Umm... how?

Yesterday morning after hearing Ethan stirring for awhile, I went to retrieve him from his bassinet and found this:

For those of you not familiar with the swaddle blankets, it has a sort of pouch for his legs that comes up to his chest, and then attaches with velcro to the side flaps that wrap up his arms. Our little stinker somehow found a way to get his legs up to where it attaches and break them free. I wonder how long he was working on that one. As I went to pick him up, I asked him"What did you do silly?" and he responded with a huge gummy smile. Too bad I didn't catch that on camera, but I thought I'd share this picture with you.

Memorial Day Weekend!

We had quite a nice three day weekend. Friday we had the chance to go to the gym and to Target (big date night) while Nana watched Ethan. On Saturday, Cory's family came through Austin on their way to the lake, and we had lunch with them at one of our favorite restaurants Amaya's. Ethan was awake for a while and got to play with Aunt Kalie and Uncle Lyle and his cousins. He also got some lovely gifts from them, which included a cute Pooh bear for him to hug. It was so nice to visit with them since we don't get to see them often and Ethan got to show off how much he's grown since he came home from the hospital, which is the last time he saw them.

After lunch, we headed over to Sam's (because we always go to Costco) with Crazy Uncle Don, and Don fell in love with a fancy electric smoker. Before you know it we were picking out our favorite meats and loading the smoker into the Jeep and calling the whole adventure "Meat Fest." We took it back to our house and put it together and prepped the 2 chickens, 3 racks of ribs, and huge fillet of salmon (all this for just us three, I told you it was a Meat Fest). Then the thunder began and the Meat Fest was moved to the garage. Well, it all worked out okay, even through the rain, and by 9pm we got to taste the fruits of our labor. It was all good, especially the salmon (I hear), but we might need some more smoking practice. Maybe we'll make Meat Fest a monthly event.

On Sunday we headed to church and then afterward to Mark and Diana's house for burgers and volleyball in the backyard. It was a lot of fun playing volleyball the whole day. Cory and I were on separate teams, and even though my team won a bunch of games in the beginning, I think we ended up about even. I doubt Cory was really trying though because he would have creamed us all single-handedly. Ethan got to spend a lot of time with Nana and Great-Gramma while we played. Too bad I didn't get any pictures of the action, I'll have to hit up Papa for some.

And finally, today. We went to Bastrop for visiting and crab. There was tons of crab (a Crab Fest, perhaps?) and it was awesome. We pretty much just took it easy all day and ate crab and steak, what more can you ask for? Quite a nice weekend I'd say.

So, now I'll leave you with some pictures of the little guy during his daily tummy time. This was on Sunday morning in bed with us where he likes to lay on my tummy and play. He gets a kick out of himself sometimes when he gets his head way up high. He's usually in such a great mood in the morning, so we caught a couple of smiles too.

"Huh? What'd you say Dad?"

Confused face from the camera

Cutie smiling

Thinks its so fun to push up high with his legs.

7 Weeks Old!?!?

I say that with both exclamation and question because it's exciting, but hard to believe. It's unbelievable to think that he's seven weeks old already. Looking at him, though, you'd definitely believe it. He's just grown out of the last of his newborn clothes (still mostly because of his length), and last night, we tried to put a 0-3 month size sleeper on him and realized it ain't happenin' because it hit him about mid-calf. We seriously need to research what clothes brands accommodate the long man best because we're running out of options, and I nearly cry every time I try something on him that doesn't fit.

He also been doing some new things lately, such as the smiling. He's smiling a lot more regularly now and it's usually a new game for everyone to see if they can make him smile. It's super cute when he does and quite entertaining to watch everyone be weirdos trying to get him to do it.

He's also gotten a lot more controlled with the head. He's still a bobble head when you hold him upright, but you barely have to hold it now. He holds it up pretty well on his own and loves to look around over your shoulder when he's held.

Another favorite past time is to push off things with his legs. He does this on the couch, in the bath tub, on the changing table, and pretty much everywhere else he can. He loves to scoot himself around which just means we cannot leave him alone anywhere that's not the floor or his bed unless he's strapped down. Not like we did that anyway, but now we definitely can't ;)

Let's see, can't really think of anything else too exciting right now, so I guess I'll leave you with the much-awaited pictures. This time, I'm posting his newborn pictures. They took so long to come in from the photographers so I never got a change to post them before. I can't believe how much he's changed since then (I know you're tired of me saying that, but it's not going to stop anytime soon so get used to it).

So tiny!

A longhorn already!

The little guy has always liked his hands.

Ethan and Daddy

Such a snuggler.

Bubblicious Fun!

As you've probably seen, Ethan is a fan of the bath. He pretty much liked it from the beginning. Well, not that first help-me-someone-just-ripped-me-out-of-the-greatest-place-on-earth bath, but by the second one, he was a fan.

Anyway, we decided that sink baths were kind of a pain when he can't support himself, and the chair we had didn't submerge him in the water enough. So I grabbed the Babies R Us coupon book and bought him his very own bath tub. He is now an extremely happy bather. The new one has a little support chair in it, and the little man figured out how to kick the wall of the tub and get himself to slide back and forth and splash water all over the place.

He LOVED that, but maybe not as much as the bubbles. Bubbles he likes to try to eat. Serious amounts of bubbles thanks to his distracted mom who poured the bubble bath in and forgot about it when she went to attend to screaming Ethan. I scraped a good amount of the bubbles out before putting him in, but there were still TONS, and it was just too cute to not take pictures of. (Don't worry, I watched him closely to make sure he did not disappear in there).

Some cute pictures of the bath:

And afterwards. All tuckered out, asleep in his robe on our bed.

Christina's Graduation

This past Thursday, Baby E had a pretty big day as one of his mom's best friends graduated from nursing school. He was dressed in one of his best outfits, courtesy of his mom and dad on the day they found out he was a boy, and was sure looking cute.

Ethan and I attended the pinning ceremony in the morning along with Nana, and then went to lunch with Christina, Mindi, and family. Then after Ethan and I came home from work, we all (meaning Cory too) went to the big cap and gown ceremony, and ended the night with dinner at IHOP (classy and super fancy, I know).

Ethan was a trooper the whole time as usual. He did a little sleeping and a lot of entertaining. At the night ceremony he was awake and showed off all his goofy faces to all our friends. His favorite trick of the moment is staring at his newly-discovered nose, which just ends up making him look cross-eyed and freaking everyone out a bit, but it's still cute to me. Here are some pictures from our very long, very exciting day.

With the graduate

With Mommy

With Mommy after she tried to take the pacifier out of his mouth (not a good idea)

Me and Christina

Smile Alert!

That's right, we're now spotting smiles. Our happy little monkey began showing some smiles a couple of days ago, but only I saw them and wasn't quite sure if they were social smiles or gassy smiles. Yesterday I saw a few more (as Cory's jealousy continued to grow) and this morning while playing on his ocean mat from Crazy Uncle Don we saw a LOT. Cory saw them too and we even caught a few on camera. So of course we hurried to the computer so we could share them with you. I'm sure the smiles will soon be abundant and we will have a ton of smiling Ethan pictures, but we're so excited about these.

Ethan's 1st Bubble Bath

Thought I'd share some pictures of Ethan's first bubble bath (all G-rated I think). Up until now he'd only had sponge baths in his bath chair. Being rookie parents, we forgot that you only had to do this until the umbilical cord stuff had all been resolved (I believe that's the reason). So we set up a bath in the kitchen sink and he really liked it, for the majority of the time anyway. He pretty much just lounged and enjoyed himself. Who doesn't enjoy a good bubble bath?

One Month Check-up

Ethan went to the doctor today for his one month check-up. We were anxious to see how much he's grown since he hasn't been to the doctor since he was a week old. Cory and I both had our guesses, both in the 8-9 pound range. WRONG. The little monkey weighed in at 10 pounds 4 ounces, which is in the 75th percentile. His length was 22 and 3/8 inches, so only a little bit longer than when he was born, and also in the 75th percentile. I guess we don't think of him as a 10-pounder because he's so long. He's still fitting into much of his newborn-sized clothes and newborn diapers, so he's not a huge chub-a-lub. The good news is the doctor said with more meat on his bones, he should be able to sleep for longer stretches, so we're looking forward to that. He also had a shot today and was a brave little trooper. He cried for like a second and then fell asleep. All in all, we have a super healthy happy boy. Here's a cute picture just because.

One Month Old!

The little monkey turned one month old yesterday! We celebrated by meeting Don for breakfast at Juan in a Million. Actually, this wasn't planned as a celebratory day, but it turned out to be quite a fun Saturday. On our way to breakfast, we noticed a lot of traffic downtown, which reminded us that the Pecan Street Festival was this weekend. So, at breakfast we decided we wanted to head down there. Then, we got the bright idea to hop on a bus so we wouldn't have to deal with parking. That is where our adventure began.

First of all, please don't judge us for taking our one month old out and about with the whole swine flu scare. We're very diligent about anti-bacterial wipes and keeping Ethan well-protected from the elements. We know we're a little bit nuts, but we figure we're building up his immunity and we can't stay home forever.

So anyway, back to the bus adventure. Don looked up the schedule on his phone and figured out the stop was right where we parked the Jeep. So after breakfast we did a diaper change, grabbed the stroller, bottles, and diapers and headed over to the stop. The bus was due in one minute. It was late. We didn't know it was late being bus riding rookies. While waiting we went back and forth on whether we should abandon the whole bus idea and just hop in the car. Well, it finally came, and we went for it.

Bad idea. First, we were greeted by the happiest bus driver on earth (sense the sarcasm) telling us to hurry up because he was late. Yeah, okay buddy, we'll hurry as we juggle a baby, a car seat, and a stroller while trying to pay our fare into a machine that none of us were familiar with. Don handled the paying while Cory and I found seats. Don was politely asking the driver how much and where to insert it and the driver continued to be short with him and claim that Don was trying to rip off the machine. Okay, we'll let it slide since the driver is obviously in a bad mood.

So we continued to head to downtown while ever so often having to hold on for dear life as the driver sped around corners. We had to move seats once, along with all our crap, so that was a bit of pain, but not a huge deal. The driver was not too nice about that either. Then the driver yelled at a little girl to hurry up and sit down (again because he was late). So all in all, the worst bus experience ever, and by the time we were dropped off at the festival, we were all but anxious to get back on to head back to our car. However, we were excited about the festival since none of us had been in quite awhile.

We had a lot of fun. Ethan was such a trooper, and we enjoyed browsing through all the booths. We got a few Mother's Day gifts and ate some good food. My mom and my cousin David ended up meeting us down there for the second half of the afternoon, so that was fun too. It was also the answer to our transportation dilemma as we ended up hopping into her car to take us back. It wasn't exactly legal since I had to sit on Cory's lap, but the baby was safe and we did not have to encounter the jolly bus driver again.

The day ended up being really fun. We were super tired when we got home, but we managed to give the little man a bath to wash the stink off him and relaxed for the rest of the evening. Here are some month-old pictures of Ethan, and Cory is working on a video of the past month to be shared as soon as he's finished.