A day in Princeton Thursday, Feb 26 2009 

Uncategorized rowanthefrog 1:07 am

Today Alix and I decided to explore my new area so we drove into Princeton, parked and walked around with Ethan.  Such a cute little college town (and we both feel smarter for having been there.)  Here are some pics from today.

 

Throw me something mister!!! Wednesday, Feb 25 2009 

Uncategorized rowanthefrog 12:23 am

Happy Mardi Gras Ya’ll!!!

Today we hosted our first playdate.  Eight moms and babies came over to my house and we had a grand old time playing and eating yummy food.  I made red beans and rice and the moms brought cookies, mini-beignets, bananas foster cake, bread pudding, veggies.  I had ordered a Gambino’s king cake but it came too late. It was a good time….Ethan was a little overwhelmed by all the visitors in his house, but all in all it was a great time.

 

 

Today I fell in love with Ethan again Friday, Feb 20 2009 

Uncategorized rowanthefrog 8:23 pm

I’m sure this is true of every parent, but every once in awhile you have a day where you fall in love with your child all over again.  I’ve had several of those days…I remember one night when he was a newborn.  It was like 2am and I was rocking him to sleep.  We were listening to the same lullaby CD that we listen to now.  And I was just looking at him, amazed at his perfection…I fell in love with him that night.

Today I fell in love with him again.  Watching him, sitting there, all by himself.  He would start to tip over and catch himself and right himself!  He grabbed one toy, played with it, and then changed to another.  James gets home, he screeches with joy.  They play, walk….he practices standing and his balance gets noticeably better as we watch.  He giggles.  He squeals.  He is just….FUN.  I love this age.  I have been endlessly fascinated by him since the day he was born – every single thing he did was completely intriguing to me.  But now he is FUN.  We can play.  He watches us in fascination – he watches EVERYTHING in fascination.  He moves all over the place and he is mostly in control of those movements now.  Its just the coolest thing ever to watch.  I can’t believe he was inside me.  I love him so so much.

 

Fun couple of weeks ahead! Friday, Feb 20 2009 

Uncategorized rowanthefrog 6:02 pm

I just wanted to say that I am really excited about the next few weeks.  Alix flies up to visit on Monday, I am hosting a Mardi Gras playdate for my moms group on Tuesday (complete with Gambino’s King Cake, Cafe du Monde beignets and homemade red beans and rice!), Julia will be in NJ this week for work and is coming for dinner and to spend the night on Thursday.  A couple of weeks after that my parents are coming for a visit as well as my newest sister-in-law, Tabatha (James’ brother’s wife), who will be up here for a wedding, and we (my parents and James, Ethan and I) are driving to Greenwich to visit my uncle and his wife!  Good times, good times.

All of that has inspired James and I to really get our house set up.  We put up our aquarium last weekend and have started cycling it.  We found someone nearby who breeds Mpimbwe Frontosas, which are a type of African cichlid.  We had one in our old tank in Atlanta and decided we wanted to focus on that species in our tank, so we got 6 of these guys.  The big one with the hump on his head is an adult, we got 6 of the smaller ones.  The Mpimbwe frontosas are known for their beautiful blue color, which you can see pretty well in the picture below.  We’ll also probably add some Peacocks to our tank as well – those are also cichlids.

Here are the frontosas well have in our new tank

Here are the frontosas we'll have in our new tank

 

The past couple of days have also been pretty busy with setting things up.  We got our new TV delivered and setup and now have surround sound and all that.  Its a nice 50″ flat screen plasma.  It is actually bigger than we set out to get, but it was the model recommended by our TV guru, Omar Nadi (thank you!) and Best Buy had a floor model available on a deep sale, so we got it.  James has been walking around like a kid in a candy store….my mom told me that men’s cars were an extension of their…um, you know.  I would venture to say that these days their TVs probably are too.  Ok that was probably gross, but anyway.  I will say that watching nature shows in HD is definitely pretty cool, so I am happy with it as well.

Last night we dug into all our boxes of art – the movers accidentally packed up about 9 of my dad’s Jazz fest posters (ok ok, I paid them….lol).  Since it will be very expensive to ship them all back, dad said we could have them on loan for awhile.  So we went through all of them as well as the rest of our decorations and started to decide what we will hang where.  I think we’ll start working on that this weekend and next week while Alix is here.  She has a great eye for that sort of thing (hope you don’t mind helping Alix!)

So, I am hoping that our walls will soon cease to be barren and our house will begin to reflect us a little more.  Fun times :)

 

Ethan is sitting up all by himself!! Friday, Feb 20 2009 

Uncategorized rowanthefrog 5:46 pm

Awwww, my little man is getting so grown up!  Today we had a playdate with little Evie.  She and Ethan were due on the same day, but Ethan came early and Evie came 2 weeks late! (Poor Christine.)  They are actually close to the same size, but Evie was sitting up.  Ethan couldn’t be outdone by a girl….so he decided that today he would master sitting up all by himself and he did!  Thanks for the inspiration Evie!

Ethan and Evie

Ethan and Evie

 

 

Crazy wind and exciting milestones for Ethan Thursday, Feb 12 2009 

Uncategorized rowanthefrog 10:02 pm

Today it was windy.  Like, really windy.  Like so windy that trees fell and killed 3 people in NJ.  That’s kind of scary.  I swear it felt like a hurricane was moving in, I think they said the gusts were up to 39mph!

I wasn’t going to go out today (because I didn’t want a tree falling on Ethan and I) but then one of my new friends called and invited us to go to the mall, so we went and had a wonderful time with Vanessa and her adorable almost 1 year old son Fletcher.  I have a feeling Fletcher and Ethan will get into some trouble in the years to come!

The big news with Ethan is that he is figuring out how to move around.  He has finally figured out how to roll the other way (tummy to back) and today I was folding clothes in his nursery and he was playing on a blanket.  Then I hear BUMP and he starts to cry.  I look down and he has rolled all the way over to his rocking chair and bumped his head on the base of it.  He was just fine.  I was like…..wait just one second here……

THEN – this evening I was calling James and Ethan really wanted my cell phone.  So I put it on the ground just out of reach and he COMMANDO CRAWLED (pulled himself with his arms) over to it.  AAAhh!  I don’t think Ethan has completely realized the extent of his new powers, but I know that it won’t be long before he does.  The game is about to change folks…..

Sleep training has been going pretty well, all things considered.  Tonight he went down without so much as a whimper.  He is sleeping longer than he was when we started this, but still waking typically between 2:30-3:00am.  We’d really like to get that to at least 4am and 5 would be better.  But, it is an improvement, so we are still working on it.

Here are some of the latest pics

Playtime on the floor

Playtime on the floor

 

Sleep training – restarted… Tuesday, Feb 10 2009 

Uncategorized rowanthefrog 9:45 am

Last night we started the sleep training again. We had stopped since Ethan got sick. He fell asleep on his own in his crib at 7pm after….ta-DAH… 2 minutes!!! He slept until 1:15am. Then he was up for 45 min crying, we checked on him during the recommended intervals, but he finally fell back asleep at 2. He slept until 4:45 (which is really good….). I nursed him for a couple of minutes and he was nearly asleep again. I put him back down….and he slept until 6:30am! For those of you who are parents I know you’ll realize my triumph. Those of you who aren’t are probably like, WTH? But, its good, its really good.

I’m hoping that 45 minutes in the middle of the night will decrease quickly and soon we’ll have a baby sleeping straight through from 7pm-7am! Wow, that will change our lives.

He just went down for his nap..hoping for similar success. We’ll see what happpens!

A

 

The rest of the professional pics are up! Monday, Feb 9 2009 

Uncategorized rowanthefrog 3:05 pm

We finally got the rest of the professional pics we got taken over Christmas and they are well worth the wait!! It was a drizzly morning when we did the shoot but, as always, Jody got some gorgeous pics.

Hes such a sweetie

He's such a sweetie

Kisses from daddy

Kisses from daddy

Impish grins

Impish grins

The photographer is Jody Lynn Photography – she really has an amazing eye. Her website is www.jodylynnphoto.com.

The rest of the pics she took can be found here.

 

Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow Tuesday, Feb 3 2009 

Uncategorized rowanthefrog 9:19 pm

Its been snowing literally all day long. Since I woke up. Now its 8:10pm and its still snowing. It had all melted yesterday when it was 50 degrees. Ethan and I went for a walk it was so nice. Now I think we will have 4-5 inches!

Poor Ethan has another cold and he got his 6 month shots today, so he isn’t a happy camper. All in all doc was pleased with how he is doing, though he is a bit concerned that his weight percentile dropped from his 4 month appointment. I have to go back in 6 weeks instead of 3 months for a weight gain check.

What's wrong little pookie?

What's wrong little pookie?

Somehow this makes me feel like I have failed him somehow. I don’t know how…..I have done everything I could. He has been exclusively breastfed from day 5. He was 4 weeks early, so maybe that plays a part. But I really thought since we had started solids that he would start putting on some weight. Apparently that’s not the case.

I guess I should start feeding him butter or something.

Just kidding…..sort of.

A

 

Night 2 of sleep training…. Monday, Feb 2 2009 

Uncategorized rowanthefrog 11:23 pm

I would call this a success. Last night it took him 43 minutes to fall asleep. Tonight it was 8 minutes. I’d like to attribute it completely to sleep training, but today we also went out to a storytime, took a 2 hr walk (it was 50 degrees outside!), changed his feeding schedule (so he ate more at the end of the day), and he slept with a little lovey that I had slept with the night before (so it smelled like me.)

Whatever it was, it worked. We’ll see how LONG he sleeps tonight.

 

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