Snack

Ethan has a new favorite snack. He loves sucking on slices of cucumber. It's great because he can pick it up hold it himself and it is nice and cold on his gums gives him something good to suck on seeing as we don't do pacifiers. I got two huge cucumbers from the farmers market the other day and he's been loving them up. We also tried some yummy whole milk blueberry yogurt (first dairy) and he thinks it's pretty great, he can't get enough of the stuff. I got some banana yogurt for him to try next.  

Ducky Bath

We have a pretty good nightly routine going with Ethan and it's working great. Bed times are quite a bit easier now than they were 3 or 4 months ago. He is really sweet while we rock him before bed and will, for the most part, snuggle while we sing or read to him before bed. He calms down and drifts off to sleep while we rub his back and sing to him a bit while he is in his crib, he even likes it when his monkey or his puppy dog give him kisses as he's falling asleep. (Before he would pitch an all out fit when he realized we were trying to put him down to sleep). He knows the routine and I think it's comforting to him, he seems likes it. We have dinner  (Ethan eats and then plays in his high chair while we eat) then Ethan gets a ducky bath, lotion and pajamas and then time to read some stories and sing a bit while we calm down before bed. He knows 8:00 is bed time and is always ready to sleep by even if we're out late for some reason.

By far his favorite time of the evening is playing in his ducky bath, he loves it! He gets all excited while we're getting it ready for him and even recognizes when we say 'lets of have a ducky bath'. Even if he's a bit fussy a ducky bath is a sure way to make him happy. He has so much fun splashing around kicking his legs, playing with toys, putting his feet up, twisting around and seeing just how low he can go in the water. He slides down until just his nose and eyes are still out of the water, when we pull him back up he pushes with his arms and slides right back down to the same spot again. As of late he as also found his little man parts, he thinks its fun to try to yank them off while he's in the bath, Andy and I get a good laugh out of it, he's just so serious about it. He loves the water, playing in it, having it poured on him and just hanging out. I will definitely have to get him in some swim lessons some day or at least find a good little indoor baby pool.

Army Man

Ethan is on the move (very slowly). He started to army crawl over the weekend, he uses his arms to pull himself around and to get to toys, books, the camera etc. Ethan army scooted over to his pile of toy and bookshelf yesterday and started pulling everything out, he loved it! He isn't very fast and only goes a short distance at a time but he can get himself to his toys when he wants to. He gets up on his hands and knees and then onto his hands and toes like in a push up position and rocks a bit. He can push with his legs when on all fours but doesn't move his arms so he lunges forward and dose a head dive. It dose get him moving just not very effectively. He just needs to get the legs and arms to work together.  I wonder if he'll end up doing a half walk/crawl on hands and feet?

Stand Alone

Ethan has always had amazingly strong little legs, he has been able to support himself standing since he was about 2 months old. Here he is standing at 2.5 months with some major help from dad on balance.

Ethan has grown quite a bit in those last 5 months and now can stand all on his own, while holding onto something! He's really good at it now and can stand on his own for quite a while. For a while he has been able to stand great as long as he was leaning against something and we had him balanced (again those strong legs). A little over a week ago we found out he could stand on his own and balance himself just great, he was a bit scared right at first then got really excited when he realized what he was actually doing. Now he is getting darning and will pull one hand off and balance just holding on with the one hand. Or he will turn and try to move his legs like he wants to walk.

Fall Hike

 Andy didn't have class on saturday so we took advantage of our family day together and went hiking outside of Nederland on the 4th of July Trail up to Diamond Lake. It was a great hike and we got to see some of the fall colors on the way there. It finally was starting to feel like fall with the cool weather up there and the lake looked beautiful, Buster was bummed that we wouldn't let him swim but the water was too cold and then he would have had to hike back all wet.

Just as we set up the camera to get a family shot in front of the lake the camera died (of course because I always forget to recharge it until it dies on us). But we did get some cute photo's of Ethan when we got to the lake to have lunch. He loved it up there and had fun checking it all out. Ethan is a great little hiker, he pokes his head out the side of the backpack to watch everything as it goes by and happily talks to us.

Little Best Buddies!

Ethan and Gavin hanging out and playing last week (Ethan 7months Gavin 3 1/2 months).

They are so cute together! It has been a lot of fun watching them interact with each other when Shannon and I get together for our weekly play dates. I think Ethan even remembers Gavin from week to week now days, he gets all excited about seeing his buddy Gavin.

Back to School

Andy has been taking review classes to prepare for the PE (Professional Engineer) exam at the end of October. The classes are all days on saturday at the UCD campus. This last saturday Ethan and I went down to meet Andy for lunch on campus during his break which was a lot of fun! It was such a nice day out and great to get to spend some time with Andy.

Ethan and I walked around downtown for a bit after Andy went back to class and stopped by The Tattered Cover and picked up a few new books for him.

Ethan 's stuffed full from lunch and has evidence of it left all over his face