Family Photos

Life has been a little crazy lately and I have neglected our blog. I am still working on getting pictures from the 4th of July off the camera and onto our computer...Bryan doesn't let me around his computer and I can only nag him so much. We had a great time at the Callaway's again this year. Ethan is growing each day. He is running all over the place, and getting into everything. He loves to play outside, I just have to keep him from eating rocks and dirt. We had some family photos taken a little over a month ago to celebrate Ethan turning one. Sara, our photographer, was amazing and the photos are too. She was so great to work with and as you can see her work is incredible. You can check out some of our pictures at http://www.slopezphotography.com/blog/ just scroll down a little. Enjoy!

Ethan Turns One

Ethan's first birthday was Saturday, which is still a little hard for me to believe. Although the week before his birthday was a little stressful, it was all worth it! We had originally planned to have a pool party, but the weather had a different plan. It began pouring down rain at 3 o'clock when his party was supposed to start. I can't thank all of our friend and family who braved the weather and came to celebrate Ethan's big day. The kids had fun running around the house and playing with Ethan's toys and the adults had fun playing Guitar Hero and drinking Bryan's world famous margaritas. Ethan really made out great with lots of really loud toys, one of which was a payback for a gift that Gracie got for Christmas (guess I will have to think about future presents a little more closely). He wasn't too excited about his cake but did manage to get icing all over his face and clothes.

What a year we have had and how far we have come. Ethan says a few words now (mama, dada, hi and bye). We are still waiting on teeth, but he can eat regular food, in fact carne guisada, rice, beans and guacamole are among his favorites. Oh yeah, and crackers too, no meal is complete without at least a few crackers. He is cruising around and has taken a few steps recently. I am so excited to see Ethan continue to grow and can't wait for what this year will bring.

Opening gifts

He really enjoyed the wrapping paper

Thanks for the really loud train Dr. Alamia

Yum...chocolate cake

Babies love pizza

Ethan is starting to show is us more of his personality these days, particularly during meal time. He is becoming pickier about what foods he likes and of those foods half of the time he wants to feed himself. He doesn't really like some of the usual kid favorites like mac and cheese or applesauce, but give him baked fish, guacamole or carne guisada and he's in heaven. Last week after he didn't want peas, carrots, or mixed fruit (which is usually a hit) he got a few bites of pizza. He was so excited, he though it was the greatest thing!

Easter and Birthdays

We celebrated Easter along with my mom's and Gracie's birthdays on Sunday. We had the first ever Easter egg hunt at our house, mostlyfor Gracie, but Ethan picked up a few eggs too.

back to the blog, finally...

It has been a while since I've updated our blog. Life has been crazy lately and sometimes I'm just trying to hang on. Some days I'm lucky if everyone has been feed, a few charts got done and I slept a few hours. Ethan was sick with a stomach bug for a few days, then a mysterious fever and now he may be teething. The other issue is our new digital camera. Our son was already 9 months old and the only video we had were "shorts" from our old camera. So as not to let more of his life go by undocumented, I finally convinced Bryan to get a new camera. Anyone who knows Bryan knows that any big purchase must be researched, thought about carefully, and then researched some more, then if he hasn't forgotten, finally purchased. So to make a long story short I still don't know how to download pictures from the new camera, mainly because I haven't taken the time to learn, so at least for now have to rely on Bryan.

now we're crawling

While he would rather walk (holding my hands of course), sometimes Ethan has to settle for crawling. At least he's getting a little better at it.

Hey daddy...

Bryan is in Vegas this week for business so I promised I would post some pics of Ethan. These are from dinner tonight. He finally has his appetite back after being sick last week.

Go speed racer go

The start of the new year has been a busy one for us. Ethan is taking baths in the big tub now, still working on crawling and eating everything in sight at dinner (3 jars of level 2 baby food!!!). Bryan's family gave Ethan a Tonka truck for Christmas which he just loves. He loves to push it and ride on it, the only problem is that no matter if he gets one trip around the living room or one hundred its not enough. He really lets you know that he is not pleased. As you can imagine it gets a little hard on the back after the 10th time around. So last weekend we were keeping Gracie for the day and enlisted her to help out. They started out by pushing the truck around together, then we let Gracie push him around. Ethan loved it, and while Gracie did take a few corners pretty fast they both survived.






Here's Gracie in action:

its the little things...

It seems like Ethan is developing and growing at record speed these days. We have had several new developments in the past two weeks. He has mastered eating pureed foods and a few days ago we started some "finger foods" that he could feed himself. After a few unsure moments he was ready for more. He's still working on getting things in his mouth instead of just on my floor. Bryan is not as excited about this new development...as many of you moms know how messy this can be.
He is also doing a commando type crawl now and I don't think it will be too long before he has this mastered as well. He started with just pulling himself around in the floor with his arms and now he is realizing he can get a lot more places when he gets his legs moving. I'm sure our animals won't be too excited, he is already tormenting the cats by pulling his hair when they get too close.
We also had the first bath in the big tub this week. It's amazing how these little accomplishments mean so much.