Reading and arguments

Ethan turned 2 1/2 on the 11th. He is doing a great job reading now. He can usually figure out new words if we help him focus on one letter at a time, and he readily recognizes and can spell quite a few words, like Ethan, Stop, Exit, On, Off, Go, Ice, Hot, up, cup, car, dog, cat, box, etc., etc. Pretty cool! :o)

One neat but potentially frustrating thing about his being so bright is that he doesn't take anything we say as absolute truth. He's so independent and sure of himself that he will argue his point with us, even though what he's saying has no basis in reality! In the movie Elf, there's a little puffin...Ethan fights with Jim about that, calling it a penguin every time Jim says it's a puffin, even though Buddy the elf calls it a puffin, too. I read the nursery rhyme "Little Boy Blue" to Ethan a few weeks ago, and that started an argument about sheeps' dietary habits. Apparently, sheep only eat hay, not corn. Never corn!

My favorite argument so far happened on Christmas eve. We were preparing Ethan to go upstairs by explaining that he had to go to bed so that Santa could come into the house via the fireplace and leave him some Christmas presents. He looked at us, looked at the fireplace, and explained to us that Santa had to come in through the window because he's too big for the fireplace. That discussion lasted a WHILE. But the following morning, Santa had left the fireplace screen open on his way back up the chimney. See, baby? Proof that Santa used the fireplace! Now, if asked how Santa gets into our house, Ethan happily replies "The Fireplace!!" :o)

But puffins are still penguins, and sheep only eat hay...

T-S-O-P!

Last night, I was playing with Ethan and started tickling him. He cracked up and started protesting: "No tickles, Mommy! Hahahaha! Mommy, stop! T-S-O-P, STOP!!"

Nice! He's spelling at us now! :o)

Reading and sleeping through the night

For a while now, Ethan has been playing with phonics and has been matching letters with the sounds that they make. He's been able to recognize certain words in context: "stop" on stop signs, "on/off" on switches, for example. But several weeks ago, he started recognizing those words out of the usual context...as stand-alone words in books, etc. Now he's starting to spell certain words or see a word and sort of sound it out to figure out what it might be. It's still kind of hit and miss, but he's definitely getting the idea. My favorite error that he's making right now is seeing the "o-n" combo in a word like (vacatiON) and he'll say "O-N spells on!" It's a big game to see if we can figure out which word he's "reading" so that we can tell him what the whole word actually says.

In other good news...I think we may actually have the sleep thing figured out! And it's only taken us 2 and a half years! :oP He's always been a terrible sleeper. We've tried sleep training, and it was horrible, HORRIBLE. Over the last few months, he was waking up 6-7 times a night and needing us to stay with him until he fell asleep. His bedtime routine was taking me 45 minutes every night...and this was AFTER his bath and storytime. It was ridiculous. Jim and I were tired and cranky, and we'd just give up after the millionth trip to his room and just let him sleep the rest of the night in our bed. Bad us, be consistent, blah blah blah, I know. But when you're exhausted, all of that goes out the window and you do whatever it takes to get an extra 5 minutes of sleep. Even if it's terrible sleep, you'll take whatever you can get, however you can get it.

So, after Halloween night and all the festivities, Ethan was pretty darn tired. I decided to explain to him that he was going to go to bed in his room all by himself, and mommy was going to go to bed in her room, see him when the sun wakes up, etc. We had a nice conversation about it, I explained our expectations, and I left. He cried. Screamed, actually. I think Jim went and checked in on him, made sure all was good, left and let the yelling start again. It actually didn't last too long, and he did fall asleep after a while. He woke up once or twice, called for us, cried a bit, and went back to sleep. He woke up as soon as the sun came up...5:45 or something crazy like that. But he woke up *in his room.*

As we drove around running errands the next day, Ethan announced "I cried in my room. Mommy left me." Ouch. We told him we were so proud of him for sleeping in his room all night, that he was okay and everything is good, and he agreed. That night, he cried a bit when I left his room, so Jim went in to say goodnight. Then Ethan konked right out and I don't think he woke up again until the morning. BUT he was still getting up ridiculously early, thanks to the time change.

After a couple of days of consistently sleeping through the night without crying, we bought Ethan a digital clock for his room and explained that he's supposed to sleep until it says 7. (I covered up the minutes and just left the hours section visible to minimize confusion...he *is* 2, after all!) We drilled him: "what if it says 5? 'I go night night!' What if it says 6? 'I go night night!' What if it says 7? 'I wake up!!'" Then we crossed our fingers. The first night went well. He woke up at 6:30, but he needed a diaper change so that was fair. After he was all clean, I asked him what time it was. He said 6 and went back to sleep. Since then, he's been waking up after 7. This morning, I woke up to a cheerful "Mommy! It's 7! I see 7!" on the monitor. Soooo much better than "MOOOOOOMMMY! WAAAAA!!" at 5:45!!

I just got him into bed about 30 minutes ago. We read 2 stories, I let him turn off his light, tucked him in, gave and got goodnight kisses and hugs, he said "night-night mommy" and rolled over. And I left. No peeps, no cries, nothing. Just a sweet little boy, drifting off to sleep. If you had told me this was possible 2 weeks ago, I would have laughed hysterically (mostly out of exhaustion!)

The impossible is possible tonight. :o)

Little boy

Ethan is not a baby. But if you ask him if he's a big boy, he answers "Nope! I'm a little boy!" And he really is. Over the last couple of months, he has really begun to master the whole language thing. He's been really great about putting together full sentences to express complex ideas. He's definitely not just parroting anymore. He's finally able to tell us what he's thinking and how he's feeling and to share his ideas with us.

I love our Daisy, but she has a real talent for getting underfoot at the most inconvenient moment. When I get frustrated with her, I sometimes let loose with a "Frickin' dog!" One night, I was trying to get Ethan to go to sleep. He wanted me to talk to him, but I was not replying. He tried to get my attention..."Moooommy. Moooommy." No reply. "Mom. MOM. Frickin' MOM!" I couldn't help it...I cracked up and had to hug and kiss my crazy kid.

He's starting to understand phonics. He will often see letters and tell us what sounds they make, or he'll hear a word, repeat the starting sound and say "Mommy starts with M!" or "Pillow starts with P!," etc. It's funny because he can't say the hard G or C sounds yet, so he'll say stuff like "duh, duh, doat starts with G!" or "tuh, tuh, tat starts with C!" (That's translated as Goat and Cat, btw. :oD)

He's also developing a cute little sense of humor. Who knew that little boy potty humor starts so early!?! He likes to pretend someone "tooted" and laugh. Sigh. He's also having fun pretending to be animals. He's usually a kitty thanks to "Kitten's First Full Moon", but sometimes he's a puppy and gives me puppy kisses. Sloppy, but funny.

Ethan also tries to be just like Daddy. He likes to pretend he's "going to work" and loves playing with doors and announcing that he's home. Several weeks ago, Jim took Ethan upstairs to get him dressed for the day. Over the baby monitor, I heard Jim asking him what shirt and shorts he wanted to wear. Ethan kept rejecting all of Dad's suggestions, but he finally agreed to a shirt and a pair of shorts, and I heard Jim laughing as he got Ethan dressed. When they came downstairs, Jim got my attention. He had been laughing because Ethan picked a shirt and shorts that matched the ones Jim was wearing...he wanted to dress like Daddy!

Another funny pretending story: we had a couple of hail storms come through over the last few months, so everyone in our neighborhood has been getting new roofs. Ethan has a firetruck tent that has a little ladder painted onto one side. A few weeks ago, I watched him lean the ladder panel of the firetruck tent against another little tent in his playroom. He picked up a toy hammer and pretended to climb the ladder, then he started hammering the top of the other tent and announced that he was fixing the roof. I was so surprised that he was able to put so many ideas and actions together and act them out...pretty complex!!

When we're driving around, he likes to yell "Green light meaaans, GO!" and "Red light meaaaans, STOP!" This has become a game during our evening walks and we now green light go and red light stop our way through the neighborhood.

He's very cuddly and sweet right now. He's generous with the "I love you's" and hugs and kisses. I'm totally eating this up because just a few weeks ago, he'd wipe away my kisses and tell me they were "Yucky! Blech!" I'm sure that phase will be back soon, so I'm going to enjoy the love while I've got it!

He's also doing a great job of following directions and trying to be helpful. He likes to "carry" things for me and help me clean. He's also enjoying putting things in time out...including Mommy. As I type, he's taking a school bus to time out, saying "Time out, school bus. Two minutes. What's the rule?? (I make him tell me what rule he's broken when we do a time out.) Stay in time out. Ok. All done."

Ethan is very hyper. He bounces, runs, talks and pretends non-stop, and he just wears me out! By the end of the day, I am exhausted. But although he can drive me crazy sometimes, he is so yummy and funny and CUTE, I feel lucky to be here with him all day.

Need a handle for Daisy

Ethan is 2 now, and we are constantly amazed (and often amused!) at the things that he says.

After dinner this evening, we asked him if he wanted to go for a walk around the neighborhood. He said yes, so we started getting shoes on and whatnot. Daisy started wagging and getting excited, too. As we put his shoes on, Ethan kept saying something, but we couldn't quite make it out. Then it clicked: "Need a handle for Daisy!"

She has a retractable leash, and it has a big red handle...he wanted us to attach her "handle" so she could walk with us!

It's Potty Time!

Ethan has been climbing onto our toilets and saying "I go potty!" every so often. But he's been mostly uninterested in whether his diaper is dirty or wet and hasn't really shown us any of the readiness cues. Still, since he's been pretending to go, we figured he might like his own potty. We got one this afternoon and he was SO excited! He'd sit on it fully clothed and say "Go potty!" while doing the sign for potty.

This evening, as I was running his bath, I took off his shorts and diaper and suggested that he sit on his potty while we waited for his bath to fill up. He did, and he went potty! It was just a couple of teeny drops, but he grinned at me and said "pee-pee!" and of course I clapped and cheered for him!

So, then we did his bath and brushed his teeth (and discovered that his second-to-last baby tooth is on its way in...last molar on the top right - one more to go!). After bath and toothbrushing, I asked if he'd like to sit on the potty again before bed. He said yes and hopped right on. Next thing I know, he's REALLY going pee-pee! When he was all done, he looked between his legs and then at me with this look of such pride. He was adorable!!

So yeah, even though I had fully expected a struggle and was not even thinking about actually trying to potty train now, it looks like Ethan has other plans. :oD

Happy Birfday!

Spring has sprung! It's gorgeous outside, so I bought a bunch of seed packets and a mini-greenhouse full of peat pellets. You add water to the pellets and they get all puffy like little chocolate cakes. Then you plant the seeds in the peat pots, put the plastic lid on the greenhouse, and presto! baby plants in about a week!

I thought this would be a fantastic little project for Ethan to learn about plants, so I was kind of disappointed (but not surprised) when Ethan had absolutely NO interest in what I was doing. He just ran around the back yard, chasing Daisy and playing in puddles. He did like the little round coriander seeds, though. He got a handful and threw some of them at the peat pots yelling "little balls!" That's my boy. :o)

Anyway, I got several colored toothpicks to mark out which herbs were in which peat pots, and I stuck a few into the sides of some of the pots. Ethan wandered over, pulled the colorful toothpicks out of the sides of the pots and moved them to the tops. After he had a nice little row of toothpicks sticking straight up, he sat down and started singing: "Happy Birfday to you, Happy Birfday to you..."

They DO look like teeny little birthday cakes with colorful little toothpick candles on top!! :oD

"Tatro"

I am often amazed how much these little people can absorb. We never know how much he actually gets, until little moments like this:

Last night we were watching TV when Ethan's bedtime rolled around. We randomly do count-downs when we're going to turn things off, or move on to the next activity. This time, I did it in French to see his reaction. He looked at me funny and said "takabaf?". Michelle decided to play along and started counting in Spanish.

Mommy: "Uno, dos, tres..."

Ethan: "Tatro!"

Free Bath

In these hard economic times, even water is a luxury. Use this great penny-pinching tip to keep the kids clean and the wallet fat: introduce them to public fountains.

Updates are way overdue!

Ethan is awesome! He's a little sponge and quite the parrot. He's talking up a storm now, and it's lots of fun to have crazy little conversations with him. He sings all sorts of songs to himself, and he climbs on EVERYTHING. He's pretty much going non-stop, which is great for him but exhausting for Mommy and Daddy! He's getting better about sleeping on his own, but he's still getting up a couple of times a night. Sometimes he'll go back to sleep with his blanket and his Nemo and it's all good, but usually he'll work himself into a frenzy and start screaming if we don't go into his room to reassure him that it's ok to lie back down. He has several friends that he's always asking for. I just think it's so cute to hear him ask to see Vivi or Jannah or Eliza! He has buddies! I love that!! :o)

Anyway, I have been awful about updating this because we had some family...drama. We started trying to have a baby in January and were delighted to find out in late January that we were expecting. But in mid-February, we started experiencing problems and we had a miscarriage at the end of the month. To add insult to injury, I got horribly ill with a bad stomach flu the day after the miscarraige and I ended up in the emergency room later that week. So, we're just kind of scrubbing February 2009 from our memory. There were highlights and good things, like Ethan's big cognitive growth spurts and some really great bonding moments between me and Jim over all of the stress. Having such a cute toddler and amazing husband has really made the loss so much easier to face, and I know that we're so lucky to have the wonderful friends and family that have been so supportive through all of this.

So, we'll try again for a baby brother or sister for Ethan later this year. In the meantime, I'll try to be better about updating this blog and will try to post some pics and maybe even some video soon!

What can Ethan do?

Ethan will be 18 months old in a few days, so I thought it'd be a good time to make a list of the things that he can do at this point. This is not an exhaustive list because I'm an exhausted Momma and am sick with a chest cold, which is NOT helping. Still, I'll add what I can remember and will update this if I remember anything particularly cool later.

Motor skills: He can...
walk, spin, clap, dance, give kisses, give high 5s, climb up and down things (including the stairs), tiptoe, tiptoe while walking, walk backwards, run very clumsily (but cutely!), feed himself with a spoon (though he still prefers his hands), throw lots of things (with distressingly accurate aim, unfortunately for Daisy), roll a ball, sometimes kick a ball, bounce on his bottom, and today he learned how to stomp. Many of these actions are accompanied by his narration: "I bounce!" "I stomp!" "Spinning, Spinning!" "Down stairs!" "Stomp!"

Other skills: Ethan knows (and says)...
the full capital letter alphabet (he points out letters every time we're out and about), a handful of lower-case letters, numbers 0-9, how to count to ten (and he can tell us how many fingers we're holding up for him to count), most basic shapes (star, oval, heart, circle, square, diamond, cross, etc.), names of people he sees often, his own name, most farm animals and their noises, lots of other animals, names of the foods he eats and many that he still won't touch, lots of verbs, nouns

Songs he sings (only partially, still):
Old Mac Donald
ABC song (he gets almost all of it right!)
My Bonnie
Itsy bitsy spider
Hello Song from music together class

Still working on:
Adjectives, colors, jumping, eating a variety of foods, patience. Ethan has a low tolerance for frustration right now, and he gets really upset when he wants to have/do something that he can't have/do. I know it's just a stage and that he'll learn how to deal, but it can be very trying sometimes. But he'll get there. :o)

Feedback

Ethan is getting really good at telling us what he's thinking.

Today, during a diaper change, he said "Brrr, cold!" and smiled when I used the wipes on him. They are a little chilly, but he'd never complained before! :o)

We also went to the outlet mall looking for little boy shoes. Ethan was a pretty good sport, but he eventually yawned and said "I tired!". Normally, he'd just yawn and I'd get it and we'd go home, but how cool is it that he can also acknowledge that his yawn means he needs his nap and it's time for us to head home?

He knows his name now, too. He's recognized his name for months, but now he finally says Ethan when we ask him what his name is. And when we ask him someone's name, he usually gets it right...assuming it's someone he sees pretty often.

Anytime we go anywhere, he chatters on at a mile a minute about everything he sees! There are some things that he is just REALLY into, so when we see/hear them, chances are good that he'll comment on them: Fans (anything that spins like one), the sun (circles with lines radiating out), stars, all things Nemo, water (especially fountains), wheeled vehicles (especially trucks and motorcycles...not so much plain old cars), airplanes, guitars, pianos, music of any kind, cats...and SO many other things. I think it's pretty cool that he's so curious and interactive now. When he sees something he likes, he tells us and gets so excited when we let him know we see it, too. Communicating with him is so much fun, and it's really neat that he can express himself to us and unveil more and more of his little personality every day!

Long overdue update

Ethan is quite the talker! He knows most common animals and their sounds as well as dozens and dozens of nouns and verbs. He knows basic shapes (circle, square, diamond, star) and he also recognizes all the capital letters and can count up to 9. We're working on colors right now. He likes the word blue, but I don't think he knows what it means yet.

He can parrot pretty much anything we say, which is pretty scary. :o) But he's actually retaining and building on what he's parroting, which is really cool. A couple of days ago, we were playing at a local fountain and he threw an acorn at it. Then he announced "I throwed it!". I'm *fairly* certain "throwed" isn't a word Jim or I have used recently, so apparently Ethan has learned basic grammar structures and has decided to add -ed to the end of a verb he knows to make it past-tense. Cool, huh?!?

He's also finishing song phrases. This started in the last week or so. I'll sing "Daisy Daisy" or "My Bonnie" and stop at the last word of a phrase, and he'll "sing" the missing word. Not necessarily with the correct rhythm or tune yet, but sometimes he does even get those right. Again, pretty sophisticated stuff for a 17 month old. Today, during bath-time, I started singing "Old MacDonald" and decided to see if he'd pick the animal. He LOVES cats, so I thought for sure he'd pick cat, but he chose sheep. So we baa-baaed and I was so proud of my son for choosing an animal for the very first time, all by his teeny self! He's also got a favorite non-kid song. Coldplay's "Don't Panic". He requests it during diaper changes and sings along while I'm changing him. Hey, whatever it takes to keep him still!!

Ethan is already starting to create basic sentences. Stuff like "I want it" and "I wanna go outside" and "I throwed it!" He's also pretty decent at saying please and thank you. He's not consistent with that yet, but he's getting there. He requests books by name and he can give me nose kisses and puppy kisses...very cute! Oh, and he's learning his friend's names! He knows Mommy, Daddy, Grammy and Daisy, of course. But he also knows Vivi and Jannah and Hamza. It's good that he's starting to care that the other kiddos have names...he's starting to acknowledge other kids as people, not obstacles. Yay!!

Oh, and he's getting really good at narrating what he's doing. He'll spin and yell "Spinning!", run and yell "Running!", splash and yell "Splashing!" All with a big "whoa, check out what I can do!" grin on his face. Ahhh, that grin!! He is SO full of discovery and excitement and wonder at EVERY little thing! He'll examine, explore, or try something, then he'll look at me with this "Ah-Ha! Check this out, Mom!" grin, and I can't help but fall head-over-heels in love with him a million times a day! Ethan is absolutely exhausting, but I treasure every minute with him and am so grateful that I am able to stay home with him and show him all of these things that he gets so excited about all day long. He's a really cool little person, and I'm just so proud of how sweet and smart and yummy he is!! :o)

The latest...

We're sooo far behind on trying to maintain this blog! Ethan is just amazing right now, but he needs me to keep a very close eye on him! He's climbing on everything (including one of his baby gates) he likes to play with the stove knobs (which are no longer on the stove now...we took them off and moved them to higher ground to avoid gas leaks!), and he somehow manages to be everywhere at once. As I'm cleaning up one disaster area, he's busily creating a new one for Mommy to work on!

He's a handful, but he's SO MUCH fun! Kiddo is talking up a storm. He has dozens of nouns, and even a few verbs and adjectives. He's playing pretend. He's curious about everything...one of his favorite words is "what?" He's able to give me a breakfast or lunch order..." milk! Noodle! Cheerio!, Bana! (Banana in Ethan-speak)" He answers "yeah" and "no" to my inquiries. He recognizes a few letters and shapes. He's just so cool!

And Uncle Tom and Michele...he FINALLY started saying "three" the day after we got home!

We just got back from Seattle, and he was such a great little traveler! One guy on the plane home actually commented on his good behavior as we were getting off the plane. He slept well and was just generally good-natured during almost all of the trip. Yay!!

He's also finally started to give kisses. Before, he'd give us his forehead to kiss, but now he's smacking me with his little baby lips...so yummy!! :oD And he's calling me Mommy now. It's one of the sweetest sounds I've ever heard!

He's growing up SO fast! Every day brings at least a few new words, and he's just becoming SO smart! And he can walk backwards now, which delights him to no end! He's constantly cracking himself up, silly boy! He is just so cute and so much fun...we're really having a good time playing and exploring and just learning all about the world eight now. :o)

Oh yeah!

Forgot to mention that Ethan knows body parts now. He started with Ear, and that was the only one he knew for a while. Then came Eye and Nose, and he's saying foot, hand, and he knows Cheek but isn't saying it yet.

What else? He can sort of count to 3. Sort of...he knows the words, but I'm not sure that he "gets" the actual concept yet. But we're working on it!

Especially in the last few weeks, every day brings new words and new discoveries...it's SO MUCH fun!! He is sooo cute, and hearing him name new things in his little baby voice is just sooo adorable. :o)

Update

It's amazing how much can happen in just one month. Ethan has SO MANY words now! He has a favorite shape (star), a favorite household item (clocks), a favorite line from a book ("down, down, down, plop!" from Are You My Mother), and so many other cool things like that. He's not signing much, but he is talking a lot and is definitely communicating with us. Oh, he just started pointing at stuff and asking "dat?" a few days ago. He's so curious about everything! :o)

Some of his names for things are a little off. He calls his toy cow "moo" and his lamb is "baa." But he definitely knows what they are...if I ask him to get his cow, he grabs it and says "moo!" Pretty neat!

Today, he tried to share his water with a Winnie the Poo puppet. He's beginning to pretend!! He laughed when I made the puppet make "drinking" noises.

And today, for the first time, he called me Mama. No doubt about it. He was with Jim and was looking for me and asked for Mama. When I came into view, he looked at me and said it, then pointed at me and said it again with a big goofy grin on his little face. It made my mommy heart soooo happy!!

Also, he nursed for the very last time on July 24th. He wasn't nursing unless it was naptime or bedtime, and I figured he was going to be able to deal with it well enough to stop, so we did it. I cried after the last time, and I still kind of miss nursing him, but he's doing very well. Still waking up a couple of times a night, but he's generally going back to sleep fairly easily unless his molars are bothering him.

Another big event...I left him with a non-familial sitter a few times. I joined the YMCA and left him with their child care center. He did okay with them. I cried the first time I left him, and the staff were all concerned. :oP When I explained why I was crying, they were all really sweet and sympathetic. They'd all been there, too. :o)

Bird!

Today, Ethan said something that sounded kind of like bird. I wasn't sure if that was what he was trying to say, but then he started doing the sign for bird and kept repeating the word! Yay!

So that's kind of his 2nd or 3rd sign, if you count waving Hi and an occasional "all done" when he's finished eating. He's really resisting using his hands to communicate...he'd MUCH rather try to talk. But if he can manage to do both, that'll really help us figure out exactly what he's trying to say.

Woo-hoo!

Shutterfly is *finally* completely current! Click on the link to the left to see pics. :o)

Stuff our son can do now...

Ethan's behavior has really changed in the last few weeks. They're not kidding when they say that toddlerhood happens fast...!

He's doing a lot more walking and he very rarely crawls anymore. I'll pretend to "chase" him, and he'll walk/run away squealing in delight! I'm sure that game will get old pretty soon, but it's very cute right now! :o)

I noticed a couple of days ago that Ethan's not just swatting randomly at the pages in books anymore. He is actually purposefully turning the pages and trying to separate pages that stick together...pretty cool! He can also tell when he's holding a book upside down. He will look at it funny and then turn it right side up.

On Thursday, we went to Barnes and Noble to go get Harvey Karp's Happiest Toddler book. I was a Momma on a Mission...just wanted to go straight to the parenting section, grab the book, and get out of there. I heard Ethan babbling, but I wasn't really listening...he usually babbles non-stop, and I was focused on finding my book. But when I actually *listened* to his babbles, I realized he was saying "boop, boop, boop." Boop, meaning BOOK. My baby was all excited because there were books all around him! It was TOO adorable!

We've been playing peek-a-boo for a long time now; but just yesterday, he started hiding his eye(s) behind his forearm and hand. He only uses one arm to hide, so sometimes he manages to cover both eyes, sometimes he doesn't. But if he doesn't, he closes the eye that's not covered, so we may as well be gone...good enough! We'll say "Where's Ethan?!?" and he'll move his arm down really fast and look at us and crack up. I need to get it on video...it's so funny, and he is SO proud of himself!

A couple of weeks ago, he discovered that the throw pillows on the sofa are fun to pull to the floor and dive into. He's been yanking them to the ground and he'll get really upset if they're being anchored down by anyone...like Daisy. Now he's also attacking the pillows on his bed. Yes, we have pillows on his bed. Yes, I know the AAP recommends not giving little kids pillows. The AAP hasn't watched our son bang his head into the walls around his bed, either, though! So now, he dives into the pillows we have propped up against the wall on his bed, and he literally bites them and attacks them like a crazy baby, then he looks at us and *grins*! Such a little goofball!

I'm sure there's a lot that I'm forgetting to jot down, but the point is that he's just becoming so SMART. Something happened right around the time he turned 1. He's really a little kid now...my baby is almost impossible to see in this curious, funny, active little boy. He's still squishy and yummy and cute, but he's definitely not a baby anymore.

birthday stuff and sleep training

I meant to update this sooner, but we've been so busy with birthday stuff and sleep training. Better late than never, though!

We didn't actually do anything too special on the 11th...we were saving it all for his party on Saturday! It was a fairly typical morning...he woke up, we played, and then we had breakfast. After breakfast, we strapped him into his infant carseat (the one he came home from the hospital in) for the very last time, and we drove to Babies R Us. They were having a carseat inspection/installation clinic, and we had a 10:30 appointment. They were running very late, so we played on a blanket under some trees until they finally got to us. They installed his fancy new carseat, but they had to install it rear-facing since he didn't weigh 20 lbs yet, but that's OK...at least he's got more room now! He was tired and cranky by the time we finished, so we got him home and he took a nap.

After his nap, we went to the doctor for his 12-month appointment. He got a couple of booster shots, but I asked her to hold off on the MMR and chicken pox vaccines for right now. He's only in the 5th percentile for weight, which has me worried. Dr. Spellings says that if he continues to fall on the growth charts, we may want to do some metabolic testing to rule out any hidden issues. But she agrees that he looks and acts very healthy, and that he started out as a big baby, so maybe he's just dropping on the charts because he's just destined to be a small person like me and Daddy. Still, better safe than sorry. She recommended that we go ahead and start giving him whole milk, so we have been trying. So far, he is NOT interested. He loves water, so I've tried watering it down for him, and that seems to help a little. Some friends have also recommended trying a different brand of milk, so I'm going to try that, too.

Larry and Carla arrived to stay with Mo on Thursday, so we all went out to dinner at Rudy's that night. It was fun, and Ethan did pretty well, even though he hadn't napped. He finally got pretty cranky, so we had to cut the evening short.

My parents got to Austin on Friday evening. We played with Ethan a bit, then I took him upstairs so he could get some good sleep the night before his party. Jim went to the airport at midnight to pick up Keisha, so when we woke up on Saturday morning, we had all sorts of fun people at the house! Mom helped me finish decorating with streamers and they got Ethan's balloons. Jim went and picked up all the food, and everyone helped with final set-up and decoration stuff while I fed Ethan breakfast.

The party ended up being lots of fun! It was hot outside, and I wish I'd gotten an extra canopy for the back yard, but it was ok. The kids seemed to have a lot of fun splashing in the pools and playing in the sprinkler. We found a bubble machine at Target, and it was a HUGE hit! Mo gave Ethan a kid's picnic table and sand & water table, and the older kids had a blast with that. I felt kind of bad for the parents that it was so hot...but at least the kids were happy. :o)

We gathered the family and sang Happy Birthday to Ethan in his high chair. We tried to light the candle on his cupcake, but it just wasn't going to work outside. Probably a bad idea, anyway! He wasn't so interested in the icing, but he went to town on the cupcake itself! He was a gooey mess, and we have lots of pics.

After cupcakes, we all went inside (air conditioning!!) and opened up presents. He got lots of really cool toys, and a TON of outfits. Ethan is going to be a VERY well-dressed kid for quite a while! The party went way longer than we'd planned, so he was tired and cranky by the time everyone left. But he got to spend some good time with his grandparents and Aunt Keisha, so that was good! Later that evening, we went to dinner at Chuy's with some of Keisha's college friends. One of them is in our playgroup, so she's our friend now, too. :o) They are all sweet people, so it was a nice dinner.

Keisha spent Sunday afternoon with our mutual friend, and we had dinner at Mo's that evening. Jim woke up super-early to drive Keisha to the airport on Monday morning. It always makes me sad when she goes home, and I was sadder that I didn't get the chance to drive her from/to the airport. But Ethan was sleeping during those times, so I didn't get a choice. :o(

After everything finally settled down, Jim and I discussed the whole sleep situation and agreed that it was time to make a change. Ethan needs me to go to sleep, but only because he was used to nursing to sleep. Anytime he'd wake up, I'd have to nurse him back down. So, we decided it's time to stop that. We've been doing it since Monday, and so far, so good! He refused to nap without nursing on Monday, so he was exhausted Monday night. He cried and cried and cried for a couple of hours Monday night, but he finally fell asleep. I was right there with him the whole time, but I just wouldn't nurse him. He woke up several times looking for milk, but I didn't give it to him. He cried, but each time was shorter than the last. I was exhausted on Tuesday, so Jim watched him so I could nap for an hour. He actually did finally nap on Tuesday. He fought it at first, but he finally went down that afternoon and konked out for an hour and a half or so. Bedtime took a while, but he fell asleep with out too much yelling. Since then, he's been pretty good about going to sleep. We read a few books, he cries a little bit, but then he's out. :o) He still needs help lying back down when he wakes up in the middle of the night, but I put him down and he usually falls asleep again without too much of a fuss.