Ethan in the tub

I think this post is my 100th blog post. When I started, I didn't think I would like it so much, but it's fun to get a few thoughts down on "paper" each day and it motivates me to take pictures and video clips. Prior to the blog, most of my pictures and video clips were from Gommy's camera because I wouldn't take any. I wonder how long I'll keep it up. I'm sure one day I'll hit my 1,000th blog post.

Anyway, Braden's out of town still at the men's ACC's meet. I think Blythe is starting to really miss him because she's been very clingy and cranky. Last night she came downstairs at 11pm crying and saying she had a bad dream. Normally I'm asleep on the couch at 11pm after attempting to watch a 10pm show, but "Eleventh Hour" was pretty good, so I stayed awake. After a few minutes, I picked her up and carried her to her room where I laid with her in bed for a while. I got up a bit later and she started crying again saying, "Mom don't go yet". So I laid down again. Eventually I was able to get up and leave even though she still hadn't fallen asleep.

Earlier in the evening at about 6:30pm, she got upset and said she wanted to go to bed. Ethan needed a bath, so instead of going to bed, she helped me with that (and by "help" I mean leaned over the tub to play with bath toys while getting her sleeves wet and hair a little wet and filling a big cup of water and dumping it out on the outside of the tub where it went all over my jeans and the floor and I had to get a towel to clean it all up). After I put Ethan to bed, Blythe and I went downstairs to watch the ACC meet on the computer and she fell asleep in my lap.

So anyway, weird night. She perked up a little this morning since she had the "show and share" bag for school, which means she can put in anything she wants and bring it to school to show everyone. She brought her little bowling game she got for Christmas, so hopefully the kids will have fun with that.

With Braden gone, it's been hard to play with the camera, but I did get a few shots of Ethan in the tub. We have a collage frame in the kids bathroom that currently has all pictures of Blythe as a baby in the tub, so I've been meaning to take some of Ethan to put in the collage.

New camera

I got my new camera! And while I haven't read the whole manual (which I certainly intend to do), I did manage to take a few pics this morning of the kids. I also took a lot last night of Bogie sleeping and the toys in the living room as I was reading the manual and testing things out, but I'm going to take a wild guess that you're not so much interested in those.

Here's Ethan smiling at Blythe as she is actually trying to scratch his arm and tell him he is not invited to her tea party with Elmo.

Hey, look at this one! Blythe is actually looking at the camera!

And here's Ethan looking at the dog food dish. Though you can't hear him, he is saying "Nuh", which means "No". I always know when Ethan is getting into something he's not supposed to because he tells me. Like when we're playing in Blythe's room and he touches the one outlet that doesn't have a cover on it. I'll be playing with Blythe and then I hear "Nuh!". So I look and he's pointing at it.

And lastly, here is Ethan's face while pooping (in a clean diaper I had just changed him into). I don't think he was all that happy with me for taking a pic during this "private" moment.

Hangaburger with pretzels

Blythe's not much of a meat-eater. Never has been. Or at least not at home (what she eats at day care is a whole other story). She will eat chicken nuggets. One time she ate a chicken drumstick. At Christmas she asked for seconds on ham, but that was the only time I've seen her eat ham (though I know she eats it other places). So I was surprised a couple months ago when she wanted a bite of the cheeseburger I got for Ethan in his happy meal. Then wanted another bite, and another, and another. Then I was even more surprised she did the same thing a couple weeks later.

So now when we go to McDonalds I ask her if she wants a cheeseburger or chicken nuggets. She still ALWAYS says chicken nuggets. So that's what we get and I get Ethan a cheeseburger. And Blythe never eats her chicken nuggets and then wants to eat Ethan's cheeseburger.

The other night we had beef enchiladas at home. I told her they were quesadillas. She of course picked through them and told me she didn't want to eat "that part" (the hamburger/beef). I told her she didn't have to, but added "but you like that, it's hamburger and you like hamburgers". Still, she wouldn't eat it.

So last night I decided to take the kids to the "club" to eat. We have to meet our $30 food minimum and we hadn't been this month and Braden doesn't get home until Sunday, which is then March. So when I picked the kids up from daycare, I told Blythe we were going out to eat. Immediately she says, "I want a hangaburger". Sure thing! As soon as we sit down she says, "I want to get a hangaburger". So she ordered a cheeseburger with pretzels and Ethan got a grilled cheese with fruit.

Blythe ate not a single bite of her cheeseburger. Just pretzels, grapes from Ethan's plate, and half of Ethan's grilled cheese.

But at least I got to eat a cheeseburger for lunch today!

ACC update

Braden left today again, this time for Men's ACC's - back up in Maryland. February is always a tough month because it's so busy, but it is fun to watch the swimmers. I never gave a final update on the women swimmers. They completely kicked ass. They ended up 3rd, which is their best placing ever. They nearly completely rewrote the school record board. They set every swimming school record but 3. So that's 16 new swimming school records. They set 1 new diving record for women and 3 new diving records for men (yes, the men dive at the women's meet instead of the men's meet because most diving programs only have 1 coach, so there's no one to leave behind to coach men for a week while the women are gone). One of the girls set 2 new ACC conference records. They also will likely have 3 individuals make NCAA's and 1 relay, though I think they may try for a another relay by time trialing this weekend.

So anyway, I'm really proud of Braden and the girls. Now it's on to the men.

Why I ordered a new camera

Here Blythe is on the uneven bars at gymnastics:



oh - well she WAS hanging on the bar, now she has dropped off.





Here she is doing the "tree" yoga pose Aunt Laura taught her:



Hmm - well, she WAS doing it. Must have just missed it.

I'm so sick of missing the shot! Happens ALL the time. So I finally ordered a much nicer camera, which should be here on Wednesday. I can't wait to try it out. Really, my pictures can't get any worse.

Anyway, after I missed that yoga pose, I tried to get her to do it again, this time on video so maybe I wouldn't miss it. She said she was going to do it on top of the learning table. Didn't quite work out, but I got a funny video:

And speaking of gymnastics, obviously I finally remembered to bring my camera. This was the last gymnastics class. As usual, it was an ordeal to get out the door. Then Braden called just before we were leaving. When he's at ACC's, we rarely talk since our schedules are very different and we're both just so busy. So I wanted to talk, but capped it at 6 or 7 minutes. So that meant we were 6-7 minutes late leaving. I was hoping the parking issue would not be so bad and we'd get a close spot so we'd only be a couple minutes late. Fortunately there was someone just getting to their car so I put on my blinker and waited. And waited. And waited. And waited. And screamed obscenities (no curse words, but everything else was free game). Then waited and waited and screamed some more. Maybe he didn't see me. So I moved forward so he could see I was waiting. Finally he put on his reverse lights. Yay! I had to back up to let him out. Only now there was someone on my ass and they wouldn't back up. UGH! I was so frustrated. So I missed that spot after waiting so long. I tried driving all the way around the drillfield (probably at least 2/3 mile around), but of course someone else had already gotten it. So I had to park far away. And by now it was 9:10 and the class is over at 9:30, but I brought my camera dammit and it was the last class, so we were going. I put Ethan in the backpack and told Blythe we had to run. That worked for a while until she said she didn't want to run anymore. Also she was wearing capri tights and it was 20 degrees out. So I picked her up and we ran (and don't forget I had Ethan on my back). Running with an extra 55+ pounds is quite the workout. But we made it for about 10-15 minutes of gymnastics. All so I could get a couple of video clips for you blog readers.

Here she is on the "tumble track"

And here she is doing "princess toes" on the balance beam. Notice how she manages to tell her instructor she has Cinderella on her shirt, all while balancing on the beam. Oh, the talent.

So we walk the long walk back to the car afterwards. As we're approaching the car, I notice one of the sliding side doors is open. So in my rush to get to the all important gymnastics class, I left a door wide open. And my purse on the front passenger seat. For anyone to take. Fortunately, no one did.

Feeling yucky

To say I ignored my kids last night is a bit of an understatement. I came down with some sort of bug the night before last which made me feel achey, feverish, nauseous, and just overall yucky. Other than being tired, I felt a little better during the day yesterday, but after I picked up the kids and we went through the drive-thru at McDonalds and then ate dinner, I felt pretty yucky again. All I wanted to do was lie on the couch. And I actually got away with it for about an hour! Yes, Blythe kept trying to get me off the couch to play a game with her and Ethan was whiny every now and then, but overall they were pretty good at letting me a blob on the couch while they destroyed the living room by getting out every toy possible. Eventually I got up enough energy to get off and go take some medicine. After attempting to watch some of the Women's ACC's online, I put Ethan down for an early bedtime (he's only taking 1 nap these days and today's was less than an hour).

So now I was still feeling quite yucky and was faced with a ridiculously messy living room. I started cleaning up and tried and tried to get Blythe to help me, but she wouldn't. So I was getting madder by the minute since all I really wanted to do was go to bed. After getting that cleaned up and watching a little more of the ACC's, I told Blythe it was time for bed. She was being her usual uncooperative self, but since I wasn't my usual patient self, I got mad at her and made her go to bed with no storytime. I didn't have the energy by then to even read a story anyway.

Fortunately, I was able to go to bed at 9:15 and the kids let me sleep until almost 7:00 this morning! After that, I felt much better.

And another update on VT swimmers: 3 more new school records yesterday (out of the 4 events yesterday). That also includes 1 new ACC conference record. Just to give you an idea of how fast the meet is this year, there has been a new ACC conference record set in EVERY single swimming event so far, including one that was 20 years old. In the 200 free relay, 5 teams broke the ACC conference record (including VT who ended up 3rd). Currently VT is in 3rd place (out of 11), which is GREAT! We're hoping they can stay there!

Also, my NC State school record in the 200 IM was finally broken yesterday. I had it for 8 years, and it wasn't that fast anyway, so I'm glad someone finally broke it. Maybe NC State is finally moving in the right direction.

Ethan swimming

Both Blythe and Ethan had swimming classes yesterday. Blythe isn't quite "camera-ready" on her class. They worked on kicking again, jumping in off the side (which she's done since she was 18 months old), and arms. They weren't quite getting the arms, so that will take practice (and that's what's going to get her to that dog paddle step where I don't have to worry so much if she accidentally falls in the pool).

Anyway, Ethan had swimming too and I asked the instructor to hold Ethan while I got some video clips of him. Here he is on his stomach, trying to use his arms a bit.

And here he is on his back, just as relaxed as can be. I think we might have a future backstroker on our hands.

And an update on Braden's swimmers - they started the meet last night with 2 relays. They got new school records in both of them, so they're off to an excellent start!

Swimming Lessons

My computer wasn't liking blogger for the last 2 days, but apparently it's now allowing me access again. Always nice to have a computer with a mind of it's own.

Anyway, Blythe started her swim lessons on Monday. She is doing a semi-private lesson with her friend Ashley. It's the first class she's taking that I didn't have to be a part of. And let me tell you how nice it was to just sit back and watch and not have to get in the cold water too! I sat far enough away so I wasn't right there watching over her. The girls didn't do too much the first week, mainly just getting reacquainted with the water and work on flutter kicking. But the important thing was Blythe actually listened to everything her instructor said and was happy the whole time. So I'm hoping after 11 more sessions, she'll be quite comfortable and may even be able to manage a dog paddle. We'll see. She's got another lesson this afternoon. Maybe once she gets a little better, I'll actually bring the camera and get some quick video clips.

Ethan has his water babies again tonight too. Can't get any more clips of him since I have to be in the water....brrr! Maybe I will try to see if I can get one while the instructor has him on his back. It's so funny to watch with him all relaxed and his arms up behind his head.

Braden went out of town yesterday to head to Women's ACC's up in Maryland. This is a really exciting time of year for the team as we get to see how fast they really are and how great they do as a team. I'm so excited to watch the webcasts at night. That means I will be ignoring my children each night starting at 7pm Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. Then again next week for Men's ACC's. Ha! We'll see how much they actually let me ignore them. I doubt I'll get very far with that. Maybe they'll be happy playing in the large box we have in the living room like they did last night. Ah - a box can be such a great new toy!

Weekend with Ada

This weekend we had gymnastics again. Remembered to bring my camera in the car:

But forgot to bring it inside. Next Saturday is the last class. Maybe I'll remember then. And yes, I know Ethan is not yet a year and he is facing forward. Since we were going on a trip later in the day (and since he's almost a year), I turned him around so he could watch TV too. Now he loves it and I can't turn him back. Oh well. He's close enough and he's well over 20 pounds.

It's always such a hassle to get out the door to gymnastics. I finally had the kids fed and dressed, which is a daily nightmare ("I don't want to wear pants, I want to wear tights, I don't want a ponytail, I want a barrett, I don't want a barrett, I want a headband, I don't want my coat on, I don't want my shoes on, I can do it myself...") By the time we actually make it to the car, I'm exhausted! We were just about to leave and all I had to do was put the dogs away in their kennels in the basement. Ethan was content playing, so I tried to sneak down to the basement so I wouldn't have to carry Ethan down with me. Just when I opened the door, Blythe says "Mom, I wanna go with you". Ugh! So I say, "No, stay up here with Ethan, I'll be back in one second. I'm just putting the dogs away". And I get, "NOoooooo! I wanna go downstairs". That was it.

"Dammit Blythe! Now I have to take Ethan down there too. UUUGGGHH!!" [yes, I know I shouldn't say 'dammit' as she is very likely to repeat me. So far she hasn't. But I'm sure she'll look for the most inappropriate place/time to do it.]

So Blythe then says, "I laugh at you when you say that to me".

"Laugh at me when I say what?"

"When you say 'ugh!'. That's funny to me"

"Well I'm saying it because I'm frustrated with you and it's not funny"

But good to know she doesn't take me seriously at all. Though really I already knew that.

Anyway, after gymnastics, we went home, got the dogs, packed up the car and drove to NC. We met my mom in Winston-Salem and she took the kids to her house for the night while Braden and I drove on to Durham to visit Doug and Lynette and see our new niece, Ada. And boy was she a precious little thing! I'm always so amazed how small newborns are since really it doesn't seem like Ethan has grown THAT much in the past 11 months. But I guess he really has!

Ada is such a sweet baby. Seems very content and laid back. A lot like Ethan was (but not Blythe). She even slept almost 5 hours the night we were there! Here are some pics of Ada:

On Sunday, the 4 adults took little Ada to the mall to walk around and look at cute baby clothes. Lynette decided to try out the front carrier:

Ada was a little bummed when she found out she slept through the whole mall trip, but she was well rested, so she didn't care too much.

Later that day we met back up with my mom to pick up the kids. We were only apart from them for 24 hours, but we missed the little boogers.

When we got home, I did get a little video clip of Ethan walking to prove he actually is walking all over the place (though I got mostly just his head). Enjoy:

Valentines Party

Blythe has her Valentines party at school today. I had signed up to bring goldfish. I went ahead and brought it this morning because I have a bit of a work crisis going on and I'm not sure I'll actually make it to the party at 3:00. I was completely stressed about work last night but I did manage to help Blythe make her Valentines for all the kids in her class. I actually was amazed I remembered to buy them last time I was at Wal-mart. They are butterfly Valentines and they come with these little butterfly tattoos, that you have to tear off and stick in these extremely small slits on the card. Then you have to fold them and put a heart sticker on them to keep them closed. Then you have to write "To: so and so From: Blythe". And here's the part where Blythe's "help" comes in - she would do a small scribble on each one. Sometimes she changed markers, but usually stuck with green. Except on Ashley's. Ashley got red, then pink, then yellow, then green, then purple I think.

So we got all those done, shoved em in a used grocery bag and took them this morning to school along with the goldfish. So I put my goldfish box next to the perfectly decorated cupcakes with pink icing and rainbow sprinkles, which was next to the box/tray of red valentines cups each filled with a homemade snack mix. Then I put her grocery bag of store-bought valentines next to the bag of homemade valentines with little glued on hearts cut out of construction paper with names written in puffy paint, all put into a clear celephane valentine bag and labeled with the child's name.

What is with these overachieving parents??? I feel like I can barely keep up and they have time to create Martha Stewart valentines and snacks? These other parents work full time too (or I assume since their kids are in day care).

At least I didn't have to bother with Valentines for Ethan since he's in the nursery and they aren't having a Valentines party. Of course, when I dropped him off, he had a couple of Valentines in his cubby. Seriously???

Ethan's 11 month update

I was so busy blogging about all the snowtubing fun that I forgot to blog about Ethan now being 11 months old. He turned 11 months on Saturday and to keep with the trend, I need to document the things he is doing at this age. Let's see....

He's still taking 2 naps a day usually, though he's transitioning to 1 nap a day.
He sleeps about 11 hours at night (though the last 2 mornings he's gotten up a bit earlier than usual).
He's walking instead of crawling whenever he wants to get somewhere (or whenever he wants to come squeeze his arms around my legs and throw his head back and cry until I pick him up).
He has 6 teeth, but I think he's working on 7 and 8. Little drooling monster!
He said "cow" a long time ago, but hasn't said it since. He says "mama" and "dada", but other than that no words. I did think I heard him say "doggie" the other day though. I can tell he is trying to pay more attention to words now though.
If I ask him where things are: "where's the doggie in the book?" "where's the cow?", he points at them.
He still loves to eat paper. Now that it's not so much a choking risk for him, I usually just let him.
He eats anything you give him. Seriously. At day care, he'll eat cucumbers, salad, cauliflower (seriously, I mean who even eats cauliflower? Yuck!).
He laughs at everything Blythe does. Unless she kicks him in the back and knocks him over. He doesn't like that. He laughs at Blythe when she cries.
He sleeps on his stomach, which means he has nice hair and not a bald spot in the back like Blythe always had. I'm pretty sure he'll have dark hair when it grows in and not blonde hair like Blythe.
He loves swimming and we're convinced he's the best swimmer in his class, even though the rest of the class is 18-36 months.

So anyway, that's our little Ethan these days. He'll spend the next 4 weeks transitioning to the toddler room at day care, meaning he will be on their schedule (yes, only one nap a day) and visit the toddler room often. Yesterday was his first day to visit and loved it! They said he cried when they brought him back to the nursery.

Snowtubing

My best friend Emily came up to visit for the weekend. Unfortunately all of our weekend plans didn't quite live up to the high expectations I had. She got here on Friday night and we had a nice time talking. Braden was away at a swim meet, getting home at about 3 in the morning. Yuck! Braden woke up around 6am I think with Phase 2 of the stomach bug. I didn't blog about it, but Ethan got Phase 2 on Thursday (yes, threw up ALL over me AGAIN!). This darn stomach bug has decided to build a habitat in our home and live in each of us time and time again. It's super fun.

Anyway, leaving Braden quarantined to the bedroom, the rest of us took Blythe to gymnastics. I tried to remember the camera this time, but alas, forgot again. She did her standard rotation around the room, but spent most of her time on the tumble track as usual. It's a long narrow trampoline that I guess gymnasts actually do tumbling on, but Blythe just runs on it (most of the time) or very rarely actually does hops on it with her arms in the air.

We got back home and while Ethan napped for a bit, we got all of our stuff ready to go snowtubing! We were SO excited to go since we initially wanted to go at Christmas time, but snowtubing wasn't open yet, then were going to go a few weeks ago but had too many sicknesses and it was too cold. So FINALLY we were going and the weather was PERFECT. I knew Blythe would be confined to the kiddie snow tube park, which I had heard wasn't much to write home about, but Emily and I would take turns pulling Blythe around in the kiddie part while the other went down the big snowtube lane. We had also secured day care there for Ethan. So unfortunately Braden couldn't go since he was still puking, and it was better not to leave Ethan with him anyway, so we took him with us.

The drive was pretty easy. Just over an hour away, so not bad at all. We parked and then had to get on all our gear and then trek a ways up a big hill to the "mountainhouse". Once we got there, we right away got some lunch. 25 dollars later, I thought "lesson learned - eat before we get here next time". So anyway, we finally get out to go get our snowtubing tickets and see this giant crowd waiting in line to snowtube.

We over heard a group talking about how they were told that they would only get to go down 1 or 2 times (in a 4 hour block of time). Tickets are $30 each. I heard it was a lot of fun, but one of wait in line for 1.5 hours while the other pulls Blythe around? Not sounding like a good idea or a good way to spend $60.

The kiddie snowtube park is only $5, so we decided to go ahead and buy Blythe a ticket for that while we figured things out. I also still had Ethan with me because we found out the child care is clear on the other side of the resort. But seeing as how I forgot Ethan's jacket, I couldn't keep him out there with us, so I shuttled it over to the other resort part to check him in to day care. Upon my return, I found Emily and Blythe had made a snowman:

After that we pulled her up and down the kiddie snowtube area, which is incredibly small and was way overcrowded due to the regular snowtubing being so busy. It ended up being actually quite dangerous as you send your kid flying down only to knock down anything and anyone in their path. Here's a short video clip:

After what seemed like an eternity of doing that over and over again (which was really only about 50 minutes), we were ready to stop and take a breather. Would have been nice to sit at a table outside in the sun and watch the skiers, except all the tables were full. Trend of the day. So we shuttled over to pick up Ethan. Though I had paid for 3 hours of day care, he was only there an hour and a half. But we were cutting our losses and going home. Lessons learned: there are hundreds of church groups that come on weekends and they like to snowtube, therefore, don't snowtube on a weekend (skiing would be fine though).

Here's one more pic of Blythe and I on the snowtube. She made me go with her a couple of times and I feared for the lives of the small children we nearly killed.

All that lack of snowtubing made us tired, so we went to bed early last night! I forgot that I had volunteered our family to greet at church this morning, so unfortunately for Emily she had to come with us and wear jeans, which made her a little self-conscious, even though anything goes at our church and people wear jeans all the time. Sorry about that, Emily.

After church, Emily and I went to the VT/NC State basketball game to cheer on the Wolfpack. I cheer for the Hokies unless they are playing NC State. Seemed like a lock after NC State was up by 18 points in the second half, but anyone who cheers for NC State knows not to take a big lead for granted. It ended up going into overtime and then the Wolfpack lost. So disappointing. Damn disappointing Wolfpack.

During the game I checked my email on my Blackberry and saw some emails from some neighborhood residents. Apparently the fraternity house near our neighborhood had had a party the night before and we had some issues with people parking in the neighborhood and walking through the streets being loud. I think some neighbors approached the "street walkers" about it and to retaliate, the frat people came back with eggs and egged peoples cars. Sure enough, they had egged Emily's car. We've never really had a problem with that frat house before, so to say the neighborhood was ticked off would be a huge understatement.

So that's how Emily's visit ended (though Braden had actually washed it off her car before we got back from the game). No snowtubing, an unexpected church visit, a deflating loss by the Wolfpack, and an egged car. But I still think we managed to have a pretty good time.

Oh, and I almost forgot that Emily brought up Blythe's birthday present from she and my other best friend Sue. A Big Wheel! Blythe loved it! She's got some room to grow into it yet, as her feet don't quite push the pedals hard enough. By this summer I'm sure she'll be riding it all over the place.

A cousin!

Big news! I became an aunt today! And Braden became an uncle, and Blythe and Ethan have their first cousin! Doug and Lynette are the proud parents of Ada Lynn Mittendorf who was born this morning. I'm completely jealous of Lynette's entire pregnancy and delivery which seemed to have been perfect from start to finish. She was even born on the day they wanted. Apparently last week Lynette said she would like to have the baby "next Thursday or Friday". Someone was listening and granted her wish :) Congratulations Doug and Lynette! I'm sure they will post some pictures hopefully very soon.

I can't wait to go and visit and hold that precious baby. I can't believe only about 11 months ago Ethan was that size. Makes me wish I had anoth....okay, getting way ahead of myself there.

On another note, we had water babies again last night and Ethan is a swimming machine. Again, amazing how kids can be so different. Blythe would completely freak out whenever we tried to put her on her back and Ethan is completely relaxed with his eyes closed like he's about to go to sleep. I find it a bit interesting since Blythe sleeps on her back and Ethan sleeps on his stomach. Seems like it should be the other way around.

Anyway, I'll leave you with a few pics I took yesterday of my little Ralph Lauren model sporting his button down shirt (with rolled up sleeves cuz he's cool like that), khaki cargo pants, and brown leather velcro shoes.

The Stomach Bug

Ethan's stomach bug has worked it's way through our whole family. I got it the night before last and Braden and Blythe got it last night. So Blythe is home with me today. Thanks to "Beauty and the Beast", I've been able to actually get some work done. TV can be a really great babysitter when you need it, but not til they're about 3 because it never worked before. Even still, I told her, "Mommy has a meeting in a few minutes. I'm going to put on Belle so you can watch it and you can't come talk to Mommy while it's on". I got "okay".

She sat down to watch Beauty and the Beast, but I swear as soon as I picked up that phone she was in my office. Apparently she's not a very good listener. Or she just doesn't listen to me. As soon as the meeting was over, she went back to the living room to watch her movie.

Super Bowl party

Last night we decided to have an impromptu Super Bowl party. We were going to be content with watching the commercials by ourselves (and cheer for the Cardinals between commercials...though we didn't care that much about the outcome), but we found out our friend Tommy was in town with his fiance Angie. So, we invited them over and bought enough food and drink for a party of at least 10. We settled down with our food and anxiously awaited the Pepsi commercials (Angie works for Pepsi, so we were TOTALLY STOKED! okay...maybe a bit of an exaggeration). Pepsi had some good ones, but I think we liked Doritos and Budweiser the best.

Anyway, we were all in the basement watching and the kids were playing with their toys. They didn't really eat dinner, more just snacked on whatever we had available that they wanted. At one point I was holding Ethan and he threw up a little on me. Wasn't much, but even through my sinus-clogged nose, I could smell it on me. So eventually I handed Ethan over to Braden and went upstairs to change clothes. After changing out the laundry and doing a few other chores, I headed back down to the basement. Ethan made his way over to me again so I picked him up and he threw up again on me! So here's how it went:
Mary: Oh my God! Ugh! I just changed my clothes and now look what he did! He threw up a little bit again on the jeans I just changed....
Ethan: BLAH! (the motherload of all pukes landed all over my shirt, my jeans, and the carpet surrounding us)
[silence and gasping at how such a little person could produce so much puke]
Braden: Oh Ethan you poor thing [picks up Ethan off of his puke-covered mom]
Ethan: BLAH! (the second motherload of all pukes all over Braden and himself and the floor below)
[silence and disgust]
Thank goodness for our friends Tommy and Angie who sprung into action grabbing towels, sponges, and anything else. Braden took Ethan upstairs and immediately gave him a bath while I changed clothes yet again.

Apparently just about all of the babies in Ethan's class got this stomach bug and each of them puked just one or two times. He took his bottle last night and this morning and ate breakfast and has been fine ever since.