Thanksgiving was good. It was a bit loud with all of the kids, but that is to be expected. Ethan only napped for 30 minutes before we left for the day. I was really hoping he would sleep an hour, but no such luck. Anyway, Dylan ate so much food. I was so proud of him. And he really wanted some pie, so I made sure he got some. Ethan barely ate anything. Honestly, I kind of thought he would eat more than he did. I don't know what to do with that kid. I got him to take a nap after lunch, but it still wasn't a long nap. The poor baby was so tired! It was a nice day though. We went up to Ryan's parents house. I am so glad that it was close by. We were all pretty tired that evening.
I didn't go out and do any shopping on Black Friday. There just wasn't anything that I wanted that day I guess. Today I got up early and went out with a friend of mine. There was a door buster I wanted to buy, so we had to go early. I was so surprised at the lack of people that were out! I expected crowds everywhere and there just weren't any! We hit so many stores, but I got most of my shopping done. There are still a few people I need stuff for, but it won't take long once I get it all figured out. It was a good day. Ryan stayed home with the boys.
Tonight Ryan's mom and dad came and got Dylan. They planned on going to the local parade that was this evening but its so cold out, I don't know if they ended up going or not. They did take him to dinner and are keeping him all night. That is so good for Dylan to get some one on one attention. I was so thrilled that they wanted to do that with him.
Ethan is something else. Its always something with this kid. I think he is a drama king! He loves to pull up and stand, but he cant seem to get himself back down. So he tends to stand there and scream. Then once you set him back down, it makes him mad, and he cries. He makes me nervous when he is up on his feet. He is so wobbly, but he just keeps going. He holds onto things, and cruises around all of the furniture. I swear he just wants to walk and get it over with. He just isn't able yet. But he tries.
We don't have any plans for the week as usual. I am starting to get antsy and want to put the Christmas tree up. But part of me says "no, it will be a pain keeping Ethan away from it." We have a big baby gate that I plan to put around it, but I guess something is still keeping me from doing it.

Dylan must be going through some sort of growth spurt, or something? He has been incredibly whiny all week. He normally is not like that. He had a good day at school. No problems when I picked him up thankfully. Most days he tolerates Ethan well. He plays well with him, but you have to watch him, because he doesn't understand how rough he can be. He doesn't do things on purpose. In the evenings while I am making dinner I stick Ethan in his walker, and he usually ventures in to Dylan's room. Dylan doesn't seem to mind most of the time. It helps me get dinner on the table at least. Ethan will zoom back and forth between Dylan's room and the kitchen.
Christmas is a month away, and I don't have much figured out. I have an idea for Dylan. I keep hoping they will mark it down a bit though. I have NO idea what to get for Ethan. None. He plays with Dylan's stuff. There is a lot that he cant play with though. I keep hoping to come across some baby toy that looks appealing, but nothing so far. I have one thing for Ryan, but I still need something else in case he doesn't like what I have already. So I have NO Christmas shopping done at all.
Ethan is doing well. He pulls up on everything. It makes me so nervous though. He isn't very coordinated, so when he is standing in front of something I am holding my breath, hoping he doesn't fall and hurt himself. He is back to drooling again. More teeth must be on their way. His eating is hit and miss. As soon as I think he is getting better about it, he starts to refuse. I'm hoping with all of the food tomorrow that he will at least eat well then. Keep trying is all I can do!
Alright...got a crying baby. Happy Thanksgiving!

Ethan is finally becoming more open to food. He won't eat much, but he has been better about trying new foods. We can usually get him to eat some things off of our fork. Slowly the variety of foods he will eat is increasing. He's just not a big eater I guess. That is so different from what Dylan was. As a baby, he was a great eater. He still is too. But he would eat whatever we would give him and eat so much of it, we would have to cut him off! The difference in these 2 boys is amazing. Keeps me busy, that's for sure! Dylan is so laid back and easy going and Ethan is well, high maintenance I guess you could say. At least its not boring around here!
I got out our video camera yesterday, and there was still a tape in there. I do not video nearly as much as I should. Shame on me. It was all Dylan. So I sat down and watched the tape and it was so much fun. In just over 60 minutes I got to see Dylan grow up. It started when he was around 15 months old, and the last thing I had taped was Christmas when he was 3. It is so sad that I forget what his little voice sounded like, his limited vocabulary and how he used what he knew to tell you what he wanted. Anyway, I really enjoyed watching it. I need to record them more often. I need to get more tapes!
The other day I made breakfast for dinner. I made pancakes, and made them in small batches. Wait, when I say batches it makes it sound like I am making huge amounts. I'm not. I only get 2 or 3 in the pan at a time. So I did 3 batches. The last batch is what Dylan and I ate. The pan temp got away from me a little bit, so in the middle of the pancakes was a bit of burnt. They tasted fine, and it wasn't much so we ate them. But when Dylan saw the burnt on his pancake, we had a conversation. Here it is:
Dylan: I can't eat this pancake. It has dirt on it.
Me: Its fine, just eat it. Its not dirt.
Dylan: What is it then?
Me: Nothing, just eat.
Dylan: But what is it?
Me: Its flavor.
Dylan: Oh! Flavor? Whats flavor?
Me: It makes it taste good.
Dylan: Oh Ok!
He then looks through the rest of his pancake pieces and says "Wow, this one has flavor too! Oh, so does this one?"
He was excited because he got more than one piece with "flavor" on it! Gotta love that kid! It was so funny. I wish you all could've actually heard it.

I almost forgot! Ethan is finally drooling a lot less. Most of the day he can go without a bib now. Since the poor thing was 2 weeks old, he has had to wear a bib, because he drooled so much. I am so happy to be almost done with the bibs!
Be sure to scroll down and look at the pictures from my last post if you haven't seen them yet. I get annoyed when it comes time to upload, because it seems to take forever. So make sure you see my effort.

Not much to say so I am just posting a few pictures. I am using the laptop computer so I didn't get to lighten some of these pictures as much as I wanted to. They are a little dark, so I apologise. I should be so much better at using my camera than I am, but sometimes its a bit difficult. I hate the flash that is on the camera, so I try not to use it too much. I really want a better flash. So bear with my while I learn! It may take a while.

I'm not sure what Dylan was doing. He was just acting silly.

Dylan and his cat, Max. That boy can carry the dumb cat however he wants to and the cat does not care.

I feel so "off" today. I really have no idea why. I had just written this long post that only ended up being a play by play of my morning, so I deleted it. I can't seem to focus on much. Physically I feel fine. Mentally, I think Im losing it!
Like I said, I started out with a longer post, but this is it. Kind of pointless.

What's been going on. Well Ethan crawls now. Finally. I'm still not sure if that's a good thing or a bad thing! He can finally do what he wants, but what he wants to do isn't always safe, or what I want him to do. He annoys Dylan now and I hear a lot of complaining from Dylan about being touched, or grabbed by Ethan or being to close to Ethan. He even gets after the dog, who seems a bit annoyed by this new talent. Almost immediately after learning to crawl, Ethan was beginning to pull up on everything. He loves to stand, tries all the time to stand. He is so far away from being able to walk, but not because of the lack of trying on his part. He also has another tooth coming in. So that has been fun. I'm so done with teething!
This week I also realized that Ethan has outgrown his infant seat in the car. Actually he has probably been too big for it for at least 2 or 3 months. At his 9 month appointment, he was 29.5 inches tall. He will be 10 months in a week. The limit for his seat is 29 inches. Bad mommy! Very very bad! So he will move into Dylan's car seat (rear facing of course) and I ordered Dylan a new seat that will hopefully be the last one we ever buy for him. Eventually it transitions into just a booster seat.
Dylan had a good day at school on Monday. He was happy to go, and left without any trouble. Not much is going on with him.
We don't have much planned for the weekend as usual. Ryan has to work on Sunday. Saturday I hope to go out for the day with a friend. Ryan is supposed to stay home with the boys, so I hope that all holds up. I don't remember the last time I was out with a friend. That sounds so pathetic!

A few weeks ago I got a nice new camera. Its a big ole fancy camera. It is capable of so much, and I love that I can learn with this camera. I do wish there was a photography class around here to help me learn, but oh well. I'm not really good at learning on my own, so this will be a slow process. I am reading one book now, and will move on to others eventually. I don't have as much time as I would like to devote to learning. Anyway, apparently part of getting a good picture is the post processing of that picture. So I have that to work on also. First you have to be able to take a good picture, otherwise, no amount of post processing will help. I have never done anything with my pictures after taking them except getting prints made. So now I am working on a basic touch up on the pictures before I get them developed. All of the pictures on this blog are all untouched. They are straight out of the camera. Look at these 2 pictures below. The fist one is straight from the camera. Now look at the second. It has a basic touch up done to it to enhance color and tones. The second one is so much better. So much to learn!

Ethan has started crawling. He just figured it all out on Sunday morning. Now I have to figure out how to keep him out of everything. He is also getting another tooth. His last front tooth is finally coming in. He is a bear too.

The weekend was ok. At least Ryan was home for most of it. We ran some errands on Sunday. Saturday we didn't do anything. It was just nice having Ryan home.

Last night I had a little trouble falling asleep. So of course my mind starts to wonder. I was thinking about Christmas coming up. Then from there, I realized that shortly after that, Ethan will be a year old. I have a hard time picturing it, and really, I have a hard time believing it. It certainly hasn't been easy with him, but at the same time, it has gone fast. I now have a 4 year old, and soon, I will have a 4 year old, and a 1 year old. Its hard to imagine what life will be like with the 2 of them around here. The fights, the laughs, the crying. Even now, a few times a day I hear Dylan say "Mommy! Ethan is touching me." or "mommy, Ethan is getting my pants." "Mommy Ethan is touching my toys." Ethan is getting quicker at getting where he wants to go. And sometimes where he wants to go is right to Dylan. Once he reaches him, Ethan (being Ethan) wants to stick Dylan foot in his mouth, or an article of clothing of Dylan's that he can reach. I'm sure once Ethan gets older, Dylan will be a little more open to Ethan being close to him. At least I hope!
Yesterday at the grocery, I remembered to grab a box of generic Cheerios in hopes of Ethan eating them. As of now he seems to like them. I read somewhere online to try giving a soft fruit or veggie to them, coated in crushed cheerios, because they may not like the soft or wet feeling of a mushy food. So I will try to give that a shot today. I'm wondering if Ethan has developed some sort of issue with textures. He eats those cheerios, he eats the Gerber puffs, Gerber dried fruit, and the Gerber freeze dried yogurt bites. All are dry and crunchy. Anything soft, and mushy (and good for him) he wont eat. Anyway, we will see how the cheerio coated food works out.
The weather has turned cool. My opinion is that it is just cold. Not winter cold, but cold. Its been windy too, which makes it feel cooler. My nose is cold right now! The living room just doesn't warm well. By the evening its not too bad, thanks to a day of full sun, but the mornings in here are quite cool. I like fall, but I am not ready for winter. This weekend they are calling for highs only in the 40s! I don't like hearing that. That's winter cold. I'm not ready for winter cold.

Thursday evening I took Dylan trick or treating. Ryan was still working, so he missed it unfortunately. Dylan dressed as a tiger. He loved it. Everyday he asks if he can have a trick or treat. So I give him one peice of his candy after lunch. Its enough to keep him happy. We walked a couple of small blocks. It was chilly out that evening. 2 blocks is enough candy for him anyway.

Saturday we had some family down for a late birthday party for Dylan. It all went well. Somehow Ryan missed out on opening the gifts. The fire department was busy that afternoon. But he managed to make it back before everyone left. Overall I think things were good, and Dylan enjoyed himself. Ryan and I were both tired that evening though. We didnt do anything on Sunday, which was nice. We were all home all day together!

Ethan's new tooth is finally all the way through. Top front tooth. We made it through all that. Now our latest issue is that he won't eat any normal food. He wont let me spoon feed him anymore. He also doesnt like anything so whatever I give him to feed himself he hates. Ive tried apples, carrots, broccoli, peas, white bread, wheat bread, and bananas. I have no idea why he won't eat anything. He just takes his bottles and thats it. I thought that his new tooth was causing pain and thats why he was refusing. But now that it is through, he still wont eat, so I really dont know whats going on with him. The only thing I can do is keep trying I guess.