Typical day

This morning Ethan:
* Pulled all of his diapers out of the plastic bag and scattered them across his room.
* Knocked the wooden train, block letters of his name and all the photos off of his dresser.
* Pulled all of Dad's socks out of his sock basket. He put some back.
* Screamed and squirmed and hit and kicked until I stopped trying to dress him.
* Enjoyed his time with just one arm in the onesy.
* Whined every time I went in the kitchen.
* Crawled up to me, put his arms around my neck and his cheek against mine, sighed, then crawled away. That made cleaning up the messes a lot easier.

Project Runway addict

Is there anyone else out there who is glad that Project Runway's drape-happy designer Rami made it to the final three at fashion week? He may have a thing for Grecian dresses, but he is much more fashion forward than Hawaiian-shirt-sporting Chris, whose creations are straight out of the 90s. Though I have been a Jillian fan from the start, I think Rami's final collection is fabulous. Of course, all of their final collections are really fun.

I miss my mom!

It has taken nearly an entire 13-by-9-inch pan of brownies to make me feel slightly better about the fact that my mom left for home in Utah this afternoon after visiting us for the weekend.

Chocolate helps, but I still miss my mom. We had such a great time with her.

Handsome

Ethan had a little photo shoot last week. Andrea Hatch came to our home and shot so many amazing photos that it took me several days to pick which ones I love best. Here they are:

Bobblehead

"Look at his head! He has an enormous head," were the first words out of Dr. Elliott's lips as he delivered Ethan.



Well one year and a few days later, we heard a very similar phrase from another doctor, his pediatrician.

While Ethan's body has become more normal - he is now 50th percentile in both weight and height (he used to be 99th in weight) - his head continues to amaze us. It is in the 91st percentile.

We're thinking that Baby Einstein video (ahem-babysitter) is really doing its job ;).

Party!

Even Ryan, who has spent most of his life pooh-poohing big birthday extravaganzas, admitted how excited he felt on Ethan's first birthday. And though almost everyone has a first birthday, it was definitely monumental for our little Ethan to turn 1!

We had a family party for him, where he enjoyed eating green (only food-coloring they had at the Harris Teeter) frosting and playing with his awesome new toys. He laughed when my parents called him to sing "Happy Birthday" and beamed when we sang it to him again before I blew out his candle (which took me several tries).

I decorated some very awful-looking cupcakes (I decided not to post that photo) that made us all feel like we were at a St. Patty's Day party. No one (except Ethan) touched them. The second batch looked a little better (last photo) but made us all feel like we might be at a little girl's party.

So the party was great! The dessert - not so hot.

About a one-year-old boy

I failed to mention that the last three photos were taken by Andrea Hatch. I'm not that talented.

Cheesy Valentine's love

Ryan is completely anti-this-sort-of-thing so I thought it would be fun to write a little something up about him.


He loves sports and he is extremely competitive. He makes a new enemy every week at stake basketball. ;)

He has this insanely dry sense of humor and people often don't get that he's joking until they've known him for a long time. I still sometimes don't catch the sarcasm in his voice.

He is the hardest worker I have ever met. He studies like it's fun. He only enjoys things if they present a challenge for him. His favorite jobs are things that require him to learn as he goes.

He is obsessed with ears. We'll leave it at that.


He loves to be clean. He wouldn't last more than a day in the wilderness because there are no showers there.


He is always thinking about what he can do for me and Ethan.


He will endure eating disgusting food instead of having to actually cook good food.

He's not a huge fan of large art galleries.

If it's good weather outside, we have to be at a park somewhere playing Frisbee.

He loves a good surprise and enjoys surprising people.


He's the best husband and father in the world (sniff, sniff) and we love him so much!

First time playing tag

When I started this blog, I decided that I didn't want to respond to tags. I would begin filling in the blanks of tags, but as I wrote in "5 things about me" or "4 places I have lived" I realized that my life is uber-boring. I just didn't have anything new to report about myself. And it's really hard for me to pick a favorite of anything. I love a lot of things.
But Carole, a good friend and woman who helped raise me through middle and high school, tagged me the other day and I decided that I should just get over it and PLAY TAG!

So if you are totally over the whole tag thing, just skip over this post. Otherwise, here is a little bit about my exciting self:

Four jobs I have had in my life:
1. Tele-surveyor at Western Watts for two weeks
2. Bagger/Checker at Macey's Food and Drug
3. Cleaning lady
4. Reporter at The Herald Journal

Four movies you would watch over and over:
1. About a Boy
2. Mansfield Park
3. Stranger Than Fiction
4. Raising Arizona

Four places you have lived:
1. River Heights, Utah
2. Wellsville, Utah
3. Logan, Utah
4. Arlington, Va.

Four TV Shows that I watch:
1. Project Runway
2. The Office
3. Chuck
4. I just watched the last two episodes of "Lost" and am embarrassed to report that I got chills. So I think I might start watching that (though it might be at the same time as "The Office," now that the writer's strike is over - is it?)

Four places you have been:
1. Cabo San Lucas, Mexico
2. Kirtland, Ohio
3. Alberta, Canada. That trip was beautiful and really cool, though my parents would never know I thought that because I was in those weird teenage years and had, well, let's just call it an episode after a 13-hour drive with my 6-member family in a cramped mini-van.
4. Playa del Carmen, Mexico

People who email me (regularly):
1. Rachel (good friend)
2. Shane (good friend and visiting teacher extraordinaire)
3. I get a quarterly update from my aunt Leslie
4. My dad always sends forwards ;)

Four of my favorite foods:
1. Crab cakes
2. Anything Thai
3. Cafe Rio (I know, you Utah people are rolling your eyes right now. I have to admit, I got really sick of it when I lived there. But there is nothing even close to that here and I often crave the coconut shrimp tacos and pork barbecoa burrito or salad. And it's just not the same when I make it.)
4. French toast at Carlyle. It is heaven.

Four places I would rather be right now:
1. Ohhhh Mexico
2. I've always wanted to go to Greece.
3. Asleep in bed
4. New York City

Things you are looking forward to this year:
1. Ethan walking and talking
2. Ryan passing his CPA exams!
3. Going on vacation (I have a few places I'm pushing, but no concrete plans yet.)
4. Visiting family in Utah

I tag my sister, McKenzie.

Mom's little helper

Ethan put his socks away.

Locked out

While living in an apartment has its obvious disadvantages, one thing I like is the trash chute just down the hall from our door. No walking through blizzards to take the trash out or forgetting to drag that large black thing to the road every Monday.

Yesterday I took the trash out. I left Ethan on the floor with his toys and slipped out the door to do something that would take less than a minute - or so I thought.

No, I didn't throw my keys or cell phone down the chute - though I'm always paranoid I'll do that.

I came back to my door to find it locked.

I instantly remembered the building engineer, who had, earlier that morning replaced some baseboards in my apartment. He had come the day before as well, and I noticed when he left, he locked the bottom lock. We never lock the bottom lock - the one that only locks on the outside. Apparently he had done it again and now I was locked outside of my apartment while Ethan was inside.

My second thought was an image of Ethan sticking the toilet brush in his mouth, pulling my lamps off the tables and doing everything else that's absolutely off-limits.

I remembered that our manager had the day off and my landlady did not have my keys so I started knocking on my neighbors' doors to call someone (like Ryan, who was 30 minutes away at work) who had my keys. No one answered their door.

On a whim, I took the elevator down to the bottom entry. As I walked out of the elevator, a maintenance man was walking out of the other door, on his way home. I told him about my situation, and though he didn't have my keys, he found them quickly. I was just glad I took the elevator when I did.

I ran back to my apartment to find Ethan covered in flour. Just kidding. He was still just playing with his toys on the floor. He looked like he had no idea I was missing for 10 minutes.