miles laugh last night

To start, we’re going to break our silence and announce that we are expecting a baby at the end of September! We’re extremely excited and everything seems to be going well. Leah is 4 months along and starting to show signs of a bump. To help comfort our anxiety, we bought a doppler to listen to the baby’s heartbeat. It’s pretty cool to hear his/her heartbeat in the 140 bpm range. Leah also has started to feel some movement and yesterday the baby gave a good kick at the doppler to make it move in her hand. We’ll keep you updated and thanks to everyone for their prayers.

Leah had weekly ultrasounds from 6 to 13 weeks so we could make sure that everything was going well.  Here’s an image from the 11 week ultrasound.  It was from an abdominal scan, so it isn’t very detailed.  (Unfortunately the printer was broken at our 13-week appointment so we didn’t get a picture then.)  If you’re having a hard time seeing the baby, it’s on its side.  You can see the arms and the top part of the torso.  We go back in a few weeks for the 20-week ultrasound, so we should have much better pics from that appointment.

This is probably boring to everyone but us, but we thought we’d add it anyway. We’re able to connect our Doppler to the computer and record the baby’s heartbeat, so of course that’s what we did right away. Here’s the baby’s heartbeat from April 1.

On Friday, Greg had the day off and went fishing with Ken to catch steelhead. He was sworn to secrecy about the places they visited and they both managed to catch a fish. Then on Saturday, we headed down to Nahma to celebrate Easter. When we arrived, Lily and Chloe were there to visit. They are both growing really fast and were excited to hear Leah is pregnant. Then on Sunday was the big Easter dinner with some of Leah’s family. It was nice to see everyone.

For the most part, it looks like spring is finally on it’s way in. The big April snowstorm still hasn’t come but there’s still time. Most of the snow in our yard is gone except a few patches in the background. We saw our first rabbit last week in the backyard and yesterday Leah saw the first chipmunk of the year.

MORE PHOTOS TO COME!

I’ve made no secret of the fact that I hate the cold. So I’m really, really enjoying this brief warm up we’re having right now. Today it got up to 61° at our house (according to our weather station), which is so awesome. During my lunch today, I drove out to the park and sat in my car and read for awhile and it was great. I had the windows open a bit and it actually got hot inside after a little bit. Just wonderful.

The only thing I don’t like about this time of the year is the dark, dirty mess everywhere from the melting snow. With the bare trees, it’s just ugly. Hopefully this time next month we’ll be officially done with winter and trees will be budding. I can’t wait. I know we’ll probably get at least a couple more snowstorms before then and the temperature will be dropping again, but I just keep telling myself it’s only one more month. I can deal with that. At least it’s not January! I hate January warm ups because you know there’s still so much winter left.

Last weekend we went fishing and I was actually warm in the 50° heat, though I couldn’t feel my toes by the end of the day, of course. Even in the middle of summer, my feet will be cold. Frustrating. Anyway, I actually outfished Greg in quantity, but definitely not quality. The total length of my two fish was probably 6 or 7 inches. My first perch was only as long as my index finger and the second wasn’t much bigger. Greg was fishing with minnows that were way bigger than those little guys. I thought it was the funniest thing ever. I’d been fishing with my usual sized hooks and getting nibbles but nothing was taking the hook. I finally switched it up to this tiny little hook and caught the little guy right away. So apparently my hooks didn’t fit in its mouth. Greg caught a pretty good-sized northern. He went out again on Sunday while I stayed home doing laundry (fun, fun!) and he actually got a slight sunburn. He did catch a few walleye, though.

A couple weeks ago we went to watch my cousin Iris play in a basketball tournament here in Marquette. She plays on a 7th grade team from Menominee which won both of the games we went to. Her third game was 8:30 on the Sunday morning after the time change and I wasn’t about to get up that early to go watch, so I’m not sure if they won that one or not.

We also watched Greg’s little cousin Caleb play in his hockey team’s exhibition game. He’s only 5 and plays on a skills team with 4- and 5-year-olds. There were some tiny little guys on that team, let me tell you. Their jerseys looked like dresses and their skates were just so, so small. This one little guy would skate by the boards after every score and high-five, whether it was his team that scored or not. Greg and I were standing by the team taking pictures, so we were high-fiving him, too. It was cute.

It’s hard to believe we’re already into March even though it doesn’t feel like March weather. The last few mornings have been extremely cold. Parts of the eastern U.P. were -27 this morning! It looks like the weather is supposed to be a few degrees above freezing for the next few days which will feel extremely warm. It has been a cold winter and Lake Superior is pretty much frozen over except for a few open water areas. Since the last posting, we’ve had a couple blizzards and a lot more snow. Greg’s had a couple white knuckle drives to work but he’s managed to stay on the road.

Leah is definitely ready for spring. Greg, however, psycho that he is, wants to get some more ice fishing in (he’s predicting he’ll be out until mid-April) before things are finally thawed for good. It’s hard to believe that Daylight Saving Time is here already. It’s going to be really hard to get up on Monday, even harder than usual (Leah’s not exactly a morning person).

Last weekend we watched one of Jacob’s (Greg’s little cousin) last hockey games for the season. It’s very entertaining watching seven-year-olds play hockey. Then on Saturday night, we went to an NMU hockey game versus Lake Superior State Univ. NMU won the game and will start their playoff run this weekend against MSU. It was especially funny to go from watching the little guys who seem to do more by accident than design to seeing the skill of the older guys. What a contrast. On Sunday, it was pretty cold so only Greg went ice fishing while Leah did the laundry (fun, fun!). He caught one largemouth bass and a splake (cross between lake trout and brook trout) that measured 14.5″.

An update on the prospective house: we’ve been going back and forth on offers and counter-offers. We’ve reached our max and we’re just waiting for a response. We’ll just have to wait and see where it goes…

14.5″ splake caught by Greg

Greg’s little cousin Jacob (#15)

Last weekend was a quiet one for us at home. On Friday night we went to Erin and Ken’s house to visit and give Caleb his belated birthday gift. He turned five back in late December. On Saturday the weather was really nice being in the 20s with no wind, a real rarity. We decided to try a new lake east of Gwinn called Bass Lake. There were quite a few other people out there so we were hoping it was going to be good. In the end, Leah out-fished me with one perch. I missed three bigger fish with one of them taking drag before getting off the hook. We also had another on a tip-up but it manage to break the line on the initial set. It was really cool to see the full moon (largest and brightest of ’09) coming up over the horizon.

On Sunday, the weather was again really nice. We got some stuff done around the house and did some shopping complete with a trip to Gander Mountain. Leah picked out a few new lures so we’ll have to give those a try this weekend. Have a good week.