ganzhorn

I added 2 months of photos including birthdays, Easter with the Smith’s and also a gallery of Zack loosing his first tooth!

I was brushing his teeth in the bath tub and he ended up spitting it out in a cup without even knowing it :). Be sure to check out the video. I bought a small solid state 720p video camera and have been getting much more use out of it than I ever did from tapes. Beware though the video is ~34M.

Ziggy has not been the most athletic of our kids. But just this week when I set him down he wants to be on his feet. Not sitting down. This morning when I let go he stood there for a second… and slowly took his first step (right foot forward :)).

After having three kids, each of them different, how am I surprised that the fourth one comes out different still?
Zack is very auditory, memorizing books, dinosaur names, whatever he is into. And his energy level is off the chart. His fine motor skills were not very good when he was a toddler but I think the NintendoDS fixed that. And now he is coming dangerously close to beating me at video games!
Zoey is very visual, observant and great with the fine motor skills. Where Zack will only talk about Bionicles or whatever toy he is currently collecting Zoey will have a full conversation about whatever is on your mind. She also has a amazing memory. This weekend I played memory match with her using 36 pairs (72 cards!). I was barely her match.
Zayda is our copycat. She wants to do everything she sees, and she sees too much :). She is the only one of my children that will eat anything spicy. She doesn’t like it, but she eats it anyway because I eat it.
Ziggy is an odd mix of the three. He has really good fine motor skills. He is waving and prefers to feed himself. But he is not as strong with the large motor skills. He is just now able to get himself into a sitting position and only last week he pulled up on a table for the first time. His attitude is closer to Zayda’s: wild. He loves to climb through our pop-up tunnel and likes to terrorize Zayda by chasing her in his walker (those wheels hurt!).
As I have watched my children grow I subconsciously tried to identify patterns and reasons for their traits. I tried to attribute them to their environment. That Zack is a first child or that Zoey is a girl. But each child breaks the previous patterns. Each child brings something with them, it is very cool :).

So tonight I was talking to Zack about Christmas and said something about Santa Clause and Zack said, “anyway I already know Santa isn’t real.  It’s Jesus who brings all those presents.  Besides how could Santa get to every ones house all in one night.”  It was all I could do not to laugh or smile….if only the innocence would last.

Tomorrow is a very odd day for me. My oldest son Zack has his first day of school. I have fleeting memories of my first school. A big building with linoleum tile floors, cinder block walls and lots of challenges :). I also have a vague memory of what might be my first trip to school. Driving up in the parking lot behind Moore school with the oak trees towering above and the concrete walkway that led to the back of the institutional looking building.
So far Zack seems to be taking it in stride. Today he showed his first sign of worry. Carrie asked him if he was excited about school tomorrow. He responded “I am a little scared.”. When asked why he was scared his answer was that he was afraid he would not be able to buckle himself on the school bus :). We assured him that school buses did not have seat belts. Odd isn’t it? Zack called us on that too

At 3:12pm on March 23rd of 2008 we welcomed the birth of Ziggy Douglas Ganzhorn.

We loved him immediately

7lb 1.5oz and 19″

I have posted two galleries of our new son:

I think tomorrow may be the last day that Lynn’s group works on our third floor. You really cannot call it an attic anymore.

Overall I am very happy with how it turned out. The finish could be better, but the design work is excellent! (thanks Lynn!)

I am excited about this coming weekend. We will probably have the kids moved in by then. This may be the first time in my life I have been looking forward to moving furniture.

Here are some pictures of the rooms (2 bedrooms and 1 bath) before we muck it all up with our stuff

It has been quite a while since I posted. The Christmas season is intense. Add to it a construction project in your house and it might just be too much.

We celebrated it 3 times this year. Once with the Duggers, once at home and once with the Smiths. The kids are convinced that another Christmas is just around the corner :).

We bought a wii for the kids this year. So far I am sure I have logged the most hours. I played boxing for ~3 hours for each of the first 3 nights we had it. And yes I was sore!

The attic is also about done. In fact I really need to start calling it the third floor. We passed the final inspection today. The only thing keeping us from moving the kids upstairs is the HVAC. It isn’t producing any heat (mad). But the project in all has turned out really good. I will be posting some pictures of it in the coming days.

I finally got around to processing pictures. The last time I sat down to do this was Dec 18! So go check-em out.

I just processed a month full of pictures, go check-em out!

Some of my favorites:

Check-out the yellow sheen!

Yup… that is a T-bone: