three months old

Yesterday was Ethan's birthmonthday, or monthbirthday, or however you want to say it. He is now 3 months old. Crazy. I can't believe that 3 months have gone by. It doesn't seem that long, especially when I remember all the things that I haven't done since he was born (do the dishes, clean the bathrooms, maintain general personal hygene, leave the house, etc.).

We love him so much. He is happy and interesting. He loves playing and singing with Daddy, cuddling and sleeping with Mama. I took a bunch of pictures of him yesterday, experimenting with the settings on my camera. I want a big nice camera that I can play around with and take super nice photos. I told Brett that we were going to start saving for a new camera and he said, "A new camera and 4 new guitars!" I told him that he doesn't get any new guitars because I never got a camera each time he bought a new guitar before. It's not a fair-trade/compromise kind of situation. It's a I-get-a-new-camera-and-you-don't-get-a-new-guitar kind of situation, mostly. Anyway, on to the pictures!

This is his tummy time face. He works really hard for tummy time.




This is what he usually looks like--kicking his legs and waving his arms. He's such a squirmy squirmer!


He also likes to fall asleep with his blanket over his head. This makes me nervous, but if I move it before he is asleep, he wakes up and pulls it up over his face again.

I've been thinking about getting one of those bimbo chairs, so we took Ethan to the BabiesRUs to try it out. He seemed to like it, but they cost $40, so I'm still not completely convinced that he has to have it in order to be a happy baby that is developing well.

happy birthday everyone!

We have many birthday wishes at this time of year. Happy birthday to: Jackie, Brett, Johnathan, Lucy, Rob, Dave, Christine, Jason, Amy, our kitties, Colette, and Nanie!

Happy anniversary to my mom and dad, Don and Laurie, and Amanda and Clark.



We took Ethan swimming for the first time up to the Jeremy Ranch timeshare. He had a great time kicking and looking at the water. He lasted about 10 minutes, upon which I wrapped him in his towel and he promptly fell asleep.

Cat update: The cats are now spending most of their time in the same room ignoring each other. This is a great improvement from the brawling that has been happening. (There is still the occasional hiss and whack, but Andrew has started fighting back at least. He must be feeling better!)

life is happening to us

We'll start with the bad news, because I think it's less depressing to end a blog post with pictures of Ethan. Our poor kitty Andrew is a very sick cat. His kidneys are failing. We did an ultrasound on his abdomen and the vet found that he's had a pretty serious kidney infection. It's been there long enough to had scarred the tissue permanently so that they aren't functioning all the way anymore. He stayed at the vet for 3 days last week, coming home every night to sleep. While he was there, they kept him on a kitty IV and a kitty catheter in order to flush his system and clean out the kidneys a bit. He's taking antibiotics and is on a special prescription diet as well.
They left the IV in his leg every night, and he was supposed to wear a hood so that he couldn't get to it. When we could be with him and watch him closely, we took the hood off so that he could feel kind of normal again. But, as you can see, he still tried to get the band off.
The visits to the vet were traumatic for him and he came home sad and exhausted every night. He would walk around the house so slowly, and fall asleep like this every few steps. He didn't eat or sleep at all while he was at the clinic.
Cordelia has been a bit neurotic since this has been happening. The first day we brought Andrew back from the vet, she freaked out and attacked him as soon as she got close enough to smell him. Every year when we take the cats in for their checkups, they both go together and both get poked and bothered together, so this has never happened before. I think actually that this is the first time they have ever been apart. Oh, no that's not true. When Cordelia tore her claw out and had to go to the kitty hospital, Andrew stayed home. He's a sweety, though, and didn't attack her when she got back. Anyway, she freaks out whenever she gets near him now and so we have to keep them separated. We have 2 baby gates stacked up at the top of the stairs (2 because she jumps over just one) and one kitty stays upstairs and one is downstairs. We're trying to reintroduce them to each other gradually by swapping places daily and rubbing them both down with the same towel (to get her scent on him and his on her). So far there's no improvement. Climbing over/through the baby gates is difficult and I don't think we'll be able to keep it up much longer. If anyone has any advice, please share!
The good news is that the IV treatment seems to be working. On the 3rd day at the vet, they did his blood work again and the critical levels are much lower. They taught us how to do a treatment at home to get fluids into him called subcutaneous fluid therapy. We have an IV bag and a giant 18 gauge needle and we basically put the fluid under his skin. It's not a vein thing, the needle just goes under his skin on his back and we fill him up with a little camel hump. He absorbs the water and it helps keep his kidneys working as well as they can.
Poor little Andrew has been shaved in random places and poked every day since we took him in. His kidneys are never going to be well again, but hopefully we can do the treatment and keep him healthy for a long time. We feel hopeful about the whole thing because Andrew is still so young. There are tons of videos and stories online about other people's cats that use this treatment to help their kitties live better with CRF (Chronic Renal Failure). Andrew is only 5, and there are cats that are 17 years old that are benefiting from the treatment.
Rob and I have been meeting up for a weekly play date. Last week we went to This Is The Place Monument. It was super rainy, but it was still fun.

Here are the babies being patient (sort of) while they wait to ride the ponies. Rob is telling Johnathan to stop freaking out and that he needs to wait his turn.
Sweet little boy waiting for his turn.
Here's my beautiful niece, Colette, riding a pony. She loves horses! The pics of Johnathan on the horse didn't turn out.
The rain was fairly constant while we were there. We couldn't see much of the valley because of the clouds. It was pretty.
The day we went to the Monument, I decided to get Ethan dressed up. I've only just started putting pants on him since it got rainy and cold here. Up until then, he was just hanging out in onesies every day. But this is his first complete outfit--shoes and all.
He's definitely his parents' child, because he loved the shoes. He would stare at them and smile and kick his little feet. Of course, we don't really know what he was thinking, but we can project our love of shoes on him if we feel like it, that's what parents get to do.
This is the view of Ethan that I get when I carry him in his slings. He has such a sweet little face, and you can tell he loves us when he looks at us like this.
He's definitely got my nose. -sigh-

We've been watching motorcycle races at nights recently. Ethan no longer is happy to curl up on my shoulder while we watch, he wants to sit up next to Daddy and watch the races too. The pictures didn't really turn out, but you can get the idea of what he's doing. He stares at the TV just like us. It makes me feel a little funny that he watches it so intently. I feel the urge to take him outside to a park or something and make him run around (except that it's dark and he can't even sit up on his own yet).
Every morning Ethan and Brett have long conversations in bed about life and bodily functions and philosophy and the Beatles. They are both so cute!

races, kitties, and sleep (and ethan too, of course!)

My energy comes in waves, it seems. It seems completely random, but it's probably is very unmysteriously related to how much sleep I got the day before. Like yesterday, I felt like I could barely move from exhaustion and the whole family slept for most of the day (cats included, they're always ready for a group nap). But today (at least now that I've had lunch), I feel like I could accomplish anything I set my mind to. So of course, I'm blogging instead of To Do-ing. Aren't you glad though? Because it means more pictures of Ethan.

I'll start with a warning...this is going to be a long blog. I considered making it more easy for the reader by breaking it up by topic and posting several different blogs. But I'm not going to do that because I'm going to conserve my energy for something else--like taking a shower.

I love how much it's been raining lately. It's cramped my style a little bit. I have been taking Ethan on these hour long workout walks for the past few weeks, but I won't take him out if there's lightning. I also haven't tried taking him out with his rain cover on the stroller yet. But that's not the rain's fault, that's my laziness again. Maybe after I blog (and after my lunch has settled a bit more), I'll take him into the rain to see how we like it.

So, I know you've all been sitting on the edge of your seats waiting for the remaining post about Brett's birthday racing adventures. Here it is. He had a total blast. I would say his favorite part of the entire weekend happened on Sunday morning before the race. All the Ducati riders who had purchased the special ticket (like Brett's) were able to TAKE THEIR BIKES ONTO THE RACETRACK AND DO A RACELAP. Ohmygoodness. I love thinking about how much fun that was. Ethan and I are going to go with him next year, so that we can watch him doing that part. He made some Ducati race friends that he rode around the track with, getting yelled at by the race marshals for going too fast.

He was also able to walk around and look at all sorts of cool things, get some free stuff (hats and keychains and whatnot), sit on a real Rossi motorcyle, and of course watch all the racing. I am so glad that we were able to get him the tickets, it was a great birthday for him.

This is the special VIP parking lot for Ducatis only. You can see his bike in the middle right, with the gray tank. It's fun to see so many Ducs in one place.



We have some sad news. Our kitten (he's actually 5 years old now, I can't believe it), Andrew, is a very sick kitten. He's been losing weight for the past few months. We thought it was that Cordelia was getting chubby and we would tease her about being fat (she would respond with a look that could only mean, "I'm not fat, my fur is just this poofy."). But it turns out that Andrew has lost 25% of his body weight since we took him to the vet last November. He's skin and bones now. We made an appointment with the vet yesterday and they found that he's having kidney problems. They don't know what exactly is wrong: whether it's an infection that can be treated with antibiotics or whether his kidneys are actually failing and there's nothing they can do. THe vet said from the tests they did, they know that his kidneys are only functioning at a quarter of their capacity. I'm taking him in tomorrow so they can rehydrate him with a little kitty IV. After that, the vet recommends that we do an ultrasound to see where the problem is in his poor little body. We just hope that whatever is wrong is treatable and that Andrew won't be sick anymore.

Yesterday we had to leave Andrew at the vet because he wouldn't calm down enough to have his blood drawn, so they sedated him and monitored him until he woke up. Ethan was doing tummy time when the vet called back and said Andrew was ready to come home. As I stood to leave and get him, Ethan started really pushing with his arm and leg to roll over. He rolled onto his side and stayed there. But once I left (of course), he rolled all the way over for Brett to see and not me.

We went up to Snowbird to go swimming at the Kocherhans timeshare. We love Snowbird. We got Ethan all ready in his swimsuit. I couldn't get a picture of both Ethan and Brett looking normal, so here's one of Ethan looking semi-normal. (He always does his Grandpa face for the camera. I hope he stops that as he gets older.)
And one of Brett.
Soon after the pictures were taken, Ethan decided he was done with the swimming idea and started screaming. He didn't stop until we got him in his carseat and left the building to go home. He didn't last up there very long, we were probably only there for about 30 minutes. We think the altitude change was causing his ears to hurt, since they probably still have fluid in them. Poor sad baby.

We went back up to Silver Lake this weekend. It's strange that Snowbird up Little Cottonwood bothered him, but Silver Lake up Big Cottonwood didn't. We had the Tylenol with us this time, just in case. Brett's Dad told us that Snowbird is higher in altitude than Silver Lake, so maybe that was the problem. We didn't need to use any Tylenol, this time, but I think that Brett actually gave him some before we left just in case. I don't remember.

The snow that was covering the lake when we were there over Memorial Day was all gone. It was rainy and very cold, but we bundled up and had a nice walk.
Ethan likes best of all to be held by his mama and to watch his daddy. This was the look he was giving Brett while we walked around the boardwalk. The picture's fuzzy because Brett took the picture while we were walking. Ethan didn't like it when we stopped walking. He knows the Bjorn is for hiking, not for standing around!

It was really cool to be up there at that time, because the clouds were so low. We walked through them on our way around the lake.
And then we saw a moose! I've only seen one moose before (It was a baby one that we saw as we were swimming at the Jeremy Ranch timeshare. It came right up to the fence surrounding the pool. We were scared because the mama probably wasn't far off, but happy that we had a fence to protect us.) We obeyed the number one moose rule--as soon as you see a moose, turn around and go home--and no one was kicked or otherwise maimed. Quite an adventure!
We've found that Ethan loves it on his tummy. When he's tired, he calms right down and sucks on his hands while he's on his tummy. When he wants to play, he likes to hold his head up and look around. Plus, he sleeps better that way. I feel nervous about him sleeping that way. I only let him stay on his belly if he's taking a nap right next to me and I can hear him breathe. At night, he falls asleep in his tummy and then I check on him every so often until he's deep enough asleep to turn over without waking him. Then he stays the rest of the night on his back. I'm happy we've found that he likes sleeping that way, though, because it's helped him fall asleep more quickly many times.
He's also really improved a lot with his motor abilities. He can control his hands now (mostly) and is aware of them all the time. He's noticed his feet and looks at both his hands and feet when he's by himself. His hearing seems to have improved as well. I don't know if it's the antibiotics and that his infections have cleared, or if it's that he's older now and pays more attention to what he is hearing. Maybe both. He turns his face to sounds and starts if a sudden noise (like Brett opening a Coke) occurs. He loves to listen to music and recognizes songs that he likes. Brett claims that he cries when he hears a lame song. Mostly he cries because he's tired and he doesn't want to be in that noisy restaurant anymore, but I guess you can extend that to the lame song that's playing in the place as well.

He's got such blue eyes, like his daddy. They say all babies have blue eyes when they are infants, but that after 6 months they change to whatever color they will be. They must mean all white babies, because if they really mean all babies in the whole world, now that's just asinine. My eyes aren't blue, but I think Brett's will have the stronger gene in this case.
My pediatrician recommended that I read a book called "Solve Your Child's Sleep Problems" by Dr. Richard Ferber. I really liked the book a lot. I read another book about getting your baby to sleep called "Babywise" that I didn't like nearly as much. What I like about the Ferber book is that he explains so much about sleep and biorhythms. I feel like I understand the event of sleeping better and so I can really understand any problems that Ethan may have. I think I even understand Brett's sleep problems better, so that we can work on helping him at the same time as we establish good sleep habits in Ethan. Also, I really like that he doesn't say I should just leave Ethan to cry himself to sleep. I hate that idea and I don't think it would work for Ethan. Anyway, I totally recommend the book to everyone. Even if you don't need help getting your baby to sleep, it's an interesting read.

Ethan has long conversations with Brett in the mornings. He does more than just goo and coo, he moves his tongue around and makes all kinds of funny sounds. We've tried so many times to catch it on video, but he gets distracted by our bright red camera and stops whenever we hit record. Here are a couple videos where we weren't really able to catch any of his talking. Mostly these videos are for Grandma, because she's been away since he was born and doesn't know how he moves and looks around. (The video can be for both grandmas, but Brett's mom doesn't read my blog.)

thinking again

This week I've started thinking about the future again. Since Ethan was born, I have been just living in the moment, taking everything one day at a time. Because of a combination of several different things that have happened recently, I have been getting excited about my life and my future again. I am finishing up my school and then I get to focus on my career. I can be a real person, instead of a student! It is exciting and energizing for me to think about what my life will be like after this summer is over.