Precarious Sleeper

Now that Ethan has truly mastered his ability to roll, he is never in the same spot as where I left him when he sleeps. He is rolling and scooting all over the crib. He'll get himself into uncomfortable situations too and sometimes he gets upset with those situations and sometimes he could care less. Mostly he just enjoys sleeping "butt up" with his little butt sticking up high in the air.

Precarious sleeping position that he couldn't have cared less about.

Sleeping "butt up" just like daddy did as a baby.

This little Nebraska sweater was made by Eric's grandma Janice Fassnacht for his dad Dan when he was a baby. 

My little angel playing in the crib while I put laundry away. Note the ISU shoes.

We had a gorgeous St. Patrick's Day. We started the day by going to the West Side Market downtown. Eric rode his bike and met us there. We had some crepes and shopped around a bit. The rest of the day was spent outside on the patio with some friends that came over.

Mini Eric

Here are baby pictures of me and Eric. I think it's quite clear he's a mini Eric. I think he has my head shape, but Eric's face.

Baby Eric

Baby Katy

Leap Day Fun

Our Leap Day was a beautiful 65 degree day. We took Ethan for his first walk sitting in the stroller like a big boy. He loved it! He enjoyed looking at everything we went by and just kept happily babbling in the stroller.

He really goes after his little giraffe while sitting in the bumbo. Look at that determined face!

Happy little eater.

He loves to pull on this vibrating frog toy while sitting in his car seat.

Leap day walk in the stroller like a big boy.

Adventures in Solids

Ethan tried his first solids last Tuesday. Rice Cereal went pretty well. At least some of it was getting in his mouth and into his tummy. We were even rolling at 2 solid food meals a day. However, the oh so common constipation factor soon set in. He had his last big poop on Wednesday night and despite all of our efforts to feed him prunes, add Karo syrup to his bottle, feed him water, etc he still hadn't pooped by the time we went back to work today on Monday. I warned his daycare provider of the issue and then secretly prayed he would have his explosion on her watch instead of mine. Well my prayer was answered. She said it was the biggest blow out she'd ever seen in all her years of doing daycare.

Despite all of that he is loving eating real food. He's doing great with it now and eats whatever we give him. He's a hungry growing boy!

Mmmm prunes.

Very first solids!

I swear he knows when he's being cute...

My expert roller.

First Illness

Well, my poor baby just made it through his first illness. It started out as just a cough and a few days later Eric and I were taking him into the ER because he was laboring to breath.  He was diagnosed at the hospital with RSV, but luckily they sent us home that same day with a prescription for an inhaler. Ethan powered through it and got better every day. Less than a week later, he was all better. Poor Eric had to go to China the day after the ER. Talk about timing! Luckily I was able to work from home until he was better so that I could keep a close eye on him.

It was quite a chore to give him the inhaler every 4-6 hours. He was not a fan and neither was I. He remained happy through the whole thing. If you didn't know he was sick you'd hardly have been able to tell. We now know he is about 14 1/2 lbs and 26 inches long!

My poor sick little guy.
Loves grabbing his feet!

Learned how to suck his thumb while he was sick, though it hasn't really stuck.

My best little Valentine.

All better and cute as a button.

Updates

I realized I never put up pictures of Ethan's finished room so here they are along with our first year with a Christmas tree.

He's smiling like crazy now and also laughing. He did a true laugh for the first time on Christmas Eve. After all the crazy things I've done to try and make him laugh all I was doing was rocking him and talking normally. For some reason he was just tired and happy enough to lose it and laugh. Since then we never know what he'll laugh at, shuffling cards, his activity center, and sometimes nothing in particular. He's also holding toys a bit now too. He loves his dog and monkey head blankets.

Christmas

We went to Storm Lake to spend time with my parents after the Baptism. Unfortunately I caught a nasty stomach flu bug so most of our time there was spent dealing with that. Fortunately for my mom that meant she got lots of snuggle time with Ethan. After that we headed down to Kansas City to spend time with Eric's family for Christmas.

Aunt Gracie kept a close eye on Ethan. She didn't know what to make of him. 

Christmas Eve

Buried in presents.