Little Daredevil

So I think it's getting time to put the walker away . . .

He likes to climb up on the railing and hold on until Michael comes over and grabs the sides, holding Ethan's hands on there and rushing down the hallway.

A Crush on Flo

Ethan loves the Progressive commericals with Flo in them. Whenever she's on t.v., he stops whatever he's doing and stares at the t.v. smiling at her. It bothers Michael cause he thinks she's annoying. So I think this would be dubbed as Ethan's first crush. I think she's a little old for him though.


He got fussy today, so I found their website with links to play the commericals. It did the trick instantly.

We'll be on the run now!

So in Sunday School today, Ethan was playing at the chair from the row in front of us and ripped off the tag. He usually plays with them and tugs at them, but today he just pulled really hard one time and it ripped off. It's one of those plastic-like tags that says "under penalty of law . . ." so I'm afraid that Ethan will soon show up on next Friday's episode of Washington's Most Wanted . . . unless the tag pulling is a federal offense. :) I kept the tag for a momento to scan into my blog . . .

















I just keep thinking of the Pee-Wee movie where that guy he meets who had ripped the tag off a mattress had broken out of jail. I don't really get why it's a crime unless you are the consumer. I know it's got the hazard warnings and material descriptions, but it seems silly for that to actually be against the law.

Sad Day

Alex (my brother) and his wife, Jasmine, are moving to Sacramento. Alex is moving with his job since they shut down the plant up here in Washington. It's only 11 hours away, but now that leaves both Alex and Nathan who will live out of state.


I guess that means me and Becky are the devoted children, and should be rewarded with favoritism from our parents now. :)

I belong . . . to a gym!

I joined the gym the last week of December with the goal of going every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday and so far I'm in my 3rd week and haven't missed yet! Yeah me! I stay for about an hour and a half . . . and it helps that Becky is usually there and my Mom comes on Fridays.

The membership is only $9/month, so I would probably have tried to go 4-5 times a week, but they charge per hour for the kids center where I put Ethan. I was worried about how he would do there since he's never really been away from me, but it's a small gym so I can always see if anyone tries to walk away with him. But Ethan seems to love it in there. He's always excited to see me when I come to get him, so I know he misses me :), but I'm glad he has fun in there. I've peeked in on him each day about half way through the time and he's either playing contently in the corner or crawling after a little girl and following her.

Last week when I went to pick up Ethan, he was chewing on a plastic hamburger patty - it was kinda cute looking, but Lorelai came over and took it out of his mouth and said "No, baby Ethan, that's a choking hazard." It's funny to hear big, adult sentences come out of a 4 year old.

I do the treadmill and a bunch of the weights. I feel like a wuss when it comes to the arm machines, but I can do a lot of weight on the leg ones. I've found that there aren't a lot of machines for the abs and that's what I want to focus on the most and get rid of this pregnancy belly that is still hanging on.

The machine that I hate is the one where you sit and try to pull down with your arms and up with your legs to work on the abs. I seriously can't make it even move. But I watch this 60 year-old lady do it with no problems . . . so what's wrong with me. I'll blame it on the baby belly - I still don't really have any feeling left on the skin around my belly button, so I'll just tell myself that my muscles are numb and don't know to work yet. One day maybe my stomach will be a flat as the lady in the picture (only if that day is in the past).

Look what I made!!

So I love the magazine Family Fun . . . it has tons of craft ideas to do with kids. But I also find some that I like doing. I made these reindeer cookies for Christmas Eve - we always go to my Grandma's house with the rest of my aunts, uncles, cousins, and their kids, so I thought this would be a fun dessert there.

Merry Christmas

Here are a few Chritmas pictures - Ethan wasn't too into opening his presents :( We got a couple pictures of him grabbing the first piece to rip off then he would crawl away.

Ethan would rather eat the ribbon . . .













His first present turned into breakfast . . .













Climbing on top of his box.



















We bought Ethan a Tonka truck that he can ride like this when he's older, but for now, the seat flips up and he can push it in front of him as he walks. Right now he pushes it farther than needed and then does a frankenstien walk to catch up - hopefully soon he learns to bend his knees when walking.













My lime green super hero mom .. .













Me and Becky bought our husbands the same sweater for Christmas and then my parents gave them and Alex all hiking pants (I think Nathan got some too, but he is in Idaho, so I don't have a picture of him with them on) cause they all wear jeans when hiking and that's not hiking protocol, so they all have 'Kuhle' pants that zip off at the knee.

Snow Day!

It's been snowing the past few days here and since the roads weren't that great, Michael stayed home from work a couple days. Once there was a good deal of snow built up, we drove over to my parent's house to make a snowman and let Ethan play in the snow for his first time.

We had him bundled up pretty good; he looked like a puffy marshmallow. He wasn't really fond of me trying to make a snow angel with his arms and legs . . .

He beat his mini snowman to death . . .

And then we put him down for a nap in the house with Grandpa and made our own snowman . . . it was quite ugly. My ball picked up tons of leaves - someone should tell the landscaping guys to rake the leaves before it snows or you get ugly snowmen!

Cutting down the Christmas Tree

**NOTE - you can click on the pictures in the blog to see them larger if they're too small to really view on your screen**

We went to cut down our tree with Alex and Jasmine (it was fun with a group, plus we needed Alex's truck to get the tree home. Our car has the antenna on the top of the car above the rear window, so we found out the hard way last year and had to lay down the seats and shove the tree through the trunk . . . luckily I was still pregnant then, so we didn't have to worry about what to do with the baby car seat and the tree at the same time.)

I wore Ethan in the infant carrier and a lady told me that he was just about as big as me. I like the thought that someone thinks I'm the same size as my 20 pound son, but sadly it's not true. Trying to explain to Jasmine what a Charlie Brown Christmas tree was, and listening to her and Alex try to pick out a tree was funny. Alex said it had to be at least as tall as her, but she kept picking out ones that were about 3 feet high. It was funny watching Alex carry it out since he could hold it over his head and walk. We went for about an 8 footer which was harder to carry (not that I would know cause I carried the baby and didn't have to touch the wet and dirty tree.)

Ethan is still sorta grumpy that we have a tree in our living room - it takes away some of his play area, but he still won't really go near it. He keeps pulling out my tree skirt, so I've resigned to the fact that it won't stay pretty and only fix it every couple days or when someone comes over. We rushed to get the tree up and decorated Sunday before Church because Rick and Debbie (my in-laws) were supposed to come over for dinner, but then cancelled on us - so I rushed for nothing but on the up side, I had a really clean apartment. But since we did it so fast, Ethan was mad the rest of the day. I laid on the ground and from his angle of the floor, it really is quite daunting since it's up to the ceiling and has prickly pine needles on it.

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.