Picking Out Our Pumpkins

Last week Ethan and I went to the pumpkin patch at the Littleton Historical Museum and walked around. We had such a good time we decided to go back the next day and bring Daddy to help us pick out some pumpkins. Ethan enjoyed playing with the straw feeling new textures and grabbing onto the pumpkins. He looked so cute sitting there in the pumpkins we had to take some photo's. And because the hardest part of doing a blog post for me is picking out which pictures to post I've just decided to do a bunch.

He was really interested in playing with the hay and kind of annoyed that I wanted him to look up for a photo.

 

 

Daddy shared his frozen yogurt with Ethan on our way home from the pumpkin patch

Ethan thought that was should have gotten a bigger bowl, mmmm frozen yogurt

Playground

We took Ethan to the playground at Wash Park a few weeks ago let him try out swinging for the first time and he loved it! He was really interested in what all the other kids were doing running around playing as well. Since then Ethan and I have taken walks down to some other parks in the neighborhood to let Ethan swing and explore a bit. I can't believe how big he is getting and how much fun he has on the swings.

These are photo's of our first trip to the playground with dad pushing Ethan and helping him stand while he checked out the other kids playing

Swinging at one of our local parks and checking out the awesome climbing wall 

Ethan loved the giant abacus at Westlands Park, he played with it for ages holding on to it to stand up and push the beads around. He was even trying to pull up on the bars and got daring just holding on with one hand.

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I am now 27. 26 was definitely an amazing year with many big changes and a ton to celebrate; becoming a mom, adding Ethan to our family, and getting to quite my office job to be a stay at home mom and wife. 

We also celebrated with dinner at my dad's house on friday night with Jared and Brogan, then tuesday we went over to Andy's parents and celebrated with the Pultorak's. It was so nice of them all to have us over and was a lot of fun to get to celebrate with both families. Ethan loves getting to see his aunts and uncles when we go over over to our parents houses and play with them. He's one luck kid to have so many aunts and uncles around who love him. 

Last Sunday was my actual birthday and I had a fabulous day celebrating with my family. It was a very relaxing day getting to spend lots of quality time with Andy and Ethan; it was perfect! Andy got up and made me delicious crepes for breakfast and then we all got ready and headed out to the Farmers Market.There was a really cool blue grass band playing we listened to for a while and we got loads of fresh veggies while we walked around in the drizzly rain with our coffee. We had a laid back afternoon just relaxing together and I even got to have a mid day bubble bath with some lovely stuff Andy got me from L' Occatine. Grandma Pultorak came over to watch Ethan in the evening for us (thanks again mom!) and Andy took me out to the Melting Pot for dinner. Neither of us had been there before but it was a lot of fun and very tasty food! I couldn't think of a better way to have spent the day. Andy and Ethan spoiled me loads and I got lots of time with my family.

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.