Update on Blocked Tear Duct

The tear duct for Ethan's left eye has been partially blocked since he was born. This is not uncommon but usually resolves on it's own by the time a baby is 6 months old. Unfortunately Ethan's left eye is still affected, and it continually goops up with discharge and is often matted shut in the morning. It is really bothersome to Ethan, and he absolutely hates it when we have to clean his eye out with a washcloth (not to mention that he rubs at it a lot on his own and it gets pink/red around his lids). He had one appointment with a pediatric ophthalmologist in May, and the doctor said that no intervention is done unless it is still a problem at a year of age. He was supposed to have a follow-up appointment tomorrow, but I called the office to see if they could just go ahead and schedule the procedure to open his tear duct, since there wasn't much point to me bringing him into the office just for the doctor to agree that it has not resolved. Unfortunately this practice is incredibly busy, so they schedule both appointments and procedures 2 months out. The first available date for him to have the procedure done is October 5th. We're on a cancellation waitlist, so hopefully we'll be able to get him in before October.

Visiting with Friends (from 7/16)

Ethan and I had a wonderful time visiting with Kim and her son Jacob and Heather and her daughter Izzy on July 16th. Kim, Heather, and I are friends from way back in elementary/middle school. We were also all part of a Future Problem Solving team at KHS that was SO much fun. Heather, Matt, and Izzy moved to Vermont over a year ago and were in town for a visit; We're so happy to have been able to spend some time with them!

I took my parent's camera to our get-together (because I had forgotten to bring our own), and Mike just burned a CD of the pics for me so that I could post them on the blog and share them with Kim and Heather.

All of us with the kids

Kim and JacobHeather and Izzy

Jacob and Ethan

Walking-Finally captured with our camera!

Ethan has become a much more confident walker in the past few days; Now he can toddle across the whole great room and through the entryway without plopping down on his rearend. He can also pause while walking without getting very wobbly at all. Since his walking stints are getting longer and longer, I was finally able to get some pictures of him walking this morning just after he woke up:










Here he is with a bit of "bed head". I have trimmed the hair over his ears a few times, but he is in need of his first real haircut. I plan to take him (hopefully) some time this week for his first haircut.

The Many Nicknames for Ethan...

My mom commented the other day that we should call Ethan "Ethan" more often... Dan and I (for some reason) are big nickname-givers, and the nicknames seem to evolve over time. Waggles has had probably upwards of 30 nicknames (he's been part of our family for a little over 4 years now). Just to give you an idea of what all Ethan has been called since he was born, I'll list them below. Please don't ask us to provide any sort of logical explanation for some of them; I'm not sure that I could!
Sweetpea
Mister Sweetpea
Silly Pants
Crazy Pants
Chief Crazy Pants
Sleepy Pants
Silly Pea
Mister Pea
Mister Peabody
Little One
Sweet One
Little Big Boy
Boo-Bah
Silly Billy Pea
Mister Boo-Bah Head

In addition to our knack for developing lots of silly nicknames, we also sing a lot of silly songs to Ethan (all that we have made up ourselves!) I will spare you a list of the lyrics. One is the "bathtime song" that we sing to him, you guessed it, as we are getting ready to give him a bath. Dan figured out how to play the song on Ethan's Fisher Price xylophone, so now we even have some instrumental accompaniment. It's never a dull moment at our house! :)

Nielsen TV Ratings Diaries

We received our TV diaries for participating in the Nielsen TV ratings last Tuesday and have been recording our TV viewing from last Thursday through today. We were supposed to record any show that was viewed for 5 minutes or longer. Nielsen is also interested in who in the household is watching each show. It was funny, but we do have an entry for Ethan watching the Weather Channel for awhile this week. That is the only "show" on TV that he truly watches (other than his Praise Baby DVDs). Although he no longer claps as often for the Weather Channel, he does still seem to enjoy watching it! All in all, it was interesting to track our TV viewing. This has not been a typical week for us though, as we have devoted every spare moment to working on the basement and have not watched our usual shows.

11 Months Old and Finally More Teeth

Ethan is eleven months old today which is so hard for me to believe. Time has been flying by lately. I caught a glimpse of his upper gumline today while he was lying on the changing table, and I found that his two front teeth are popping through the gumline. He woke up crying late in the evening the other day (which is very uncharacteristic of him), and he settled down quickly after a bit of Oragel, so that's probably when the teeth were getting ready to break through.

Tomorrow I will begin slowing down on pumping since we have some breastmilk in the freezer and can start transitioning Ethan over to whole milk soon. I will be very relieved to be able to box up the pump and stow it away sometime in mid-August. I never would have guessed that I would end up pumping for a year; We definitely got our money's worth from the pump!!

Today Ethan wore his "Hawaiian" shirt that was a gift from my cousin Beth, and he got lots of compliments on how cute he looked from the customers at Lowes! We have been to Lowes a ridiculous amount of times here lately. We ended up trying 5 different testers for paint and finally found one that we think will work for the basement. We drove to Danville today to check out a flooring store that a couple in our childbirth class had recommended as having excellent prices and service. We were very impressed with their selection of laminate and carpet, and they had the best prices by far for the same products that we had looked at at other stores. So we ordered our laminate from them and hope that it will arrive by next weekend so that we can begin installation next Saturday or Sunday. We'll likely purchase our carpet from there as well (but we can't get the measurements for that until the laminate is fully installed). Not too much longer before the basement will be liveable-and Dan will be SOOOO happy to be done with it!

Here are some pics of Ethan from today:

Mischievious grin

Looking surprised

Checking out the ever-fascinating cabinet locks (he's figured out how to remove these, so we have to make sure that they are on very tightly)

Talkin' About My Doggie

Ethan absolutely loves our dog Waggles (even though Wags can drive me and Dan nuts at times, especially lately due to his profuse shedding). Ethan has been saying "MaMa" and "DaDa" for awhile now, and he just added a new word to his vocabulary this evening "Doggie". Over the past couple of weeks he would work very hard at making sounds like the beginning of the word "Doggie", and just tonight we heard it very clearly. Now whenever he sees Waggles, he says "Doggie, Doggie, Doggie..."

He is also improving his walking skills with each passing day. He walked back and forth between me and Dan this evening, taking 10+ steps each way.

Standing up from the Floor Without Assistance

Tonight Ethan was able to get himself from sitting on the floor, to kneeling, and then to a standing position without holding onto anything or anyone for support. He demonstrated this new skill a few times. It's so much fun to see him figure out things like this that we, as adults, don't give a second thought to.

More Walking All By Myself!

Ethan has continued practicing his walking and has taken up to about 8 or 9 steps in a row on his own (he's walked halfway across the toy room). He is quickly becoming more steady on his feet and is just thrilled to be walking. His eyes light up and he squeals as he zooms along :) Watching him walk and the joy this new accomplishment brings him is just about the cutest thing I've ever seen...

First Independent Steps!!

Tonight Ethan "walked" independently for the first time. He ran along the coffee table (holding on), and at the end of it he let go and took several steps on his own before plopping down on the floor. He received so much praise for this that he repeated this maneuver a few more times. Since he took 2-4 unsteady steps in a row by himself we recorded this as the date for first steps in his baby book. Unfortunately his time spent walking has been too short to capture with the digital camera, but we were fortunate to catch him on video once. It'll be fun to see him continue to learn how to gain some stability with his walking. Then I'm sure he'll really be all over the place in our house!!

Feeding Myself Puffs, Looking All Grown Up, and Basement Update

Ethan gets really excited to feed himself Gerber puffs in his high chair. So far he has tried sweet corn, sweet potato, and cherry-flavored puffs. He seems to like Cheerios to snack on too, but he has gagged on them one too many times for me to feel that comfortable feeding them to him. He still just has 2 teeth (on the bottom), so it's difficult for him to chew much. Here are some pics of him enjoying some puffs:


For some reason it really hit me today how much Ethan looks like a "big boy" and not a baby anymore... I dressed him in his first set of 2-piece pajamas a little while back (previously he had worn sleepers or onesies to bed), and he looked like such a big boy! Pics of Ethan playing just before bedtime:

His favorite activity lately is walking around with his walker toys. He has become very adept at steering the walkers around the house. He'll walk from the great room to the entry way, stop, make a 90 degree turn, and then proceed into the "toy room". He also enjoys "running" along holding on to any piece of furniture in the house.

In other news, Dan and my Dad have been steadily making progress on our basement. All of the casing and trim is up, and Dan is working on filling the nail holes and then sanding them in preparation for painting. We are in the process of selecting a sectional to go down there, and once that decision is made, we'll pick out a paint color, laminate flooring, and carpet. Dan is targeting to have the basement completed before Ethan's birthday. It's exciting to see it all coming together!

Happy Fourth of July!

We celebrated the 4th of July with my family and our dear friends Gene, Joyce, and Stephen, and Don and Mary. Unfortunately my parents and their friends were not able to go to Symphony on the Prairie (an outdoor orchestra concert with a huge fireworks display) in Indianapolis because the weather forecast threatened severe storms with possible hail, but we are glad to have been able spend the holiday with them at my parent's house. We cooked out and enjoyed the gliders on the patio. Ethan loved all of the attention. Here he is enjoying the company of Mary and Joyce.