Update on Ethan

Hi! My name is Ethan and guess what? Yesterday I turned 5 months old. I'm growing up so fast and can do lots of fun things now. During Thanksgiving, my Grandpa Sims taught me how to stick my tongue out and blow raspberries and I have been doing them ever since!I'm really good at them! Mommy and Daddy gave me a Johnny Jump Up and boy do I love it! Sometimes I get so tired from all my jumping that I will fall asleep in it. Im rolling everywhere now and can roll from one side of the room to the other. Mommy and Daddy now have to keep a closer watch on me so I dont get hurt. I am almost sitting up on my own too. If i have a toy in front of me I can sit up by myself for awhile, but I still prefer to jump more than anything. Even though I am getting so big and am able to do so many fun things, I still cant seem to stop spitting up all over mommy and daddy. Last night I spit up all over daddy at least 5 times! Oh well, may be one day I'll grow out of it. Mommy and Daddy took me to go get my pictures taken the other day and here are some of them, I hope you like them!This is how I like to fall asleep in my Johnny Jump Up

Update on Ethan

Thanksgiving Fun

For the Thanksgiving holidays we were finally able to go to my home in Texas. It had been a year since I had been home so it was really nice to make it back. We spent most of our time with family and my dad's sisters family made it down to see us from Arkansas as well. My parents hadn't seen Ethan since he was born and my brother and grandparents had never seen him so everyone was excited to play with the little munchkin. It was such a nice break away from school and we most definitly did not want to come back and face the reality of deadlines, tests and papers that awaited us. Our little family is doing well. We are just super busy with everything the end of the semester brings. I only have one more research paper left to write and Im almost done with writing and illustrating my children's book, you would be surprised at how long this project has taken me! Justin is done with all his stuff and is just awaiting finals. He is really good about watching Ethan while I head up to the library to finish assignments. Im so grateful for his willingness to help me out! For Christmas we head down to Mesa, AZ and then leave with his family to San Diego for a little family vacay. A little bit of R & R will be good for us I think!

Ethan with G&G Sims

Ethan with his Great-grandma Sims
With his Great Grandpa Sims

I wish i had our family Christmas pictures we took. I'll post them when I get them.

This Kid Loves His Daddy!

So turns out Ethan absolutely adores his daddy! I can never get Ethan to laugh as hard as Justin can. Sometimes I don't understand how Ethan can think something so silly as counting numbers (as you will see in the video)can be so funny! Justin just has the special touch for cracking this kid up!

Halloween Fun

Sadly, Justin and I have been so busy this semester that we didn't have time to really enjoy all the Halloween festivities that we love so much (i.e. pumpkin carving, corn mazes, etc.) But we did borrow this adorable Winnie the Pooh costume from our neighbors and couldn't help but put little Ethan in it! He was so cute! This is actually the first time we have caught his smile on camera. He is a very happy baby and always smiles and laughs, but it seems as if everytime we take out the camera to snap a few shots he notices, stops smiling, and becomes intrigued with the camera! Sorry for so many pictures...I just couldn't decide!

He LOVED the leaves outside! It took a lot of "Ethan, look up heres!" to get his attention away from them!

More Hallowen Fun

Finally, a Champion!

So for the past three years one of my main goals in college was not to make straight A's nor to graduate college with honors, but to win an intramural championship t-shirt! Don't ask me why this was so important to me.. maybe it is the fact that our team has come so close to winning the top division every year, but just not able to pull off the victory in the championship game. Well we finally did it and I now have my very own championship t-shirt! Woohoo!
The winning team!


Of course my two biggest fans (Ethan and Justin) were there to root me on...

My good friend Alicia and I showing off the shirts.

He is getting so big!

This past week we took Ethan to the doctor and at 3 1/2 months old he weighs in at 14lbs 2oz! He is still such a good baby and he brings so much joy to our little family. He is starting to grab things a little more easily now and of course loves to put any object in his mouth! He is almost rolling from his back to his stomach and the same from his stomach to his back. He is in such a fun stage right now. I was telling Justin that I will be even more excited to have another one because now I know how much fun they get after the first month or two!I will also try to upload some video on here in the next week.
We bought him a fun little activity floor gym that he loves! It makes tummy time a lot more bearable for him and it keeps him entertained for quite awhile!

He always makes this face when we try to take pictures of him!

Becuase of his torticollis we had to buy him "The Cradler." This goes in his car seat and makes him keep his head straight...he pretty much hates it.

Unsolved Mystery

For some reason my drop down box that had all of my friends blog links mysteriously dissapeared.. any one have any ideas as to where it went and how to get it back?

My Sweet Husband

This week has been a pretty stressful week for me with midterms, papers, and projects due. Maybe it's just me, but it seems like whenever weeks like this arise housework just kinda takes the backburner for awhile. Before the days of trying to juggle school, work and Ethan (i.e. this last summer)I was able to keep a pretty clean house for the most part. Now when Ethan is asleep (which is less and less everyday now)it's no longer clean house time but get as much homework done as we can time. So anywho, on Monday I came home from the testing center (after taking a 115 question test)to a beautifully cleaned home! My sweet husband deep cleaned the whole house for me while I was gone and it looked wonderful! Although this is definitly not the first time he has helped me out like this before, I just thought I would publicly brag on Justin and what an amazing husband he is for me. I am so grateful for his thoughtful nature and appreciate the nice things he always does for me!I am so lucky!

This picture is one from when we went to Hawaii this last April...

3 Months Old!

Here are some recent pictures of Ethan. These were taken on the 7th of October, and he will be 3 months old tommorrow ( the 9th)! Time sure does fly by. He is still such a good baby and has been sleeping through the night for the past couple of weeks. I actually have to wake him up at about 8:00am so I can feed him and head off to class...who knows how long he would sleep if I let him! He has started sleeping in his own crib in his own room and does great with it. It is starting to get cold up here, however, and so last night he woke me up crying. I went in to see what was wrong, picked him up, and realized that he was like ice.. he was so cold! Because of that he has developed a nice little cold, but is surprisingly still just as happy. So Justin and I are going to seal up his window (to stop the draft from coming in) and hopefully turn on the heater soon. Crazy to think.. running the heat in October?! Enjoy the pics!P.S. Family: Just click on the pictures to see a larger version :-)

In his bouncer



Having fun in his crib. He loves his mobile that Grandpa Sims gave him.

All ready to go to the football game in his Snugli!

Betty Crocker Watch Out!

So on Sundays I try to either bake or cook something new and have never quite been too succesful with the baking part. I have never baked a decent batch of cookies and when trying to make peach cobbler, I burned it to a crisp. So yesterday I deceided to make a homemade apple pie ( the crust and all!)! Needles to say it took a little longer than it probably should have ( oh..like 2 hours longer), but was it worth it?! Yes! It came out spectacular! So I couldnt pass up the oppotunity to take a picture or two and write about my wonderful experience in finally baking something worth eating!

Our little Cougar!

We took Ethan to the season opening BYU football game a few weeks ago. We were a little worried that he might freak out with the band and the crowd being so loud but did that bother him??? Of course not! Our little buddy slept through the whole thing! At the very end of the game he woke up and so we took a quick picture. Justin and I are so grateful that he doesn't mind going to volleyball games, football games, etc. because we love going to them!!


He was all smiles for Justin and I before going to church last Sunday! He is starting to smile, giggle, coo and blow raspberries.. so fun!

Ethan's First Flight!

Sorry for so many post today, but I have nothing else to do at work and a lot of catching up to do on here. This last week Justin, Ethan and I flew down to AZ to visit the Smith side of the family. We had heard horror stories of newborns crying the whole flight because of the pressure taking off and landing has on their ears, so we were well prepared with a pacifier in hand for whenever he got fussy. Taking off time came and the kid slept through the whole thing! That was the easy part!
Going into Phoenix, he became outrageously hungry and got pretty fussy. As soon as we got off the plane I headed to the least populated area of the airport I could to feed Ethan and to try to stop him from screaming. Turns out there is no unpopulated place in the Phoenix airport and everyone by now was staring at me holding a screaming baby trying desperately to find the nearest bathroom or something! I finally found a bathroom and just had to drop everything and feed him right there. So many people came in there and gave me the awkward quick glance and scurried around me. By that point, I just didnt care. While I was feeding him, he conveniently dropped a bomb in his diaper so I had to change him on the very unsanitary table in front of everyone in line. He was still fussy after i changed him, so then I proceeded to burp him. Somehow he missed the burp rag and threw up all over the floor multiple times. After I finished trying to clean up that mess, I had to wash my hands (GermX would not have done the job in this case). Do you know how difficult it is to wash your hands while trying to hold a still crying baby?!?! I finally made it out of the bathroom and had a wonderful rest of the trip spending time with family, but I definitly didn't leave without getting many looks of pity from the women in the bathroom!

New Swing

Our neighbors upstairs let us borrow their swing to try to calm him down one day, and Ethan loved it so much that we decided to look around and find a swing for him. Of course we never buy anything for full price so we searched around on KSL, Craigslist, etc, and found this swing. There was a rich lady up in Draper selling it for $50 in great condition! I think these type swings are usually priced at about $100-$130 brand new, so we got a great deal. It swings not only front to back but from side to side. Ethan loves it and so therefore, so do we!



It puts him to sleep pretty well. Maybe that's why we like it so much!

Rub-a-Dub-Dub

So a little while back we decided to give Ethan his first real bath (as opposed to the sponge baths we had been giving him). We filled up his little bathtub that Grandma and Grandpa Sims had given him and put him in. He was such a little trooper through it all, even when I accidently poured cold water on him! I'll try to figure out how to post the video we have of it but for now here are some after shots of him in his cute Hippopotamus towel.

Great News!

Shortly after I posted my last blog entry, I recieved a phone call from our next door neighbor saying that she read what i had written on my blog and that her husband could actually recover the lost files!! I took my camera over to their house and sure enough he was able to recover all of them! I have no idea how he did it but I was estatic and so grateful that he could. Whew! That sure was a close one! So here are a few favorites of ours...

I came home from church and couldn't resist taking a picture of these two! Ethan loves to sleep on his daddy's tummy!

Sometimes he gets this funny "Im just going to be mad at the world" look on his face.

So i try to give Ethan a little bit of tummy time everyday and the poor kid hates it! This picture was taken within the first minute of his tummy time yesterday. Shortly after this picture, however, he was not nearly as happy and was flailing his arms and legs around everywhere! What's a mom to do!? Anywho, he is starting to lift his head up off of the ground despite the lack of tummy time though, so i guess that's comforting:-)