Serious Play

Ethan LOVES his exersaucer!!! He stares so intently at everything on it, and of course, sticks it all in his mouth. I try to get some things done around the house while he's playing, but it's hard because I love watching him play - his expressions are priceless.


This picture is DEFINITELY going to be used to torment Ethan when he grows up - I think his future wife will enjoy seeing him make out with a seal...

It's Sunday, so here we are on our way to church! :)

**Thanks to everyone for their good advice on my sleeping/eating issue from the last post. We haven't tried anything different yet - I thought I'd give him another day or two. But we still aren't seeing much improvement, so we're going to change up his routine tonight to see if something else might work better. (feel free to leave more advice if you didn't get a chance to before - we can always use it!)

Sleepy Boy

We've started a new bedtime routine, now that Ethan's started eating rice cereal - but we didn't count on him falling asleep in the middle of it!

We've been having a hard time with Ethan sleeping through the night, so we took out his evening nap (from 6-7), hoping he'd be tired enough to not wake up in the middle of the night. So he's been sooooooo tired from about 6:00 on. We start his bedtime routine at 7:15 with a bath. Then at 7:30 he eats half of his bottle (which he almost always fall asleep during), then cereal, then the last half of his bottle. Then off to bed! He's been going to sleep great, but we're not seeing much of an improvement throughout the night. Sometimes he only wakes up twice, but we've still had one or two nights where he wakes up ten times. It is so frustrating. I'm just hoping we can get it under control before school starts, but that's not looking like it's going to happen.

Anyone have any ideas on how to get him sleeping through the night again?



Here's my sleepy boy:








This has nothing to do with sleep, but it's too cute not to share. He looks like a little boy, not a baby!

Two Great Videos

Ethan has apparently discovered that he has a tongue and is trying to figure out what he's supposed to do with it.

This just melts my heart...

Every night at bath time I sing the same song to Ethan as I wash his hair. And still, after 5 months, he seems completely enthralled by it. He just STARES at me when I sing it and smiles at me. I had to video it so I can remember the way that he looked at me - it is so sweet!

(Of course, ignore my annoying "baby voice")

Yummy Rice Cereal!!

We finally decided to give Ethan his first try of rice cereal. (In hopes of getting him to sleep better!) It almost wasn't as fun as I thought it would be because he was too neat! Most of it stayed in his mouth.
I think he actually enjoyed it! We'll see if it will affect his sleep at all tonight. (although it only took about 2 minutes to get him to sleep tonight, unlike the hour it's taken the last 3 nights, so I guess it's already helped!)



The before picture...

LOVE THAT FACE!!!!!
Lonnie thought he'd try it and get his picture taken, so he can send it to Gerber and get his picture on the box (you know, like Wheaties). But, I don't think they'd advertise this disgusted look.

A Day at the Lake

At the church's mission trip fundraiser, the Grubbs, Benders, and us went in together to buy A Day at the Lake on the Davis' boat. So yesterday afternoon we got to send the kids to the babysitters and head to the lake! We got to try waterskiing (which none of us could do), knee boarding, and tubing. They even had dinner for us on the boat. We had SUCH a good time - great friends, perfect weather, and fun activities!

Make a Smilebox scrapbook

Nap Time

So here it is...naptime. What am I supposed to be doing? Studying for a literacy class I'm teaching all day on Thursday and Friday. What am I actually doing? Well, see below.

Make a Smilebox scrapbook

I've been wanting to get into digital scrapbooking for awhile now, but I've been a little too intimidated by it all. That is, until I found this website! Smilebox makes it sooooo easy. I did this in just a couple of minutes. I know the pictures are repetitive - I was too excited to wait until I took more pictures to actually fill up the whole album, so the pictures are repeated throughout. But who cares? I think I'm hooked...

Five Months Old!!!

I'm NOT going to start this post by saying how time flies (but it does!). We've had SOOOO much fun this month, mostly because I got to enjoy him 24/7. Have I mentioned I love summer?

Here are Ethan's stats:
Weight - 18.2 pounds (on our home scale, of course)
Height - 27 1/2 inches

What Ethan's been up to this month:

• TOES, TOES, TOES!!!! The boy loves his toes! Grabbing, playing with, and especially eating them.
• He is so strong - he stands up with just us holding onto his hands. We're convinced that he'll skip crawling and go straight to walking.
• He eats 8 oz. every 4 1/2 hours (I'm going to start including this info mainly just for myself so I can remember)
• Sleeping has NOT gone well this month. Right around 4 months he stopped sleeping through the night. He wakes up several times during the night, sometimes twice, sometimes ten (yikes!). 99% of the time he just wants his pacifier back in and he's right back asleep. But we're ready for this phase to be over!
• Still drooling and gnawing on his fists all the live-long day (but still no teeth).
• He's starting to wear 6-9 month clothes. I've had to pack away a lot of his 3-6 month stuff mainly because he's too long for them.

Here's Ethan at one day:

And now at five months: (notice Lonnie is holding onto his feet because he would NOT get his feet out of his mouth long enough to take a picture!)

This is what all the other pictures looked like:

And now our impromptu photo shoot. We let him play with the football, and he really enjoyed it! Definitely a future football star. I know this is way too many pictures, but I couldn't decide which ones to cut out!

Next stop...

HALF A YEAR!!!!

Weekend Pictures

Here are just a few pictures from the weekend...

Hopefully the swimming pictures are not getting too boring - we at least tried to spice it up a little with the mohawk pictures:

We had several of our friends over on Saturday night for a Game Night. We used to have Game Nights a lot before kids entered the picture - we realize now how hard it is to do with kids. The girls did end up getting to play a game, but not until most of the babies were asleep. Of course, we had to get a picture of the boys - Camden, Ethan, and Peyton. (and yes, it is IMPOSSIBLE to get a picture where the babies are still, looking at the camera, not crying, not drooling, and smiling). This is the best I got...

This morning for church I thought we'd give this outfit one more turn before he outgrew it because I think he looks SO STINKIN' CUTE in it. But, I think we're a few weeks too late. The milk belly hanging out is not exactly the look we were going for.

Just had to snap a cute sleeping picture...

What we've been up to...

Sorry...I guess I've been a blog slacker this week.
Lonnie's had the last two days off, so Ethan's been enjoying Daddy time (and I enjoyed some Mommy time - aka, shopping!)

Ethan is REALLY into his toes lately - it started with just grabbing, but now he loves chewing on them, too.



We've been enjoying a lot of cousin time lately, too. It's next to impossible to get a good picture of all three of them, so this is the best we got.

Some of the previously mentioned Daddy time. :)

So obviously, not a lot going on here. Summer's almost over for me - I've got a lot of school stuff coming up. We're gearing up for our trip to Indiana for my cousin's wedding at the end of July. Ethan will start daycare :( on Aug. 4 while I get my classroom set up. Then school officially starts for me on Aug. 11, and for kiddos on Aug. 18. Yuck! I've had too much fun being home with Ethan this summer - it'll be hard to go back!

Ethan turns 5 months old on Monday!!!!! :)

Ethan's New Trick

Ethan's learned a fun new thing...spitting!

We're encouraging him to do it by making the same noise, so you kind of have to pay close attention to his lips to see if it's him doing it, or us in the background.

Also, Ethan rolled over from his back to his belly yesterday! He's rolled from his tummy to his back for 3 months now, but he finally decided to do it the other way! His arm was stuck for a few seconds, but he managed to pull it out and prop himself on his belly. It was cute!

Enjoy the video! :)

Happy Fourth of July!

Ethan enjoyed his first fireworks display last night. We didn't brave the city-wide fireworks, but went to a friend's house and did our own. Ethan startled at the first loud one, but then just sat there calmly and watched the rest. I think he really did like watching them!
Here's my smiley boy in his cute little festive onesie (that used to be Caden's - can you believe that?). If you can't read it, it says "Mommy's Little Sparkler."

Hope you all had a great July 4th! :)

Lamp Look-alike Meter

Interesting, huh?

Another Good One

Input, please!

Time to settle an ongoing dispute between Lonnie and I. As the days go on, more and more of Ethan's hair keeps falling out (as evident by the fact that I had to lint roll his crib yesterday to get rid of all the hair). It has officially formed a perfect mohawk. Lonnie thinks we should just cut the top off and make it all one length. I, however, say there is NO WAY WE ARE CUTTING MY FOUR-MONTH OLD'S HAIR!!!!! I know it looks ridiculous, but I just can't cut my baby's hair - not at four months, anyway! I'm okay with sporting the comb-over look (yes, I know that looks ridiculous too, but I'm not cutting his hair!)

Soooooooo....what do you think???? Don't be afraid to disagree with me. I already know that Rachel thinks we should cut it off, too. So, leave a comment and tell me your honest opinion.

Mohawk look:

Comb-over look: