The life and times of a little hippie in the Bersagel-Briese clan.
These are absolutely fascinating and have raised all sorts of questions discussions as new parents. Watching this stuff makes me excited, scared and intrigued by what the future holds for Ezra….and makes me ask “what can we do to get him ready for it all?” I can tell you for certain, that I am looking forward to the communication technology that will make our nursing home life better. 🙂
Version 3.0 was created in 2008.
Version 4.0 was created last month.
Mop Up – The stage of eating (usually dinner) where Ezra is done eating his main course yet is still hungry. At this point, we search the fridge for leftovers from previous meals, resulting in a mixed bag of breakfast and lunch for dinner.
During the aforementioned mop-up stage of dinner last night, Ezra decided to try to feed himself. He was enjoying some leftover yogurt from an earlier meal, and started to reach the fork into the yogurt container and then bring the fork to his mouth. Most of the yogurt seemingly didn’t make it into his mouth, but the effort, control and decision making were all there.
During our last few hours in the city, we had the opportunity to eat at an amazing little cafe in St. Paul and play in a park in Minneapolis. The cafe is named Trotter’s Cafe and is a delicious spot in a cool neighborhood in the city….highly recommended if you are in the area. The park is Minnehaha Park and is famous for it’s waterfalls and house that mark the start of the current city of Minneapolis. Only catch is that there isn’t any water going over the falls…sort of like someone turned it off. The rumor is that the area is in a drought – which when you come from Colorado and see everything so green, is really hard to believe….but whatever. We enjoyed walking around and playing on the swings before grabbing a little ice cream snack on the way to the airport.
There is a video attached to this posting where you can watch Ezra in is never ending attempts at perfecting walking – and new this past week has been his ability to stand back up on his own.
Special Israel Edition
Today was a perfect vacation day….the beach this morning for a swim with the jellyfish (stings all around), a quite lunch, a visit with a good friend, a nice afternoon nap, and an enjoyable evening for drinks at the seashore (Ahna and Oren with Yuval and Sivan…we left Ezra with Dave, Mary Jo, and Rena).
Now to some Ezra news – afterall this is the purpose of this blog, right? About two weeks ago he started taking a step or two on his own; but in the last two days, he has really taken off on the adventure of walking. He is moving more and more confidently on his own, and his leaving things (like the table) to go somewhere that he wants to. I think that his range is approaching about 10 feet, so still not leaving the room, but that ain’t far away. It’s been really fun to be able to share this new achievement with Dave, Mary Jo, and the family in Israel. It’s really cool to see the newfound ability change and develop daily hourly, I suppose that it’s only a matter of time now.
The first is a picture from this morning’s nap, then a video of the walking.
Here is a little slideshow of Ezra’s year…it is in two parts because You Tube won’t let me upload something that is more than 10 minutes. The video is 16 minutes total. Enjoy!
So the last couple of weeks of practice has made nearly perfect….Ezra loves the stairs, and when he is motivated to get to something (and not distracted by the cat as in the first part of the video) he motors. The level of the house that he ends up on isn’t exactly child-proof, so if we aren’t careful, Ezra will end up playing with the cat’s water, or finding something worth grabbing off of the dining room table bench.
A sort of random act occured today when a friend (Joe) and I went to Broomfield (notice the irony in the name) and watched the 2010 US Olympic Curling Trials. The event also served as the US National Championships. We went for the morning and noon sessions, which were the end of the men’s round robin and the start of the women’s playoff – the finals are over the weekend.Â
Our obsession with curling began two games ago, and really got kicking during the Turino games in Italy. We heard that this event was coming to town about a year ago, and marked it on the calendar. It was fun to go and watch along with the 100 or so other fans…and to be able to get close and converse with the curlers, as well as to take it as a photography opportunity that doesn’t come around too often.Â
Anyhow, here are some pictures from today….along with a video if you have no idea what curling is (it’s about 30 seconds long, and I took it today).Â
When I was about to post this video, I got to thinking about something…..on January 16 we posted a video of Ezra starting to perfect the army crawl. That was 11 days ago. Check the new video out:
Yea, it seems to be becoming more and more perfected over just the past couple of days. Once again, generally it’s the cat that is inspiring some of the these moves, and just about every time that we set him down to play – and the cat is within sight – he drops and army crawls over to her (ps: I have found them several times locked together via her claws….but just on his clothing. I suppose it’s good that it’s winter and he is wearing long sleeves). We have also started to notice that in conjunction with learning how to use his hands for the army crawl, he is starting to apply the same techniques to attempting to crawl on his knees. I suppose that it won’t be long how.
Here are a couple short videos of Ezra over the Christmas vacation. There will be another post about the whole ‘crawling’ thing…..
Ezra hanging out with Aunt Kari
Cousin Nora reads to Ezra
Ezra is beginning to learn to crawl
The Life of a Little Hippie 