Ethan - Month 9, Week 4

Boy has Ethan been on the move this past week. Ever since he got the army crawl down, he has been off to the races! The positive side of all this activity is that he is napping like a champion these days. His morning nap is lasting over two hours and his afternoon nap is now around an hour and a half. The only disruption to this was that he caught a little cold for a few days (nothing serious, just a runny nose) and he wasn't sleeping all that well while he was congested. I can't really blame him though, because I don't sleep all that well when I'm all stuffed up either.

Since Ethan is so mobile now, babyproofing has begun in a hurry at our house. It's amazing the things that I already had ready (outlet covers, etc.) in which he shows absolutely no interest and the things that I didn't think about (the cat food bowls) that he makes a beeline for every day. We've gotten creative with some things (moving speakers around) and given up on others altogether (keeping anything on the metal shelves underneath our coffee and end tables) in order to accomodate Ethan's newfound mobility. Poor little guy has some small bruises on the underside of his arms (near his elbows) that I can only assume developed from all this crawling. Since I saw his arms I've been trying like crazy to keep him off the kitchen and wood floors and only on the carpet. Hopefully it will help...I felt terrible when I saw the marks on his arms.

He is also pulling up on anything and everything these days. His latest favorite is when we are upstairs he goes straight for the window that overlooks the driveway and pulls up on the window sill so he can look out over the cul-de-sac. It makes me really nervous to have him by the window like that (it is closed and locked, but it's still glass) but as long as he's not hitting it or banging his head on it and I'm right there with him I guess it's okay. I keep moving him to play with other toys and he keeps going right back to it. He definitely has a favorite spot where he's not supposed to be in every room. My little troublemaker....ha!

Ethan does get up on all fours (in the true crawl position) frequently now and will rock back and forth but when he is ready to move he'll drop down and army crawl (very quickly I might add) to wherever it is that he wants to go. I wonder if he'll ever do true crawling. If he's this mobile now though, I'm kind of scared to see what happens when he starts walking.

The funniest thing that Ethan did this past week was clean out one of my drawers. He loves pulling things out of drawers and since my pajama drawer is on the bottom (and up until this past week has been highly disorganized) I opened it up and let him pull things out. He was in heaven! After a few minutes of this, I started folding the things as he was pulling them out, organizing them, putting together a pile for donation. Ethan was occupied for almost a full hour with this game and I ended up with a completely organized drawer by the time all was said and done. We might have to work on a different drawer every day - Ethan will be my little organizer!

The weather has been beautiful lately so I've been taking Ethan outside to read under our peach tree most days. It's so funny though - he does NOT like to have his feet touch the grass. He is perfectly content to sit in my lap and pick at the grass, but the second I try to let him stand in the grass (with bare feet) he picks his legs up like he's sitting cross-legged even though he's suspended in mid-air. I am going to have to capture this on video because it cracks me up.

This should be a fairly low key week coming up. We don't have too many plans which is good - I definitely need some down time before all of the summer craziness hits. I'll try to get my pictures from this week uploaded sometime soon so that I can add them in, but for now this will have to do. Have a great week!

Ethan - Month 9 Week 3

Here are my attempts to capture the official 9 month picture...as you can see, it was a complete disaster!

Crumpling his sign
He was insisting on standing...that is all he wants to do these days

I tried to tape the sign to his quilt in hopes that I could get at least one picture where he wasn't flinging the sign around...no dice - he just pulled up to grab the sign anyway

You don't really need to see that he's 9 months old, right?!

Ethan has gotten really proficient at pulling up this week. He insists on climbing all over us and wants to be standing whenever possible. He loves it! He is also making some serious strides towards crawling. He is pretty quick at making forward progress, but he doesn't quite have the exact positioning down yet. It's pretty funny to watch as he gets going, because his little legs are flailing behind him as he hurries forward. I wonder if he'll ever figure out true crawling, or if this is going to be as good as it gets until he starts walking.

Hanging out with Spot - she was surprisingly tolerant because she usually runs away and Ethan crawled right up to her and then wanted to stand and look out the window with her too

This past weekend Patrick and I celebrated our fifth wedding anniversary and I also got to celebrate my very first Mother's Day. It was a great weekend! Patrick and I went out to a fantastic dinner on Friday night while our neighbors watched Ethan for us (he was asleep the entire time we were gone) and it was so nice to get out baby-free. I love Ethan so very much but without having family in town it is rare that we are able to get away just the two of us. It was awesome getting to dress nicely again (outside of my mommy uniform of shorts and tee shirts) and get back out into the world again. Mother's Day was awesome - Patrick watched Ethan for an hour in the afternoon when he got home from work so I could take a nap. It was fabulous! Then we took Ethan to the park and came home to have ice cream cake - yum!

Ethan's first time sitting in a high chair away from home - he loved his new perspective!

We had so much fun having lunch out as a family of three (usually it's me and Ethan meeting a friend out, so it was fun for Ethan to have his Daddy with us too)

My first Mother's Day Enjoying some time with my boy :)

Since Patrick was off today we took Ethan to downtown Matthews and enjoyed the wonderful weather. We went to a park and had lunch outside. Ethan LOVES watching cars go by. It was so cute - his little head would be craned out to the left and he would follow the car all the way until his little head was hanging out of his stroller to the right. When a loud truck lumbered by, he was in heaven! His favorite toys are his cars and trains because he loves playing with all the wheels. He is such a boy!

Here are some video clips that I know I've been a total slacker about posting...I have a bunch more I need to organize and some tiny baby ones that I'll get together for a separate post sometime soon. In the interim, enjoy!

Attempting to crawl: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LDXc14_Tfb8
Meeting a new friend: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MwfMkyfFmr4
Hanging out in the crib: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=op8bcpRgPxQ
Eating bananas: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zpKyUrfjvok
Playing with Faith: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vBphyThl1no

Ethan - 9 Months, Week 2

What a week already! Earlier this week I set Ethan down in his bathtub for his morning bath and the second he hit the water he decided to pee in his tub. Gracious! I had to get Ethan out of the water, drain and clean the tub, refill it and then try for a second time to get my child clean. (All the while trying to keep a naked baby out of trouble!) Okay, fast forward two days later....repeat above mentioned scenario. Yikes! I got him ready for his bath this morning with some mild trepidation, but success - no pee today! One of these days he's actually going to pee on me (and I am so not looking forward to that day!) It's kind of funny that these are the things about which I worry these days :)

Ethan had his first babysitter this past week. Miss Heather came over for two hours while I stayed in my bedroom with the door closed and was able to work uniterrupted for two solid hours. Heaven! Since I work freelance there are days where I have lots of projects and days where I have nothing going on. I've had a lot of guilt lately though, because I've had a lot of projects and I feel like I've been going through the motions with Ethan and hurrying him off to nap so that I can get back to working. That goes against the entire reason that I decided to be a stay at home mommy, so I decided to figure out how to find a slightly better balance. Ethan had a wonderful time with Miss Heather and I caught up on some assignments so that I was able to relax and just enjoy Ethan later that afternoon. It's amazing what a difference those two hours made. I was also able to go to bed a little earlier that night, because anything I don't get done while Ethan is napping is reserved for after he goes to bed at night and I've been staying up pretty late some nights to get things wrapped up. That wouldn't be horrible except that Ethan is an early riser. To say I've been exhausted lately would be putting it mildly. I think we're going to try to have a babysitter for Ethan once a week (for just a couple of hours) which will be great for my mental health and for Ethan. Heather was fantastic with him and had way more energy for playing and entertaining him then I usually have. (Poor little guy - I have to drag him to Target and the grocery store, do laundry, etc. etc. so hanging out with Mommy isn't always the most fun.) I think he will really enjoy having a couple hours with Miss Heather every week!

This past weekend my sister and her best friend (who has grown up with our family - I affectionately refer to her as the "other sister") came to visit. We had so much fun and put together a royal wedding viewing party. We had all sorts of goodies to eat and of course, hot tea and scones. I refuse to share any pictures from the party, but let's just say that there were tiaras. It was so fun to get to do something girly for a change. I've been so focused on being a good mommy that I've kind of forgotten about myself lately. I'm working on finding a better balance with that too.

Earlier this week I thought Ethan was ready to drop his afternoon nap (he went 5 days without actually sleeping in the afternoon!) but thank goodness that today he decided that sleeping was fabulous again and took an afternoon nap. I would give anything to take one short nap a day, so this child has no idea how good he has it. He takes a solid morning nap now (he has settled into an hour and a half to two hour morning nap) and has now adjusted to a 45 minute to one hour afternoon nap. He went through a period a few weeks ago where he was shortening his morning nap, so I think that he is settling into his new routine. Ethan thrives on a schedule, so I'm curious to see what he settles on now. I've heard that once your child gets to be pretty predictable they go and change things up on you again, and Ethan is living proof of that statement. I put Ethan in his crib for "quiet time" the past couple of days which was fine (he just babbled to himself throughout napttime) but I wasn't prepared for him to give up a nap entirely just yet. I know that day is coming soon, but maybe he can hold on for a few more months....fingers crossed!

Now that the weather is nicer I've been taking Ethan on an afternoon stroll and to our neighborhood playground each day. He is so funny on the swings - he holds on so tight! This afternoon I took him outside to read stories under our peach tree. He tried to put his toes on the grass and would immediately retract them. I think he thought that the texture was funny. We might start doing storytime outside for awhile until it gets too hot. As much as I stress about everything, moments like these are so precious to me and I am so grateful that I get to spend my days with my son. I can't imagine anything else I would rather be doing.

My camera is still not uploading pictures properly (I think it has something to do with the fact that the memory card is full) so when I go to upload the pics they are all out of order and there are over 1400 on there so there's a lot to go through. I'm going to try to figure it out this week so that I can add pics on here as well.

That's about it for now - hopefully I'll be able to catch up on the rest of life this week as well :)

Ethan - 9 Months

A few random pictures to go along with this post:Ethan's 8 month pics (way late on here, huh? 9 month pic coming soon once camera uploading issue is resolved) He would not stay still!

Eating breakfast - his favorite meal of the day because he is still in his comfy jammies!

Ethan had his 9 month check up this week...that's right, NINE months! Where is the time going? Ethan weighed in at 19 pound 4 ounces and was 27 3/4 inches long (which was the 50th percentile for both.) He did really well with Dr. Wiese, but definitely did not like having to lay down on the examining table for the nurse. He only needed one shot this time, but he'll evidently have four at his one year appointment. He did not like the shot (really, who does?) but luckily he never has had an adverse reaction or anything. After his one month shots he was pretty fussy for a couple days, but since then he has been fine. Thank goodness!

Getting ready to go watch Daddy at his softball game

Ethan's latest trick is that he's learned to pull himself up. For the first couple of days it was only to his knees, but yesterday he finally pulled up to his feet. Now he wants to pull up and stand no matter what we are doing. He uses me as a means to get himself upright so I am referring to him as my little monkey right now. The first time he pulled up to his knees he was in his crib, so we promptly lowered his mattress that night. It's pretty cute to look down the hall and see him standing or kneeling in his crib looking out the door. He is so proud of himself and once he's upright he isn't in a big hurry to get out of the crib. In fact, this afternoon I went to get him after his nap and he protested me taking him out of the crib because he wanted to practice standing in there. Go figure! He's taken a few more tentative cruising steps while standing and hanging onto the couch, but he's still not super coordinated with the cruising.

His very first time pulling up...yes, the crib mattress was lowered immediately!

We had a wonderful Easter at home with my mom and several of our neighbors. Ethan was very well behaved in church and made friends with an adorable 15 month old who was sitting next to us. When we got home we gave Ethan his very first Easter basket. He wasn't too interested in the basket or the goodies inside it - all he wanted was the tissue paper. I should mention that his other favorite activity these days (thanks, Aunt Carolyn!) is shredding paper. He spent a solid 30 minutes absolutely engrossed in shredding the tissue paper. He was very focused on his task, that's for sure.

Happy Easter!

There's so much going on and I wish I had time to catch up on it all, but this is going to have to do for now. Hopefully I'll get a chance to add more really soon because (surprise, surprise) I'm so behind! Oh, and I'm having some issues getting some pictures uploaded from my camera, so hopefully once I get that resolved I'll have a bunch more to put on here too.

We are all Hokies

Tomorrow marks the four year anniversary of the tragic shootings on the campus of Virginia Tech. We should all take a minute to say a special prayer for those who lost loved ones on that horrific day. My aunt and cousins live in Blacksburg, VA, and I am forever grateful that they were not on campus that day. Take a minute to hold your loved ones a little closer to honor the memory of those 32 people whose lives were cut way too short.

neVer forgeT

Update: My cousin Anna had this link to share, and it was so appropriate that I wanted to share it on here too - http://wordsofwhit.wordpress.com/2011/04/15/we-are-virginia-tech/.

Ethan - 8 Months

So how behind am I on life in general these days? Whew! There are no words. I'm trying my best to devote today to catching up on all the fun things that I've let get behind so that I don't feel quite so guilty about everything that is piling up around me. I managed to order all of the snapshots of Ethan from the past 6 months (yes, you read that correctly - I had not actually ordered pictures since Halloween although I have been taking and uploading them fairly regularly.) I spent about two hours last night putting Ethan's pictures into photo albums so now I'm almost caught up on that project. I still have to order Ethan's professional pictures from November AND March (did I mention that I am behind?!) and will be ordering extras for all the people that I owe pictures to and will also be ordering a few of the snapshots that I love through this site as well. They come out looking so much better (and only cost just a little more than a Snapfish or a Shutterfly) so hopefully I'll get that item crossed off the to-do list here shortly.

Ethan officially has three teeth now. I complained about teething a couple of weeks ago (he was up multiple times throughout the night for a couple of days about a week or so before his first two teeth popped through) but fortunately that chaos seems to have subsided. And compared to some of the horror stories I've been hearing, so far we've had it pretty good. The third tooth came in without much disturbance, so I'm hoping that our luck will hold out now. Right before those first teeth actually appeared was not fun, and I do not want a repeat performance. I think the top two teeth are going to be showing up soon. I'm so glad that he seems to have settled into his teething rhythm now, because in talking to some of my friends with babies the same age I see just how bad it can get. Cross your fingers that Ethan decides not to participate in these crazy shenanigans!

One of Ethan's favorite "toys" these days is a 12 ounce soda bottle filled halfway with water. When his girlfriend Faith was here for a visit, she was playing with a Dr. Pepper bottle and Ethan was so interested in it that I filled one up partially with water and he loves to shake the bottle and carry it around with him. Why waste money on toys when my child is so easily entertained by the most random things?! He still likes to carry his bowl around, although not as much as a few weeks ago. Ethan also has what I like to refer to as a "paci addiction." He always sleeps with a pacifier in, and now insists on holding a pacifier in each hand (in addition to the one in his mouth) before he will settle in to sleep. Maybe it's because I still don't keep any toys or anything in the crib when he's going to sleep, but he is seriously attached to his pacifiers. Maybe it will subside some once I put a blankie, stuffed animal or lovie in the crib with him to sleep, but so far I'm still keeping everything out of there when I'm trying to put him down for a nap or to bed. I do put a few toys in for him to play with when he wakes up, but otherwise it's still pretty empty in there.

Most mornings Ethan now wakes up babbling to himself which is the funniest way to wake up. I'll be sound asleep and then hear him having a conversation with himself through the monitor. I'll usually leave him in there for awhile and so far he's pretty content to babble to himself while I do a few morning things like brush my teeth and put in my contacts. If I wait too long he will cry to get out, but I usually get at least 20 minutes. He wakes up most mornings around 6 and goes to bed around 6:30 at night. He is still an early to bed baby and there is no keeping him up any later...I've tried! He is trying to shorten his morning nap right now which has been hard on both of us. It's hard on me because when he naps I get a chance to work on projects for work, and the less time he naps during the day, the later I have to stay up at night to finish everything up. It's hard on Ethan because I can tell he's still tired and needs a little more sleep to feel rested, but 45 minutes is about all he'll give me for the morning nap. I hope he doesn't drop it altogether anytime soon! His afternoon nap is usually about an hour and a half or so. Every now and then he'll push it to two hours (heaven!) but for the most part he's pretty consistently napping for about 90 minutes.

Ethan still isn't crawling, but he is definitely on the move. He does his inchworm/army crawl all the time now (I wonder if he'll ever figure out the real thing!) and he also rolls anywhere and everywhere with reckless abandon. His new trick is that he loves to stand holding onto the furniture. He's made a couple tentative steps while holding on to the couch, but not enough for me to say that he's cruising yet. Part of me worries that he isn't crawling yet, and the other part is grateful that as much as he's getting into already that there's one less thing I have to be watching out for all day. Does that make me a lazy parent?! He will also take a few steps while holding onto our hands, but more than anything he likes to stand and just bounce. Ethan is a nut, that's for sure!

There was a huge (and I mean HUGE) storm in the middle of the night last week, and since it woke both Patrick and I up we went to check in on Ethan to see how he was doing. He was sound asleep, so I now see where the expression "sleeping like a baby" comes from. This storm launched our grill across our yard (not sure yet if it is broken or not since we had to let it dry out completley before we're ready to test it - I do not want a huge gas explosion in our backyard!) and toppled patio furniture, trash cans, etc. Our poor cats were taking refuge under our bed and I could not believe that Ethan was so totally unaffected by the booming thunder, pouring rain and pounding hail. I wish I was able to sleep that soundly! I don't think I've been a sound sleeper since the day we brought Ethan home from the hospital. Will that kind of sleep ever return to me? Oh how I miss it!

I took Ethan to Raleigh two weekends ago to visit my mom and sister. My mom was in a really bad car accident a couple of days before we got there and Ethan was fascinated with the large plastic neck brace she had to wear. She's doing much better now and got to switch to the soft neck brace which she said was much easier to wear. Her car was totaled and so a couple of days ago she went and got her new car. I am so jealous (not of the accident, but of having a new car.) My car is dying a slow and painful death, and it makes me nervous to drive it very far these days. It has developed some sort of shriek that I try to pretend isn't happening. We're looking at cars now, but haven't decided exactly what we want, and then what we're willing to pay for it. Say a prayer that my car holds on long enough for us to find a suitable replacement.

Anyway, back to Raleigh. Ethan and I left on a Friday right before his morning naptime. He slept for about two hours and then babbled to himself for the remainder of the trip there. He was such a good little passenger - I was shocked! My mom wasn't really able to pick him up since she was in the brace, but she did give Ethan lots of cuddles from his Nana. We went to a baby shower for one of Carolyn's friends on Saturday and Ethan was pretty much the only little boy there. There were lots of little girls, so he was the little player - ha! Let me stop and say that I had promised myself that I would never be that person bringing a baby to a party (so annoying when you are not anticipating children and somebody brings their rowdy child!) but this was a kid-friendly affair complete with pack n plays and exersaucers for the drooling crowd. After church on Sunday, I went to meet my friend Lindsay for some consignment sale shopping and Aunt Carolyn came over to my mom's house to babysit. Ethan LOVES his Aunt Carolyn. She may just be his favorite person on earth (and that is including mommy and daddy.) Ethan and I went out to lunch with Carolyn on Friday and during lunch she taught Ethan a bad habit that I am still trying to undo. She let him shred napkins all over the place (we cleaned up before we left, promise!) and now shredding items is a favorite activity as well. When Carolyn was watching Ethan on Sunday, she brought two of her friends with her and evidently when they were holding him he would reach his arms out to Carolyn. The only other person he's done that with is me, so I'm thinking that he looks at her like mommy, only lots more fun :)

Last weekend Patrick's sister Jeannie flew in from Boston for the weekend and so Ethan was spoiled rotten with Auntie time. She brought him two Red Sox outfits (sorry, Suzanne) and a baby baseball hat. I'll try to get a good picture of him in his hat - babies in hats are just too cute! Ethan did really well with Jeannie and even let her feed him. On Saturday, Ethan's dad and his wife came and spent the day here and Ethan was on overdrive with so many people paying so much attention to him. He didn't nap really well, and by evening he was DONE! Jeannie and I went to my friend Melissa's 31 party that evening, and it was great to see Melissa again. She and I were roommates in college (and friends from high school) and since she lives a couple of hours away I only get to see here every so often. It was actually Melissa that introduced Patrick and I - Melissa is a fantastic golfer and was on the golf team at App. When we were in grad school she had a job at Grandfather, where Patrick worked, and the rest is history!

It was so nice having Jeannie here and I'm going to have to keep selling NC to her to get her to move back from the snowy north. We have barbecue, sweet tea, mild winters - what's not to love?!?! And here is my ace in the hole - we have Ethan (who she loves just a little bit - ha!) I'm just saying... I wish the trip had been longer, but considering the distance I am grateful for what we're able to get. I know we'll get to see her again for our family beach week at the end of the summer, and hopefully we'll get one more visit in before then.

Ethan continues to show dominance with his left hand, although I still think it's way to early to tell which hand he is going to use. Everybody keeps saying that he's going to be a lefty though. We'll see! He bangs all his toys with his left and has started picking up his puffs to eat with his left hand as well. He tends to carry items with his right hand though, so there's no telling. I kind of hope he will be left handed, but I guess time will just have to tell on this one. His eyes are still blue, so I'm starting to think they are going to stay blue. I was unaware that babies are all born with blue grey eyes, and at the hospital they told me that they would probably change up until around 9 months or so. We're rapidly approaching that mark, so we'll see if he stays with the blue or decides to change it up on us at the last minute. I have more pictures to post, but I'm out of time for now so hopefully between the 7 month pics and this you're a little more caught up on life around here. I'm really trying hard to climb out from under all of the things I've been letting get behind, so cross your fingers that I get back on track again!

Ethan's 7 Month Pictures

We recently had some pictures taken by my good friend Erin (who is a professional photographer - let me know if you need her contact info because not only is she fantastic at her job, she's lots of fun to be around and your kids are going to LOVE Miss Erin!) I'm going to be ordering some prints this week (with copies for everybody that I owe some Ethan pictures) so hopefully I'll get caught up on that front here in the not too distant future. In the interim, here are a few of my favorites:

He is such a happy baby!

Funny face...love it!

The trees look so pretty like this...I wish I had the talent to know how to take a picture at angles with the right lighting, etc. etc. I so wish I had the photography gift! I guess if I can't be blessed with this talent at least I have a good friend who is!

He was wearing shoes...part of the time (he loves to take them off and then take off his socks too)

Our future golfer...if he gets his daddy's talent and not my pitiful lack of hand-eye coordination that is!

He looks like we're already embarrassing him :)

Probably my absolute favorite...Ethan's very first time wearing a tie! He was more interested in playing with the grass and pine straw than getting his picture taken. He is all boy already - I am in for it!

Hanging out - I love how he's just chilling in this one!

Posing in his Janie & Jack bunny outfit with his "Ethan" bunny - his name is embroidered on the ear. I have some other poses in this outfit that will make great Easter pics!

I was so proud of him for not flopping backwards and hitting his head (I was right there to catch him just in case he made a move though!) His favorite thing to do when he sees something he wants is to fly backwards and roll to it...he's a nut!

My little man :) I hope he's a mommy's boy (but not necessarily a mama's boy) forever

How does Erin come up with these super cute ideas? I would never have thought of this!!

He looks so much more grown up in his suitcase now than he did when he was in this for his newborn photo shoot...I'll have to repost one of those pics for comparison!