Here We Go Again

I have 3 "Here We Go Again" topics.

First, here we go again with playing catch up. I haven't posted much this year, but in January Mike took a trip to New Jersey for a few days and when he got back we celebrated his 31st birthday. He got a new fancy camera that I've been waiting to get the pictures from before posting, but maybe I should just teach him to start posting them himself...Here are the pictures from my phone.

Papa made Ethan this trains shelf!

Ethan is learning to count. He consistently counts 1-4 or 6-9. This is his proud face after counting these four (magnetic) darts.

Chilling in Nana's office while Mom works for a few minutes.

One day he decided to take a nap on the floor, random but cute.

Big haircut! The first time I've used scissors to try and keep it from getting too short.

Nana and Papa took us to a pizza place where they have an organist who can play like any song and lights etc. that flash to go along with the music. Ethan had fun, especially when the organ made train noises.

Just a cute sad face.

Ethan has discovered a secondary train table. He stands in the tub and drives the trains all around, mostly when I am getting ready or cleaning.

The first weekend in February was our community parade. Ethan actually liked it. Mike was there at the beginning and then had to go home to get a clean diaper, and since we walked, it took awhile.

He did this on his own.



These pictures were stolen from Lisa's blog. This is at the Children's Museum last week.

Lisa and her kids are visiting Nana and Papa. They were supposed to stay here this week, but Ethan's been sick. :(


At the museum again.

It rained in Phoenix!


Earlier in the year Ethan got a crazy goose egg, poor kid.

We've been to the zoo 4 times this year! Twice with local friends, once with our family, and once with Lisa and kids. Here is a picture of lunch time with friends.





Here we go again #2!

Most of you know this already, but I just remembered I haven't blogged it. Baby Abegg #2 will be joining us around 9/10/11. This ultrasound was at 6 wks 5 days. I was estimated to be 8 weeks 2 days before this measurement, so this has been a very long trimester (my due date was moved back 12 days). I found out I was pregnant on December 29th and will be 12 weeks this Saturday.

Here we go again #3. Tomorrow I am running the Ragnar Relay again! I was the team captain this year, so more work than last year, but I'm excited. We meet at 4:30am tomorrow (Friday) and by early Saturday evening 12 of us will have run about 200 miles, and hopefully will have slept at least a little!

Can you tell?

Why yes I did spend the whole morning deep cleaning all the tile in the house...
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Projects

Mike had a very productive morning finishing a fix of our sprinklers, replacing a window in his car, and now chasing Kiwi around the guest bed mattress with a tennis racket. Apparently Kiwi really misses having the guest bed!
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Good Sport

I hope I don't jinx myself by saying this, but Ethan has been SO much better lately about just eating what we're eating. Last night he was doing a great job of at least trying everything.

Almonds? "Yucky"
Canned mandarin oranges: Not a fan (although he LOVES all fresh citrus)
Lettuce with homemade poppy seed dressing? Accepted! First time he's eaten salad!
Noodles? Spit out.
Stroganoff beef: Accepted!

The funniest part of the night though was when a piece of mushroom got into his bite of beef. He started to open his mouth to spit it out and we told him to keep it in and chew. He slowly, tentatively, kept chewing, but had these big pitiful, "are you really going to make me do this?" eyes. We kept coaching him to keep chewing until finally Mike said, "say 'ah'", Ethan opened his mouth, Mike pulled out the piece of mushroom, and Ethan happily ate the rest of the bite. I wish I had a picture of his sad little mushroom face! I was so proud of him for being a good sport and trying a bite of everything we gave him though!

The Salt Cellar

Yesterday my friend Jessica volunteered to babysit for us, so Mike and I started planning a date. I had mentioned earlier in the week that I have been wanting good seafood, like the fresh fancy stuff, not a frozen bag of precooked shrimp from Fry's. I thought we were going to do something low key last night, but Mike did some research and found out about this really good fresh seafood place in Tempe/Scottsdale. That's right, fresh fish in the desert. We decided that since we very rarely eat out and because we could count it as Valentine's Day, we would justify the cost and go. We didn't bring cameras, so here is a picture I found online:

And here is another one from online that shows what it actually looks like.

It is tiny and obscure, but there is nothing above ground. As soon as you walk in you go down a bunch of wooden stairs (surrounded by wooden walls) to a very pretty restaurant. I can't really describe it, but the atmosphere is great! Even on a Thursday night it was pretty busy (if you go, make a reservation). I got King Crab Legs, yum! Mike did too, but his meal came with steak as well.

The crab legs hit the spot and it was fun to get out, even if I was getting a migraine (which fortunately held off long enough for me to enjoy my food).

Thanks Mike for planning a fun evening!

Snapshot

I have this problem of not wanting to blog until I have all of my pictures gathered and organized, but with Mike getting a new camera for his birthday, there are so many more pictures to upload and from more places. In the meantime, here's a picture of Ethan playing outside in our beautiful weather this evening.
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Sleep Training

Is there an age that we stop dealing with sleep training?

A few weeks ago Ethan started getting up at about 5:50am (instead of 7:30am). Of course this was NOT ok with me, but I thought he might snap out of it on his own. Not so. After a week I started brainstorming what to do. One idea was a sleep training night light like this one, but I was hesitating because it would be close to $40, and what if it didn't work?

Most of the mornings during this time Mike got up and put Ethan in front of a cartoon so I could keep sleeping. But a few times I got up and told Ethan it was still night time. I would sing him a song, get him back in bed, and he would sleep until a reasonable time. This made me think the sleep training light would work. Still not wanting to spend $40, I went to Walmart and bought a plain night light that lights up blue (no cute sun/moon night lights there) and an outlet timer for a total of $7. I came home and showed Ethan how blue means "sleep" and we practiced "falling asleep" as soon as it turned blue. He caught on quickly. I put him down for a nap with the blue light, but was hearing quite a bit of noise, so I went in to check on him and found the night light in bed with him. Apparently he liked it. I explained that it needed to stay in the wall.

We have been using the light at naps and night time since Friday. He's not completely consistent yet, but one of the following is what happens each time:

1: Most common-Sleep in until or past when the light turns white, signaling wake up. YEAH!!! (I've set his light for 8am, so it's even better than before.)

2: Once or twice he has woken up early, but after I point out the blue light he goes back to sleep until the light turns white. Nice! (I expected mornings like this as we started out.)

3: Yesterday Ethan woke up early and I was sick so Mike went in to tell him to go back to sleep. He didn't want to, so Mike told him he could stay in his room and read or play. When I went in to get him after his wake up time he was sitting on the floor "reading" a Thomas book.

4: The fourth option is what could be the downfall of this idea and it demonstrated in this story.

7:15am (so not too early): Ethan is jiggling the locked doorknob and calling, "Mommy." Mommy stands outside the door and says, "Ethan, what color is the light?" Ethan: "White!" Mommy enters the room to find the night light pulled out of the outlet, so it is white. *sigh* Kids are smart.

Ethan is already sleeping more, and I'm optimistic that this will continue to work.

In other wake up news: since moving to his toddler bed, Ethan has insisted on opening his bedroom door in the morning. That means that he calls for me, I unlock the door, and then he MUST open it. Now, though, almost every morning, and even after most naps, he doesn't open the door, so after waiting a few seconds, I do. I inevitably find him laying on the floor spread eagle waiting for a diaper change. It looks like potty training may be on the horizon as Ethan is all of the sudden not liking the feeling of a dirty diaper.