Congrats Joe!

Just wanted to let you all know, Joe is done with school, he will be a college graduate soon!! His actual gradaution date is June 4th, but he has no more classes, which makes us all VERY happy. We will be have a graduation celebration the 17th of June, but I will be sending out invitations later in the mail. I just thought you would all like to know and I thought Joe deserved his own post!

Lots of new stuff happening

I finally have some time to update our blog and add all of our pictures to our Yahoo site (see the link on the right). We have had some new and exciting stuff happening in the last few weeks, so I will give you all an update on that.

Alexander is all better! It didn't take him long once he was released from the hospital. While in the hospital, his Oma gave him a baby to help him recover faster and in doing so he learned to say baby. That means he has three words in his vocabulary now. We had a second 1st birthday for him on the 15th so he could enjoy his cake and open a few presents and boy did he enjoy his cake!

That's all that was left of the big piece we gave him. Then on the 16th, we spent Easter at my sister Rachel's with my dad's family. He was so good and even got to go on an Easter egg hunt and enjoy his first taste of real ham.

We have also totally weaned him off of formula and baby food, he now eats what we eat (well within reason, I don't think Daddy's espresso would be a good idea). His favorite things are applesauce, cottage cheese and bananas. He even likes broccoli, cauliflower and asparagus. We are still experimenting and figuring out what he likes and dislikes, but so far he has not been to picky!

Then this last weekend we took a trip to Des Moines for my cousins wedding and AJ got to spend the weekend with his Great Aunt Jackie and Great Uncle Jim. I even bought him a little tux type outfit from Once Upon a Child (for $8 I couldn't pass it up). He has also learned to say the word Go and has developed his own sign language for Fan (he sakes his arm back and forth trying to copy mom when she said a fan goes around and around and made a circle motion with her hand). Now every time he sees a fan he shakes his arm back and forth. No walking yet, but he does move around the furniture really well. The last new thing is he has two more teeth. The two top ones have a new tooth on each side now, so that makes 6! Other then that, not much else is new with us. Here's one last picture of him from the wedding, check out all of our other pictures on Yahoo.

Not the best 1st birthday

Our weekend started out pretty good, AJ's actual birthday was nice and we got the house ready for the party, Grandma Schmitt even came and helped. But then by Friday evening things started to go down hill. He woke up screaming and could not go back to bed. We called the after hours care line and they said to give him a double dose of Tylenol and then head to urgent care in the morning, another ear infection they thought. At urgent care the next morning he was diagnosed with a double ear infection. They sent him home with antibiotics and said he sounded good otherwise. But by the time everyone showed up for the party, he was having a really hard time breathing and had 3 nebulizer treatments in the matter of 4 hours (not good). Talked to the care line and they said to head right in to urgent care. Once at urgent care, we were told he needed to be taken to the ER at Children's via an ambulance (not what you want to hear as a parent)! Once at the ER they diagnosed his problem as pneumonia, not just restricted airway disease (or asthma) like we thought. So we spent Saturday and Sunday night in the hospital! He was such a trooper and did such a good job. It helps that he hag lots of great visitors to keep his spirits up. We headed home today about 11 am and he is doing amazing! You would never even know anything was wrong with him.

He didn't get to enjoy much of his birthday, but he will have a great story to tell later on- I got to ride in an ambulance on my 1st birthday. Thanks to everyone who came and visited us at the hospital, you helped keep our spirits up! And thanks to everyone who made it to the party, we are sorry the man of the hour was not feeling so well.