A note from Ethan

As everyone should now be aware my mommy has been putting together a team for the March for babies walk on April 25. This is a really important event. Each year millions of babies are born with complications, prematurely, or still born. The March of Dimes does research to find out why this happens so that they can try to prevent it from happening. I was born 10 weeks early at 30 weeks gestation. I weighed 3lbs 9oz at birth. Fortunately I didn't have any major medical problems due to my prematurity. I spent 52 days in the NICU when I came home I weighed 6lbs 11oz. Now I am almost 21 months old, I weigh 25lbs, & am a happy healthy little boy. I want to encourage everyone to make a donation to our team. Our goal is to raise $100 for the March of Dimes. The money will go towards research & to help families who can't afford the medical bills. Please help my mommy raise money by making a donation. You can make a donation via the link in the side bar of the blog.

Thank You,

Ethan

Busy busy busy there's so much to do

Ethan has just been a busy boy lately. Thurs he & I were out running a few errands. While we were in one store picking up a few things this little girl came up to us & was reaching for Ethan's hand. I was holding him so that he didn't grab things off the shelves. She looked like she was about his age. I looked around but there was no one else around other than the store clerk. So I got down to her level & took her hand to keep her near me hoping her mom would come looking for her. A few secs later she did. The little girl was so infatuated with Ethan we let them visit a few more mins. I asked how old she was her mom (grandma?) said she was 18 mos. When I walked away tellling her bye she did not want to go with the lady quietly. As I was paying I saw Ethan looking at something with this coy smile on his face. The little girl had come back & was standing in the aisle waving at him. Then later we went to BW's for dinner. Ethan was interested in the claw games. So Matt decided to be a cool dad & win something for his boy. He made 2 attempts came up with squat. The a guy from a table next to us walks up & wins on the 1st attempt. Soon after another table next to us won 2 bouncing balls & then the other table won 2 balls so Matt decides he can win a ball for Ethan. Nope. I was going to try when a little girl about 3 came up with her mom & asked Ethan if he would like to have one of hers she only wanted 1. Ethan smiles coyly & flashes his baby blues then nicely took the ball from her. After he finished eating we let him out of his high chair & he went right over to the little girl who gave him the ball wanting to play with her. It was really cute.

On Sunday Ethan went to Aunt Robin's to play with Kaitlin & Colin. After a while Matt noticed a stain on Ethan's upper lip. Robin remembered there was chocolate cake on the counter but didn't think Ethan had gotten into it. Sure enough he had. There were little finger marks in the frosting. So Aunt Robin was cool & gave him a little piece of cake. Ethan of course had a blast playing with his cousins. They wore him out that's for sure he slept good Sun night.

Ethan has been doing much better with sleeping in his big boy bed. The 1st 3 nights were horrible. He wouldn't stay in bed, constant screaming, waking up every few hours. We were all very tired. By night 4 he was sleeping till 4 then by night 6 he was sleeping to 6:30. By night 7 he was sleeping to 8. Monday night (night 11) he had a set back & kept waking up every hour & didn't want to go back down. Last night he was up at 2 again at 3 but he eventually went back down and was up around 9. Hopefully tonight he will be back to sleeping all night. He's 50/50 yet with naps. Sometimes I can get him down by just singing a few songs other times he won't calm down. On the times that he won't calm down he gets a few warnings & then I just have to leave him & let him calm himself down. I like having him in a big boy bed. Now he can just get up when he's ready & not have to wait for us to hear him & then come get him. Now he just comes & gets us.

Ethan is getting to be a big boy. He's growing up right in front of our eyes. It's so cool to watch him grow & learn new things.

Ethan's a big boy now

Ethan is growing up right before our eyes. Thursday night we moved him from his crib to a twin bed. He did great the 1st night since then however he has refused to go down w/o a fight. Friday night it took over an hour for him to go down, same for last night. We have tried a no cry method but even though he doesn't cry he also refuses to relax & settle down. Instead he wants to bounce on the bed, turn the light on & off, ect. So in the end we have resorted to just letting him scream himself to sleep. Each night his screaming has become shorter & shorter. So it's been 3 nights of getting no sleep for all 3 of us. Ethan is so tired he can barely keep his eyes open yet he fights sleep when he's laid down in his bed. Oh how we hope he will get used to his bed soon. I don't know how many more nights Ethan will be able to go w/o getting a full nights sleep.

In other news on the Ethan front Ethan is now a forward facing toddler. We turned his car seat in Matt's car yesterday. I'll turn it in my car when I have to go out next. So many new things happening to him this week. He's getting to be such a big boy.

I took him out to play in the snow after we had that big storm come through. He loved trying to walk through the deep snow but he hated when he would fall in it b/c he couldn't get up. I took some cute pictures of him in the snow as soon as I get them loaded onto the computer I will have them posted.

Potty training, baby proofing, organizing! OH MY!!

I think that title says it all. The potty training is proving to be quite the challenge with Ethan. He loves to sit on his potty. He will even let us know when he is wet. He just won't go on the potty. We have been putting him on the potty every couple of hours. We even tried cloth training pant to help him feel wet. Yea he really didn't care. He's too busy to worry about whether his pants are wet. When he is asked if he needs to go to the potty he will run straight for the stairs & head straight up to the bathroom. If his little seat isn't on the potty he will try to put it on himself. He likes to sit there & look through his little books. It is pretty cute. It is just going to take time & a lot of patience to get him trained.

Baby proofing has been an issue since he was able to crawl. I swear this kid can get through any kind of baby proofing. We had locks on the drawers in the kitchen & he somehow managed to break some of them. So we went out & bought a different style of lock. The directions on the package said "Installed in 5 easy steps! No Drilling!" The package lied. The stinkin' adhesive gave way almost immediatly. I ended up getting the drill out & putting them in that way. The locks are magnetic so the drill & ended up doing it by hand. What was supposed to take a half hour took me 3.5 hours!! I think my stubborness got the best of me this time. I refused to give up. Of course when I finished I was so proud. I had gotten the locks on all by myself. I went through each drawer putting the magnetic key to the locks to release them just to make sure they all worked. Go figure the very last drawer had to be the one that falls off. *Sigh* it had to be re screwed back on. Then yesterday Ethan got through the lock on the bottom drawer. Somehow the adhesive settled & even though I had the lock screwed in it shifted & we had to re-do the lock moving it up a bit. Now all the locks are working & Ethan hasn't gotten past them anymore. On top of putting new locks in place I have been working on putting the computer chords, printer paper, printer cartridges, & Ipod things into a Sterilite container with baby locks on it to keep Ethan out of that stuff. We are running out of shelves to put that stuff on. So I have been busy organizing to get things out of his reach. Him getting taller is not a good thing, it's making it harder to put things away from him. LOL.

Last but not least Ethan managed to get out of his crib. On Weds I was getting up heading to the bathroom when all of a sudden he started screaming at the top of his lungs so I raced in his room only to have him come running towards me. Yea my little genius didn't climb over the railing he climbed over the end of the crib. So instead of us constantly worrying about the possibility of him getting hurt we have gotten him a twin bed. We ordered it from Bedroom Expressions. It should be here in 2 weeks. We would rather him fall out of a bed that sits low to the ground than fall out of his crib & get hurt or him getting hurt trying to get out. So I went out yesterday & bought him a few twin sheet sets. I will have them washed so they will be ready for when his bed comes. We are also going to put mesh bed rails on to help him feel more secure. This is a big step for Ethan. He's getting to be a big boy now.

Potty training starts again

Over the weekend we decided to restart potty training Ethan. We haven't had many actual successes yet. He's about 40% right now but it's only bee 3.5 days. We are taking a different approach this time. We went out & bought him a seat to put on the big potty. He doesn't seen to want to sit on his little potty at this time. We also have placed a reward system. If he succeeds & uses the potty he gets a cookie otherwise it's just a sticker on the chart. He could care less about the chart but it helps us keep track of what time he was on the potty & what happened. We are putting him on the potty every 1.5 - 2 hrs, in the morning when he gets up, before/after naps, & before bed. For some reason he is not interested in pooing on the potty he just waits till we get a diaper on then he does his business. I am going to have to come up with an idea that will encourage him to want to do his business on the potty & not in his pants.

We got Ethan's test results back yesterday on his hyperphe & his Tyrosene levels came back at 29 which is the lowest it's allowed to go. His phe levels were 1.8 which is the lowest they have ever been. He hasn't been getting the 35g of protein that was recommended. Ethan is into feeding himself & he doesn't want much help so it's very hard to judge exactly how much he is truly eating. After all about half of what he's given seems to end up on the floor. So for now we are keeping him at the 35g of protein. We just can't let his tyrosene get any lower but we can prevent that from happening by giving him an extra glass of milk each day. We also have a case of Phen X formula that we had received when it was thought he had PKU. So if need be we can give him a glass of that per day but it hasn't come down to that yet. Ethan goes back to the specialist in Feb so more will be known then.

If you look to the left of the blog in the sidebar there is a new badge. I am putting together a team to walk for the March of Dimes on April 25 2010. Our goal is to raise $100 in donations. So please if you are interested in donating just click on the badge. We can make our goal happen if everyone were to donate just $5. If you are interested in signing up to walk with our team please visit this link http://www.marchforbabies.org/team/t1366263 to do so. So far we only have 4 walkers so please come join us. Each person has to sign up idividually children included b/c we have to register upon arrival to the walk. It's being held at the Lucas County Fair Grounds on Apr 25 team members need to be there at 8:30 the walk starts at noon. It's a 3 mile walk so have your walking shoes ready. I will be receiving more information through the mail soon. There's supposed to be a packet being sent to me. Again this is really important to us so please either sponser the team, Team Ethan, or come join the team & walk with us. I will do monthly reminders until we get a little closer to the date.

Oh My Ethan

Ethan has been quite the little troublemaker this year. What doesn't he get into? We took down the Christmas decorations Jan 2 & he was not a happy camper about it. Once everything was down, put away, & the house straightened up he got royally fussy. He kept going to the dining room crying & pointing to the corner where the tree had been standing. It took him a day or so to get over that his beautiful lights are gone for the year. He had so much fun turning the lights on with his daddy every day. Each day Matt would come home from work & he would take Ethan around the house turning on all the lights. Ethan would get so excited. As we were putting things away I was having him kiss his lights & tell them good bye. Not sure it made it easier but it was pretty darn cute.

Since then Ethan has been terrorizing our poor cats. It seems there is nowhere for them to hide now. We got them a kitty condo so they would have a place to hide from Ethan or just lay around. Unfortunately for them Ethan thinks it's his toy. He has fun climbing on it & chasing the cats out of their hiding place. He has also taken to becoming more aggressive towards the cats. Right now his favorite thing to do is grab them by the tail or the ears & drag them off the chair/couch where they were peacefully sleeping. So we put the kitty condo in the dining room & we keep the gate closed so that the cats can go hide in their condo & Ethan will leave them alone. He loves the cats. He just doesn't understand they don't find what he does to them fun. We have been trying to teach him that if they are on the furniture they are off limits. On the floor they are fair game. Yea that's not going so well but we will keep trying. Carmel takes a lot of Ethan's abuse but even he has a limit. Ethan has been snapped at a couple of times by Carmel for pulling his ears, tail, & fur. Not that we condone the cat snapping at Ethan at the same time Ethan needs to learn to leave them be.

Ethan's proved that he is going to be an electronics man. His favorite things to play with are the computers, cell phone, remote control, & ipods. If he sees them he goes straight for them. I had to replace my cell b/c he was having a blast throwing it around. Can't seem to find a good hiding place for it. He's really good at getting it out of my pockets. Last week he managed to spill my drink on my computer. I had to take it in to get it checked as it wasn't working right. They told me that it would be $40 to just look at it & then to repair it anywhere between $300-$900 to fix. I have a protection plan but it doesn't cover accidental spills that is considered abuse. In the end it cost us $40. There was actually no damage done to any wires, sensors, trackpad, or keys. They just simply cleaned it all up & the computer magically worked. I figured it would be my luck & they would tell me it was going to be $900 if I wanted it fixed. Phew, missed that price tag. Of course something else could go wrong as a result of the spill but nothing was found everything tested out fine. I'll keep my fingers crossed. So now we are taking even more precautions with drinks in the house. We are keeping them on the opposite side of where we are sitting if there is a computer in the area. Me, when not in use it's in the case Matt got me for Christmas. It's supposed to be a waterproof cover & is padded to protect from any kind of droppage. Oh Ethan ever the little mess maker.

We finally got the sled we ordered for Ethan. I took him out last week? I think. Well, whenever we got that 4-6" of snow. He wasn't sure what to make of the snow at first. He walked outside & had this confused look on his face. So I brushed my hands in the snow to show him what it was. He was sticking his mittened little hand in the snow & then rubbing his hands together. Eventually he started stomping around. Once he started to enjoy the snow I got him on his sled & was running him up & down the driveway & around the yard. I hope we get a little more soon so I can run him up & down the driveway. It helps having the space to turn around. I have pictures that I will be posting.

Since we have been keeping the gate closed to the dining room Ethan has not been happy with just the living room to spread his toys all over so we again converted the spare room. First it was a computer room which served us well till he started crawling & kept getting into all the chords so we packed away the desktop & kept the laptops out, less chords for him to get into. So we turned it into a workout room which served us for a few weeks. Matt was unable to use the treadmill in the mornings b/c Ethan's room is directly above the spare room. The vibration & the noise would wake him. He couldn't get in there after work b/c Ethan wants to be with his daddy. So in the end it didn't work for us. So this past weekend we moved the treadmill back to the basement & moved some of Ethan's toys into the room. He has a ball going in there & turning the little tv on & running in & out of the room. It gives him more room to spread out his toys & less pick up for me in the living room. I could care less if that room is messy with his toys at least we won't trip all over them.

This morning after we had breakfast I took Ethan to the basement where he has even more toys. He ran around there while I threw in some laundry & vacumed the carpet. I also had to take care of the fish tanks. While I was changing the water in the medical tank he was all about the big tank. He loves the fish. So I told him "fish". He started repeating me saying "Fish". So now he has another new word. I would point to one of the fish & say "What's that?" He would tell me "fish". I'm so proud. How cool is that? I'll hopefully be adding more fish to my tank soon. I've had 2 die from disease, 1 in the medical tank recovering from fin rot, & now the PH is too low for the live plants I just put in there a couple weeks ago. I may have to get something for that. The plants will help with the ammonia problem that I can't get rid of. Since Ethan loves the fish so much I'd like to keep fish in the tank. For over a year I haven't had too much wrong just high ammonia but over the last 3 weeks seems like everything is wrong. I've put in new filter cartriges, I change them every month. Change the water every 7-10 days, & yet disease still comes up. Oh well I've had these fish for about 2 years it was time for something to happen to them. Ethan would be sad though if there weren't any in there for him to look at.

Checking out the snow

Time to sled

Not sure what to think

Sledding

Just being cute

Eating spaghetti

Using his fork

My messy boy

Almost New Years.....

Wow I can't believe that another year has gone by. Ethan had a great Christmas. He has been enjoying all his new books & jammies. Thank you all for all the nice gifts. He loves the prodoodle that we got him. He has been drawing us pictures on it. He's quite the artist. We are still awaiting the sled that we had ordered him. We knew when it was ordered that we wouldn't get it by Christmas. It's ok that it hasn't arrived yet we need more snow anyways. We'll have to take pictures of him on his first sled ride. As for his New Years Ethan has no plans. He will just be spending a quiet evening at home with us most likely which should be nice. I thought about putting him down for a late nap tomorrow so that he could stay up till midnight & ring in the new year with us but decided not to as that will just make him crabby for New Years Day. We don't want a crabby Ethan for the OSU game. He will be all decked out in Scarlet & Gray Friday. We are hoping the Buckeyes don't blow another bowl game. Sunday Ethan will be 19 months. That's so hard to believe. He's growing so fast it just doesn't seem possible.