Some 10 Month Pictures

I am still having a few technical difficulties with my camera, but in the interim, here are a few pics of Ethan this month. These aren't all that great, but hopefully I'll have more to share here in the not too distant future!

Daddy wanted to try on the Bjorn at least once before Ethan outgrew it!

Opening a present from his grandparents

He wanted down!

Being silly with Nana
He used to be such a ham for the camera...now it is impossible to get him to stay still long enough to take even one picture!

A morning ritual...banging on all of the furniture

Me with my little 10 month old...he's not going to be a baby much longer :(

Still in his jammies in the morning, banging away on the couch (his FAVORITE activity is to bang on things!)

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....

Ethan - 10 Months

It's been an eventful couple of weeks! Let me start by apologizing for not updating sooner - two weeks ago I had mastitis, and let me tell you, it was AWFUL! The worst part was feeling like a had the flu, complete with fever of 102. I started feeling pretty miserable on a Monday afternoon, saw the doctor on Tuesday afternoon and by Wednesday afternoon (once the meds starting kicking in and I was able to get some rest thanks to my in-laws coming to my rescue and spending the day helping out with Ethan) I was starting to feel much better. I had to take my medicine every 6 hours, and for those of you who don't know, I am TERRIBLE at swallowing pills. I try and try (and if you have a secret that works for you, I can bet that I've tried that too) and so I ended up opening up the capsule and mixing the powder with applesauce and sugar. Probably not the best method, but hey, I got down every one of those 28 pills within a week. Yes, I would count them out throughout the week to see how many were left. Being sick while caring for a baby full time is hard work. I remember when Patrick got the flu this past winter he went and spent several days hiding out in the guest room and sleeping the day away to recover. I have discovered that mothers do not have this luxury. Thank goodness the medicine kicked in pretty quickly though, so I wasn't out of the game for too long. It's been several years since I've felt that badly so I'm glad that is all behind us now.

Ethan and I went on a roadtrip together this past weekend. (Patrick was working - the downside of being married to a golf pro is that getting a full weekend off is a rare luxury.) We drove up to Blacksburg, VA to visit with my Aunt Susie and cousins, Anna and Suzanne. Anna is in grad school in NYC at Columbia (hopefully Ethan will have some of her smarts!) and was in town for the weekend so it was a great opportunity for us to all get together. My sister Carolyn drove up from Raleigh and she and I stayed at the hotel with Ethan. We had so much fun!

I left Charlotte about the time that Ethan usually goes down for his morning nap thinking that he would sleep the majority of the three hour drive there. Not so! He slept for about 40 minutes and was up for the remainder of the trip. I have to give him credit though, because he was a fantastic passenger. He did not cry at all! I planned ahead and had a bag full of toys on the passenger seat, and every time he threw the toy he was playing with, I would reach into the bag and pass him a new toy and he would stay occupied with that toy for awhile. Then he would repeat the above scenario - throw the toy across the backseat, I would pass him a new one, and he would be engrossed in the new toy for awhile, and then repeat again. When we finally arrived in Blacksburg the backseat was littered with toys, but he was happy and since I was traveling alone with him I was just relieved that we made it there without some sort of breakdown.

We all went out to lunch together and Ethan enjoyed sitting right next to Suzanne. After lunch we went to some stores and Ethan finally fell asleep in his stroller in the book store. We decided that the elevator music and cool air conditioning must have done the trick. He snoozed away for the next 30 minutes or so, but that was it for naps for the day. I was a little worried that he was going to lose his marbles, but fortunately he was so interested in seeing everything that was going on around him that he did fairly well. Later that afternoon we headed over to the pool where Suzanne was lifeguarding and hung out for awhile. Aunt Susie came over a little later with a fabulous spread of food for dinner. It was soooo yummy! I think Carolyn and I decided that the food alone makes it worth the trip. After a couple hours at the pool I could tell that Ethan was getting pretty sleepy so I took him back to the hotel and got him all ready for bed and he went to sleep in his pack n play immediately. I got about an hour to chill by myself and once Suzanne's shift was over my aunt came to sit in the hotel room so I could go out with my aunt and cousin. It was so sweet of her because it is rare that I get to go out baby-free these days.

Carolyn, Anna and I went to a wine bar and got to just sit and visit on the patio for awhile. It was very relaxing. (Suzanne had to head back to Radford for the night, but we saw her again in the AM.) When we got back to the hotel I was relieved that Ethan had been asleep the entire time and therefore my aunt hadn't had a screaming child on her hands. This was Ethan's first time in a hotel and I would be lying if I said I wasn't nervous about how he would behave. Everything was going pretty well until about 2:30 am and I heard somebody out in the hall talking. Ethan must have heard him too, because all of a sudden I heard a loud wail coming from the pack n play. Yikes! I rushed to him and he quieted down the second I picked him up (I was not about to leave a crying child be with my sister in the room and other hotel guests who probably wouldn't appreciate a crying child in the middle of the night) but every time I tried to lay him back down he would cry. If he was in my arms he was sound asleep, but laying down again in the pack n play seemed to be out of the question. I couldn't let him cry for a minute and settle down because it was 2:30 am, so I propped myself up as comfortably as possible in bed and he slept on my chest. This lasted for about 30 minutes or so and then he started trying to fling himself off me. I let him roll onto the bed (onto my outstretched arm) where he looked so comfortable and was sleeping soundly. Ummmm....not so sure about letting a baby sleep in the bed (with me no less, I've heard horror stories about people who let their children sleep in the bed with them and tragic accidents occur so I've never let him in the bed with me at all) but he was asleep and exhaustion took over and I let him stay. I moved all the pillows off the bed and kicked off the covers (not so comfortable for me - the life of a mom, huh?!) He was laying on my outstretched arm so I could feel if he made a move to roll towards the side of the bed and we stayed like this until about 4:30 until I was so uncomfortable I just couldn't take it anymore and I scooped him up to lay him back down in his pack n play.

He woke up the second I layed him down, and when he woke up I guess he thought it was morning because all he wanted to do was play. I fed him and he went back to sleep (on me in the bed again - he was over the pack n play at this point) around 5:30. When Carolyn woke up at 7 she found Ethan in bed with me and I have to say, as worried as I was (and as little sleep as I ended up getting) it was pretty cute. I'm so relieved that Carolyn slept through most of the nightly chaos (she heard him at 4:30 when his genious mother woke up a sleeping baby) but that was it. We got ready for chuch and picked up my aunt and we were off again. Ethan did okay in church (sometimes he's great, and other times we have to make a hasty exit.) His shining moment was when we all bowed our heads for a moment of quiet reflection - Ethan chose that moment to LOUDLY babble in his baby voice. I think I turned bright red! He was occupied for the most part with Aunt Carolyn's purse of fun. He loves her purse - and all the lotion bottles she keeps in it. It was funny!

By the time we were ready to hit the road that afternoon, Ethan was exhausted and he slept the ENTIRE trip home. Yes, he slept for three hours straight. It's a good thing too, because when we got home Ethan's girlfriend was in town and he had a great time playing with her. The funniest part was when they each had their pacifiers and they wanted each other's. We all went out to dinner and Ethan and Faith ate their little crunchies and puffs together...they are so cute and sweet together!

I'll have pictures and videos to post soon!

Please Vote!

For those of you that are Facebook users, please go to Toyota 100 Cars for Good and vote for Cindy's Hope Chest today. (Voting is today only for this organization.) This is my neighbor's charity and winning this contest could really help her organization. Cindy has been honored by the Lifetime Network for the work that she's been doing and her girls are going to be babysitting Ethan in the coming years. It will only take a couple seconds of your time, but it can make a big difference. Please share with your friends - thanks!

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 :)