Ethan's New Tricks

As Ethan gets older, his little personality is certainly showing more and more. He thinks all the naughty things are funny! For instance . . . he loves to throw things out the dog door, like all his toys, my water bottles, etc. Anything he can get his little hands on. He also likes to unroll the toilet paper. He thinks this is pretty neat. He also will take the vents out of the floor and stick things in the ducts. I have to watch him like a hawk.

Picture Time

It's holiday picture time! I love taking pictures, and so I take for friends and family! I took these pictures today of my Aunt Janet's family! They turned out pretty good I think!!!

Decking the Halls

I know that poor Thanksgiving is not even here yet, but I don't really decorate for Thanksgiving anyway! So . . . with that said, I've been decking the halls! I just love Christmas. It is by far my most favorite time of the year. I love the lights, the decorations, the parties, the family, the traditions, the celebrations, the friends, the food, and the spirit! It's such a great time of the year, and I really wish we could just leave up the tree all year long.

This year is Ethan's first Christmas! My mom made him a stocking to match, and we are so excited for him to experience Christmas this year. I'm sure that he'll love to rip open all of his presents!

Andy has been doing some decking of the halls himself . . . for the past few months. He and his friend Andy have been working on a light program. The program allows you to choreograph your lights to your own music. So, he has spent hours preparing songs for our lights, and he's even got most of the lights up. He has to put up the finishing touches this weekend, and then we'll be good to go. The cool part about the lights this year is that he got an FM transmitter, which means that you'll be able to tune your car radio into the music that goes to our lights! Pretty genius huh? There will be a video to come later!

This leads me to my biggest pet peeve of all time! (Is that how you spell that?) Oh well! Anyway, I hate it when Christmas lights on houses are crooked! Call me crazy, tell me I have OCD's, I know, but it really drives me nuts. So, Andy is always careful to make sure that each light on the roof of the house is hooked in with a clip to ensure that they are all perfectly straight! Thanks babe for helping to keep my sanity! Love you!

9 Month Appointment!

Those who have recently called my little Ethan chubby should be eating their words right about now! I took him to the doc today and he weighed in at 19 lbs. 6 oz! This is only in the 22%. He's 42% for height at 28.5 inches! This basically means that he's fairly average for height, but under the average weight! We were happy to hear that our little guy is doing so well! Ethan had his flu shot also. He wasn't too happy about that, but got over it quickly. They offered me a flu shot as well, so I got one too. I felt just fine until about 30 minutes ago . . . now I'm feeling dizzy! I hope I don't get the flu!!!

First Words, and boy Genius!

I was really disappointed to know that Ethan's first word was dog! He LOVES Norma, but she really can't stand him. He chases her around the house, and she gets up and moves every time he gets close, until she's too tired, then she just growls at him a little bit. Anyway, I wasn't sure if he was really saying dog, or something just like it, but this morning I got him out of bed and Norma walked into the room and he pointed at her and said dog! Now, as a mom, I was hoping his first word would be Mom, but I was pretty certain it would be Dad. What a disappointment to know that it was neither mom or dad, but dog! Oh well.

I guess I shouldn't brag, and who knows, maybe I don't even have rights to brag, but I think Ethan is pretty darn smart! For instance, he loves the night light. He pulls and pulls on it until it comes out of the wall, and when it finally does, he is diligent in trying to plug it back in, like he knows it won't light up until it's back in the wall. Today he was playing with an empty bottle of juice, and the cap came off, and once again, he was intenly trying to put the cap back on. His little hands don't work quite yet, but he sure knows where things are suppose to go, and what they are suppose to do! Anyway, I think these things make him quite smart, but who knows, maybe I'm just crazy, and all kids do these things!

But I Want it Mom!!!

Ethan is a smart little guy. Boy do they learn and pick up on things fast. He wines when he doesn't get what he wants! Talk about a spoiled kid. I blame this thoroughly on the grandparents, and take no blame whatsoever. :)

You've seen many a picture of Ethan staring blankly into the camera. He is fascinated by it. Now that he can crawl, we have a dilemna with pictures, he won't sit still, he has to go get the camera. Here is the evidence . . .

Tub Time!

The tub is tricky these days! Don't get me wrong, Ethan has always loved to take baths, but now he's learned how to let the water out, and keeping him from doing this is almost impossible. He thinks it's really neat!

Tagged by Tiff

8 Favorite TV shows:
1. Friends
2. Clean House
3. John & Kate +8
4. CSI
5. Decorating Cents
6. The Ellen Show
7. Design on a Dime
8. Little People, Big World

8 Things I did Yesterday:
1. Voted
2. Taught 210 twelve year olds how to calculate the density of an object
3. Was proud of myself for checking the tire pressure in all my tires, and filling up the ones that were low.
4. Put Ethan down for a nap, and waited 3 LONG hours for him to wake up to keep me entertained. My husband is gone hunting, and Ethan was super tired obviously!
5. Make pumpkin chocolate chip cookies with splenda instead of sugar.
6. Watched Ethan chase Norma all over the house! She doesn't like him, so as soon as he crawls over to her, she jumps up and takes off! It is hilareous.
7. Watched Election Coverage
8. Took down the Halloween Decorations

8 Things I look forward to
1. Getting finished with my Master's degree - only 1 more term.
2. Christmas!
3. Pumpkin Pie
4. Ethan's first steps.
5. Ethan's first words!
6. Having a little girl . . . not anytime in the near future, but hopefully one day.
7. Having some time to get back to scrapbooking!
8. Andy coming home from his hunting trip!

8 Favorite Restaurants:
1. Cafe Rio
2. The Blue Bayou in Disneyland - if you haven't been, you must go, it's fantastic food!
3. Madeline's
4. Joe's Crab Shack
5. The Roof
6. Chili's
7. Olive Garden
8. Pizza Factory

8 Things on my Wishlist:
1. Go back to Europe, and make out with Andy on the Eiffel Tower! :) Sorry to those of you who hate PDA, but if I'm on the Eiffel Tower, you'll just have to deal with it!
2. Get our basement finished
3. have a maid to do all my laundry
4. never have to empty a garbage again!
5. Go shopping with someone else's credit card :)
6. A class of 7th graders that are perfectly behaved!
7. A 64 Mustang
8. To have a school day from 9 until 2! :)

8 People to Tag:
Maylin B.
Candace G.
Heather C.
Beth
Suzanne T.
Lisa P.
Lindsey H.
Diane D.

Happy Birthday ANDY!

Andy's big 30th birthday was yesterday! I made him a pirate cake, and a treasure map to find his presents! Of course, since we can never wait, he opened his presents a few days early! Oh well. We gave him epoxy coating for the garage floor! Hopefully it will turn out nice.

We got a baby sitter and went out on a date! We get pretty excited about having some time to ourselves! We went out to lunch, and to a movie . . . Ghosttown. It was pretty funny! We had a great time!

Happy Halloween

Ethan isn't too sure what Halloween is, but it was sure fun to dress him up and take him trick-or-treating anyway! He looked pretty adorable in his monkey outfit.

(Great Grandpa and Grandma Bateman and Ethan)

He trick-or-treated at Great Grandparent Bateman's house, and at both Grandparents houses. What was I thinking, I didn't get pictures with the Grandparents! Yikes!! He was pretty pooped after all the excitement!

We brougth him home, and he napped through almost all of the trick-or-treaters, and he even missed his cute cousin Sloane in her Pirate Costume. How adorable is she?