Exploring Pittsburgh

Well, it's been a couple weeks since we've updated the blog. Not surprisingly, we're keeping pretty busy here in Pittsburgh. Work is going well for me. Law school and living in Charlottesville has been great, but its going to be really nice to be done with the "paying/taking out student loans to go to school" routine and start the "getting paid to work" thing.

Courtney and Luke have been out and about exploring Pittsburgh most days. As usual, Luke has been so excited about getting outside. And he knows what it takes to get out. We usually grab his shoes from a shelf, but he often goes and gets Mommy or Daddy's shoes so that we can go.

The other day Courtney got him out of bed in the morning, and Luke immediately pointed to go downstairs. Then he pointed at the door and insisted on going outside. So he was in his pj's, hadn't had his diaper changed, hadn't had breakfast or anything to drink, and he's wanting to go outside 30 seconds after he wakes up.

Yesterday, we all went to a park over in the Mt. Lebanon area. We're trying to get out and see different parts of the city to figure out if this is where we want to end up after law school.

Over the Memorial Day weekend, we went to Altoona to be with Courtney's family. One of her cousins was getting married, and Courtney was singing in the wedding. We dressed Luke up in a dress shirt, vest, and tie... he was looking pretty sharp! We didn't have our camera, but once we get the pictures from Courtney's parents, we'll put some up here. Luke had a great time playing with his cousins and his Grammy and Pappy.

Pittsburgh!

Our next adventure begins... we arrived in Pittsburgh yesterday for my summer internship at a law firm here. We'll be here until the Fourth of July and then head to Cleveland for a month before returning to Charlottesville.

I finished up my last final a week ago. Since then, we stayed pretty busy getting packed up and cleaning our apartment for the subletters that are coming. Courtney even waxed our car. It looks good! She also had a doctor's appointment two days ago. Everything is good with the baby. We got to hear the heartbeat for the first time. The doctor said it had a "boy's heartrate" of 142. That's an old wives' tale, of course, but I hear that it's accurate about 50% of the time.

The drive up to Pittsburgh went pretty well. We made a couple stops, including a longer one at a park to eat lunch. Luke seemed to appreciate that. He has been just off the wall excited since we got here. I think it's because of all the stairs... we go up a flight of stairs to get to our apartment, and then our apartment itself is two stories.

Luke just loves being outdoors now. He goes over to the door wanting to go outside practically the minute he wakes up in the morning. To him, the only purpose of being inside seems to be to eat and sleep. Otherwise, he doesn't understand why we aren't just always outside.

Happy Mother's Day!

Luke and I just wanted to wish Courtney a Happy Mother's Day! Luke decided to pull together a bunch of his favorite pictures with Mommy...

Finals

It's finals time. I took two exams this past week and have two more coming up this week. Over the last couple days, I've "enjoyed" spending a lot of quality time with the Internal Revenue Code. Good times.

In other news... I'll throw in a few recent pictures of Luke. He really likes imitating talking on the phone. When his Grandma or Grammy are actually on the phone, he never really wants to do it, but when it's fake, he loves it. In fact, lately he's been putting just about any toy he can fit into his hands up to his ear as if it were a phone...

Next, we've got Luke thoroughly enjoying bath time (as you can see, Mommy was also enjoying it, showing some creativity with Luke's hair)...

This last picture was right before going to church this morning. Luke was wearing one of the new shirts Grandma got for him when she and Grandpa were here in March. Luke says thank you!

Some news...

...We're expecting! That's right, Luke is going to be a big brother. Courtney is about 12.5 weeks now and the baby is due November 3. The above ultrasound is of course the little guy (or gal) as of about 10 days ago when we had a doctor's appointment. Do you see him waving hello? Courtney hasn't been feeling very good. Hopefully in a couple weeks or so the morning sickness (or as Courtney would describe it "all day sickness") will go away. Other than that, everything seems to be going well so far.

Easter

We all went up to Pennsylvania last weekend for Easter with Courtney's family. Luke had a great time exploring around Grammy and Pappy's house now that he can walk. (He took his first steps around 13 months and has been walking pretty well since about 14 months.) After church on Sunday, all of the kids came over for the traditional "candy hunt." Courtney's parents have quite a bit of land, and so the adults hid a whole bunch of candy and other treats all over the place for the kids to find. We simplified things for Luke a bit, putting some candy in some eggs and basically just placing them in plain sight in front of him to grab. As we've said before, he just loves being outside, so he enjoyed it.

Brackets

Courtney and I have been married for nearly three years. In each of those years, we have dutifully filled out our brackets for the NCAA Tournament. Typically, this involves me doing a lot of thinking, reflecting, and even a bit of research, while Courtney will quickly jot down her picks on the spot. The first two years we did this, Courtney's bracket beat my bracket. So this year, I decided to not put too much thought into it and just fill it out in one five minute sitting. Were my results any better? Short answer: no. With UNC's win yesterday in the semifinals, Courtney has officially beaten me again for a third year in a row.

Luke also filled out a bracket... with a little help from his parents. He picked the top seed in each game, except for having Duke go all the way. And yes... he beat me, too.

(We will see if this ends up being the last college basketball post for a while or not... don't worry, before long, we'll be back to our regularly scheduled programming of Luke, Luke, and Luke.)