Happy 2nd Birthday Zacher!
Zach turned 2 years old at 7:56am this morning, and nothing changed…still a fussy toddler 
But we love him more everyday no matter what.
What a year for Zacher! Let’s summarize year number 2.
Shortly, and I do mean shortly, after his first birthday, the family moved up to Seattle, WA so dad could start a new job at Amazon.com. We lived in an apartment in Issaquah for 2 months while mom studied and took the WA State Bar exam. Zacher visited Hurricane Ridge in the Olympic mountains and even took a trip to Mt St Helens. While in the apartment Zacher perfected his walking and took his first independent steps on August 10th. BTW, Zacher moved into his new home on July 28th.
We flew down to the bay area in early October to catch up with friends and family. Then came winter. We had the record rains of November (and some snow), the huge windstorm in December and the snowstorm in January.
For Christmas the Duiven and Arthur clans came up to celebrate and the only thing that broke was the furnace. In early January, Zacher had a minor operation on one of his beans (it needed to be lowered) but he recovered very quickly.
During the year Zacher has become a member of the Woodland Park Zoo, the Seattle Aquarium, the Museum of Flight (OK, this was more for daddy), and the Children’s Museum. He holds more memberships than his parents! He has visited each place several times. In addition he became good friends with Dominic who introduced him to 4 other buddies (Matthew - who shares Zach’s bday, Drew, Jake, and Natalie).
In February, Zacher got a new minivan so his brother Nate will have a seat next to him and we can still drive around other people. Zacher took a drive to Bellingham, Anacortes, and Whidbey Island in the new van. In March, Zacher took a trip to Eugene to see Auntie Jan and Uncle Mike - they fed him lots of cookies!
Now that spring has arrived, Zacher has been playing a lot outside and he really digs sidewalk chalk. Plus we’ve been making many trips to Lincoln Park so Zacher can play in the sandbox and on the swing.
Oh, and just for the record, Zacher hit the terrible twos at about 18 months…does that mean it ends 6 months earlier or are we just privileged with an additional 6 months or terrible-ness?
We love you Zacher!
Update: Steph just sent me this…Grandma’s first update to her secretary when Zach was born:
I sure had fun. Held Zach for an hour and a half - he was awake the whole first hour, looking around. Then he had the hiccups and went to sleep. Paul went out for lunch while we were there. Then they gave Steph 2 Percocet and we left. Steph looks tired but otherwise fine. Zach looks perfect!