Low Key New Year's Eve

This is the first year I can remember that we didn't do anything in particular to celebrate New Year's Eve. We are planning to leave early in the morning tomorrow (by 7am) for a long drive to visit family out of state, so we thought it would be best to have a low key New Year's Eve celebration this year. We went to Applebee's and had a really yummy dinner. Ethan loves veggies, so Dan ordered a side order of steamed vegetables for Ethan. Our waitress brought a plate with a giant heap of steamed broccoli, squash, and carrots. Ethan surprised us by eating nearly the entire thing! I'm not much of a vegetable fan myself, but I'm very glad that Ethan likes them alot.
This holiday season Ethan has really enjoyed looking at all of the Christmas lights and inflatable yard decorations, so after dinner we drove to a local free gigantic Christmas light display. We also drove around our neighborhood and admired the lights that our neighbors put up. Along one street there are three inflatable yard decorations at different houses, a polar bear, a puppy dog, and a snowman. We drive by them often for Ethan to see, so we "visited" them this evening too. I stayed up pretty late packing, and we are very excited to spend some time with Dan's family tomorrow!

Christmas Celebration with my Family

We had a wonderful time spending Christmas Eve and Christmas Day with my parents and brother. We had fun making dough ornaments with Ethan for the first time. We made circular ornaments with Ethan's hand impression on them. Hopefully we can do this every year until the ornaments get ridiculously big (Ethan's hands are already pretty large for a toddler!) After baking them, I painted his hand impressions green and sprayed the ornaments with a sealant. Having never done this before, I'm not sure how well they will stay preserved from year to year, but I'm hoping that they last for awhile.

Mom and Dad's Christmas tree (they always put up a real one)

For the past many years our family has opened presents on Christmas Eve, so that is what we've been doing with Ethan too. It was fun to see how excited he was to open his gifts, and he did a great job removing the wrapping paper by himself and telling everyone "Thank you".

Checking out his new "Dino Toob" (a plastic tube containing 15 miniature dinosaurs)

Last year Mom and I looked and looked for a Fisher-Price Little People nativity set to no avail, so when we came across one at Wal-Mart this year, we bought it right away. Ethan really enjoyed that when you press the angel atop the manger it plays "Away in a Manger"

It might be a little early for this game, but he seemed interested in his new Sesame Street Chutes and Ladders

Bath time is more fun when you have a dinosaur hooded towel!We'd like to collect Christmas books that we can read each year to help Ethan (and Baby Q) understand the true meaning of Christmas. Mom and Dad started out our collection this year with a Silent Night book.

There wasn't much time Christmas Eve after gift-opening to unpackage and assemble Ethan's new toys, so the morning of Christmas Day Ethan was anxious to try out his new spiral trainset and covered bridge

Who Knew Food Could be so Much Fun?

Since we ended up staying in for the evening due to icky weather conditions, we decided to let Ethan open a Christmas present early to play with. It was a set of plastic food along with dishes, silverware, condiments, a pot and pan, and a tiny stove. I thought that Ethan would enjoy playing with this set of food but did not anticipate how much of a hit it would be. Ethan played for over 3 hours straight with his food and made lots of "meals" for me and Dan. He loved to identify and cook all of the types of food. When we told him that it was bathtime and bedtime (which usually doesn't elicit complaining), Ethan became really upset. He was crying and saying "My food, my food!" He really did not want to stop playing with his food. During bathtime and while tucking him in, we had to repeatedly assure him that the food would still be downstairs inthe morning and that he could play with it all he wanted the next day.

Parking in the Yard?

Unfortunately we were unable to attend our church's Christmas service this evening! We were all set to go and left the house early (our church is enormous and the childcare area fills up quickly over the holidays), but we were thwarted by some crazy weather. We had a lot of freezing rain that caused our driveway and neighborhood streets to be just like a skating rink. We thought that the minivan would be heavy enough to gain some traction, but we found out very quickly that we were mistaken. We managed to get down our driveway, and I had very little traction driving the van along our street toward the exit from our neighborhood. We saw several other "distressed" vehicles that were unable to steer and were sliding all over the place. We decided that the conditions were too dangerous to make the trek to church, so we circled back around to return to our house. Along the way we saw a car up in someone's yard which we thought was odd at that moment (but understood later) and also a van that could not get traction on a driveway that had a very minimal grade. They spun their wheels for over 5-10 minutes trying to get up the driveway. As I approached our driveway, I found that I could not get up the tiny slope at the base of our drive. Our Grand Prix was parked in the driveway and we didn't want to risk hitting it, so we decided to try driving across the yard to get to the garage. We managed traction in the grass, but as soon as the front wheels hit the driveway, we had no traction at all. We decided to leave the van in the front yard until the ice melted rather than risk hitting one of our other cars in the driveway or someone sliding into it on the street. It looked pretty silly to have the minivan in the middle of the front yard, and I meant to get a picture of it, but within 5 or 6 hours the temperature had risen enough that Dan was able to get the van in the garage before I took the photo.

E-T-H-A-N

Today is the first day that Dan and I recall Ethan telling us how to spell his name. He has known all of the upper- and lowercase letters of the alphabet for a long time and also recognizes when he sees his name spelled in all uppercase or upper- and lowercase letters, but this was the first time we asked him to spell his name for us and he did it all by himself! He has also learned to spell "Sam" (both his best buddy's and cousin's name) and shows a lot of interest in learning how to spell other words. I bought a few sets of flashcards that he has enjoyed playing with, so I think that we'll really focus on using those to learn more word recognition soon.

A Visit with Dear Friends

Our friends Chris and Kim moved away from the area several years ago when Chris joined the Air Force to become a pilot. They were members of our community group through church for many years, and we have really missed them. While Chris has been in the Air Force, their family has grown by three and moved several times! We were fortunate to be able to spend some time with them during their visit back to this area over the holidays. Ethan had a fantastic time playing with their kids Luke, Hannah, and Andrew. They especially enjoyed running around and around the coffee table in our great room. Hopefully they all took a nice long afternoon nap for you Chris and Kim!

Chris, Kim, Hannah, Andrew, and Luke

Who knew a coffee table could be so much fun? (By the way, Luke was pretending to fall down each time he ran around it!)

Christmas CVS Deals

CVS had another great sale with coupon match-ups and extra care buck earnings for Christmas. I got up early this morning to complete my transactions while the sale items were still in stock. It was definitely a worthwhile trip! I am writing this entry several weeks later, so I don't recall exactly how much CVS "paid" me for these items, but I know that I spent less than a dollar out of pocket and ended up increasing my ECB total significantly. Yay (as always) for CVS!

5 Arm and Hammer cleaning solutions, 5 Right Guard deodorants, 3 Thermacare packages, 1 Excedrin Express Gels, 2 Sally Hansen nail polish, 2 L'Oreal eye shadow duos, 1 package of Altoids, 1 3-outlet plug, 1 Halls cough drops, 5 Listerine mouthwashes, 1 protein bar, and one Benefiber drink mix

For those of you who are wondering, what do you do with all this stuff? Many items that you can get for free or be "paid" for at CVS are consumables (usually toiletries) that we use and surplus is great to donate to shelters and charitable organizations. Other oftentimes free items that can be donated include medicines, glucose monitors, and cleaning supplies.

Family Christmas Celebration (My Dad's Side)

Despite the threat of terrible weather, my dad's side of the family was able to get together for our big family Christmas today. We had so much fun visiting with everyone, eating incredible food, playing games, and hanging out. Ethan had a blast running around with his cousins and especially loved Nathan and Cameron's Thomas the Train set. He spent several hours guiding the trains along the tracks, over bridges, and through tunnels. Dan and I really enjoyed playing Tripoley with our family. The time always goes by entirely too fast; We wish that we could all get together like this more often. Thanks so much for hosting everyone John and Cindy- we really appreciate all that you do!

Photos of the "chaos" of gift-opening

Thank you all for the wonderful gifts!My brother Mike keeping warmBeth, Alex, and Eric playing TripoleyNathan and Aunt JoanneBeth was excited about her wealth of Tripoley poker chips! Cindy, Becky, Dad, and Maggie

John, Aunt Barb, and Uncle LeonardUncle Jim and MomKatelyn and Becky

Ethan's Very Own Mini-Tree

My mom knew that Ethan got such a kick out of our Christmas tree, and she had a great idea to let Ethan create a tree of his own. She had purchased some little (centerpiece-sized) Christmas trees and a variety of decorations (mini- ornaments, tree toppers, garland, etc.) on clearance last year and had also acquired some special ornaments that Ethan would particularly like (Thomas and Percy, a locomotive engine and its coal tender, Bob the Builder, and Bob and Larry from Veggietales). Ethan and I visited my family for the day today, and Ethan had a blast helping mom and I decorate his very own little tree (it's even pre-lit!) It turned out to be really cute! We've kept it on our fireplace mantle or on Ethan's arts and crafts table so that he can see it everyday. Each morning he reminds us to turn its lights on and points out the character ornaments (Thomas, Percy, etc.) It was a huge hit with him!

Ethan and his mini-tree

A closer-up photo of the tree

Hanging Ornaments... Ethan-Style

Tonight we added ornaments to our Christmas tree (last night we assembled the tree and got the lights and ribbon situated). Ethan was excited to assist in decorating the tree, so we showed him how to put the hook around a branch and gave him several silver ornaments to place on the tree. It was so cute to see where he decided to hang them- all at the same level side-by-side. He was so proud of hanging the ornaments by himself that we decided to leave them that way instead of evenly distributing them throughout the tree (which was our initial instinct to do). Here are a few photos of Ethan excitedly displaying his contribution to hanging ornaments on the tree!

Our completely decorated tree (plus an "Ethan blur" at the bottom!)

FINALLY Getting our Christmas Decorations Up!

Took us long enough, didn't it? We finally got around to getting our Christmas decorations out of storage in the garage and putting our Christmas tree up this evening. It was SO much fun to see how incredibly excited Ethan was as our artificial tree began to take shape with each layer of branches that we added. He kept saying over and over "I LOVE the Christmas tree!", "I HUG the Christmas tree!" (literally, many times), and "I KISS the Christmas tree" (yes, also literally!) He was thrilled when we added the lights, ribbon, and ornaments (we added ornaments the next day, so they are not in the video). It was great to see his enthusiasm just bursting out. I managed to capture a little clip of video showing his adoration for the Christmas tree, but unfortunately didn't catch most of his repeated hugging of the tree.

Here is the video clip of Ethan gently hugging his Christmas tree :)

4D Ultrasound of Baby Q

It was just our luck that the OB practice I go to purchased a 4D ultrasound machine a week or so after our routine fetal survey ultrasound in October. I asked our doctor if there were any way that we could have another ultrasound, as I was concerned that Baby Q might be breech (Ethan was until about 37-38 wks) and really would like to get to see a 4D view of the baby. Our doctor was nice enough to order the ultrasound, so today we had our third ultrasound for Baby Q. Everything with the baby looked great, although my amniotic fluid level was measuring high. I was aware that low amniotic fluid was of concern for the baby's health, but did not know that high levels can also be indicative of abnormalities. The baby was estimated to be 3 lbs 11oz and otherwise appeared healthy (aside from the fluid levels). And (yay!) he is head-down, not breech.
Sadly the ultrasound tech informed us that she had not yet been trained on the 4D capabilities of their new ultrasound machine and said that she had only experimented with those settings on one other patient. We asked very nicely if she would consider attempting to view Baby Q in 4D, and she was willing to give it a try! So, she experimented with the "wand" for a bit (she said that the way you acquire views of the baby in 2D vs 4D are very different, so it was difficult to change mindsets on how to go about acquiring 4D images). She managed to view about half of Baby Q's face, but he was obstructing the rest of the view with his arm. It was neat to get a tiny glimpse of what Baby Q will look like, and from what we can tell, he is going to resemble his big brother quite a bit! I had asked if we could bring a CD-R or DVD to record images of the baby, and unfortunately we were told that was not possible at this time, though we did get to keep a few printed images. My doctor scheduled another ultrasound for 2 weeks from now to re-check the fluid level.

Ethan's "Big Boy" Room Makeover

In order to prepare for Baby Q's arrival, we had quite a bit of work to do (organizing, moving a file cabinet upstairs from the garage, selling unneeded furniture, donating Dan's big blue couch, acquiring a twin bed and dresser from my parents, converting our office into an office/guest room, transporting a huge guest room furniture set from our house to my parent's house, shopping for, purchasing, and picking up furniture and a mattress/box spring set for Ethan's new bedroom, getting out Ethan's baby clothes and washing/organizing them, moving Ethan's closet and dresser drawer contents from the nursery to his new room, buying a safety bed rail, bedding, and curtains, moving a storage cabinet from the office down to the basement etc, etc...) I felt a little (ok, ALOT) overwhelmed initially, but we've been taking things step-by-step and are now nearly ready for Baby Q's arrival. I took some before and after photos of Ethan's (previously the guest) room's transformation. The photos I took of Ethan's new room didn't turn out very well, and now we are "missing" a dresser drawer (there was some damage to it when we picked it up from the furniture store), so I returned it to the store and am awaiting a repair. I will include photos of Ethan's new big boy room in a future post. Here are the "before" photos... I'll just have to keep you in suspense for the "after" photos!

This furniture set was mine from the time I was 5 until I went to college! The bed is actually a canopy bed, but we opted to leave the canopy off while it was used as our guest room furniture. Definitely too feminine of a set to use for a little boy!