Catching Up

The baby's room is done!!! Yay! Thanks to Nathan for putting up the bead board & chair rail (after Tyler's room, he swore he'd never do it again). I love how it turned out!
Sledding with Daddy. It was only 6 degrees outside when we went....brrrr, what were we thinking??? Ty will be very sad when he gets too big for his daddy to haul him up the hill.


I found this little Korean outfit when I was organizing Tyler's closet. He was so cute, and wanted to wear it all day. His Halmoni bought it for him to wear at his baby brother's one-year birthday party. Hopefully he still fits into it by then!
My favorite time of day. It's so cute to see them together like this. Makes me smile every time!And finally, one of the many uses of a pregnant belly. Haha! At least someone is comfortable!

Christmas Card

For those of you who didn't receive a card this year...here it is!

Christmas came early this year

Tyler has been wanting Santa to bring him a big boy bed for a while now. He finally grew too impatient to wait for Christmas. When I went into his room yesterday to wake him up from his nap, he was already awake. He had been lying there, for who knows how long, "Waiting for Santa to wake me up & bring me mine big bed." So Nathan and I decided that Santa would have to come twice this year.

I'm sure that part of his excitement was from us unrolling his memory foam mattresses in the spare bedroom. I knew that sometimes they can take a while to fully inflate, so I thought that I would give them a couple weeks before Christmas. He loved the mattresses so much that he made Nate read him his nap-time story on them, and even asked to move them into his room for his nap!
Due to the size of the bunk bed, Santa was unable to fully assemble it last night. So it was in large pieces in the living room along with his cool new train bedding. When Nathan asked Tyler what Santa left for him, his reply was, "Whew...Santa left a BIG MESS!!!" After we finished the job that Santa had left, Tyler played on his new bed for the rest of the morning.

He was so excited to sleep in his new bed tonight, that he opted to skip his bedtime story (that NEVER happens!) and get right in bed. Look at that big grin on his face!

It's Done!

After months of work our basement office is finally done! I did most of the work myself with some help from my Dad and my Grandma Clark. Yep that is right my Grandma is awesome and is great at taping and mudding. Anyway here is my corner

and here is Jessica's. I think this is a much better place for her sewing machine than the utility closet.

The only parts I didn't do were the carpet and the trim. We hired one of our neighbors for that and he did an excellent job so if you live around here and need any type of flooring done let me know and I'll give you his number.

It's a.....

HI!!! I'm Baby Ekstrom #2...

They told my parents that I'm a GIRL!!!

But they were wrong! I'm a BOY!!!

I was just being a little shy...

Today in the car...

While we were driving in the car to my parents' house today, I couldn't help but laugh my head off. So Nate & I were talking about babies, and it came up that he doesn't like to hold newborns. I know! Crazy, right? It's because he's afraid of "breaking them." I guess I can see his point, they are pretty fragile. Anyway, I told Tyler, "Daddy is afraid of tiny babies! Isn't that silly?" To which Ty responded, in a very sympathetic & comforting voice, "Ohhhh, it's okay daddy! There aren't any babies in the car. Don't be afraid!" So funny! But that wasn't the end, he went on to describe what WAS in the car, "See Daddy, there's only toys, and books, and mommy, and Chester" etc. etc. I thought that would be the end of it, but once we arrived at my parents' it continued. "And there's no babies in the bushes to be scared of either Daddy!" I love when Ty takes on the role of parent & tries to comfort us. :)

Little Book Worm

Tyler loves books. He loves to have us read to him. But even when Nathan or I are too busy, Ty loves to look at the pictures and "reread" the book in his head. He has an astonishing memory, and can remember most words to most of his books (anyone who has seen our bookcases knows that that's a lot of books!). He always has several piles of books lying around the house & in the car. You get the idea. I didn't think much about his love for books until I found him the other day with not one of his books, but one of mine....The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.


He was, no lie, sitting there "reading" this book for about 5 minutes before he even looked up. As soon as he noticed me, he got too embarassed & stopped reading. But after I left, I heard him go back to his make-shift reading nook (aka. a stool by the front door), and return to the book. As you can see, he even uses the little shoe cabinet in our entry as a place to store his books!

Tyler also loves to learn. Whenever he finds a book, newspaper, magazine, or even a piece of scrap paper with typing on it, he brings it to us and says "Talk about it." Recently, we've been trying to learn our letters. He likes to write them, with a little help from mom. This picture is a little old (a few months old actually), but I had to include it. After I had helped him with his writing, he did this...


As you can see, he gets a little shy in front of the camera. Many of our pictures have an embarassed smirk or smile, like those that you've seen so far. Maybe he just thinks that his mom is silly for taking pictures of him with a pencil.