A few more pictures...

Waiting to head home from the hospital!  It was COLD and WINDY the day we brought Andrew home.  Additionally, the visitors parking lot at the hospital was full, so Tom had to park a mile (literally) away and then take the bus.  Instead of taking my precious three-day-old out into the elements, we waited in the foyer and let Tom do the traveling.  I snapped a few pictures while we were waiting.

Laura went on St Nicholas Day to retrieve her newly stuffed stocking.  Everything with Mommy being gone and Andrew arriving must have had her a little off, because she wouldn't go near St Nick to get her goodies. She did get her stocking back, though.  It was stuffed with the traditional Dec 6 fare - peanuts, oranges, gingerbread and candy!

Laura decided that she didn't want to nap one day.  I heard her in her room playing and talking, but was dozing on the couch with Andrew, so figured I would just let her be and enjoy my brief repose.  When I finally went in to get her, her first word to me was, "mess!", and indeed it was.  She had emptied the little bottle of Andrew's iodine everywhere and taken every last wipe out of the box.  Everything was pink from the iodine, so we had to strip her and the bed and wash everything.  Her hands were pink for days...  The little rascal :)

 The "mess"

First Family Photo

We've found it really difficult to get family photos with all four of us.  If one child is happy, the other isn't.  And if we decide to take pictures when Andrew is happy, by the time we get all set up, his happy window is over.  However, we do have a few, this being the first.  It may not be a perfect picture, but it's real life :)

Sweet Andrew sleeping in his bassinet.  I love sleeping babies.

More Andrew Pictures

Andrew is 5 days old today.  Crazy how much has changed in less than a week.  We came home on Monday and have been enjoying being at home.  Laura is doing pretty well, though you can tell she's struggling a little with all the changes.  She's super sweet (most of the time) with Andrew though and we only need to worry about her smothering or poking him too much.  She loves to watch us change his diaper, swaddle him and feed him.  Then she goes and does the same with her baby.  I'm waiting for her to start nursing :)  She hates it when he cries and sometimes cries with him.  I'm enjoying seeing them interact as well as having my parents here to give me a hand with the two of them!

 She LOVES to kiss Baby Brother.

 What we got when we told her to show her teeth when she smiled.

 Big hand, little hand

 Ba-by An-rew, nose!

 Tom's starting him early on GT and airplanes

Trying for some artistic shots :) 

 Father and Son!

My sweet baby snoozing away!  Did you notice they have the same blankets in Switzerland as you get in the US?

Introducing Andrew Paul Holst

At Katie's first doctor's appointment after finding out she was pregnant, the doctor insisted that Katie's due date was the 1st of December; Katie was indignant, having already determined that the due date was supposed to be the 2nd of December. In our broken French we found it impossible to argue. I, personally, had a difficult time bringing myself to care much about this trivial detail in the life of my first son, and to be honest, over the coming few months came to side with the doctor leaning toward the 1st. But not so with Katie. She made it her mission to prove that lady wrong. And though it took nine long months, she succeeded.

We went to the hospital on the 1st for the official "due date check-up" and you could see the fire in Katie's eyes as they told her she wasn't dilated at all. "I always knew that doctor was wrong," she told me with a gleam of satisfaction. The nurse gave us a "contraction cocktail" all-natural recipe that was supposed to get things moving, so to speak, but Katie was not going to get to try it. 

At 12:50am on December 2nd, the contractions started and at 5:34am, we had baby Andrew Paul laying in Katie's arms, whimpering and looking thoughtfully at his persistent :) Mommy (he looked to me like he was a day or so over-ripe!). 

Anyway, I'll spare you the details for now and let you see what you really care about: the pictures. I'll update a bit later with a more thorough account of Katie's victory.

Katie on the 1st of December--just to prove that she was not, in fact, in labor yet.

Andrew Paul Holst...hand-picked and fresh!

She really does NOT look like she just gave birth. You would think that we staged this picture some days later, but I promise you, I didn't.

Laura meeting Baby Brother!

I think she likes him!

That's what Laura does when you tell her to "smile".

<<---Same baby--->> 

Gramps and grandson

Andrew Paul Holst

Chillin' with Daddy in the sun

That's all for now, folks. Come back later once we've all had a bit more time to catch up on some sleep!

Family Photo

A picture of all four of us!  These are a rare occurrence - it is HARD taking good pictures of/with a toddler.  I'm open to any tips you might have!  This was in front of our rental house in France.  I loved the meandering grapevines (the grapes were good, too) and all the flowers.  Laura enjoyed watching the numerous caterpillars that were chowing down on the rose leaves right outside of our door.

 Laura climbed up in the apple tree with Daddy and actually cooperated for a picture!  This is her face when you ask her to smile (sometimes).

Desaples

Every fall "the cows come home" in a traditional celebration called La Désalpe - literally coming down from the Alps. We made it to two different festivals this year and Laura loved them.  She saw cows, sheep, donkey, goats and horses up close and personal.  At first the loud bells around the necks of the cows scared her, but she got used to it after awhile.  While Laura's favorite part was the animals, I liked shopping in the markets the best.  Such fun, crafty, Swiss stuff to be had... I didn't buy much, but looking is half the fun!

With all the traffic, we were a little late to the first parade of cows in Charmey.  It meant we got a good view, though.  Everyone just pulled over and ran across the street to watch the cows go by.  Either that cow is really big, or our car is really small...

One cow broke ranks and headed straight for us! 

 Laura is really distracted.

 The decorated sheep.

 She's started smiling on command (sometimes).  This is her sporting pig-tails for the first time.  At first I couldn't keep them in and now she asks for them all the time. She needs something done to her hair though, it's finally!! (it only took 2 years) long enough to get in her eyes.

Before winter arrived (it's 32F outside right now), Laura decided to play on the porch in this interesting outfit.

Time for a break! 

 Our second desalpe in Semsales. Laura talked about the donkeys for days.

 An interesting float? in the parade. The man in back was playing music by manually cranking a handle.

 Hard at play...

 I take no responsibility for this outfit.

Happy to be outside at the park behind our house.  This fall has brought the opportunity to search for chestnuts.  We find them and then feed them to the deer who live next to the park. 

Laura wanted to be like mama.  She carried her baby around like this all day - even on our walk to the park.

Apples and More

One thing I love about our house is the apple trees in the back yard.  They produce more apples that we could ever hope to use in a season.  However, we try!  Laura loves going out to "pick" apples.  Though her contribution is usually finding a (worm-free) apple and eating it while Mommy and Daddy do all the work.  She eats a whole apple much better than one all sliced.

My cuties.  Laura really enjoyed wearing her boots.

 Always willing to share.

 Our friend, Matt, flew in from France to visit us for the weekend. It was great to be able to catch up with him, feed him fondue and show him a few of the local sites.  Laura is still talking about "Map" and "train" and "bye, bye" meaning that we took Matt to the train station and said goodbye to him there.  She loved having a visitor.

Know what it is??  Play-doh!  It was super easy to make and is a wonderful toy.  I was so excited to have it turn out successfully.  Now I just have to resign myself to the colors getting mixed together...so hard...