Video updates to entries on 12/24/07 and 12/27/07

I just figured out how to edit a couple of video clips that I've taken with our camera so that they meet the size requirements for Blogger. I uploaded three video clips to previous entries: One of Ethan from Christmas Eve repeating a few of the words that he uses regularly now and two of the jellyfish exhibit at Ripley's Aquarium. Please check out the blog entries on 12/24/07 and 12/27/07 to take a look!

More Fun in Tennessee- Ripley's Aquarium

On the 27th we all went to Ripley's Aquarium in Gatlinburg that is a ton of fun. The kids had a great time watching all of the fish and especially loved the moving walkway that goes through a tunnel under some large tanks containing many types of sharks, lots of fish, and even barracudas. We also enjoyed a really neat display of jellyfish; I wouldn't want to encounter one in the water, but they are truly amazing and unusual to watch. They are surprisingly graceful, and the aquarium pipes classical music in near the display to listen to as you observe them. Hover your cursor over the pics in the slideshow below to view the captions (you can also speed up or slow down the pics by clicking on the "-" or "+" signs in the lower left).

Christmas Visit to Tennessee

On our way down to Pigeon Forge, TN to visit Dan's brother and sister-in-law (Chris and Julie) and their kids (Drew and Sam), we stopped in Knoxville to visit Grandma Q's dear friend Shirley. She recently added a beautiful sunroom to her home as well as expanded her deck. Ethan had a great time stomping around on the deck and exploring every nook and cranny. He especially loved the windchimes that he could be lifted up to reach that Shirley had above the deck.

After lunch, we, Grandma Q, and Gino headed the rest of the way to Pigeon Forge where we stayed at The Preserve (a beautiful resort of cabins up in the mountains that Dan's brother manages). We enjoyed visiting with Dan's family and stayed in Tennessee from the 26-29th. Ethan really enjoyed playing with his cousin Sam who is almost exactly a year older than him. They played with a box that we brought presents in for quite some time and also loved running around the lower level of the cabin that had an air hockey table, a foosball table, and a pool table.

Below is a slideshow of pics that I took on the 26th at Shirley's house and at the cabin.

Christmas Day 2007- Our Family's Puzzle

While Ethan was asleep overnight on Christmas Eve and napping on Christmas day, we worked on a 1000-piece Springbok puzzle, as it is a family tradition to work on a puzzle every Christmas. Amazingly we were able to complete it in less than 24 hours. I stayed up way too late on Christmas Eve working on it though... Here is a picture of the completed puzzle:

Christmas Eve 2007 at Grandma and Grandpa G.'s

Dan, Ethan, Waggles, and I spent Christmas Eve and Christmas Day with my parents and brother Mike. We had a great time opening gifts, doing our annual Christmas puzzle, eating wonderful food, watching "The Nativity" DVD, and just enjoying spending time together. Ethan was ecstatic to receive a TMX Extreme Elmo as well as an Elmo remote control (finally a remote control that he is allowed to play with!) He wore himself out playing with all of his gifts and with the wooden trainset that my Dad built for Mike when he was little.

I created a slideshow of pics of Ethan on Christmas Eve at my parent's house that is posted below.

Below is a video of Ethan saying a few of the words that he uses regularly now. You'll probably need to click on the lower left corner of the slideshow above to mute the music so that you can hear the video.

My Dad's Family Christmas Get-Together

Every year my Dad's family gets together for a big Christmas party- Thanks so much to John and Cindy for hosting all of us year after year! This year was especially fun because it was the first Christmas that Ethan was at least somewhat aware of what was going on! He had a blast running around and playing with all of my cousin's kids, and he really enjoyed unwrapping gifts and playing with the wrapping paper and his new toys. A big thanks to everyone for all of the wonderful gifts! Here are a few pics of our get-together along with a video of Ethan and Katelyn enjoying throwing wrapping paper around after all of the presents were opened. I apologize for the odd perspective on the video... I rotated our digital camera while taking the video, and when it uploaded to Blogger, it started out playing sideways!

Down to One Nap and a New Fondness for Blankies

Ethan is growing up too quickly! We have transitioned him this week from two 1 1/2 hour naps to one 3+ hour nap. It has actually been really easy to switch him to this new schedule, and he has adapted to it very well. It's so strange to have a big chunk of time in the afternoon to get things done-I haven't had that in a long time!
We have been fortunate that, at least up to this point, Ethan has been a great sleeper. When we took the pacifier away at 4 months, he took a little while to learn how to self soothe, but ever since we haven't had any problems. He never found his fingers to suck instead, and he didn't have an attachment to any sort of "lovie" or special item that he required to sleep. It's been really nice not to have to worry about ensuring that we have a specific stuffed animal or blanket with us when we travel or visit my parents in Kokomo. Perhaps until now! As it has gotten colder this winter, I started putting a fleece blanket in the crib with him when he sleeps. He loves holding the blanket and rubbing the fleece between his fingers. He knows that we call it a "blankie", and now whenever I put him in his crib to sleep he'll say "B,B,B" or what sounds like "blankie" and gets upset until you hand him a blanket. He also loves to drag a blankie or multiple blankies (I've seen him with 3 or 4 at one time) around the house with him. Looks like we better ensure that several of these are packed with us when we travel over Christmas!

Highly Recommending Redboxes

If anyone hasn't heard of Redbox before, they are big ATM-like machines that are located in many McDonald's and grocery stores. They are automated DVD rental systems that charge only $1 per day for new release rentals. I had read about Redbox before but had never tried it. I had a coupon for a couple of Blockbuster rentals for free that I tried to redeem the other day, but unfortunately found that the coupon was not valid. That was the first time I'd been in Blockbuster in awhile, and their overnight rental fee for new releases is now $4.29 + tax. So, I decided to try Redbox instead, and I have to say that I'm hooked! You can view what DVDs are in stock at each Redbox on their website and reserve them through the website if you want, you can get promotion codes for free rentals easily, you can keep the DVDs as long as you want for $1/day, they email you a receipt for your transaction, and it is so easy! Since the weather has been so crummy this weekend, Dan and I watched 3 new release movies for $2.12!! We got one free rental (Ocean's Thirteen), and two other rentals (the new Harry Potter movie and the third Pirates of the Caribbean). Anyhow, if you have not tried this yet, I highly recommend it! I foresee Blockbuster going out of business in the near future...

Toys R' Us in the Ice and Snow and Surprise Elmo

It is very difficult for me to stay away from a bargain, even in the midst of a snow and ice storm. The Toys R' Us ad this weekend had a doorbuster sale on Crayola products. Buy 1 get 2 free, NOT buy 2 get 1 free, you actually would get 3 products for the price of one. So, I decided to make the drive yesterday to Toys R' Us during our winter storm. Fortunately I made it there safely (the roads were really not that bad-I just slid once for a very short distance on a hill). And amazingly the store was completely full of customers! I was very surprised to find so many other people willing to head out in the storm to shop for a deal. Anyhow, I happily bought 9 Crayola products for the price of 3 and also saw that they had a display of stuffed Elmo dolls set up for 75% off. Since Ethan has been so into Elmo lately, I decided to buy one for him as a surprise. We gave him the Elmo when he got up from his nap this afternoon, and he was SO thrilled!! Here are a few pictures of Ethan with his new Elmo:

Cookie Eating, I Mean Decorating ;)

Heather in my mom's group at church planned and hosted a really fun cookie decorating event this morning for the moms in our group and their kids. She arranged for us to use a beautiful building at a local park, set up tables covered with paper, supplied many different colors of icing, brought toys and a VCR with Christmas shows for the kids, had Christmas music playing, and brought snacks and drinks for the moms and kids. She also put together great gift bags for the kids that said "Happy Birthday Jesus!" and contained a book of prayers. It was a very fun activity, and everyone had a wonderful time! I brought Ethan's crayola smock to help keep icing off his clothes, and surprisingly he was content to sit on my lap and munch on a sugar cookie while watching me ice and decorate our other cookies. He helped me ice a little bit too, but enjoyed running around playing with toys and interacting with the other kids more. This was the first "real" cookie that he has eaten (other than Gerber graduate cookies that are fortified with lots of vitamins, etc.) He LOVED it!! Lori brought her camera and took a lot of great snapshots of everyone. Here are a couple of her pictures:

Ethan enjoying his sugar cookie and watching me ice cookies

Dancing, Rolling, and Spinning Around

Ethan is a very active little boy. Ever since he became mobile, it's look out world! Some of the neat things he's been doing lately include dancing, rolling, and spinning. If you ask him to dance he does this little stomping jig for you. He has the "rolling" part of Pat-A-Cake down, and he loves to rotate his arms around each other if you ask him to roll. And apparently it is quite entertaining for him to spin around in circles until he gets dizzy and wobbly, as this has become a favorite activity that he does at least several times a day. I took some video footage of these activities tonight, but unfortunately we don't currently have a means to transfer our video to our computer. One of these days I'll update this post with some video of Ethan's dance skills (he's pretty good, so I'm not sure where he got that from because it could NOT have been inherited!) :)

Totally Crazy About Elmo

Ethan has always enjoyed it when we read to him, particularly several Sesame Street books that feature Elmo. He adores Elmo and always lets us know wherever he sees him, pointing and saying "Elmo", "Elmomo" or "Mo" ;) Mom and I took him to Babies R Us the other day, and they had some Elmo stockings hanging on hooks low enough for him to reach. I was carrying him around as he was pointing at them and squealing. I set him down, and he made a beeline for the display chanting "Elmo, Elmo, Elmo" with a grin from ear to ear. Cutest thing ever! It's fun to see him make connections between characters he sees in books and other places he sees the same characters (like on toy shelves). Also, when I change his diaper, I let him hold the new diaper until I need it. Since we use Pampers, many of the diapers have pictures of Elmo on them. He loves it when he gets to hold a new Elmo diaper and will tell me "Elmo diape". He's starting to learn to recognize some of the other Sesame Street characters too like Big Bird, Ernie, Bert, and Cookie Monster.

O' Christmas Tree, O' Christmas Tree, How Lovely are Your Branches, and Ornaments, and Lights

We put our Christmas tree and other decorations up this weekend, and Ethan has been fascinated by them. He constantly walks over to the tree and points to it. We put a superyard up around it and the gifts that I've wrapped so far to keep him out of mischief. Tonight we took the superyard down to get some pictures of Ethan with the tree, and he loved holding the ornaments, checking out the lights, and patting the tree limbs. It was so cute to see his excitement about the tree!