Santa Clause came to town!

We had our Christmas party at churh this morning. Ethan didn't really know what to think of Santa. He was kinda grumpy to begin with and then seemed mad that we sat him in the lap of some white bearded stranger. We took the pictures quick before he belted out a scream.













Then we added him in the picture with Emma and Lorelai (his cousins). Lorelai isn't too fond of Santa either . . . she never really has liked him.

Now, if I could have everyone's attention - take a look at Ethan's cute sweater. It is my favorite piece of clothing I have for him and this will be the only month he can wear it, so he may just end up wearing it several days in a row so that more people can enjoy it. I bought it when I was still pregnant with him last Christmas at Old Navy and I just had to buy it cause they never have the same thing there the next year/season.

Dorodango

We were watching MythBusters last night and they were trying to see if you could polish animal poo (gross, I know) without adding wax or polish stuff. So they had a guest come on who makes Dorodango - a shiny, Japanese dirt ball. Just adding water to make it muddy, they squeeze it to a ball and after a long, long amount of time, the water is all squeezed and evaporated or something and you have a shiny dirt ball. Michael really wants to try this, so we are going to steal some dirt from my parents back yard tonight when we go over for dinner (since we live in an apartment, we don't have dirt).

But until we succeed and get pictures of it, here is the link to go to and see what I'm talking about. http://www.dorodango.com/

1st Tooth

Ethan's first tooth didn't seem to bother him as it was surfacing. But he now has a 2nd tooth coming in next to the 1st one, and this tooth is making him cranky. He is calm if I'm holding him while I'm standing. But if I sit down or put him down to do something, more than half the time he screams at me.

He's lucky he's so cute and smiles all the time or he would be making me cranky. I don't have anyone to hold me 24/7 when I'm grumpy . . . life's not fair.

Double the Trick-or-Treat!

My mom made a lion costume for my niece Emma for her first Halloween and then Lorelai used it next, so it's getting passed down to each of her grandchildren. But we had a church "trunk-or-treat" on the 30th; since most of that party would be indoors, I decided to have a different costume for Ethan at the church party and use the lion costume on Halloween.

So for the church party, he was Charlie Brown. I figured I would embrace the fact that my child has pretty much no hair. There is some of it there, but it's bright blonde right now, so you can't see it. It was so hard to find a yellow shirt for him to use, so I ended up cutting the bottom off one of his 0-3 month size yellow onesies and hemmed it and then sewed on the black zig-zag stripe. I didn't want to buy such a small amount of black fabric, so since I'm so short, I cut off a few inches from one of my black pajama pants (and there are still several inches to spare).

All of the pictures I could find of Charlie Brown had him wearing brown shoes with the black shorts -- which sooooo doesn't match -- but we did it anyway. I used my black eyeliner to draw the swirl on top of his head.

For Halloween, we went to my Grandma's house as we've done for as long as I can remember (except when we were old enough to trick-or-treat on our own and wanted to hit a ton more houses (plus we lived in Nebraska then :) so that would have been quite the drive to Grandma's. Michael carried Ethan around to the houses with the other kids. I didn't want to carry him up there cause I knew people would say "I know who this candy is really for" and I didn't want to feel embarrassed. But Michael doesn't embarrass easily, so he didn't mind.

Ethan was quite the trick-or-treater. He never cried and stayed alert and was interested in everything around him the whole time. But it was another story once we were done and got him in his car seat. It was past his bedtime and he let us know it!

Tagged by Jen

So Jen tagged me to answer this questionnaire-thingy . . .

8 favorite TV shows:
1. 90210 (the new one - and don't make fun of me . . . i know it's a teenager show, but i like it)
2. Chuck
3. America's Next Top Model
4. Amazing Race
5. So You Think You Can Dance
6. Desperate Housewives (just started watching this one - i'm on season 3 from the library)
7. Survivor
8. CSI (all 3, but mostly the original series)

8 things I did yesterday:
1. finished preparing the craft supplies for Super Saturday for the class i was teaching
2. took my son trick-or-treating
3. RAN ERRANDS (this one was big cause Michael's motorcycle is in the shop, so he's been using my car for 2 weeks, and I've been stranded at home and couldn't do any of my errands . . . so i made him skip work to let me use the car - he's his own boss, so no worries)
4. took Ethan to visit my mother-in-law at her work so she could see his costume
5. fixed my hair (more than just the quick straightening)
6. wore something other than sweats or jeans and a sweatshirt
7. got to leave the house
8. didn't clean

8 things i look forward to:
1. buying a house
2. having a yard
3. buying a house
4. having a yard
5. having another baby . . . don't know when, but i liked being pregnant - a baby is fun too :)
6. staying perpetually 22 years old for a few more years, then moving it to 24 for a while
7. getting skinny again
8. fitting into my skinny clothes from before i got pregnant

8 favorite restaurants:
1. Desert Fire
2. Fat Burger
3. Subway
4. Chili's
5. the mongolion grill by my Grandma's house
6. New York Burrito
7. The pizza place i went to yesterday with my hubby
8. Red Robin

8 people i tag:
1. Kari
2. Tami
3. Minnette
4. Alex
5. Jasmine
6. Nathan (probably won't happen cause he hasn't updated his blog since about June . . . )
7. You :)
8. Them :)

Trip down memory lane with Emily

So one of my college friends and co-workers (Emily) posted a comment on my blog about my profile picture . . . yes, I am at the Writing Center and proudly wearing my Writing Center vest! The background isn't very detailed, but she knew where I was. It probably helped that my hair was fixed all funky. . . and I think that was the day I managed to wear 11 different colors and I felt that I still matched. Too bad you can't see my outfit or my rainbow brite-ish socks. But if I'm remembering right, I used a straightner, a triple-barrel curler, a mini curling iron, and a crimper in my hair . . . and I was quite proud of it too.

So in rememberance of the fun times with Emily and to congratulate her on publicly announcing she has a boyfriend . . . here are some pictures of our fun times at college - coming up on 6 years ago now . . . that makes me feel really old :(

For some reason we liked to buy plain cakes at the grocery store and then decorate them with weird things . . . this picture had toy horses and stuff, but we've used plastic army men and other random things too.

And Jen is in the picture too!! Hi Jen! I think this picture was right before Emily took off on her mission to Japan.

And this picture is when we made toothbrush bracelets. We had to pull all the bristles out with tweezers - that was way harder than we thought it would be. And I actually ruined my cool yellow tweezers.

I was going to put more pictures in, but I can't find them - I must have filed them away somewhere that made sense at the time and then we moved and I don't remember which box I put them in. But I would have put pictures of us feeding Sharon's horses while we house sat when she was out of town or our St. Patricks day of everything green (only green food and if it wasn't green, we made it green) and I think Emily sprayed her face green too.

I miss you too, Emily!!

New Skills

I heard some scratching noises while Ethan was supposed to be napping, so I peeked in his room to see if he was awake and scratching the sheets . . . but I found him standing in his crib. He's been pulling himself up to standing position on my leg or against the couch or some of his toys, but he hadn't done that in his crib yet since the railing is higher than the things he's been pulling up on so far. He didn't notice me, so I went to get the camera . . .

He was supposed to be sleeping for his nap for another hour, but he decided he was done. Both his naps yesterday were less than half what they normally are :( So I didn't get as much quiet time as I was looking forward to.

Pumpkin Patch

We went to Spooner Farms today with Michael's parents to find pumpkins. Ethan was really good; he was just very somber and wouldn't look at the camera. So for most of the pictures he was looking off to the side and not smiling. We had a couple where he smiled, but they weren't for the cute poses - like the pumpkin row or in the wheelbarrow. He just smiled when we were walking and taking pictures.














The only thing he didn't like was the air horn. There was a pumpkin sling shot where you could put mini pumpkins in a giant slingshot and try to hit targets at the other end of the field. When someone hit the target, they would sound off the air horn and every time, Ethan would spit out his pacifier and scream in fright - he looked so worried.














He likes to sit on Michael's shoulders but grabs at the sides of Michael's hair. I think it makes for a cute picture cause Ethan has this look on his face like "what; I didn't do it."

Brushing Teeth (or lack there of)

I decided to try brushing Ethan's gums since he seems to be teething and the pressure might feel good to him. He usually locks his lips tight whenever I try to feel around his gums to see if there are any teeth coming through. So I thought he wouldn't let me try a toothbrush, but he grabbed the toothbrush right away and tried it himself. I think the fruit flavor baby toothpaste helped.

As you can tell from his shirt, he drooled just a little in the process.

Are we related?

I was digging through my many files of pictures and came across this one of me and Emma (my niece) from January 2006 . . . I don't think we look alike at all. Do you? I mean, the identical scarry smiles aren't that convincing are they?