Ethan - Week 7

This has been a fairly quiet week in the Strain household. The biggest news this week is that Ethan has started going 5 hours between feedings at night. Well, 5 hours between his last feeding before we go to bed and the next feeding (and after that one he's been back to every 3 hours...sigh!) It is progress, and I can see the light at the end of the tunnel to get him sleeping through the night but alas we are just not quite there yet. His girlfriend (who is a whole 2 days older than him!) is now sleeping through the night so I'm hopeful that he won't be too far behind. In the interim, I'm enjoying getting a little more uninterrupted sleep. Maybe one day my dear friend, sleep, and I will reunite for a long winter's nap. Until such time though, I continue to take advantage of the fact that Ethan is a great napper throughout the day which allows me to catch up on some of the sleep I'm missing out on in the middle of the night. Here's Ethan getting ready to settle down for the night:

And since his sleep pattern is now slightly off by going for 5 hours and then 3, his first feeding in the morning comes at around 5:30 (ugh! Fortunately he does go back to sleep for awhile after this feeding but these early mornings have been rough on me.) Here's a common sight in our house when Patrick leaves for work at 6:00 am:



My dear friend Meredith drove up to spend the afternoon with Ethan and I this past Tuesday and although he slept for the majority of her visit (shocking...that seems to be all this child likes to do when he gets visitors!) I dressed him up in real little boy clothes for their visit. I know I'm getting made fun of already for the preppy style clothes I've been picking out for Ethan, but I think he looked so cute in his little sweater vest:



Football season is FINALLY upon us and we had a bunch of our neighbors and a few friends over for a cookout to celebrate the return of Panthers football. Alas this does not look like it is going to be a stellar season (the only bright side of which is that when the Panthers aren't playing well we tend to be given tickets to a lot more games!) and the last half of the game was ugly to watch. Even our quaterback suffered a concussion...true fans love their team through good times and bad and it looks like this just might be one of those "in bad" kind of years. I'm going to hope that this poor showing (and the pre-season games as well) were exceptions and that they'll be back this coming Sunday. Fingers crossed anyway!

Our family has adopted the WVU Mountaineers during football season (and we'll support them during basketball season unless they are playing our beloved Duke Blue Devils) and my wonderful friend Jennifer has ensured that Ethan is properly attired to support his team, just like his godsister, Morgan.

He was a little sleepy at first!

Now he's cheering on his team!

This is the first year that I have fielded my own fantasy football team (I usually watch Patrick with his multiple teams) so I was really excited to see how I did in my first game. Let's just suffice it to say that my number one draft pick went down in the first half with an ankle injury and is now out for the season, my defense scored negative seven points (how is that even possible?!) and my number two draft pick managed to score a whopping three points. My grand point total...39 points. Boy if that isn't humiliating! The guy I was playing this week in my league had one player score 41 points (and yes, that is more than the combined total of ALL of my players!) I think I have a lot to learn here. The only good thing coming out of this week's debacle is that prior to the start of the games I picked up Grant's backup to be on my team and thank goodness I made that move because now he'll be starting so I'm hopeful that I can pick up some points with him. We'll see how this week goes, but I'm so grateful that the league I'm in is only $5 because I can pretty much kiss that money goodbye!

Ethan's cradle cap is continuing to improve (why had I never heard of this condition before?!) and I think that he should be back to normal in a week or so. Thank goodness! He loves his bath time and this is becoming a great bonding time for Patrick and Ethan. Patrick loves to give him baths! It is so cute watching my guys together:

One of the gifts we have been given is a totally adorable fuzzy blue bunny suit for Ethan. It is still a little big on him, but I could not resist playing dress up and putting him in the outfit for a few pictures. The hat and slippers both have rabbit ears - he looks like a little stuffed animal in his new outfit! Since it is still in the 90s around here, he won't be able to wear this outfit yet so it's a good thing it's still big on him. The pictures really don't do this outfit justice though - it is so absolutely adorable!

Ethan continues to reward us with happy smiles all the time these days. He has such a sunny disposition - I'm not sure where it comes from since I'm such a stress case all the time. He has been a great incentive for me to slow down and remember what is actually important in life. A friend of mine recently wrote a blog post about prioritizing spending time with her child since it is so easy to get caught up in the little things that need to get done each day. (Boy did that hit home with me!) I really want to ensure that I am taking the time to cherish the moments that I'm getting with Ethan right now and not rush through each day and wonder why I didn't take the time to sit back and enjoy my child. I'm not saying I'll always remember this, but I'm really making an effort to not worry if the house gets messy or the thank you cards take a week to go out the door and to really focus on Ethan and being the best mom to him that I know how to be. He's already growing up way too fast and since I am fortunate enough to get to be home with him full time right now I am loving the time that we are spending together each and every day.

Maybe when I post his 8 week update I'll have news about him sleeping through the night...wishful thinking much?! I guess I can't complain too much since Ethan rarely cries (unless I have kept him way too long past his feeding time and when he decides to randomly cry it generally lasts about 30 seconds and he's over it) but I so would like to get him sleeping through the night. Cross your fingers on this one (and for the Panthers to actually play well this week and for my fantasy football team to not humiliate me two weeks in a row - I don't ask for much, huh?!)