Ethan is 9 months old!

Thanks to my neighbor for supplying these photos of Ethan and Sophia. Ethan is into kissing girls these days:)...oh man!

What a sweet boy!

Wow, I am seriously remiss. My last post was when Ethan turned 8 months old...

It has been a wonderfully busy month!

Mom and Dad came to visit at the beginning of the month and we had a lovely time, I will post about that soon.

As far as our sweet little man well he's busy! He still prefers to have us close by, really he wants us within touching distance:). He has made the transition to full on hands and knees crawling and now he's lightning fast! He spends a great deal of time taking books off of shelves to taste every book and bang them against each other, taking clean clothes out of the laundry basket for shaking, and attempting to yank cords, a CO monitor, and safety plug covers, out of the wall. He now eats lots of different table foods and needs 3 meals a day. Cashew butter+____ is still his favorite food option. I am particularly amused by his plum skills. He likes to suck the essence off of paper thin slices and then, and only then, chew them up. Ethan is also having more temper tantrums but part of that is a 9 month ramp up, part of it is a need to eat more frequently, and part of it is temperament. I am certainly in a place of prayer asking God to make me calmer as he ramps it up, I am the model for how to handle his emotions...with the Lord's help:).

Ethan still hates being in the nursery at church on Sunday, and chapel during Protestant Women of the Chapel (PWOC) bible study. I am toying with the idea of scrapping the nursery all together and just keeping him with me...any suggestions?

I love you my sweet Ethan, you are a joy and a blessing, and I'm so thankful to be your Mama!

Ethan is 8 months old!

Ethan tried blueberry pancakes this weekend! He mostly likely the texture in his hands:).

Today marks 8 months for Ethan.

I probably say it every time, but I am amazed at how quickly he has grown! He know looks much more like a toddler than a baby, losing his chubbiness in all but a few spots. Ethan also sports a 4 pack so just be ready if you tickle him because there are abs of steel waiting to deflect your movements:).

Ethan is very vocal, loves commando crawling all over the house, enjoys chewing on purse straps and electrical cords, and loves to scrunch up his nose and give a toothy grin


whenever you catch his eye. He is still very attached and concerned that we are around, but he's becoming slightly more independent and just all around content.

He LOVES Lady and has recently realized the fun of holding onto her tail, eating her tail, and tugging on her tail. Lady also LOVES Ethan but she's not such a fan of his new tail fascination:). Thankfully, she handles it well and her biggest disobedience regarding Ethan is TOO much fascination with and willingness to interact with him.

Ethan has also become more interested in other children when we're out and about. A few weeks ago we went to a sit-down restaurant, a rather rare occurence, with an Aggie friend. While we waited for our table Ethan yell-talked for about 5 minutes straight until the 2 toddler girls across the way noticed him. Then he stopped...oh man:).

Ethan is LOVING the baby wrap, as am I, and we now spend a great deal of time split between the baby wrap, and him crawling. I think it's a funny juxtaposition but whatever works!

He is trying more and more solid foods and although his appetite is supressed from a virus, he has been surprising me with both the frequency and amounts he is hungry for.

Joel's work schedule of late has afforded us more opportunity to add in more to Ethan's nighttime routine. For some time Joel had been getting home at or after Ethan's bedtime, 7pm, and so I was generally scrambling to get him bathed, fed and in bed. That led to a slightly overstimulated Ethan when he initially went down, which led to his panic and fighting sleep. Now we are all doing baths, prayers, reading his bible. After I feed him he calmly falls asleep...well most of the time at least!

My mom has shared a great deal of wisdom with me but that was one of the parenting morsels that I have most recently savored. She wisely identified that part of my constant struggle against sleep as a child, well lets be honest here as a Rachel:), had to do with an insecurity I felt that I might miss out on something or someone. She read after I was past the age of necessity, a suggestion that both parents be part of the nighttime routine. The idea being that this instills a sense of security in the child that mama and papa are here now when I go to sleep, and they'll be here when I wake up. That seems to be exactly what Ethan is fretting over. So, we are working towards making him feel secure.

I am so thankful to be your mama Ethan. I love to see your smiles, receive lots of kisses and sweet cuddles. I cannot wait to see what God has in store for us next!

There's a monkey an Ethan on your back!

Our next door neighbor was kind enough to let us try out her Sleepy Wrap last week. Ethan LOVES being cuddled up in a wrap and I have enjoyed the opportunity to get more done around the house! Yesterday I was catching up on much-needed vacuuming. You see, Ethan used to sleep through the sound of the vacuum-awesome right? Then he grew out of that, so I adjusted. I would clean while he played in the jumperoo or on a quilt. Then separation anxiety set in and things got complicated. Then the sound of one of the vacuums began to terrify him...So it had been too long since I had vacuumed:).
Ok, so back to the wrap. We had slowly been working our way through different wrap positions. It took some doing on my part, but we worked out the back carry wrap. Ethan giggled, babbled, nuzzled and generally amused himself. While I vacuumed the rug, and all of the floors. Instead of having a full-on panic when the vacuum scared him, this time he just nuzzled in between my shoulder blades:). So sweet. Needy. But oh so sweet!

It looks like I teased my hair and hairsprayed my bangs from this angle...ahh the wonders of being big-haired;)!

Wow, I started this post last week but I needed to go to bed so I saved it...and here we are...

Since I started this post I picked up a Navy cotton interlock remnant of 4 yards for $5 so now Ethan has at least one wrap all his own and maybe 2! Otherwise, I'm using the rest of the fabric to make a nice cotton dress. I don't have any pictures of the new wrap yet but we did try it out and he fit beautifully. If any of you out there are interested in a baby wrap don't spend $40-60 buying a Moby or a Sleepy Wrap! Just buy 4-5 yards of cotton interlock (if you want a fabric with stretch) or a thin, non-stretch fabric. All you have to do is cut down the middle to make the wrap between 25-30 inches wide! I am not currently planning on hemming or finishing my fabric since the how-to's I have read suggest that it was unnecessary for them. I may make a slight modification to the tails so it's easy to tie, we shall see. And if I do chose to make that modification, then I will likely need to finish the edges I taper. Either way, make your own wrap and enjoy! It has certainly made my "cuddly" baby easier to handle and my arms and back aren't quite so exhausted:). In other baby wrap news, I used Joel as my guinea pig for trying other back carry methods I found on You Tube and well...just watch...

A very amusing laundry basket

Yesterday I was working on a whole bunch of clothing and household laundry so I was in and out of the room. But thankfully Ethan was completely self-amused. I didn't know what I owed the pleasure to, as I worked, but I certainly appreciated hearing sweet babble rather than ear-piercing screaming and crying:). When I got back into the living room Ethan had tipped the laundry basket and filled it with his stacking cups (basically his favorite toys-ever) and then swung the whole basket around, one-handed, like a pro:).

Tangential question alert. Are, palming a Fisher-Price train while propped up on the other arm, or swinging around a laundry basket when seated, normal developmental abilities? Or is my child gifted with superhuman strength?!?! Superhuman strength you say? I thought so.

So back to the laundry basket musician. Ethan continued to enjoy the laundry basket music after I reentered the living room and I was able to catch a bit of it on video.

Do you think we look related;)

Ethan at 6 months old:
Me somewhere between 6-12 months old: So what do you think?

I think I definitely need to scan some pictures of Joel to compare as well.

Nut butter through the ages

I made a cryptic reference today, in my most recent Facebook album, about how much Ethan is like me in his nut butter messiness, as evidenced in the above picture. As I said there, anyone who is related to me, or has spent enough time around my family to hear stories of me as a toddler, knows exactly what that means.

Alright, prepare yourself, because this is going to be a Rachel story;).

I am the 4th of 5 children, which I love and wouldn't have any other way! However, one of the hilarious, and only sometimes annoying, parts of having my birth order is that EVERYONE was there to note and retell my silliest moments. Not only that, since my brother is 13 years older, and my sisters are 10 years and 5 years older respectively, they were more than likely participants in changing my diapers, feeding me, and helping out with me in various ways. So really there love for me is deep and wide (Did anyone just have VBS/Children's Choir flashbacks because I just did!)...and learned;).

One of the favorite family anecdotes about baby/toddler Rachel is how much I loved _____& Peanut Butter. I apparently liked peanut butter on pretty much anything. I had a healthy and adventurous appetite at first and I wasn't shy (I theorize that this anecdote caught due to my extreme picky eater-ways that set in years later). Apparently I really went gaga for buckwheat pancakes with peanut butter and syrup...I know...I will pause while you judge my palate;)...I also spend a lot of time eating cheerio and peanut butter "sandwiches". On our trip to Houston Ashley recounted fondly that it was her job to sit at the ready and assemble "sandwiches" with a deft 2-part swiping motion that she demonstrated for me. The next part of the story, invariably includes the fact that no matter what I chose to pair with peanut butter that day, I always ended up with it all over me! Caked in my beautiful hair (I'm just telling it how I've always heard it:)) and all over everything else. Something, like this, or maybe this, note the JIF jar in the forefront:). So it should have come as no surprise, nay, my heart should have immediately swelled with pride, when my beautiful son slathered himself in cashew butter the first time I served it to him on some Wasa crackers. I know what you're thinking, what kind of hippy dippy trippy mother are you?! Let the boy have some good ol' American peanut butter on Ritz/saltines/graham crackers/bread?! I know, I know. I STILL love peanut butter and Nilla wafers as a meal. But, my nephew has a peanut allergy. And, as many of you know, peanut allergies are scary. And the risk is higher for Ethan since his cousin has it so...no peanut butter for him...until he's 3. As Ashley would jokingly say, at this point, "Poor Ethan!" And just because I've kept you for so long with my story, here are some additional photos from Ethan's cashew butter initiation:

Ethan is 7 months old!

He was 7 months as of Friday:), close enough! Ethan is so much fun and we are thankful for the new and interesting ways he is developing. In the past month he has gotten more interested in crawling but he only goes backwards:). Ethan's is most definitely asserting his strong personality and a stubborn streak. The most recently he has decided he no longer wants to use his hands and feed himself, although he was fully capable 2 weeks ago. This has went to the point of him refusing to eat cheerios unless I was putting them in his mouth. Suffice is to say, we sat on the quilt for 10 minutes with him fussing and refusing to close his hand around cheerios or open his mouth to the cheerios in his hand...yeah:). He has also started flirting with strangers more and more and I can't get enough of his gap tooth smile! Ethan talks, and talks, and talks some more. He also can cluck with his tongue and he will try to get just about anyone to cluck back at him and praise his trick:).

He had such a wonderful time spending time with his cousins and he really took some developmental strides after watching all of them. It also made us wish that we lived closer to home and/or Ethan had siblings. Not anytime soon but nevertheless. We bought Shepherding a Child's Heart thinking we were ahead of the parenting curve and now we REALLY need to bone up on Godly discipline and parental understanding. Thankfully, we also have a wealth of wise Godly parents to lean on.

The Great Et Han

Our family returned yesterday from a wonderful trip home to Houston. I have a lot of pictures, and anecdotes, to share. But for today we must start with the legend of Et Han.

To give you some background, my brother-in-law Dylan is really big on nicknames. He delights in spending copious amounts of time arriving at the perfect nickname. So, even before Ethan was born, Dylan has been working on his nickname. He decided a few weeks ago that he would be Et Han (pronounced "E T Han"). When we came to Houston last week, Uncle Dylan proceeded to work his nickname branding magic by creating a whole elaborate back story for The Great Et Han. This video below shows a little snippet of the "lore" surrounding The Han as he also became known.

The best part of the whole thing, is that Ethan's "Han-like" stories, which are much like Chuck Norris "truths", are incredibly infectious! Joel, some friends, and myself, ended up telling our own Han stories to add to the lore. It was delightful and stinkin' hilarious! Thanks Dylan, I know Ethan will appreciate the special way you set him apart through this. Plus, hopefully he'll get a kick out of seeing this video someday!

Mama

Today, Ethan said Mama. He has said it 1 or 2 isolated times in the last week but I wasn't sure if he was just making M sounds or not. Then today, he said Mama and kept saying it! Once he saw how excited I was at his new trick he embarked on a marathon of mama's and mamamamama's. He even seemed to be using it with cause (yes I'm aware how INCREDIBLY biased I am) and said it when he wanted my comfort or my help. I'm still a puddle of loving mush as a result of all this.

Tooth # 3

Ethan cut his top right tooth this morning! He was REALLY fussy last night and early this morning, waking several times and being rather unhappy about it. Then he slept in and woke up at 8:30! When we checked, sure enough, his tooth had broken through and he was obviously feeling much better:). He has been very cheery this morning. There isn't much to photograph just yet but I will be sure to get some once the tooth is more visible.

And just because I love you and I know you are hankering for an Ethan fix, and I KNOW you don't leave within driving distance, here are a few funny shots of Ethan seemingly helping Joel out on his laptop. Seriously cute.

Hi Mama!

Ethan's outdoor adventures

Can you tell since this is my 3rd post within the hour that Ethan is taking a marathon nap?! 2.5 hours and counting...
We probably should have tried this sooner but we it's only been a month since it's really warmed up but we had not moved beyond putting him in a stroller. This past weekend we set up a quilt on the oh-so-soft grass on our front lawn and played with Ethan. Once we got out there and I saw how much Ethan LOVED it and mellowed, I remembered how my nephew Jackson would do the same thing as a baby. But in Jackson's case, he was born in Houston, in the spring, so they figured that temperament out a little faster than we did! Ethan laid on his back and stared at the canopy of trees with awe,
this was his view. The outing went so well that Ethan and I went out Tuesday afternoon to enjoy the yard again:). Ethan had a fun process of exploring that I was able to chronicle. There was excitement, then he decided to roll himself closer to the grass, and calm contemplation.
Ethan LOVES rubbing the grass through his fingers!
And then Ethan made yet another move to surround himself by his new friend, grass:).
And then the final move, there was no quilt in sight at this point!
And then there was a little more tree gazing.
Now add to your image of all this, that I am firmly planted on the quilt with my bible study materials strewn about me. This was all taking place around 5 or 6 in the evening while most of our neighborhood was driving home from work. We got some funny looks as people drove by. I imagined that they saw Ethan in the middle of the grass, by himself, and me ensconced behind him and grimaced. What IS that woman letting her child do?! All well, he had a wonderful time, and so did I:).

Another haircut and eating out:)

We are the old folks that went to lunch at 11:15 so we're the only ones on the patio at this point!

Ok, so I really cannot blame our lack of "going out" social time on Ethan. Joel and I were homebodies before becoming parents:). But, we definitely have taken it to a new level since his arrival! We also have a bit of difficulty figuring out what to do and/or where to find things in the Fort Campbell area. So, this past weekend I had another hair appointment with my wonderful stylist in Nashville. Whenever I have an appointment we make a day out of it in Nashville, a lovely city, and one that we do not spend enough time in even though we're less than an hour away. After my haircut we went to this very tasty New York style pizzeria across the street from my salon. And, because I get rather giddy when I get a restaurant experience so I took pictures to mark the occasion:).

Not the sharpest shot but I wanted to show Ethan's setup, his first outdoor restaurant experience, his Mimi will be proud!

Ethan's giving me the crazy eyes because he was sleepy and not interested in his car seat.

And this is the solution we came to, Ethan cuddled up while I ate...yep we're closer than ever these days:).

We had a great time in Nashville and the whole family was worn out by the end of Saturday!

Ethan is 6 months old!

Today, Ethan is 6 months old. He is such a delight! Ethan has mastered sitting erect and unassisted so thoroughly that he is now working on continued mobility yet again:). For whatever reason Ethan decided to take his sweet time with all things rolling over. He mastered front to back rolling right before 4 months but, even though he could rock halfway from back to front, he didn't seem very interested. So about 1-2 weeks ago he began to roll easily from back to front and then combine it all! He LOVES my reaction when he gets going so he has made sure to make it a permanent fixture in his repertoire. So, now Ethan is combining scooting, rolling, and low-crawling to move himself all over the floor and the yard! He is also enjoying making new sounds by inhaling at the same time and quick little breath sounds like he's got his own private joke that only he gets. Ethan gets a real kick out of staring at himself, or us, in mirrors and he LOVES to hear "Mama", and "Papa". He is also starting to experience some separation anxiety so grocery shopping, household chores, sleep, and the church nursery have gotten considerably more complicated. This is of course not helped by the fact that he is cutting his next 2 teeth, the top fronts, and the right tooth will likely break through any day now. Finally, Ethan has started solid foods this past week! He has tried: brown rice cereal,
carrots,

green peas, This is what happened when Ethan sneezed with a full mouth of mashed peas:)

avocados, Ethan enjoyed wearing avocados as well as eating them:)!

and bananas. He really loved the avocados and the bananas but those were the last 2 foods we introduced so it is likely also because he's getting the hang of this. Ethan's favorite part of solid foods is hands down the sippy cup. He starts flapping his arms and making his little quick breathy laugh every time he gets sight of that cup! Ok, I know that was long but he's doing a lot:). Plus, I want to make sure I record all this while I remember it! I have a cute video of Ethan's first solid food meal that I'll post as well.

Not Me! Monday, Part Deux

Here is my second installment of MckMama's blog carnival, Not Me! Monday. And opportunity to tell about the slightly embarrassing events in your life that you may wish you in fact did not take part in.

This past week I did not take all of 48 hours experimenting with cloth diapers to realize that I am a HUGE fan of Huggies! I did not walk around with fingers that smelled strongly of zinc because Ethan has a diaper rash. I did not practically force feed Joel more roasted chicken and meatballs because we STILL had leftovers of them and nearly make him sick of both (two of his favorite meal staples around here). I did not purchase a whole new stroller travel system because I should have listened to my mom and sisters and purchased a new one in the first place, not me! But if I had done that, I would at least have gotten a well-rated system on sale that will now last until Ethan's 30 lbs., not 22 lbs.:). I did not forget my glasses twice this past week and run into another patron at the grocery store (granted the car seat doesn't help matters) and halfway grope my way through the store, that would be what a silly woman would do. Finally, we did not skip church yesterday because Ethan woke up early and so was still napping when it was time to head out for church. We're very serious about fellowship so we wouldn't do such a thing;). Have a wonderful Not Me! Monday.

"Not me!" Monday

Ethan still freaking out now that he had what he wanted...

As I mentioned in my post yesterday, Ethan is really a fan of the freak out these days. I do think early on set separation anxiety plays a part in addition to the aforementioned perfectionism.
So, in honor of MckMama's ...I did not let Ethan wail so I could take a video of the meltdown for the blog, not me! I did not let him sit and wail several times today because nothing would make him calm down to the point where his whole little body was red, splotchy and covered in tears.


Sorry that this is sideways, I always forget that my videos cannot be reoriented!

I did not almost pummel several individuals during my errands today because I did not have lunch before running errands. I did not nurse Ethan in the car at SAMS after most of said errands and almost pummel a man 2x's my size when he rammed our car fender repeatedly with his grocery cart rocking our car...WITH US in it! Not me. I did not walk out the door without deodorant on Mother's Day.

Oh man, that was really cathartic. Have a wonderful "Not Me!" Monday.

Ethan's Baby Dedication

Ethan's Baby Dedication took place today, Mother's Day. And what a milestone in Ethan's life! Joel's family was with us to commemorate the event. Our Pastor put it aptly as he described how much we ache as parents to be able to impart salvation on our children but alas that is now God's plan for humanity. Instead we commit ourselves as a family and a church body to strive to be like Christ for Ethan to show him the truth of Savior in our lives. I was humbled by the weighty responsibility but encouraged that there is already a fellowship, in our church home as well as family and friends, that are that to be Christ in his life.
On a much lighter note, Ethan looked so darn cute! Thanks Mimi & Pops, we miss you!