Building a what??

You might need to listen carefully to this one to pick up on what's so funny. 

Trendsetter

Maya's definitely got her own sense of style!  What a little nut!

ABCs

Brian worked this weekend, so Maya and I got plenty of time to catch up.  We read a lot of books and sang a few songs. 

Meeting Charlie

We went over to Rochester last weekend to meet baby Charlie.  Maya was very interested in him at first and she was very gentle with him, but she lost interest pretty quickly.  I had fun holding him, though!  He's so tiny and light compared to Maya!  It seems almost impossible that Maya weighed almost two pounds less than this little guy when she was born!  How did we not break her?!?

We had a sunny but cold morning the next day, so we headed out to visit the animals.  Maya is pretty fearless.  She walked right into the barn and even let Brian put her down a couple of times.

Busy!

It's been a busy couple of weeks for us, so I guess it's time for an update.  My spring semester is off to a good start.  I have two classes of great students: Public Policy and Interest Groups.  I only have 27 students, total, but I have a ton of grading.  My own fault, I guess.  A few weeks ago I traveled to Florida for a conference related to my job as director of the First Term Seminar program.  The conference was all about programs designed for first-year students.  It was good for me to get a bit of exposure to what other colleges and universities are doing and I left knowing that we're actually doing a great job at Gustavus. 

My other big news (and big time suck) is that I got the proofs for my book back this week.  It is basically the last draft of the book before they publish it.  I have to proofread it one last time and put together the index for it.  Indexing is something that authors usually pay other people to do for them, but I was too cheap to do that :)  I have about two weeks to finish my work and get it back to the publisher.  It will be a huge relief to be done with it once and for all!

Brian has been keeping busy with Maya, work at Menards, and lots of hobbies.  We had a few days with snow and he built a snow cave outside our apartment.  Unfortunately, it rained all day today and now it's gone. 

Maya had her 18 month appointment on Wednesday.  According to the doctor, she is a healthy girl.  The rest of her body is finally starting to catch up to her head (remember when she was in the 98th percentile?!).  She weighs just under 24 pounds (67th percentile) and is 32 inches tall (56th percentile).  She's just about ready to move into 24 month/2T clothes.  She also has a nearly full set of teeth...though it's nearly impossible to see them unless you hold her upside down and make her giggle.  And you have to wrestle the Nuk away, too :)

Welcome, Charlie!

We've been a little lax with updating the blog the past few weeks.  Sorry about that!

The big news in the Knutson family is the addition of baby Charlie.

He was born on Wednesday, sharing a birthday with his grandma Cher.  It sounds like Tricia, Tony, and Charlie are all doing well, though we haven't gotten over for a visit yet.  The next few weeks are unfortunately scheduled to make it really tough for us to find a day when there isn't something scheduled that we have to be at.  *sigh*  We can't wait to get over there to visit!

While Mama was away

Sure.  It's been a week since Maya and I were at Willow Hill while Kate was in Florida, but I think you'll still enjoy these videos of one of our outings to feed the sheep and go sledding. 

Maya likes Simon and Simon likes Maya.  Enough said.

It was actually too warm to be in the deep, sticky snow.  We made do with the cleared and packed driveway to the barn.  Grandpa Alan helped launch, I took video, and Maya?  Well I think she liked it!

After riding a while, Maya just wanted to pull the sled like I do for her.  She took her gloves off (as usual) and pulled the sled all the way down and back up the driveway.