ryanandbernadette.com

First, I did just get some photos posted so you can check those out.  There are some in Ethan’s folder and some in a new Halloween folder.

This week has been pretty busy.  We had our Halloween party last Saturday, that was fun.  We had a lot of people come and some great food and costumes.  Ethan was an adorable cowardly lion, Ryan was the scarecrow, and I was crazy enough to sew my own Dorothy costume.  Remind me never to do that again!  But I learned a lot, and got a new sewing machine since my old one bit the dust, merry early Christmas to me!

Last Tuesday we took Ethan for his very first haircut.  It was a bittersweet experience for me.  His hair desperately needed cutting, it was getting really long and unruly.  He enjoyed it fairly well, he got to sit in a fire truck and ring the bell the whole time.  It was really strange seeing him when he was done, he looks like a little boy now and not a baby.  He really surprised me the next morning when I’d forgotten and was shocked all over again after I woke him up.

He’s really walking all over now and has gotten so much more stable.  He still falls down but not nearly as much.  He’s starting to put on some speed too!  Ryan installed some door knob latches today as Ethan has figured out not just how to turn the knob but open the door once he has.  Hopefully our house is finally done being babyproofed!  But somehow I doubt it as I know I’ve said that before.

Ryan took Ethan around to a few of our neighbor’s houses last night, sans bag, for trick or treating.  We had a bunch of kids come here, it’s fun to see their costumes though I have to remind myself to look at them as I give out candy.

Ryan lets me sleep in a little bit on Sundays and gets Ethan up for me.  This past Sunday, as I lay in bed, I enjoyed listening to the two of them “chat”.  Ethan, so far, does take after his mom and is a pretty good sleeper so Ryan had to wake him up.  He fortunately wakes up better than his mom though!  Ryan makes up funny songs for him all the time, usually based on some tune he knows, and changes the words to reflect whatever’s going on.  So he sang to him about something silly, I don’t even know what, and Ethan just loved it.  Then of course you have the tickle session while getting him dressed.  I don’t think there is any better sound in the world than your child’s belly laugh.  Ethan also “talks” (read babbles) a lot too, from the time he gets up to the time he goes to sleep.  There were the sounds of both of them brushing Ethan’s teeth, and then a few cries as he suffered the indignity of getting his face washed.  It was marvelous.  It’s not too often I get to just sit and listen to the sounds around me, it was beautiful.  And I think it was the best part of sleepng in.

It’s hard to be a mom, and I doubt I mean what you think I mean.  As people, we are all pretty much egocentric, that’s just the way it is for the large majority of us.  It’s hard to ever think of our parents as people until we’re older, and still hard even then.  I mean, I can’t really see my parents as kids of 6 or 13 or even 22.  I didn’t know them then and I’ve only ever known them as my parents.  But we all know that before we were parents we were someone’s child.  I know Ethan won’t really understand this either.  It’s hard to see when you are a kid that your parents have already been there, done that and maybe have something to teach you.  Some kids will learn from that, most won’t.  I watch Ethan now and can see that he’s headed for some certain heartaches, ones that are common to us all.  We went to the park yesterday and let Ethan play on the playground for a little while.  He just loves bigger kids and looked up at this boy on the playground with such obvious (to me at least) admiration on his face.  I just know that one of these days that admiration will hurt him as some bigger kid hurts him in some way, probably not physically though that may happen, but probably emotionally and that can often hurt worse.  He’s just so open to the world right now that it almost breaks my heart.  I know it’s the cynic in me probably coming out, but all of us get hurt, that’s one of those commonalities.  I don’t want to be a “helicopter parent”, I don’t want to shelter him from the world, but I don’t want him to get hurt, I don’t want to see pain on that little face that I love so dearly.  I guess I just have to love him as much as I can, be there for him when he gets hurt, and teach him to rely on the One who loves him even more than I do when I can’t be there.  It’s so hard to be a mom.

Ethan is finally getting his signs down.  We’ve worked on these a lot for a very long time now and I do find them to be quite useful.  I’m going to have to learn more, but for now the signing and pointing are working just fine.  He can sign change when we change his diaper - I’ve still gotta figure out how to teach him to do that when his diaper’s dirty, not just when I’m already changing him.  He’s been able to sign milk for a long time, but somehow forgot how once he learned how to sign eat and would just sign eat and point to his cup.  After much diligence on his dad’s and my part over the past week, he can now do both though he still points to what he wants too.  Maybe he just thinks we’re dense and uses that to really get his point across.  I swear his friend Evan is teaching him signs on the sly too.  He came home from Amy’s house last week knowing how to sign please, which we’d hardly worked on but now he does really well.  And today he signed more when he wanted more food and we really haven’t worked on that.  He also did a sign we don’t recognize so I can only hope Evan is not leading him astray.  :)  It’s really nice for him to be able to communicate with us a bit more.  It hasn’t prevented too many fits though since he usually throws a fit when he’s tired or hungry (signs do not prevent this) or when something doesn’t go his way (signs also do not prevent mean mommys).  And we’ve had plenty of fights over getting him to use his signs when all he really wants to do is drink his milk.    But it’s really quite impressive to watch him communicate his desires, especially tonight at dinner when he kept signing eat and pointing to the empty spot on his plate where his pizza should have been.

Our family lost a very important member last week, our dog, Musketeer.  He was a very special member of our family and we will all miss him.  I haven’t lived with him for many years now, but most of the rest of my family has.  He was like the third twin for my brothers.  For those of you who don’t have pets this probably doesn’t make much sense to you, but animals really are members of the family.  Our cats mean a lot to us and Ethan just adores them.  You should see him give them hugs, he just tackles them and presses his face into their fur.  Those cats can get him to walk when mom and dad can’t.  Anyway, we will all miss our big fluff.  I know it can be a hard decision to let an animal go, I’m glad I haven’t had to make that decision for myself yet, but I have had to help other people decide whether it’s time or not.  It’s one of the hardest parts of my profession and can be very draining.  I know it is a blessing to be able to decide, sometimes it can also feel like a curse.  I cry even when I don’t know the animal or the people.  I already told Bree and Katrina that they have to live forever.

No, I’m not above bribing Ethan to get him to do something I want.  We’ve been working with him a lot on getting him to walk and just getting him to stand on his own.  I’ve known he is fully capable since he plays with his walkers all the time and maneuvers them easily which you can’t do if you can’t hold yourself up.  So tonight Ryan helped him learn to stand on his own.  We did it first without chocolate and only used that as a sort of reward since we know he likes it.  Then he was working so hard to get the chocolate we decided to use that as an “incentive” to keep him working.  :)  It worked well.  I was hoping that peer pressure would play a more important role than it has since his friend Evan, who is a week younger by the way, has already been walking for weeks, but that didn’t seem to faze Ethan at all.  Hopefully that will still hold true in about 14 years, but I somehow doubt it.  So I can only say thank you to Melina for the chocolate, I will use it to its best advantage, trying to get Ethan to walk and then celebrating with it when he finally does.

I did get Ethan’s birthday pictures posted today, and I just now finished the captions so those are available for your perusal. 

I had a good birthday today.  Ryan completely surprised me with my present, with something he knew I’d really like and never would have thought he’d remember to get.  He got me a fruit bouquet from Edible Arrangements and I love it!  I have a really hard time coming up with things I’d like when it comes to holidays so it helps me out a lot when he just remembers things from other parts of the year.  If you’ve never had one before, they are worth it.  It’s like getting flowers only you can eat them, and they have fantastic chocolate covered strawberries.  Yum!  And Ethan got me a book called I Love You Mommy; he has great taste. 

We had a fun evening out together.  We went out to dinner at the new outdoor mall near us, and I got a very tasty steak and some of the best spinach artichoke dip I’ve ever had.  Ethan really liked it too and I figured since it had vegetables and dairy in it, it couldn’t be that bad for him.  :)  The other best part was our mall has had free outdoor concerts all summer long and this was one of the last ones.  So we got to listen to live music out on the patio, enjoy delicious food, and spend time together as a family.  We went and sat in the outdoor area after dinner and just enjoyed the music.  There were a surprisingly lot of people up and dancing and just enjoying themselves, which was fun to see.  Ethan really liked the music, especially the drum solo, and did some of his own dancing.   It will be fun to take him next year when he can actually get up and dance.  It was one of the best birthdays I can remember, and if this is what 30 is like, then bring it on!

I think having a baby is good for your health, in some ways that is.  Many pregnant people may argue with that, but hear me out.  Before having Ethan, we paid slight attention to what we ate.  It was mostly we shouldn’t eat this but who cares so we’ll eat it anyway kind of thinking.  Don’t get me wrong,  we did eat our vegetables and tried to avoid the really bad stuff, but once in a while was ok.  It still is, but it has to be once in a greater while now, and I don’t want to feed Ethan some of the same junk we eat and I don’t want to cook more than one meal, so if I want him to eat healthy and not spend the whole day in the kitchen then I guess I have to eat healthy too.  I find myself thinking more often about what I should buy at the store and cook for meals.  My own pickiness comes into play here a bit too because I just won’t fix some things no matter who they are for.  I did cook Ethan a scrambled egg for breakfast last week and I think that’s about the last time I’ll do that.  I gagged just about the entire time from the smell.  I know most of you think I’m crazy, but I just cannot stand the smell of eggs cooking.  Now, you put an egg in a cake batter and I’m good with that!  Breakfast is the most interesting meal of the day, and not just because it’s the most important.  I’m finding I really have to study my own eating habits and adjust them a bit for Ethan.  I’m usually pretty good with a bowl of cereal, but I haven’t really figured out how to feed him one yet.  We tried oatmeal the other day, which I don’t like and apparently neither does he.  I’ve got cream of wheat but I haven’t made it yet, again it’s a smell thing for me, and he hated baby cereal anyway, but maybe we’ll try that tomorrow.  We had pancakes and sausage today for breakfast, he really liked that!  And no, I didn’t give him any syrup.  I’m trying to avoid sugar and additives in his food, and maybe by extension I’ll get a little healthier too.  So far having a toddler hasn’t helped with my weight any, but maybe that will change once he can actually walk.  :)  So now I find myself caring more about what’s in my food, like sodium, sugar, and ingredient lists that take up an entire paragraph on the label.  After all, when you by a simple food like fruit, shouldn’t the label just list the fruit?

I posted some new Ethan pictures from our trip to Missouri, after sorting through literally 600 pictures!  So I haven’t posted birthday pictures yet, but I’m getting there.  Only 600 more to go!

I know the whole first year of life is all about changes, going from completely helpless unable to even hold up your head to running around like a crazy toddler, babbling all the time, and expressing your opinions.  No, Ethan isn’t walking just yet, but he is crawling around like a crazy monkey.  It seems like the month you turn one is completely full of changes too.  Like I already said, Ethan is working on learning to walk.  He’s getting better, but he’s still really timid about standing up on his own, which significantly hinders the walking process.  His size has changed too.   He’s 50% taller than when he was born and weighs 3x as much!  My arm muscles get a workout from my 22 lb little guy!

We’ve turned his car seat around so now he can look out the front of the car.  We were going to wait since it’s much safer to have him face the rear, but he’s too tall now and his legs were really cramped.  He likes the change of scenery, I think it’s mostly because now he can stretch out his feet!  He finally learned how to hold his own bottle a few weeks ago after a screaming (him, not Ryan) dinner with his dad that I was thankfully not around for.  Now we’re in the process of switching him from formula to milk.  He seems to like the milk so far, but I’m mixing it about half and half with formula so we’ll see what he thinks when he’s changed all the way.  The last of the baby food is in the pantry, and there isn’t much left.  Once that’s completely gone, he’ll be on people food all the way.  The biggest change there is going to be for me, now I’ll actually have to make sure I have food prepared for him to eat rather than just opening up a jar.

One of the changes I witnessed today was when we were at the store.  Ethan likes to look at things on the shelf and today he found a big stuffed duck pillow that snored.  He liked that and was very sad when we had to put it back on the shelf.  He really threw a fit when we walked away and I told him he couldn’t have everything he wanted.  It was the first time (of many to come I’m sure) that I’ve taken away something he wanted in a store, well, besides that can of beans but I don’t think he really wanted that.  Some other changes we’ve gone through lately include me going back to work on a very part time basis.  So while I’m gone, Ethan usually goes to our friend Amy’s house to play with her little guy Evan, who is a week younger than Ethan.  He has lots of fun playing there and I know he’s safe and sound and in good hands.  Plus, Evan just had his birthday party too and now Ethan has lots of fun new Evan toys to play with.  :)  I think that’s the most of the changes we’ve done lately, I’ll let you know what happens next!