We are finally having our lawn graded today. Its a bit scary for me, but Ethan is really enjoying the big machinery.

After we have the hydroseed put on the lawn tomorrow, i’ll take a picture of the finished product.

I posted this on the photo blog, but I thought I should repost it here as well.

Aaron and Ethan missed out on half of Braelyn’s party yesterday. I thought maybe they had left or something, so I went outside to look for them. This is what I found…

Ethan decided that today was a good day to start sitting up on his own.

He does really well, and he doesn’t get mad when he falls over on his face.

YES! I can do it!!!

These were all taken this afternoon with my new camera. I’m starting to get used to it.

Ethan is all better now. His fever turned out to be Roseola. On Monday, his fever finally went away, then a rash appeared all over his head. The rash spread over his torso, but it didn’t seem to bother him. Now the rash is pretty much gone, and he seems to be feeling better for the most part.

He does appear to be teething though. I’ve tried to get a good look at his top gums, but he is very sensitive about me touching his mouth. He gets really mad when I try to look in there. From what I can tell, they are very swollen. From our limited experience, Aaron and I think that the teeth will come through within the week. But really, we have no idea. That is just a guess and wishful thinking. I had to give Ethan Tylenol yesterday to get him to calm down. I hope those teeth come in soon.

Here are a couple of pictures. just two… i’m really busy and i haven’t had any time to take many pictures, let alone process any of them. These are both with the new camera.

The first one is a bit out of focus. I’m still trying to get used to the huge number of focus points on the D300. I think I focused on Eris instead of Ethan, so he’s just a bit soft. I had to move quick to get this one!

And this one is a bit grainy, but it was shot at ISO 4500!

Today we took Ethan to the ER at Children’s Hospital in New Orleans. His fever kept rising and wasn’t responding well to Tylenol (unless we combined with Motrin). If we gave him both Tylenol and Motrin, the fever would go down, but as soon as one of the medications wore off, it was up to 103 again. To me and Aaron, 103 seemed like a scary high fever, so we called the pediatrician this morning, and she said we should take him to the ER to be evaluated. He didn’t really have any other symptoms – no runny/stuff nose, no coughing or trouble breathing, etc. We weren’t scared for his life or anything, but we didn’t want to wait until the fever hit 104 or greater before we took him in.

The doctor saw him quickly when we arrived at the ER. They took urine and blood samples for testing, but the results came back clean. The doctor couldn’t find anything wrong with him at all, except for the mysterious fever (and the mild crabbiness and fatigue to accompany it). She was very nice, but explained that 103 in a baby his age isn’t very high. Its not even considered a fever unless it is 100.7 or higher. She said a fever becomes scary when its over 105, but even then, its not a concern for seizures or brain damage unless its 106/107 or higher. So we were being overly cautious, but she said that is our job as parents. Better to be safe than sorry. Aaron thought we were being overly cautious since Ethan didn’t seem like he was sick and didn’t have any other symptoms, but he wasn’t going to argue with me and tell me going to the ER was a bad idea. I’m glad that it was nothing.

They are going to do cultures on his blood and urine, and if any bacterial infections show up, they will call us.

The doctor said that it could be due to teething. 103 is a bit high for a fever due to teething, but its not unheard of. Teething is at least part of his problem. His top gums are extremely swollen and purple today, and you can tell that it is hurting him a lot. He has bitten me many times today while nursing, and it HURTS. We have given him a cool washcloth to chew on, and even that seems to hurt him. He has lots of chilled teething rings, barley teething biscuits, and cold washcloths to help him out.

We took Ethan to the pediatrician this morning even though he was acting like he felt pretty good. His temperature was a little elevated when we got there, and by the time we left it had risen to 100. The doctor said there were no signs of a bacterial infection – ears, throat, nose all looked good and his chest sounded relatively clear. She told us to keep an eye on him, give him tylenol for his fever, and give him breathing treatments for the next 2 weeks. He has had a fever all day today. At the highest it was about 101, and at the lowest, it was only slightly elevated to 99. He acted like he felt fine for most of the day. It was only when his fever got up to 101 that he acted sad and crabby. He stayed well hydrated. He nursed ALL DAY LONG.

The doctors visit was pretty uneventful with the exception of Ethan’s weight. He was 16 lbs even, so he has now officially tripled his birth weight!

And Aaron wanted me to let everyone know how cool he is. So there, now you know he is totally cool and awesome.

And now, its time for the pictures…

Here are the pictures from the March for Babies
Mom, Victoria, Ethan, Eris, and Duncan Punkin’ Pie before the walk

Aaron, Andrew, and Nancy

Our Tshirt

Our goofy group picture

Ethan got tired of walking and fell asleep on Aaron’s shoulders

And he didn’t even wake up when Jim took him to meet the Pink Panther

And some pictures with the new camera!!! These are from today. You certainly can’t tell that Ethan was running a fever all day. He was in a good mood nearly all day despite his little illness.

Look at the teeth!

Its been a week since my last post, and yes quite a bit has happened, but I have been too busy to write about it.

We went to Jackson for the March for Babies. Our team raised just under $1000 between our online donations and collected cash donations. I think that is pretty spectacular! Thank you to everyone who made a contribution!!! I didn’t get many pictures because the morning was very hectic and the weather was not nice. I have been so busy with work that I didn’t get the Tshirts finished in time. I was supposed to wake up really early on Saturday to do them, but nobody woke up until 8 and the registration for the walk was at 9. I kinda freaked out about it because I worked hard to design the shirts and I was really looking forward to having our team wear them. Aaron was wonderful about my panic attack and finished the shirts for me while I got ready and got Ethan ready to go. The Tshirts turned out very nice, but I will have to share a picture later. I did get a few pictures from the event, and I will post them later. Right now Picasa is not agreeing with me, so I can’t upload them.

Sunday was my first Mother’s Day. Happy late Mother’s Day to everyone! My first Mother’s Day was uneventful and basically went unnoticed. Kinda crappy for my first Mother’s Day, but oh well, we were out of town. We celebrated after we were settled back at home. I purchased beautiful handmade leather photo albums for our moms and filled them with my favorite pictures of Ethan. I have heard very good things about J. Lee albums, but this was my first purchase from them, to see the albums in person. I was totally impressed. They are so pretty and well worth the hefty price. I considered keeping the albums for me and finding new Mother’s Day gifts!! But I kept to the original plan and gave them to our moms. I gave Nancy hers on Mother’s Day, and mom and I exchanged gifts on Monday. My mom gave me a nice smelling candle and a very thoughtful (and teary-eyed) card. Since we were out of town on Mother’s Day, Aaron, Ethan, and I celebrated when we came back home. Aaron got me a beautiful flower arrangement and I got a new camera!

Ethan’s gift to me was that he slept in his crib for the first time on Tuesday night! After I nursed him for bed, he laid on our bed getting all sleepy. Usually, I let him fall asleep on our bed if he doesn’t fall asleep nursing, then I put him in his pack n play. Well, I thought I might as well try putting him in his crib just to see how long it would take him to freak out and cry. That is what I was expecting – that he would NOT like it. Well, thankfully, I was wrong. I turned on his crib aquarium and he went to sleep without a fuss. He slept all night without a peep!!! It is very exciting, but also very sad for us. He’s growing up already, wow!

My other late Mother’s Day gift was a lovely fever that visited me after we got home from Jackson. I had a bit of a sore throat on Monday, but it wasn’t too bad so I didn’t think anything of it. Tuesday, I woke up feeling like I had been hit by a truck. I couldn’t get out of bed. I could barely even sit up in the bed, and I struggled just to pull Ethan out of the pack n play and change his diaper. Luckily, Ethan was nice enough to lay in bed with me and nurse for a few hours until the tylenol knocked down my fever and body aches. Tuesday night I was feeling a bit better, but it all came back on my way to work on Wednesday. I came home from work almost immediately after arriving. A few hours later, Aaron came home early too. He was even worse off than me. After taking 3 ibuprofens, his fever kept creeping up, so he took Tylenol too, and it finally broke. I have been nursing Ethan like crazy to help boost his immune system with all the antibodies I am producing to fight this crud. This morning we went to the doctor and found out that Aaron and I both have bronchitis and sinus infections. I have the extra bonus of an ear infection. Yippee! Until this evening, Ethan was feeling fine. His temperature has been slightly elevated for a few days, but it wasn’t a fever. Well, tonight he had a bit of a fever and we could hear some congestion in his chest. We gave him some tylenol and a round of breathing treatments. His fever is gone for now and he’s sleeping soundly. I don’t hear any wheezing, so that is good. He’s going to the doctor first thing tomorrow morning.

So, back to my new camera…. I finally upgraded to the Nikon D300, and boy is it amazing. Well, it certainly looks amazing, at least. We’ve been too busy and too sick to give it a try. I would really love to try it out and take some pictures of Ethan, but that will have to wait until we are all better. And then I need to catch up on all the work that I’m delaying since we are all sick. I still haven’t taken any 7 month pictures yet, and the way its going, I probably won’t take them until he’s 8 months old!!! I have, at least, charged up the battery and purchased a memory card for the camera. And I have turned it on and familiarized myself with some of the controls and settings. But I haven’t taken any pictures quite yet. Just some random test shots to make sure it actually works! And it works! Yay!!! Really, I am just so excited about that sucker!

I think that’s about all the news for right now.

Ethan is now 7 months old! wow, time flies! I hope I get a few minutes to take pictures of him today because we were too busy yesterday to take any.

He went to daycare for the second time, and it went about as well as the first time. He was not interested in the bottle or the sippy cup. He drank a little from the sippy cup, but totally refused the bottle. He just waited until I got home from work at 2. When I got there, he was asleep in the pack n play. When he heard my voice, he woke up and started to cry. I know he had to be starving by that point, after 6 hours with no milk. After I fed him, he was very very happy. He smiled and giggled and babbled a bunch of baby nonsense. I put him back in the pack n play and told him goodbye. He didn’t even cry when I left!

I am determined to get him to take a sippy cup because I can’t go nurse him every time he needs to eat at daycare. I mean, I could do that on some days, but it would not be ideal. And I don’t want him to become dehydrated or anything like that. I decided to try yet another sippy cup at home tonight, and lo and behold, he drank from it. After his dinner (mashed avocado, yum), I put water in the cup and he drank about an ounce. With that success, I became brave and put some cold breastmilk in the cup. It took him a while, but he drank 2 ounces!!! I was amazed! It was a messy process and he spilled some and spit some out, but he consumed nearly all of the milk. And the milk has to be cold, straight from the fridge. If its warm or room temp, he gets mad that its in the cup and not straight from the source. I will be sending the new cup and very cold milk with him next time he goes to daycare. Hopefully he will do even better for the daycare people than he did for me. That would be great.

Yesterday was Ethan’s first day at daycare. I will admit I feel really guilty about it, but what can you do. For the last 2 weeks or so, I was staying up till the wee hours of the morning so that I could keep up with my workload. And forget cooking dinner or doing any housework. I fit in a couple photography sessions last week, but my sleep definitely suffered and I was starting to feel like a zombie.

I was feeling really bad about sending Ethan off yesterday morning, but once he came home I started feeling better about the day. It was nice to be able to work all day without any distractions. I took a break around lunch and went to see him. He refused to drink from a sippy cup all day, so I nursed him when I went to visit. He didn’t cry when I left, so I know he was happy. He even took a few naps. The daycare lady said that he fussed a bit, but he didn’t cry very much.

We’ll see how he does on Wednesday when he goes back. I will be in New Orleans at work until probably 1 or 2, so hopefully he can hold out to nurse. Or maybe, even better, he will give in to the sippy cup.

We had a very fun weekend this weekend. Saturday, we made baby food and cleaned the house. Ethan now has freshly baked sweet potatoes, apples, pears, and green peas. Saturday night we went to dinner at the Thai Orchid in Slidell. Ethan had saltines and sweet potatoes, but he really wanted my glass noodles. Too bad for him, it was tasty.

Ethan cut his second tooth this weekend. I thought it happened on Saturday, but when we were driving on Sunday, Marissa noticed that there was a little blood in his mouth. I looked and his gums were a little bloody around the second tooth. And man, was it sharp!!

On Sunday, we went to a Renaissance Festival in Ocean Springs with Mike and Marissa. Ethan had a very good time, especially at the petting zoo. We watched a live joust, listened to celtic music, watched the dancing faeries, and generally had a good time. After the Ren Fest, we went to eat at Lookout 49 in Gulfport, then over to Barnes and Noble. Ethan became wild in B&N. He wasn’t bad or angry, just loud and crazy. He was making all his crazy noises and biting my hand like a deranged beast. He was running his teeth over my hand in a side-to-side sawing motion, and blowing drool all over the place. He fell asleep very quickly when we got back in the car.

Here are some pictures from the weekend:
Taking a little nap on Saturday morning and wearing his “Save the Universe” shirt from Auntie Vicky

Having fun at the Ren Fest

Showing off the new teeth

Petting the goats at the petting zoo

This picture is for Uncle Andy, hehe

Posing as a Knight fighting dragons

What is he doing with his legs??

Crazy blue sky

He was a little bored by the joust and took a nap

and there are even more pictures if you want to look at them. Just click on any of the above pictures to go to the album.

After another week of crabby rottenness, Ethan has a second tooth. I didn’t feel it yesterday morning, but I feel it today, so it must have come through sometime last night or yesterday afternoon. He won’t let me take a look though.

The last week has been extremely difficult. I have been very busy with work, staying up till the wee hours of the morning to get things finished. And Ethan was super crabby every day. I hope things get better now that his tooth is through the gums. We cleaned the house and cooked baby food all day today. At least the housework is partially caught up now.

He also starts daycare on Monday. We’ve been on a waiting list for a while now, and they finally have a spot available for him. It should be interesting to see what he does. We packed up all the bottles today, so I’ll be sending him with sippy cups for his milk. I hope he figures it out.