North to the Future!

The citizens of Ezra Nation have spoken: This blog laziness must end! We here at HQ (and especially me, the dad), apologize for the lengthy absence. True, we found ourselves with some unaccustomed free time after the wedding, but we found it swiftly swallowed up by work duties, I'm afraid. At any rate, we now end the radio silence with this long-overdue dispatch.

Ezra has been a busy boy ... and unfortunately, his gastro-intestinal system has been ramping up its activity as well. Ez has been filling his diapers with extra enthusiasm for the last couple of weeks. I'll skip the blow-by-blow, but let's just say it's been a challenge to keep up. The doc says not to worry, and it seems to be tapering off at last. His health otherwise has been robust.

He's also picked up a few new hobbies. Chief among them: dismantling stuff. His favorite game these days is taking things out of containers and casually tossing them over his shoulder. This applies to his toy box, our recycling bin, finger food and any stack of mail or magazines within reach. We've made some attempts at showing him the joy of putting things back in containers, but this has not caught on. The child is like a little entropy machine. I suspect his paternal grandparents have some idea of where he gets it from.

Another fun game is a combination of hide-and-seek and peek-a-boo ... or as we call it, Hide-and-Peek. We'll be sitting in a room, and he'll crawl out the door, and hang a right down the hall. From the room, we'll call out: "Wheeeere's Ezra?" At which point he'll turn around and peek his head back through the door. "Theeeeeeere he is!" And he rewards us with one of his patented megawatt grins. It's so freakin' adorable. Then a few days ago he cooked up a variation, detailed in the video below (please excuse the annoying parental soundtrack). Indeed, that is actually Ezra opening and closing the door. Amazing: it's a new phase for us when the games we play are actually recognizable games, as opposed to what seems like haphazard, random flailing and gesticulating.

Meanwhile, Ash has taken it into her head that we need to share Ezra's undisputed cuteness with the world. She decided to enter a picture of Ezra into a baby photo contest. I went along with this until I discovered that the grand prize is a trip to New York to be on Good Morning America. I'm not sure I could stomach that (no offense to the GMA fans out there). So I was a little relieved, and only slightly indignant, when the deadline passed with no phone call from Diane Sawyer. Anyway, we're happy to share the photo with our blog-reading public instead -- see bath pose.

In less than two days, the whole fam will pack up and embark on an epic trip to Alaska. It's our honeymoon, with baby in tow. We're beside ourselves with excitement. Aside from seeing dear friends and revisiting beloved haunts, we're going to treat Ezra to his first night in a yurt. We'll also get in stays at a couple of B&Bs and a rustic cabin, and do plenty of hiking.

The trip is likely to prove a major logistical challenge, though. Thursday we'll be spending about 8 hours on planes and in airports ... and the return flight 10 days later is a red-eye. We've already seen that it can be hard on him when we tweak the routine a little, and now we're about to blow it to smithereens. We hope though that, even if he's way too young to remember the trip, he'll have a good time. And he'll certainly have some happy parents. In any case, we'll provide a full report.

Much love,

Gabe, Ash and Ez