Smiley boy!

Luke has become very smiley, and a much better sleeper. He's only getting up to eat once a night now, instead of 3-4 times. We're all thankful for the sleep. When he sleeps we've found the Kidappotamus swaddling blanket to be the easiest and most secure way to swaddle him. Also, letting him sleep in his swing helps lull and keep him to sleep most reliably.

He's been going with us to church for the last three weeks, without incident. It's been nice to reconnect with our church family. He just sleeps through the service in a sling on Greg's chest.

He has been able to find his hands for sucking on, and he has a lot better control over his arms and hands. He's been grabbing things on his bouncy seat -- sometimes with both arms at once! During tummy time, he can really lift his head and hold it up.

Here are some more recent pictures.

Two months old

Luke is two months old today, and he passed two milestones today. First, he seemed to repeat a sound that Greg made (we think). Second, he flipped himself from stomach to back -- twice! When he landed on his back, he was pretty surprised, and cried. But we were pretty happy.

Luke has been making a lot of different new sounds lately -- coos and grunts and other types. He's been batting at things, reaching for toys above his chair. He's really looking at lots of stuff. The most fun thing is his smile. He smiles a lot now, especially in the mornings. His smile is *great*. :)

Here's a picture (taken by Ivy):

It's summer (almost), so we've been able to spend some more quality time with Luke during the day. If you haven't yet met our boy, you should! He's growing up fast.

Luke meets more family

Luke met some of his great grandparents and his great aunt this weekend. But first, we had to wake him up, photograph his feet, and give him his first real bath.

Welcome, Luke Ansel

Ivy gave birth on Thursday March 4th, 2010 to Luke Ansel, who was due today (March 14th). He is doing really well, and we hope to post some pictures here periodically. Thanks to Robbie Rogers, who took some of these pictures!

Life moves fast!

Been a while... need to update the blog!

Since the last post, we completed our trip to Denmark. It was a very fruitful trip for Ivy's research, though it was a difficult trip from other perspectives. Living in a small hotel room for a month was not easy.

Ivy finished her degree while we were away. Many thanks are due to her support team, including Greg's dad who hounded UCSD gatekeepers about getting papers signed while Ivy was absent.

When we returned to Texas, Ivy was rewarded with a cat, named Zoe. Here's a picture of Zoe when we got her:



And here's a recent picture of Zoe:



Ivy's parents now live in Waco, about 15 minutes from us, and it's great having them here!

We had a good fall semester of teaching and research. Several trips thrown in for work -- Chicago, Vancouver, and then Thanksgiving was in San Diego with Greg's family. Christmas/New Year's was at home. We have about 10 days before the spring semester starts again. We've been cleaning house and organizing, which has been awesome (says Greg).

We also recently (about a month ago) got another cat -- for Zoe to play with. His name is Toby, and he is very sweet. Here's a picture of the two together:



Ciao for now!

Belgium!

We've been travelling quite a bit, hence the delay of 10 days between posts. Let's recap quickly on our trip to Belgium, shall we? We'll talk about other travels in subsequent posts.

Last weekend (June 8-11), we flew from Copenhagen to Brussels (about a 90 minute flight), and then took a quick train to Leuven, the city where we spent the 2003-04 academic year. This was a trip to see the friends we made that year -- colleagues, church friends, etc. We had a wonderful time. On Friday, we spent a few hours in Brussels, eating moules frites (mussels and French fries), and wandering into churches and bookstores.



Then we took a train to Leuven (only 20km away), where we wandered around some more seeing the sights and carrying our bags (getting heavy from all the walking).



Around 6:30 PM we went to the house where we spent our year 3 years ago. Bea (the woman who owns it) let us stay with her for the weekend, which we enjoyed very much. That evening we went to dinner with some of Greg's colleagues from the university at De Wiering, a ribs place. It was great to re-connect with them and see how they're doing, and interesting to hear their perspectives on local things like politics and relations with Holland.







On Saturday, first we did some laundry at Bea's, which was sorely needed at this point. We went to the Saturday outdoor market in Leuven, which is always a fun time. Lots of fresh and local food, flowers, and knick-knacks. It was a bit rainy, but the market was still going strong.



We got breakfast at our favorite place -- Het Dagelijks Brood (The Daily Bread).



We spent some time wandering and relaxing, and then had dinner in the city center. We were planning to meet with some of our friends from our Dutch language class, but due to lack of email and cell phones we weren't able to meet up with them.

Sunday morning we went to church at ICEL, the International Church of Evangelicals in Leuven. This was the church we attended while we were in Leuven for the year. It was wonderful to see everyone, to hear of new marriages and children. For some reason people kept introducing us to people we didn't know, and we spent a lot of time talking to those people -- which was very nice, but I'm not sure we'll see them again. We had lunch with Lies, Jean, and Ida, a family who hosted a Bible study at their house which we used to attend. It was very nice to talk with them and catch up on what everyone has been doing.



On Sunday evening we caught up with Bea again and talked with her for a while. We really enjoyed seeing the renovations of her house, and hearing about how she and her family have been doing. Then on Monday morning, we packed up and left for the airport and flew back to Denmark.

It was such a great weekend. It was fun to see everyone we knew, to hear and practice the Dutch language again (which we can sort of understand, as opposed to Danish, which we can't), and to re-trace our old paths through the city.

The only thing that was slightly negative was that the airline never checked my (Greg's) identification when boarding the flight to Brussels. I tried to show them, but they just waved me on.

More on Stockholm

Stockholm has really been the highlight of our trip so far. The weather was very sunny with a cool breeze. Stockholm is built on a bunch of islands, so there are bridges, canals and boats everywhere. When the sun comes out, the whole city sparkles.



It has been 6 years (!) since I did my field research in Stockholm, but all the places I liked to visit in 2001 are still where I remembered them being. My favorite places in Stockholm are the marketplace at Östermalmstorg, the Vasa museum, and the open-air museum (Skansen).

The market at Östermalmstorg has all kinds of food. The fish counters were amazingly well stocked with all kinds of marinated herring, shrimp, octopus, huge salmon and other fish I couldn't identify. The cheese counters are pretty impressive, too. I love all the colors and smells at the market.
















As Greg described earlier, the Vasa museum presents a warship that sank in 1620. There were too many canons on the boat and not enough ballast in the bottom, so it tipped over and sank before it even got out of Stockholm's harbor. So much for projecting power in Europe. The museum is built around the warship, so it's possible to look at it from many different vantage points. My favorite part of the museum is not actually the warship, but the parts that describe life in 1620s Sweden. This was shortly after Sweden became a Protestant country and during the time when Sweden dominated Finland and was competing with Denmark for dominance in Northern Europe.




Skansen claims to be the first ever open-air museum. It's a big nature park dotted with old houses from around Sweden. During regular business hours, the houses are opened and staffed with historians reenacting life in the place and time that the house would have been used. When Greg and I visited we saw a woman knitting a sweater based on a pattern from the 1920s. It was very colorful and thick with a complicated pattern.

Skansen also has a zoo with nordic animals -- my favorite are the reindeer, but they also have bears, wolves, otters, and seals. When I went there in 2001 it was the day of summer solstice and they had people in traditional costumes dancing around the maypole.




Skansen is on a hill, so it has great views of the Stockholm skyline.


Here's a reindeer.


This specimen is double-salt licorice. It's a very popular kind of candy in Sweden. Most Americans have difficulty eating it because the taste is very strong. Imagine being bludgeoned in the head with a brick of salt and black licorice sticks. In our experience, it induced nausea that lasted for hours. I guess we shouldn't have eaten it on a high-speed train.



I thought this advertisement was interesting. Who names their blue jeans company after acne? Did they mean acme? Does acne mean something else in Swedish? The mystery continues.