Bubbles and Grandma "Bob"

Ethan has been very good at repeating words to us, particularly those that begin with "B" or "D". One of these words is "bubble"- he especially loves the froth of bubbles that form in his tub during bathtime. It is adorable to hear his pronunciation of "bubble" and to see his excitement when he "captures" bubbles on his hands in the tub.

I had asked my mom what she would like for Ethan to call her- Grandma, Mamaw, Nana..., and she said that she would prefer Grandma. Since Ethan has been learning so many words here recently, I keep asking him to repeat "Grandma". So far he consistently says back to me "Baba" or sometimes something that sounds like "Bob". So, for now, Grandma is aka Bob or Baba :)

15-Month Well Baby Check-Up

Ethan had his 15 month check-up today with the pediatrician. He was 22lbs 7oz and 32 1/8 inches long. He's consistently been in the 75-90th percentile for height and 10-25th percentile for weight, and this visit tracked him in those same percentiles. I was SO excited that this was the first well baby check-up that we've had after which we did not have additional bloodwork, ECG, specialists appointments, etc. Ethan just had to get three shots, and we were on our way back home. No follow-up needed until his 18 month appointment. Woo hoo! I realized too that 2008 is going to be a leap year as his 18 month appointment is scheduled for February 29th.

Visit to the Ophthalmologist (for Mommy this Time) and Fascination with Buttons

I had an appointment at the ophthalmologist today that was long overdue. My last visit had been 3 years ago almost to the day. Anyhow, I finally got around to making the appointment and Mom and Dad babysat Ethan for me. Fortunately I was informed that my right eye sees 20/15 and my left eye only has very minor nearsightedness. I consider myself incredibly blessed because the rest of my family has an array of eye issues: cataracts, astigmatism, trifocals, bifocals...

Ethan has recently developed a fascination with pressing buttons on remotes, phones, TVs, VCRs, fax machines, copiers, you name it! While he was at Mom and Dad's house, he discovered that the power button for their TV was within his reach and enjoyed turning the TV off, and on, and off, and on, and off, and on (you get the point)! I am glad that our TV is still too high off the floor for him to reach, but I'm sure that soon enough he'll be punching all of the buttons at our house too!

First Visit to the Children's Museum

Grandma Q. came to visit over Thanksgiving, and we all decided to check out the Children's Museum while she was here. This was the first time that I had been there in about 10 years, but we used to go fairly often when I was growing up. There is an area designated for children 5 years old and younger, and Ethan seemed to really enjoy it. Below are pictures of him with a waterproof smock on playing with some of the water toys in the Playscape area. At first he was a little unsure what to do with the toys and he just wanted to hold them, but soon he was splashing them in the water and having a good time. He also played with some trains on a train table, rode a little airplane that rocked, and crawled through a really long tunnel by himself. We bought a membership and am sure that we'll be making many more visits in the coming months!

Piggy Back Rides and Massage Chairs

Ethan really enjoys piggy back rides complete with the "horsey" shouting "Wheeeeee!" Ever since he could walk, if we ask if he'd like a ride, he comes running and grabs our shoulders awaiting a piggy back ride. He gets the biggest grin on his face as we run around the house with him on our back.
Ethan also likes to sit in the recliner at my parents house because they have a massage pad attached to it with a remote. Two very interesting things for Ethan- the actual massage and the fun remote that he is allowed to play with!

Unexpected Naked Bum in the Nursery

Ethan has very recently begun to enjoy removing his pajama pants. I'm not sure if this was originally fever-induced (he was too warm in his jammies?) Anyhow, I always check in on Ethan before I go to bed myself, and last night I unexpectedly found that not only had Ethan removed his pajama pants (ones that snap in four places to his pajama top), but for the first time he had also decided to remove his diaper. He was sound asleep with his fleece pj top on, his pants were beside him, and he was hugging his (fortunately dry and clean) diaper. It completely cracked me up to find his little naked bum in the crib. To prevent any mishaps overnight, I got him out of bed and re-diapered and re-panted him in pajama pants made of a lighter fabric (all the while he was fast asleep). Oddly enough though, when I got him up the next morning, he had somehow again removed his pajama pants! Thankfully the diaper was intact though :)

Double the Fun

The ER doctor recommended that I take Ethan in to see his pediatrician a couple days after we took him to the ER. Since the holidays are quickly approaching, I made the appointment for this afternoon. The pediatrician confirmed that Ethan did have a severe ear infection in the left ear, but also said that his right ear is infected too. He thought that the fever was a separate viral issue and that the ear infections were secondary infections due to the congestion caused by the virus. No wonder our little guy was in such bad shape :( Since he's had 5 doses of amoxicillin he has perked up considerably. Hopefully we're on the road to recovery!!

Ethan's First (and Hopefully Last) Trip to the ER

Well, we thought that Ethan's fever had been improving yesterday, but he woke up at 2:30am this morning crying inconsolably, and I had a really hard time getting him back to sleep. He woke again at 6am, and he felt like he was burning up (we again got 104-105 readings on his temp). I quickly got him into the bathtub for another lukewarm bath and dosed him again with Tylenol. Even after the bath and Tylenol, he was still reading 102-103 on the forehead thermometer, so we decided not to wait the couple of hours until our pediatrician's office was open and took him to the ER instead. His temp there was 102, and I was a bit surprised that the Dr. there only examined his ears and listened to his chest. I thought that he might at least look in his mouth/throat to see if that area was inflamed. Anyhow, he thought that one ear looked a couple of shades of red darker than the other, so he might have another ear infection. He thought that the symptoms of the very high fever and clear runny nose indicated a viral infection, but he prescribed an antibiotic just in case anything that is going on with him is bacterial. Ethan slept in my arms for about a half hour this morning, and after waking just cried and cried. He wanted to be held, but when I picked him up, he arched his back and squirmed his way back down. This cycle of wanting to be held/squirming away repeated itself over and over. Poor little guy has had a really rough time for the last 4 days. We hope that having had 3 doses of antibiotic during the day today will help him sleep this evening.

High Fever Scare

Thursday evening Ethan didn't do well sleeping through the night (which is very unusual for him). He woke up 2 or 3 times, and I rocked him back to sleep each time. Friday and Saturday Ethan was not acting like himself, being very clingy and wanting to be held all of the time. He wasn't interested in playing with Waggles or his toys. Friday he was running a low grade (100-101) fever, and he was slow with his eating. That, along with a clear runny nose and slightly swollen gums, led me to believe that this was due to teething. However, Saturday late afternoon Ethan felt like he was burning up, and when we took his temperature with the forehead scanning thermometer, it read between 104 and 107 with even a couple of readings that had no numeric value and just said "HIGH". We thought that couldn't possibly be correct, so I scanned my own forehead for comparison, and it read 98.5 I called the on-call pediatrician right away, and he said to put Ethan in a lukewarm bath and keep his forehead damp. We had been giving him Motrin every 6 hours, but the Dr. recommended Motrin at a higher dose alternating with Tylenol every 3 hours. Poor little guy didn't sleep well Friday night, and Saturday night (following the Dr's instructions), we woke him up every 3 hours to give more medication and gave him 2 more lukewarm baths. His temp came down this morning to 100-ish, but spiked back up into 104-106 range this afternoon. We nearly took him to the ER a couple of times, but we called the pediatrician back and he said that it sounded to him like a nasty virus and that we should keep up what we had been doing (baths/medication) and see how he did over the next couple of hours. Fortunately he started acting much more like himself and his fever came down quite a bit this evening. We are continuing the medication regimen and hope that he is back to 100% soon. I think that this was caused by teething in combination with a viral infection. He was back to playing like normal this evening, but he is refusing to finish his bottles and is also refusing even pureed solid foods. He behaved this way with food the last time that some teeth were close to breaking through the gumline. I'm praying that his temperature stays down and that he's back to eating normally very soon! Seeing him acting so out of character and looking totally miserable this weekend was really scary.

Being Gentle with the Doggie and Toys

We have been working with Ethan to help him understand how to be gentle when he interacts with our dog Waggles. If he starts getting rough with Wags, we remind him to be gentle and show him how to pet the doggie softly. Ethan cracked me up the other day because he was carrying around a rather heavy toy and threw it down in our entryway (on the laminate). It made a huge crashing sound and had the potential to damage the floor, so I asked Ethan to be gentle with his toy. He carefully squatted down next to his toy and started patting it very gently like he does with Wags. I thought that was too cute! :)

Keeping Feet Warm- Any Suggestions?

Ethan has never liked to have things covering his feet: booties-nope, socks-nope, shoes-nope
He takes them off every chance he gets! This wasn't much of a problem when he was younger because it was harder for him to get socks off by himself, and he spent a lot of time in sleepers with built-in feet. But now most of his jammies don't have feet, and he's old enough to remove pretty much whatever we put on his feet by himself. Does anyone have any recommendations of what we can put on his feet (specific brands/styles of socks, shoes, or slippers) to keep them warm that would be difficult for Ethan to take off? Thanks!!

Haircut by Mommy

Ethan was born with a lot of hair, and it never really thinned out that much. His hair grows very, very fast. We have taken him to a hair salon specifically set up for kids a couple of times now, and it runs about $17-20 each time. Since his hair is growing so fast and he'll require many haircuts, I decided to carefully observe his haircut the last time we took him and I tried it on my own today! I set up one of our kitchen chairs with Ethan's portable booster seat on it in front of the TV and put a Praise Baby DVD in. I clipped a towel around Ethan's neck and shoulders, sprayed his hair down, and did my best with our hair shears. It took me almost a half hour because I did little snippets at a time, but I was excited with how well it turned out (since the potential for it to be disastrous was very real). Here is a picture of him with his new shorter hairdo (sorry it's not the best picture- he was very active this morning and I chased him around trying to get a good picture for about 15 minutes before giving up):
Also note the remnant of the nasty bruise above his left eye that he got from his fall on the 5th :(

Giant Goose-egg and Post-Op Visit to the Eye Dr.

We got up bright and early this morning to drive back home from Tennessee (we left early enough to make it home to unpack and then get to Ethan's post-op appointment for his eye surgery at 3:30pm). When we first stepped into our house, I set Ethan down to play in his toy room and started listening to a message on our answering machine. Just seconds later Ethan began wailing (not an "I need something" cry, one that told me that something was very wrong). I picked him up in the toy room and noticed that he had about an inch and a half long vertical purple line on his forehead and the area surrounding it had already swollen more than a centimeter out from the rest of his forehead. I quickly hollered for Dan and called the pediatrician's office. The nurse was very calming and gave me a list of warning signs to look for that would be indicators that he had a concussion. Ironically one was whether the pupils of his eyes were dilated the same. I say "ironically" because we had an appointment scheduled with a pediatric ophthalmologist about an hour after this injury occurred. Fortunately Ethan was back to himself within minutes and just cried when we tried to put ice on his forehead to reduce the swelling. The ophthalmologist later confirmed that he would be fine. The Dr. said that he has several boys of his own and that this goose-egg would probably heal just in time for him to get another one. We still don't know for sure what he fell into, but it was likely the corner of his toy storage unit or our china cabinet. The fact that he was very tired from our drive home probably also contributed to him being less stable on his feet. The ophthalmologist also said that the stent in his eye looked really good and that he would prefer to leave it in for an additional 3 months before they remove it. So Ethan should be stent-free as of February 11th of next year!

Cousins Meeting for the First Time

On our way back from North Carolina, we stopped to visit Dan's brother and sister-in-law (Chris and Julie) and their two boys (Drew and Sam) in Tennessee. We had not yet been able to introduce Ethan to Chris, Julie, Drew, and Sam, so it was really fun to get together with them and for Ethan and Sam to play.

Great Grandma's 90th Birthday Party

Today we spent some time with Great Grandpa and also celebrated Great Grandma's 90th birthday with Dan's family. Great Grandma is currently in a nursing home recovering from some health problems, but we are hopeful that she will be able to return to the assisted living center and rejoin Great Grandpa in the near future.

Great Grandma's 90th birthday party
Ethan and Great Grandpa
Ethan playing with his silver dollars on Great Grandpa's walker and carrying them around
Hanging out with Grandpa

Visit to North Carolina- Meeting Some of Dan's Family for the First Time

Dan, Ethan, and I drove to North Carolina leaving at about 4am this morning. The wee hours of the morning departure worked out really well for our trip to Oklahoma City, so we decided to try it again. It didn't work out quite as well this time, as Ethan amazingly stayed awake the first hour and a half of our drive, so his sleep schedule was off quite a bit that day. Fortunately he was mainly "zoning out" during that time, so he wasn't cranky. We made it to Dan's aunt and uncle's house in about 11 hours with about a 45 minute delay due to a truck that caught on fire on the interstate. This was a very special trip because Ethan was able to meet his great grandparents and Dan's aunts, uncles, and cousins on his dad's side for the first time and to celebrate his great grandma's 90th birthday with Dan's family. It was so much fun to see Ethan and Great Grandpa A. interact and enjoy one another. Great Grandpa gave Ethan 2 silver dollar coins (which he termed his "big money" :), and Ethan had a blast playing with them and clanking them together. I was also able to take a 4 generation picture of the men in Dan's family which was really neat. His family has a 4 generation picture taken when Dan was about 2 years old, and we copied the placement of each of the generations in the picture that we took.

Great Grandpa A. holding Ethan

Several tries at the 4 generation picture (Ethan was being a squirmbug)Ethan carrying around his big money