Engel Family Update 2014

For a couple years now, our family has produced a little update letter around the close of the year. For those of you who didn't receive a physical copy, here's a PDF you can read to learn more about what happened to us and how we're all doing. I hope the new year finds you well, we've all caught a cold here, but are feeling better. If you'd just like to read the text, it's below.

It’s been an incredible year. Our little family has become a little bigger and better. Morgan spent the first part of the year getting familiar with his new job, partially by taking a company trip to Tahoe where Eli got to meet his work family and Grandma Gale got to fly up and watch Charlie.

Eli was back in shape by the early part of the year and started teaching more and more classes as summer (and summer camp) approached. In early March, Eli got a feeling that things were going to change and boy, was she right. Despite a few mis-diagnoses at the beginning of the pregnancy, everything plodded along as planned.

In June, we all headed to Chicago and road tripped to see our good friends Matt and Alyson get married in a beautiful ceremony near Lake Michigan. Charlie, while technically young enough to be a “lap infant” got his own seat—a happy choice for us and the passengers around us; six hours on plane is a long time for anyone, and Charlie didn’t much care for it.

Charlie learned the entire alphabet this year and spent hundreds of hours outside drawing the letter A over and over again on the back porch. He’s gotten pretty good at knowing which letters make which sounds and can occasionally recognize words by sounding them out. He’s still a huge fan of books, but has recently developed an obsession with cars—both the things and the Pixar film.

Eli spent the summer teaching circus acrobatics to 5-15 year-olds, one week of summer camp at a time, all while 5 months pregnant. She did great and finished out the summer, but was happy to be able to take a break at the end.

Toward the end of summer, Eli’s sister Catherine moved in with us to help watch Charlie and with the end of the pregnancy. She also wanted to help out with the new baby and to help with the transition from one kid to two. She’s been a lifesaver in both roles and has become a welcome addition to our household.

Malcolm Tiberius was born at 8:15 in the morning on November 13th in our home in Oakland. Eli opted to have him with no drugs and just three midwives to hold her hand while she labored. If anyone didn’t think she was incredible before, now you know.

Malcolm is a talky baby. He grunts constantly and lets us know exactly when anything is wrong. He’s also a smiley baby, we’ve already managed to catch a few on film. He’s been pretty easy—gaining weight well, seems happy and healthy. We look forward to going through all of the exciting parts of raising a newborn again, now that we’re not quite so terrified as parents.

We miss you all.
All our love,
Morgan, Eli, Malcolm, and Charlie