This post should have actually been done December 13th. It was on that day that Corinne's first two teeth broke through. The night before, she was a bit fussy, and I knew she had to be teething. Sunday morning, while we were at church, I could see two little white bumps in her mouth. When I ran my finger over them, I could barely feel the edge of one tooth. By that afternoon, I could clearly feel both teeth. Now they are coming up and very visible, but I can't seem to get a picture of them yet. She's just getting cuter by the day, and the teeth are adding to her darling little grin.

I'll be posting soon about Christmas, but for now, I'm going to join Corinne for a little nap.

December already?!? I can't believe it! It's beginning to look a little like Christmas in our house. There are still some decorations to put up, but the tree is out. When I got home from work Friday afternoon, Jeremy surprised me with the tree set up and lit up. And he put the most darling little gift under the tree.
Corinne under the tree
Look at the lights





Christmas cutie pie

What happened to the Zerrs? Where have they gone? What are they up to? The suspense is probably killing you now...is there something big and exciting to report??????

Nope...we're just slackers. I'm a bit shocked myself to see that we haven't added anything since August. My Thanksgiving resolution will be to do bi-weekly updates. "Thanksgiving resolution" you say? Yeah, why not. "Thanksgiving resolutions" are the new "New Year's resolutions." Pick any holiday...or any day for that matter...and resolve to do something incredible. Why wait? (I know...just a bunch of randomness.)

So, let's bring you up to speed. Since the last post, Corinne has changed and grown so much! At her last visit in October, she was a whopping 14lbs 6oz and 26 inches long. And the kid keeps growing! (Amazing, I know.) She has learned to do so much over the past several months. Rolling, belly crawling, rolling her tongue, blowing raspberries, crawling over her Boppy pillow and various toys, pinching, chewing, giggling, splashing, and eating foods. I'm sure I'm missing something here, but the point is that she's a very busy little girl. We've rearranged the living room furniture to keep her contained and from getting into the entertainment center and chewing on various electrical cords. She's very curious and just wants to get into everything. I realize that's completely normal at this age...and I also realize it's only going to get worse as she gets older and more mobile. She isn't officially crawling on her hands and knees, but can certainly get where she wants quickly with her belly crawling. Maybe she's waiting for her Grandma Bonnie to come visit before she starts crawling. :)

Here are a couple of the latest pictures of our little darling.

Corinne and Grandma Bonnie

Look at that cutie pie!

Go Twins!

Trying out food

Our award-winning Halloween costumes
Come and get me!

Can you believe she's already six months old?! We are so amazed! Check back for updates and more pictures. We may even try to get a video or two up. Much love from the Zerrs!

So its been a few weeks since we actually went camping, but Corinne had a lot of fun, so I figured I would at least link out to the pictures that we posted.

We took a trip up north of Crouch, Idaho, and camped at a campgrounds that I had camped at by myself before, and really liked the spot, and it is very easily accessible so that if anything unexpected came up we weren't out in the middle of nowhere. The campgrounds is right next to a bend in the Middle Fork of the Payette River, and has pretty big campsites compared to most other drive-in campsites I've been to.

It was a hot day, so it really didn't get very cool at night, which was good because we were worried about Corinne not having a comfortable night. It didn't get very cold at all, and we even left the rainfly off of the tent to cool everything down real nice.

Corinne also decided that as soon as the sun came up, it must be time to be up for the day, so we were all pretty much up by around 6am. Then Katie and I decided that we might as well get breakfast going if we were going to have to be up that early, then as soon as we got everything cooking, the little stinker fell asleep in the tent, so we really didn't need to get up when the fishies do too.

Anyways, Corinne had a great time, here is the link to the pictures from camping.

Corinne Happy Camper

I did intend to update the blog when Corinne hit the 2 month mark. Some of the information I planned to include was her weight at that time (10 lb 10 oz) her height/length (23 inches) and that she had started sleeping a bit longer at night. Now, at 3 months, she's weighing in at 12 lb 6 oz and seems to be getting longer by the day. She's growing like crazy! She's also been a very busy girl the first few months of her life.

At the end of June, we flew back to Minnesota to catch a Twins game...and to see family and attend 2 weddings. Corinne is a super-star traveler! As soon as we got to Minneapolis, we went straight to the Metrodome for the Twins game. Corinne loved it...at least Jeremy is convinced that she loved it. Despite all the noise, she did really well. It was a bit tricky trying to feed her in the stands, so I convinced the staff to let me use a quiet space to feed her. (They were awesome about it!) I ended up in the pressbox used for the Vikings games, which was relatively quiet and was a great view of the game. At the end of the game, we took pictures of Corinne at the famous Kirby Puckett "golden seat."

The three of us
Corinne with Auntie Tahnee
Corinne is so hungry she's trying to eat daddy's arm
Corinne with Daddy in the Golden Seat

After staying the night with Mark and Jenny, we drove to Alexandria, Minnesota for Justin and Katy's wedding. We had so much fun seeing the family! From Alexandria, we headed west to Fargo, where we spent the week. Corinne got to spend a lot of time with Great Grandma and Grandpa Schiele, Great Uncle Kent and Aunt Cindee, and Grandma Bonnie. After visiting Fargo for the week, we headed back to Minnesota, this time to Walker, for Bjorn and Meghan's wedding. By that point, I think Corinne was starting to get tired of all the traveling, because the first night in Walker, she had her first all-out meltdown...a solid 45 minutes of screaming and crying. Jeremy and I hadn't heard her cry for more than a couple minutes before that episode, so we were at a bit of a loss. After taking almost all we could handle, Bonnie, Greg and Tahnee came over to our hotel room and were able to help get Corinne settled. After that, she slept beautifully. Although we had a blast seeing everyone, and Corinne was an awesome traveler, it was certainly nice to get back home and settled back into a routine.

Corinne has had many more exciting events since then, including cracking her first "real" smiles, rolling over, going on her first camping trip...I'm sure I could go on for quite a while. Jeremy will be getting our pictures posted and will be doing a blog post about our camping trip. Check back for more photos of our cutie!

It's hard to believe that our little girl is already a month old! She's grown and changed so much over the past couple weeks. And we've learned a lot of valuable lessons in this first month. Here are just a few:

1. Diapers have limited capacity.
2. Babies have unlimited output.
3. Giggling uncontrollably does not make the mess disappear when the unlimited output exceeds the limited capacity of the diaper.
4. Sleep deprivation quickly becomes normal.
5. Getting more sleep than expected may cause irrational fears.
6. The fleeting "gassy" smiles make the 2 am feedings and diaper blowouts totally worth it.

Corinne got to spend some time meeting more of her family the past couple weeks. While my brother was home on leave, he was able to come over with Sydney (my niece) and spend some time with us. Sydney adores her cousin and can't seem to get enough of her.

Corinne and Sydney

Jeremy's mom, Bonnie, and sister, Tahnee, came out for Corinne's baptism at the end of May. Corinne's godparents are Tahnee and our friends Phil and Becca. Our friend, Ryan, was available to stand in for Phil and Becca.

Here is a link to some of Corinne's baptism pictures.

And now, for the exciting news. At her 1 month appointment, we learned that Corinne is growing like crazy and is tipping the scales at 9 lbs 9 oz and is 22 inches long! I'm still shocked she's a month old and can't believe how much she's grown already.

Here is a gallery with pictures over Corinne's first month.

Here are a couple pics from June 10th.

What a cutie

My little sugar baby

An attempt at a pose

Its hard to believe that Corinne is a week old. This week has gone by so slow, starting with being in the hospital for 2 days until Tuesday around supper time. I just don't like hospitals that much, makes me wonder why I ever decided to work for one. Those days in the hospital just seemed to stretch on for a long time, but I think that's just because I was really looking forward to coming home with our little girl.

Here are a couple of photo galleries that I have added:
Hospital after born
Going home from hospital

I also added a Corinne gallery that is where we will start putting all new photos:
Corinne Zerr gallery

So it has definitely been quite a change to get used to having to be up every 2 hours in the middle of the night for feedings, and realizing that myself, I can't do much to make her feel better when she's crying. She really only has one thing that makes her cry, and I know that Mom is the only one who has the goods to make it better. It sure took a while for Corinne to get the hang of how to do the breast feeding thing, but now that she has it down, watch out! Poopy diapers left and right.

Like the other day when I was on the phone and had her in my lap. She was making her usual little sounds then all of the sudden, a deep grunt that she made for a few seconds, followed by a squirting sound that I could hear and feel on my lap. She can be totally innocent, wide eyed, and looking all around, but in a heartbeat, she can turn into a grunting poop factory. Its the most funny thing that we've had in this first week at home. I'm getting pretty good at changing diapers, and I find that Corinne really likes it if I make the sound of air tools like I'm changing a car tire at a pit stop. Well, maybe she really has no clue what is going on, but I still have fun with it.

We've had a really good time this week, we have been helped out a ton with people bringing food over that we're still having for meals. We haven't really gotten out much, just once to go for a walk, but that will change in this upcoming week, we have the first doctor appt for Corinne on Monday, and baptism is Memorial Day weekend.

I'm proud to announce that Corinne Sophia joined us on Sunday, May 10th, for Mother's
Day at 7:12am. She was 7 lbs 5 oz, 20.5" long, and both Mom and baby are perfectly
healthy.

We started with contractions about midnight, and after realizing they were coming
consistently every 2-4 minutes for over an hour, we realized that this was the real
deal.

So we hopped in the pickup and made it to St. Luke's by around 2 am. Apparently, that
was a very popular time for babies to be born, as there were about 3 moms that arrived
around that time, so quite a few nurses had to be called in.

We stayed in Triage until nurses were able to arrive and saw that the contractions were
still going, and I was so excited that it really was going to happen, we were going to
see our baby!

We went over to a delivery room and got all settled in, the contractions were still
coming very frequently and getting stronger, they weren't anything like Katie had felt
before. She relaxed in the tub in the delivery room for a while to help get through
the contractions.

Katie's parents joined us in the delivery room and were a big help. I didn't pass out
as many of you, including me, expected, although I was very close for quite a long time
during delivery. I'm so proud of Katie, she did the whole thing without any drugs,
which was something that was important to us, and we wanted to make every effort to try
it without. She was absolutely amazing!

So Corinne came out with a head of hair, and with the cutest wrinkled hands and feet
because she was a couple days overdue (we were due on May 8th). But she was the best
Mother's Day gift that we could possibly dream of.

Here are some pictures. Don't worry, these aren't all of them, but we'll get them all
up when we get home and get a chance to settle in.

Hospital Baby Closeup

Mama and baby at hospital

At hospital, baby holding daddy's finger

So I really haven't posted much of anything since the Honeymoon, but a ton of stuff has happened.

After getting back from the Honeymoon, Katie had some great news to wake me up with on my birthday. I was kinda surprised to get woken up so early, and I'm pretty grumpy in the morning, but Katie just HAD to get me up. Katie found out that she was pregnant! She took one of the tests later on in the day just to be sure, and no doubt, it was true! What a birthday gift for me! Plenty to be continued with this story...

A couple months later, the Boise MSBL baseball season came to a close, and I was lucky enough to not have other committments this year around playoff time, so I was able to be a part of our second championship in a row. We had a great season and a lot of fun.

Katie and I have both been helping out with the junior high youth group at Our Lady of the Rosary this year as program leaders. Katie used to help out when at St. Marks, and this year is my third year helping out.

We started the youth group basketball team practices up again and had a great showing in the Hallissey basketball tournament, which is the annual junior high Catholic basketball tournament. We won the sportsmanship award, and also took 3rd place in the tournament. It is always a lot of fun. When you win the sportsmanship award, you get your picture taken with the Bishop, its a pretty big event.

I also was offered a second job at St. Luke's, working more as a traditional web developer to help out the Nursing Services team turn a spreadsheet-based application into a much more flexible web application, capable of integrating lots of financial productivity measurements into helping the staffing products. Got to present this to the CEOs and VPs of the organization over the last couple weeks and was given the go-ahead to start a pilot program with it.

So as our spring came, it was filled with lots of changes, learning about pregnancy, getting the living room painted and blinds updated, and getting baby's room ready. We are just days away from the official due date, May 8, and we will be +1 family size in no time at all.

Some of the pictures from the photographer are on the photogropher's website.

Sneek Peek

At Church

Couple

Family and Friends at Albertson's Park

Misc.