Happy Nine Months Ethan!

Ethan is 9 months old today, inching his way to his first birthday awfully fast! He's a very busy boy these days, here's a snapshot of where he's at:

• Still has no teeth, though the bottom two have been ready to pop for weeks now.
• Can pull up to standing on almost anything
• Has started cruising the furniture!
• Loves to eat, hasn't met a food he doesn't like! Has recently tried plain yogurt and likes it.
• He can clap his hands
• Sticks his tongue out of his mouth most of the time
• Has been to a rodeo, drive in movie theater, and powered through a 9 hour trip to Idaho in the last month
• Still babbling with plenty of inflection
• Loves to "dance" with Grace and me. I'll have to post a video soon because he does this adorable baby butt bounce when he's sitting or standing! Seriously cute.
• Has crawling down to a science and goes just about anywhere he pleases.
• Loves to play with Grace's play kitchen. He crawls in there and pulls up to standing and plays with the sink. I think he likes it because it's one of the few toys Grace has no problem sharing with him.

Another Round of Potty Training Commences

That's right, yet another round of potty training is happening in our house this week. Last night when we made a family trip to Walmart I picked up a package of vinyl training pants so that we can keep our potty training efforts going even when we leave the house. We told Grace that since she's a big girl now she doesn't need to wear diapers during the day and it's time to wear training pants all the time. She happily agreed and immediately wanted to put her Little Mermaid underwear on and watch her Elmo Potty Video. Score 1 for Mommy. She wore her underwear for about an hour last night before bedtime without an incident and she wore a diaper to bed. One step at a time!

This morning when she woke up I brought her immediately to the potty but she didn't have to go. She was happy to put on her training pants and I asked a few times if she needed to go potty throughout the morning to no avail. I was busy nursing Ethan on the couch when Grace came streaking into the living room exclaiming "I peed in the potty!" with a mile wide grin on her face. I asked her if she's sure she peed IN the potty and not in her underwear, and she was emphatic that she did indeed pee in the potty. So I went with her to the bathroom and checked her training pants on the floor...dry! She had indeed peed in the potty all by herself. Once I confimed her success she immediately asked for the Dora sticker and picked out a Minnie and Mickey Mouse sticker for her Potty Sticker Chart as well. Then we did a happy dance!

We even left to go to the Post Office and run a few errands today with her in her training pants and the vinyl cover. She announced to the entire Post Office that she peed in the potty and proceeded to lift her dress to show off her underwear. We're still working on that whole "ladies don't lift their dress in public places" thing but at least she's excited about Potty Training. Let's hope she keeps it up!

Happy Fourth of July!

We had a great Fourth of July with Pat & Katie, James & Jessie, James' brother Matt, and our favorite neighbors the Richardsons. We started out the day by meeting at the Independence Parade (in Independence, Oregon....what a coincidence!). I took the kids and our decorated red wagon and we walked in the Kids Parade which was a lot of fun. Grace was mesmerized watching people as we walked by and Ethan did his best to eat the wagon decorations (I fished out a shiny red piece at one point). Once we reached the end of the parade route we wound our way back to where the rest of the group was sitting and enjoyed the rest of the parade.



Grace had a grand time running to get the candy tossed out every now and again and ate her fair share. Ethan was happy so long as he had access to his Puffs, and seemed to take it all in with his usual non-chalance. After the parade we headed back to our house and played a little Rock Band and chatted until we went over to the neighbor's patio to eat some delicious food and chat some more. We had quite the tasty spread!



We waited until dusk to start our fireworks and by that time Ethan was asleep in his crib so he missed the fireworks. I don't think he'd like them anyways. Grace liked the snakes and smoke bombs and wasn't too sure about the rest. I did talk her into doing some sparklers with me if I held her and she didn't have to hold one. I told her they were fairy wands and that made her pretty interested! She spent most of the time wrapped up in a blanket on her doggy chair telling us when the fireworks "turned off". By the end of the show she seemed to like them much better.



After our show stopping fireworks display (we drew out some extra spectators!) we headed to the neighbor's back yard where we had everything set up to watch a movie projected onto a king size white sheet. It was pretty amazing! We tested it out the night before and watched Indiana Jones but for the fourth we went patriotic and watched Independence Day. We had a smorgesbord of candy and popcorn and lots of blankets. It sprinkled on us briefly two times and we didn't finish the movie until after midnight, but it was worth it!



Hope everyone else had as nice of a time!

Rodeo Pictures Finally Up

Just a heads up for all my Snapfish Followers that I finally got the Sisters Rodeo Album up. Yes it took awhile but I've been busy. Sorry for the delay!

Ethan's First Red Wagon Ride

Yesterday the kids were growing restless after dinner and I decided that a walk outside would be just the thing to stop the whining. I was right, it certainly did the trick and then some! I hadn't put Ethan in the red wagon yet but I figured now would be a good time to start. He had been a teething monster in the living room so I let him bring the yellow comb he was chewing on and he was quiet the whole way.



I stopped to take a picture of the monumental occasion of Ethan's First Red Wagon Ride (hey, I like taking pictures!) and asked Grace if she'd like to walk and look at the flowers. Of course she wanted to! So she spent a good 30 minutes walking through the empty lots in our neighborhood picking the weeds and calling them beautiful flowers.

To her they were beautiful and really, when you stop to think about it who's the one that decided weeds were ugly in the first place? Some of them really are quite beautiful. Not that I want them in my yard, but I can appreciate them other places.




While taking pictures I thought I'd try to take the comb away from Ethan for a better photo but he wasn't thrilled with that idea AT ALL.



So I handed it back to him and shrugged. I can't help that he's a teething monster and if he finds comfort in chewing on the little yellow comb who am I to insist on a pretty picture?



Once we made it back home I put Grace's treasured flowers into an equally lovely Tiffany's crystal vase. They're currently sitting on our dining room table, a reminder for me to appreciate the beauty in everything. Even cranky teething babies and weeds.

The Little Guy

The drooling, the swollen gums, waking up to nurse three times between 11pm and 3am. Yes I think the poor kid is going to be teething forever!



Baby Blue Eyes



He's got a smile that lights up a room!

The difference between boys and girls

There's nothing like having a profound discussion with your toddler while sitting on the floor of the hot van nursing the baby. Especially when that profound discussion is about specific anatomy parts and whether or not one can switch genders. At first I thought the conversation was going the typical route where Grace tells me who we know that are girls and who we know that are boys and what particular reproductive organ they happen to have. She's learned the actual names for such parts and has a good grasp on what's what ever since her little brother joined the scene. But this time she told me she might be a boy when she gets big. I simply told her that you're born a boy or girl because that's the way God made us and there's no changing it. I just can't imagine taking that conversation any further with an almost 3 year old! Of course I never realized how often I'd be talking about certain body parts and excretory processes either so I guess it's all par for the course.

And on a lighter note, here's a picture of Grace wearing the new hair clips we found at Safeway that are actually working to hold her bangs out of her eyes while we work on growing them out!