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We visited the traveling Vietnam War Memorial today while it is in Boulder.  It was pretty powerful, especially considering it isn’t even the full size.  I know Ethan didn’t understand it at all, but maybe someday he’ll get to see the real one.  I’ve never been to DC, it would be a great place to take a family vacation.  Part of what struck me was the sheer number of names.  A volunteer reads them off, one after the other.  The wall guide told us that they are arranged by date of death, each alphabetical grouping of people died on the same day.  If there is a diamond by the name then the body was recovered, but if there is a cross, then they weren’t.  The beginning of the war and the end meet in the middle.  It’s a very simple memorial, which I think makes it all the more powerful.  I know that the Vietnam War was strongly protested, but we still remember its victims; I can only hope we do the same for the current war.

We spent all day outside working on our porch.  A big thank you to Noah, Casey, Graham, and Jason for all their very hard work carrying, shoveling, weeding and demolishing!  We rented a dumpster for the weekend along with a jackhammer and a concrete saw.  If you saw our previous porch pictures you would have seen flagstone.  You may or may not have seen that the flagstone was very poorly laid.  The mortar had mostly dissolved in many places leaving the stones very loose and easily removed, whether you wanted them to be or not.  The good part is the porch was poorly done leaving it fairly easy to demolish.  The bad part is the porch was poorly done so we had to demolish it for safety reasons, as well as aesthetics.  Now it is not quite so ugly anymore as it is now even with very little residual mortar left.  Ryan still has to do an acid wash to remove the rest of the mortar and we have to do something to the front steps since they are at a drastically different level than the driveway.  But he got to have fun cutting down bushes and a tree with his chainsaw!  The guys used the jackhammer to remove most of the concrete the previous owner laid in the backyard because it stuck out too far and we don’t have that much yard anyway.  I think they had fun with that, but maybe not so much with carting the cut up concrete around to the dumpster.  I need to get some pictures posted, along with some new Ethan ones.  He’s 11 months old now!  He just got in his top two teeth and he’s strolling around the house with his walker.  Anyway, I need to go get cleaned up, we are all filthy dirty from all the yard working.  Believe me, you did not want to smell us when we got done!

Ethan has now hit one of my favorite milestones.  The other day he actually put his toys away when I asked him to.  It was truly amazing!  I still have to gather them up and he has to be sitting right in front of his toy basket, but he will take a toy and put it into the basket when I ask him to.  It made me very excited, which I think was a good motivator for him to keep doing it.

We’re working on more signs now.  He’s known how to say milk in sign for a long time, but he uses it for everything which isn’t very helpful.  So I’m trying to teach him please, food, drink (for juice), change (for diapers) and all done.  And I’m also trying to teach him to fold his hands and pray before meals.  So far it has involved much screaming and fit throwing, but the duration is getting shorter so I see that as progress. 

I hope all of you had a fun-filled Fourth of July!  We had a very yummy dinner with friends and a rousing, surprisingly competitive, game of Bunco.  Ethan enjoyed his first taste of fireworks.  Over the past few months, he’s had a lot of trouble falling asleep in places that aren’t his room so I spent almost an hour trying to get him to sleep in a crib that wasn’t his in a room that wasn’t his.  It was futile.  He’d finally nod off but as soon as I tried to lay him down, he’d start screaming for “mama”.  Yes, that’s right, he does now say mama and he really does seem to associate that with me.  I think so because he usually will only say it when he’s scared.  Or mad.    Anyway, he wouldn’t sleep so he did get to see fireworks.  Others swear he wouldn’t go to sleep because he didn’t want to miss the show, but I told him I’d wake him up so I don’t think so.  He did really enjoy watching the fireworks, we watched a neighborhood show since just about all fireworks are illegal just about everywhere in Colorado.  It was a bit bittersweet since this was the first year we haven’t had any fireworks of our own.  And if you know Ryan, you know he loves fireworks!  But it was a good show and maybe a good introduction to Ethan since they weren’t close enough to be scary.

Ethan is doing other new things too.  He’s been saying “dada” (but it sounds more like “dud dud”) longer than mama, but his first “word” was probably “bubbub”, which is what we call him.  So it’s not a true first word in that it really isn’t a word, but we use it as such so I think it counts.    We taught him high five earlier this week and he likes to do that a lot.  He figured out how to wave on his own and now he really does associate it with “say hi” though he won’t always comply.  He cruises all over the furniture though he’s not very interested in walking yet.  Most of the time when we try to practice walking he just sticks his feet in the air or sits down.  His crawling pace has increased at a rapid pace though!  He loves climbing on things and makes an obstacle course out of whatever he can.  He also likes climbing stairs but he hasn’t figured out how to get back down them without going face first so I try to keep him away from those.  He talks up a storm, mostly just noises right now though except for bub, dud, na, and ma sounds.  He sure does love to shriek!  His favorite game is still throwing a ball and chasing it around, especially in the dining room on the hard wood floors where it makes more noise.  He enjoys being read to and likes going to the library for story time every week.  He is finally getting his two top teeth in but you can’t see them unless you look really close so no pictures just yet.  He’s still a sleeper and I thank God daily for that!  Basically, he’s a happy, busy, wonderful little guy who is rapidly outgrowing baby status, to the mixed emotions of his parents.

Summer is always interesting in terms of tv programming. I never really understood why it’s mostly just reruns since I was always home from school and actually able to watch. But there are new programs during the summer and a chance to view new things since you can only watch so many reruns. A new show we’ve started to watch is Hopkins. It’s really interesting watching the lives of doctors across the country and the cases they are working on. Tonight we watched a baby with a heart arrhythmia being cardioconverted back to a regular rhythm. Basically, the baby’s heart wasn’t beating correctly and they shocked it to get it to work properly. FYI, the baby did fine. It made me want to go squeeze Ethan and thank God that he is healthy. I didn’t because he’s sleeping and you just shouldn’t wake a sleeping baby, but I will pause a little longer by his crib tonight when I check on him and will definitely send up that prayer.

Pictures from our trip to Puerto Vallarta are now posted. Enjoy! My favorites are of course the pirate ship.

Puerto Vallarta