Ethan has been sick off and on or teething since he made one year old. I haven’t been able to do any kind of a photo session with for a while now. I knew that I would be free this afternoon, so the plan was to do Ethan’s 12 month pictures today. Well, he had other plans as we were up half the night with a crabby baby and then puked on at 6:30 this morning. He slept and nursed most of the day, but towards the end of the day he was in a pretty good mood so we went out for a very quick photo session.

We headed over the the Episcopal Church across the street. I think Ethan really enjoyed the fresh air. He had a good time crawling around and being crazy. We kept the session short, but I still got a lot of good images. We were there for less than 10 minutes and I got 19 keepers out of it. Here are my favorites of the keepers.

Poor guy is still working on some teeth. He’s always chewing on a finger.

Hmmm, how do I get down?!

This ridiculous fast crawl is why he won’t even try to walk

We’ll try another session again soon. I’d love to find a pumpkin patch or hayride, or even find a corn maze this week. And of course, we’ve got a cute Halloween costume to share also.

The little boy was sleepy this evening. When I got home from my photo session this afternoon, he was ready to nurse. I got settled with the camera and the computer and nursed him. He fell asleep after a little while and I figured I’d let him take a little nap before dinner. When he woke up, he was in a terrible mood, so I cuddled with him until he fell asleep again. And he is still asleep. He skipped dinner and his bedtime nursing session. He’s sleeping in the bed with us tonight because if I move him to his bed, he’ll need to wear something warmer, and changing him would wake him up. As tired as he is, you’d think he had a busy weekend or something…. lol

Here are some pictures from his birthday party

Awesome new PJs from Auntie Vicky

Auntie Vicky flew in for the party and Auntie Allie gave her a new haircut

Sharing his party favors with Granny Carolyn

Granny Rita and the Aunties are enjoying the snacks

Pam and Grandma Tina let me try celery and it was weird!

Happy Birthday!

Hmmm, what’s this blue stuff?

Its good!

I like birthday cake!

Inspecting the new toys

Getting crazy with the balloons

Enjoying more Rock Band

Ethan learns something new everyday. Sometimes it amazes me that he picks up on things so quickly. He learns so much just by watching and imitating us and picks up on things without us telling him what to do. I noticed today that instead of just playing with the telephone and pushing buttons, he now holds it to his ear like he’s talking. Its a little thing, but it amazed me anyway. When he plays with the phone, I don’t show him how to use it. He learned that just by watching what we do. Very cool.

Ethan is starting to make sounds that resemble actual words. I hesitate to say that he has learned any new words, as I am not convinced that it isn’t just coincidence that he says certain things at the right time. For example, he said “Auntie” when he saw Victoria sitting on the couch this weekend. I told Allie to teach him that word, so she repeated it a bunch on the way to pick up Victoria from the airport. Later that afternoon, we walked into the great room and he shouted “AUNTIE!!!!” with so much excitement when he saw Victoria. Could be that he learned a new word or it could just be coincidence… Who knows?! He also says Eris from time to time and he says kitty. His favorite word is now mom or mama. When he wants to nurse, he beats on my chest and yells MOM MOM MOM MOM MOM. Or he’ll pull my collar out and look down my shirt. Nice….

He is super huggable these days. He has abandoned kissing for the time and has moved on to hugging. He wants to hug everyone and everything. He hugged the nurse at the doctor’s office the other day. He hugged Maisie Cat last night and he hugged his new toy today. I thought the toy hugging was the most hilarious. He loves his new toy so much, he just wrapped his arms around it and laid his head down. so funny.

Ethan also loves to dance. His dance moves get more spectacular every day. It started off with just a little arm waving. Now he bounces and wiggles and shakes his head. Mostly its just one or two moves at a time, but sometimes he really gets into it and puts all of his dance moves together.

And he sings… mostly when he is sleepy, but sometimes he sings just for fun. He’ll crawl around humming whatever little baby tune he has stuck in his head.

He points at things that he wants. He loves pickles, so Victoria gave him half of her pickle at lunch. He finished that one, then he saw Allie’s pickle on her plate. He yelled and pointed at it and we all laughed. He also points at himself in the mirror and he points at other babies.

Last night we discovered that Ethan has another new tooth. One of his canines finally erupted. Now he has 8 teeth, but he is lopsided. Three teeth on one side and 5 on the other!

He is still sleeping in his crib and it gets better every night. He has learned to put himself to sleep pretty quickly at night. He will stir a bit halfway through the night. The first couple nights he would let out a few little cries and go back to sleep. Now its more like a confused grunt and he goes back to bed. When he wakes in the morning, he’s generally in a good mood and will sit up and play with his crib toy until I come get him.

He stands by himself for a few seconds at a time without holding on to anything. He still has little interest in letting go of the furniture to walk. If he wants to go somewhere he knows that crawling is faster, so he doesn’t even try to walk. I’m sure that once he feels walking will be more efficient, that is when he’ll decide to walk. I know he is capable, but he just doesn’t want to do it. Or he gets too excited and throws himself off balance.

Weird stuff: he slaps himself on the face occasionally. When he gets really excited about something, he will shout and crawl frantically in circles. He gets crazy and violent with his food when he’s excited about eating – he’ll violently bite the food or shove it in his mouth and grunt and yell.

there are so many other things he does now, but my mind is blank. I have been making mental notes to blog about this stuff and now I can’t remember what it was that I wanted to write. I’ll just make another post if I think of it. I’ll be making another post before too long to talk about the birthday party weekend at our house.

Ethan saw a different pediatrician today to get a second opinion on his weight issue. This appointment went much better than the other one this week.

The doctor said that Ethan should not have been judged against the full term baby chart. He said that preemies take time to catch up on their growth, so there is a special preemie growth chart that Ethan should be plotted on until he is 2 years old. I had heard of the preemie growth chart, but our other pediatrician didn’t use it and instead plotted Ethan on the full term chart based on his actual age. He looked over Ethan’s previous measurements and plotted his weight on the preemie growth chart based on his adjusted age (based on when he was DUE not when he was born). He was AVERAGE or slightly above average weight until around 9 months old. At 9 months old, he was around the 35th percentile and now at 1 year, he is somewhere around the 10th percentile. Not at all underweight. Perfectly normal for a preemie. Thank goodness!!!

He said that at this point, his slow weight gain is not a problem. He said that although Ethan only gained 1/2 a pound in the last 3 months, he did gain something. As long as he continues to gain, everything is OK. His advice was to fortify his milk up to 22 calories. Since Ethan is nursing and not drinking pumped milk, we can’t do that. However, I did buy some pediasure that I can send to daycare. If he has a couple of ounces of pediasure every day, that will be a good calorie boost. I also let him try peanut butter this week and that has been a huge hit. We’ll plump him up in no time.

Also, they took a much more accurate length measurement on Ethan. He is somewhere around 29″ to 29 1/4″, which puts him just a little taller than average for his adjusted age. He has gotten so tall lately

We won’t continue to see this new doctor though. He is out of network for our insurance and I didn’t like his bedside manner. I liked that he explained things well and that he provided rational and logical answers. But I just didn’t like his attitude in general. I won’t go into details here.

Soooo… I am glad to know that I am an excessive worrier and that he is a perfectly healthy and thin baby. Deep down I knew he was fine because he looks and acts fine, but the uncertainty and the inconsistency of the pediatrician’s opinion certainly had my mind spinning. And I didn’t want to ignore an impending problem, either. So, now we know he is fine and I can not worry about it until its time to check his weight again!

I am up late tonight and I should really go to bed, but before I do that I know I need to post some of the birthday party pictures. Ethan’s second 1st birthday party is this weekend, so I figure it would be a good idea to post pictures from the first party before we have the second party.

One of the highlights of Ethan’s party was our family “rock band”. Uncle Matt introduced us to the awesomeness that is Rock Band.

From Ethan – 12 Months

When Ethan was tired of dancing to the Rock Band songs, he danced to the chicken dance.

Finally, its time for cake!

Ethan was not very keen on putting his hands in the cake.

But he loved chewing the icing off of his animals

He liked to eat spoonfuls of icing and cake

Ok, maybe I’ll touch the icing

And that’s enough!

Hanging out with Grandma

He LOVED the balloons!

Time to open presents!

He was totally excited when he realized there was a toy under all that paper

We had a good time! That is all!

blah… i can’t sleep. I’m very stressed. Ethan had his doctor’s appointment yesterday and we had some bad news. First of all, he has another ear infection, so he couldn’t get his shots. The ear infection doesn’t seem to be too bad because he is sleeping fine (night 2 in the crib) and he hasn’t run fever. The doctor prescribed him an antibiotic to take if he starts running fever or acting like he feels really bad.

Second piece of bad news… she let me know that his lack of weight gain is cause for concern. He has weighed 17 1/2 to 18 lbs for several months now and his weight no longer plots on the growth charts. We have to start pumping him full of calories and monitoring his weight. If he doesn’t gain lots of weight and plot on the chart, he will need to see a specialist.

It is frustrating because I have been worried about his skinniness for some time now and she repeatedly reassured me that he was fine. I had finally gotten it through my head that he IS fine and that it is OK for him to be so skinny. I had finally stopped being crazy and stressed out over it. Now I am told that he is unhealthy and failing to thrive.

I made an appointment with another pediatrician to get a second opinion. I don’t doubt that he is too skinny. Like I said, I have been so worried about it for months now. I would like a second opinion because I feel that his current pediatrician has been inconsistent in her views and that is frustrating for me. I am annoyed that I have been worried for so long about it and told it wasn’t a problem. I talked to the doctor several times about the fact that he refused to drink breastmilk or formula from a bottle or cup. That he has only gained three pounds since he was 6 months old. That he doesn’t make very wet diapers anymore. That most days he barely eats anything. And the answers were always that I shouldn’t worry, he won’t starve himself, he will eat what he needs to eat, babies breastmilk intake reduces at this age and he gets everything he needs from only 3 feedings, and so on.

And not just the pediatrician, but everyone who knows Ethan encouraged me in feeling that he was perfectly healthy. He is developing properly mentally and physically. He is burning off all the calories that he eats. He is just a thin baby. I’m not saying that they are wrong for encouraging me. I appreciate that everyone has tried to make me feel better about it and not worry so much. It is, however, incredibly frustrating to have felt like a crazy person for so long for worrying unnecessarily about his weight only to now be told that he DOES have a problem with weight.

Do you know how difficult it is to cope with a gut feeling that something is wrong despite everyone telling you otherwise? Then to finally get over that insanity and stop worrying so much just to be told that you may have been right all along and to start worrying again. I’m going to drive myself crazy. Brandi says “I think there is a problem… I have noticed XYZ” and everyone else says “Oh, don’t worry about that, its perfectly normal. you are reading into things”. Later on Brandi says “Oh, I have noticed something else. I think there is a problem.” and everyone else says “You worry too much. He is perfectly fine.” later on Brandi says “I really think there is something wrong because XYZ valid reasons”. And everyone else says “Really, stop worrying, you are getting annoying. You are imagining there is a problem when everything is really fine. You are going to make everyone else crazy with all of your stress.” Brandi says “OK, fine I will just have to trust that everything is OK”. Then….. “Oh, guess what… there is a problem. You need to start worrying.”

Really, I just need to stop now because I am going to make myself ill.

Someone slept in his crib last night. And he’s still asleep!

Aaron and I were off work yesterday for Columbus Day. We kept Ethan in daycare and stayed home to clean the house. I organized and cleaned Ethan’s room so that he could start sleeping in his crib. Aaron also cleaned out the guest bathroom and we moved all of Ethan’s bath toys into that tub. Last night, Ethan had a bath in his bathroom and he seemed to thoroughly enjoy himself with all of his toys. After his breathing treatments and milk, I put him in his crib in his room. Of course he cried, but within 3 minutes he had settled down. I heard him wake up at one point during the night, but he put himself back to sleep quickly. The first night in the crib has been a success!

Today Ethan gets to see the doctor for his 12 month checkup and shots. I’m anxious to see if he has grown any as it seems he went through a growth spurt since the last doctor visit a few weeks ago. I don’t know if he’ll get shots today or not because he has a cold and maybe more ear infections. We’ll see if the doctor thinks he is well enough for his shots. I would like for him to at least get the flu shot before we get too far into cold and flu season. We don’t want any ridiculous hospital visits like last year.

I’m working on his birthday party pictures today. I may have time to post some later. if not, they will wait till this evening or tomorrow.

Ethan loves bath time again, yay! When we went to Memphis, he decided that he hated bath time. This hatred for baths lasted until about 2 weeks ago. It was awful – he would kick and scream and thrash around. When he entered the bathroom, he would start to wimper and cry in anticipation of the dreaded bath. His bath only lasted a few seconds, just long enough to clean and rinse him off, then he was out. We tried to give him toys, but he was not interested.

Thank goodness, he is enjoying himself again. He loves bathtime so much, I bet he would stay in there for hours if we let him. He plays with all of his toys and he scoots around the tub on his butt and he splashes water all over the place. He was having so much fun the other night, I grabbed the camera to get a few pictures.

Ethan says thank you for all the birthday wishes!

I didn’t blog anymore about Ethan’s birthday yesterday because he was in quite a foul mood and he kept me busy. I let him stay home from daycare because he was so tired in the morning and he was generally just not his cheery self. He had a little cough so I wanted to give him breathing treatments throughout the day. The day went OK. He played quite a bit and he had a HUGE appetite. He was mostly crabby in the morning, then he had a 3 hour nap in the afternoon and that put him in a much better mood.

He ate a bunch of cheerios and a yobaby yogurt for breakfast. Then just two hours later, he ate two veggie chicken nuggets plus an entire pear and a teething cookie for lunch. He ate nilla wafers for a snack. For dinner he had two more chik’n nuggets plus half an avocado and some left over carrots from our pot roast. Then we went out for ice cream at Marble Slab. Ethan had peach ice cream and LOVED it. Oh and on top of all the food he ate, he nursed like a mad man. Yes, he was a little piggy yesterday.

Between the eating like crazy and the extra sleeping and crabbiness, I figure it must be a growth spurt. Also, he is getting new teeth. He’s still working on the top left canine, but today I noticed that the bottom left lateral incisor is through the gums. It must have come through yesterday, which would explain some of the crabbiness. It probably also explains why he kept biting my arm yesterday. Thankfully, he doesn’t bite when he’s nursing. So, that brings the tooth count to 7 with more on the way. I’m sure it will only be a matter of time before the other bottom incisor pops through and that canine should be here soon.

This weekend we are heading to Jackson for birthday party number 1! We can’t wait to see everyone and for everyone to see Ethan destroy his cake and presents!

Happy Birthday to Ethan! I’m letting him sleep in today. He’s still in bed, lol. I guess that means he’s staying home from daycare today.