Ethan - 10 Months, Week 3

Ethan has really started to show his little personality here lately...I love it! He definitely has a mind of his own and when he has it set on something that he wants to do there is really no distracting him from the task at hand.

His new favorite activity (oh my!) is to flip over on his changing table (while I am attempting to change his diaper no less) so that he is up on all fours in the crawling position. I am always right there with a hand on him so he's never come close to falling off of the table, but this this new favorite activity still worries me. I usually am holding his ankles with one hand so his little legs are pointing up towards the ceiling, but he manages to twist at the waist and his torso is facing the changing table. I call him my little rotisserie, because he seriously reminds me of a chicken turning around. I even tried using the strap that comes with the table (perhaps I am a terrible mother, but I've never used it before) but he was still able to twist around. If he wasn't un-diapered this would be a pretty funny scenario, but I still have a fear of being peed on and so Ethan twisting and shaking all about half naked is just not my idea of a good time. Okay, okay, it is a little funny, but I will be glad when his interest in doing this passes because in the interim trying to get a diaper back on him has become quite a challenge for me.

Ethan is officially into EVERYTHING! Earlier today we were playing downstairs in the living room and he decided that he wanted to play with the fireplace tools. Of course I could not let him do this and when I took them away (and by took them away, I mean I set them up on the loveseat temporarily - what is happening to my house?!) he burst into tears. He has this one face he makes when I take away something he wants that just about breaks my heart. It is so sad looking!

He continues to army crawl everywhere that he wants to go. He'll get up into true crawl position and rock back and forth but when he sees something that he wants he immediately drops down and army crawls. I did not realize this, but my mom said that I only ever army crawled too. He may look just like Patrick, but at least there is a little bit of me in him after all!

His favorite toy right now is his counting cookie jar. He loves to dump out the plastic shapes and put them back in. He hasn't quite figured out the shapes yet (there's a circle shaped hole for the circle cookie, a star shaped hole for the star cookie, etc.) but I'll get it started for him and he loves to finish pushing the cookie into the jar. Any of his car toys with wheels are still a big hit as well. He really enjoys spinning the wheels! He got some stacking cups this week and if I hide a little cup under a bigger cup he gets so excited when he picks up the big cup and finds a little one underneath it.

Another of Ethan's favorite activities is banging on anything and everything. Most every morning now after I hear him moving around in his crib for a little bit I'll hear a loud banging on the walls. Yes, he is standing in his crib and banging his pacifier against the wall. He still enjoys banging on the upstairs window (mercy) and any of his toy baskets, table tops or toys in general are fair game.

His sleep patterns have settled into a very predictable rhythm now which is nice. He usually goes to bed around 7:00 and wakes up somewhere around 5:30ish (maybe a little later on days that he takes pity on his exhausted parents.) This morning he slept until 6:15 and I was ecstatic...how sad is that?! The only positive of his early wake up call is that Patrick is up for work that early so I can usually stay in bed while Ethan spends some time with daddy as he gets ready for work and then I take over for the rest of the day. He naps from 9-11 almost like clockwork in the mornings, and his afternoon naps range from 45 minutes to an hour and 45 minutes (usually a little over an hour.) I use my three hours during the day to work, and then usually spend another hour or two at night when Ethan is in bed to finish up work for the day. This schedule is working out really well and I think I'm starting to regain some of my sanity.

Ethan waves bye bye all the time now and loves to wave at his reflection in the mirror too. Oh, I almost forgot...he said his first word! "Baby" is the first official word (outside of mama and dada, that is.) We think it comes from the fact that since Ethan is in love with looking at pictures of himself (I'm hoping he doesn't actually realize that he's looking at himself, otherwise we might have a tiny egomaniac on our hands!) and we will always ask him, "Where's the baby?" He just smiles and grins and giggles with this game, so we do it all the time. We've been doing this for months, so fast forward to now and his first word is baby. He still says mama the most though. He's totally backwards because he said mama first and I've heard that every child always says dada first. Ethan likes to do things his own way, that's for sure!

We are shopping for his "big boy" (read - convertible) car seat now so on Patrick's last day off the three of us ventured over to Buy Buy Baby to take a look. I love this store! I think I equate Buy Buy Baby to Target and Babies R Us to Wal-Mart. (I hate going into Babies R Us and avoid it whenever possible!) Everybody here is so nice and helpful and they really know their stuff! Anyway, Ethan thought that this was the most fabulous place on earth, because we took him down some of the toy aisles. He was in heaven! Everything had lights and made sounds and I think he could have stayed in there forever. While we were in the car seat section the employee had us strap Ethan into the various seats that were on display to see how he liked them. He looked so grown up in the big car seats. Tear! Plus, it was pretty funny to see Ethan strapped into a car seat sitting on display.

Ethan's girlfriend Faith was in town for several days this past week and they had the best time playing together. Oh, and they gave each other kisses several times too. It's love! Ethan will give kisses anytime you ask for one (oh, if only he would do this forever and not outgrow this total sweetness!) We weren't sure if they would give each other kisses or not, but they did. They both loved the stereo in the playroom and changed the song and CD frequently. (We got maybe 15 seconds into any one song before they would change it again.) They both showed off their dance moves too. Their moves pretty much consist of bouncing up and down, but that's about as much rhythm as I have these days so I probably can't say too much :) We all went to our regular Tuesday trivia night together, which was a tradition until the babies arrived. We all went the week after Faith and Ethan were born and haven't been back since. It was really fun to be back again!

I've taken Ethan to our pool and he loves splashing around. I'm so glad he likes the water, because I plan on spending some serious time at the pool this summer.

I have so many pictures to share, but my camera has been giving me fits in trying to download pictures and I finally got the issue resolved tonight only to have the battery die on me. It is currently recharging and hopefully tomorrow I will be able to get everything taken care of. I've spent all my free time working lately so things like catching up with friends who actually work and can't chat during the day, uploading pictures, updating the baby book and even this blog have gotten woefully behind. I'm catching up now though. (That seems to be a theme with me, huh?!) Cross your fingers that all technical difficulties are now behind me and that I can make some progress on my to do list tomorrow and this weekend. I have so much catching up to do....