New family addition

 Things have been busy in the Pfalzer world here in Nashville. I can't believe it's been since 2017 since I last posted, so in a paragraph, here's what we've been up to:

Although we spent Christmas 2017 in Bloomington, IN at YiaYia's house with all the family around, I got our FIRST ever Christmas tree! It was so fun to put ornaments on the tree with Hazel and we found many special ornaments given to us by Mimi and other relatives. Hazel was assigned the non-breakable ornaments.

 We also had a neighbor who had THOUSANDS of christmas lights all over their house. If we had a "good day" at daycare we would go by their house and walk around and point at the lights. I think I just told Hazel we had to leave when I took this picture. She is a sad little elf....

Closer to Christmas, we all headed up to Indiana to meet up with the rest of the family and it was definitely a white Christmas. Thanks again to Annie --all the cousins had matching pajamas.

 Hazel got a cool plasma car from 'Santa' this Christmas and took little cousin Mara along for a ride!

 Back in Nashville after a week in Indiana, Santa apparently, also stopped by our house and left a sweet easel with chalkboard and whiteboard and Hazel spent quite some time on the Picasso you see below. We use this to draw out the letters in our name and to make our grocery lists sometimes.

 This year, Nashville had several days were we got *maybe* an inch or two of snow. That's it. Seriously. And as a result, we had almost a week of no daycare. We survived through a mixture of babysitters and bringing Hazel into the lab with me. Here she is sitting at my desk and looking at centrifuge tubes -- clean ones of course. She colored and entertained herself pretty well actually.

 Hazel has also started taking swim lessons at our local Sportsplex. Overall, she seems pretty pumped to go to swim lessons each Monday evening and the coaches motivate the kids with lollipops after every class. They clearly have done this for many years. Hazel is getting much more comfortable in the water and even floats on her back and stomach with her face in the water. I am hopeful soon that she will be more independent in the water -- which will make me feel a little less nervous about Hazel when she's around water.

 Uncle Warren (and Ellie) stopped by for a quick visit in January?? February?? gosh. I don't remember. Warren's frat had their formal in Nashville this year so before getting all dressed up, they came by our place for a free meal and some Hazel snuggles.

 Probably the biggest life changer for us has been the discovery that we are expanding to a family of four! I'm asked pretty consistently whether I'm excited or not and I think 'excited' is not quite the word for it. I'm anxious?? Terrified?? excited?? all those things. Anyways, this picture demonstrates Hazel and I's matching baby bumps... pretty pathetic in this picture at only 10 weeks but things would soon progress.

 Here's a picture at almost exactly 25 weeks.... Bump is definitely noticeable. All peps at work know or just think I've overdone it with the hot chicken. I feel pretty good now that I'm well into the 2nd trimester. The first was quite different from my pregnancy with Hazel -- this time I was tired, nauseous, and oddly the only thing that helped with the nausea was eating... constantly.
Now, I have more energy and am attempting to get our vegetable garden in good shape before I can't bend over as easily.