Is Anyone Still Reading This Blog?

I don't even remember when I last updated the blog - though I could just look at the date on the last post I suppose. At any rate, it's been a while. Ezri is now a whopping 10 months old. It's hard to believe but she will be hitting her 365-day-milestone in less than 2 months...crazy. She has a full-blown personality now and is showing definite signs of having inherited her parents' strong sense of independence. She crawls like a mad woman and pulls up on everything. While she does enjoy chewing on books at this point, she is showing far more interest in music - playing instruments, making beats, and singing along with her perpetually out-of-tune parents. We can also happily report that Ezri is a budding foodie - preferring humus, satueed portabellas and fresh avocados to the jars of puree we were sending to day care. So overall, Basically, Ezri is amazing and probably the best baby to have ever crawled the earth...just so you know. There are those screaming fits when she doesn't get her way and the on-going struggle to get her to sleep/wake up at decent hours, but still...best baby ever.

Speaking of day care, we have officially sprung Ezri from the daily grind of Infant Room B. It was sad to say good-bye to her fabulous teachers and her pint-sized friends - we'll miss Marco most of all - but it was time. Over the 7-odd months that I returned to work, it became glaringly apparent that having both of us working outside the home just wasn't...well...working. On a good day I was arriving 15 minutes late and on the bad days even the kids with the tardy slips were shaking their heads at me in dismay. Poor Ezri spent the first months of her life being trained to believe that waking up means a strange ritual of running through hallways and shouting obsenities while grooming onself.

So now, we are enjoying the summer and me being a home full-time and working part-time. I've joined the family business and Ezri and I are travelling to Granmda and Pop-Pop's once a week so that I can work, and she can be doted on. So far it's a fabulous arrangement. Mr. Rutgerian still has his Depot duties but without having to wash bottles and fold diapers at 5am anymore, that's a cakewalk. When we're not on the road, we are all enjoying the freedom of being unscheduled and uncommitted. Strangely, it's made us more apt to get up and go do things. I suppose that's not entirely strange, as both Mr. Rutgerian and myself have always maintained a somewhat teenaged attitude of "Well I'm not going to do it just because you told me to." Setting our own pace has given us the illusion of being in control which - let's face it - we both enjoy. Oh, what will Miss Ezri be like as an adolescent...

Here are some recent photos. We'll also be adding more to the online album so be sure to click the photo link on the right.