Ethan 1 Month

What can I say baby boy this past month has been an absolute whirl wind.  Our pediatrician told us at your 2 day weight check that the nights are long but the weeks are short.  She is 100% right, the weeks are flying by.  It's hard to believe you are no longer my newborn, your now an infant. Speaking of weight you are putting it on like a champ.  You were born 7lbs 13 oz and lost about 7% of your body weight before leaving the hospital.  At your 2 day check you were holding your own but not gaining, luckily my milk came in that  morning.  When we we went back in for your 2 week check you were 9lbs 2oz, you skipped right over that eight pound mark!  They also checked you for jaundice because you looked "a little yellow",  apparently no one told them your "a little Asian". Turns out your bilirubin was just fine.

Your tongue is healing just fine after being clipped (you were born tongue tied). Mommy was a big wimp and couldn't watch them do it (I also sat out your circumcision, even though I've performed them on other babies).  I sat out in the waiting room balling my eyes out while your daddy held you for the procedure.  What an awesome daddy!  You took it like a champ and stopped crying as soon as it was over.  Even the nurse commented how strong you were.  After the procedure the doc commented it was a good thing we had it done because the frenulum was very thick and its unlikely it would have loosened on it's own.  Hopefully now you will not have any problems nursing or with speech.

Eating- well you have spaced your feedings to every 3 hours - thank you so much.  This makes for a much happier mommy.  I now have time to do things between the feedings.  Plus you are super efficient and are typically done eating within 15 minutes.  I love feeding you.  You look so sweet with your little fists all balled up at the start of a feeding and you are all relaxed by the end when you are enjoying your "milk buzz".

Sleeping - I'm not gonna lie little man this was the toughest thing about bringing you home. As daddy says that first night" sh#t got real". Waking to feed you every 2 hours is crazy hard, especially when it takes 20 min to feed you, 10 to burp you, and 5 to change you, then one hour later it starts all over.  Thankfully you are such a good eater our pediatrician gave us to OK to introduce a paci and space your feedings to every 3 hours.  This gives mommy more sleep and makes it so much more manageable.  Right now it's easiest for mommy to sleep downstairs with you because your pack and play is set up in the living room.  Hopefully we will start sleeping upstairs soon.  Right now my favorite thing in the whole world is when you fall asleep on my chest!  I'll be so sad when you are too big to do it anymore.

Milestones -  mostly you like to sit and stare at our faces, and we love staring right back.   You are just so cute and have this super serious look about you.  You keep your hands right up by your face a lot just like you did in Mommy's tummy.  We think you are gonna love sucking your thumb as soon as you can find it, right now your are pretty content to stuff your whole fist in your mouth.  You are also starting to recognize our voices.  You will turn your head in our direction when you hear us across the room, we just love that!  You are slowly become more aware.  You were pretty sleepy the first 2 weeks.  Your family just loves to hold you.  We can spend the whole day just staring at your face.  Your Pops is already telling people you can read at a 2nd grade level - no pressure

See what I mean - we just sit and stare at you! (Aunt Dee, Great Grandma and Grandpa)

Meeting your sister Layla - she was pretty excited

Well baby boy the time is just flying by!  Our lives changed the moment you were born and its hard to believe it's already been 1 month.  I want you to stay little forever but I also love watching you grow.  I guess this will be an ongoing struggle for me.  You are such a little miracle and we love you so much!

Ethan's Nursery

People, can I just tell you that designing a gender neutral nursery is HARD!  It almost made me want to know if we were having a baby girl or baby boy, almost.  Alex left most of the planning up to me.  His only request was make it look colorful!!

I knew I wanted to stay away from yellow and green which seems to be the go to for gender neutral. I started out by finding inspiration on pinterest.  Most of what I was pinning were neutral colored walls (think grays and tans) with white trim and bright pops of color.  Pinks, corals, and orange for a girl and blues, greens and orange for a boy.


 
 We started with the easy stuff.  Buying furniture.  I knew I wanted furniture that could last and could eventually be used for a guest room when our future toddler wants to sleep in a race-car or princess bed. We ended up with a dark wood double dresser to use for our changing table and a convertible crib that can become a queen bed.  We also ordered a Dutailer glider for a steal on costco's website.  I loved the furniture when it finally arrived!  Now we really needed to get started on the nursery.  Alex started by painting the room a dove grey with white trim. 

Then I picked out a white tree decal with bluebirds that I ordered from ETSY.  I wanted my baby to have something to look at when we had story time and a sweet little tree seemed perfect without being too boyish/girlish.  This is the decal Alex and my Dad we putting up when I started going into labor - procrastination at its finest!

Next we grabbed white floating shelves, white frames, and a white book shelf from IKEA to help set off the gray walls.  All I needed now was to know which accent colors I would be adding to the room. This poised a serious problem as I wanted to have most of the nursery finished before the baby came.  So I started by making tissue paper poms from a martha stewart tutorial in both our girl and boy colors to hang over the crib.  Since these were so cheap and easy to make I didn't feel bad about doing both sets of colors.  I wanted our baby to have different shapes to look at when laying in their crib so I ordered some white origami stars to hang with the poms.  We went ahead and hung the blue and green poms, figuring we would be right 50% of the time (plus I felt so strongly we were having a boy).  I also bought wooden letters in both our top girl name and boy name to paint and put above the crib.  This was one of the projects I tackled on maternity leave.  I started by painting the letters white.  I then picked scrap book paper in our nursery colors and modge podged them to the letters.  I think it turned out pretty great!

Next I needed to figure out how to get the crib bedding we wanted for our little peanut.  I had picked out several fabric choices to be handmade into bedding on ETSY.  Both stores required 10-12 weeks for the bedding to arrive, which would mean we needed to order it way in advance.  Here is where we strayed from the gender neutral plan.  At one of our ultrasounds I had the tech look to see the gender, then they put the ultrasound picture in an envelope and sealed it.  That sealed envelope was sooo tempting to look at!  I needed to get it out of the house ASAP.  That's when it hit me, I could have someone look at it and order our bedding for us. I just had to make sure that person wouldn't slip and accidentally tell us.  The only person I trusted was my friend Leah.  She also didn't find out the gender of her little guy until he was born, so I figured she would have the best chance of keeping it a secret.  She was awesome; she didn't even tell her husband! She even gifted us our bedding and had them make a baby blanket and changing pad cover which I absolutely love!  The final step to a completed nursery was the curtains.  Again this was something I tackled during maternity leave.  I knew which fabric I wanted for each gender and just waited to buy it after the baby arrived.  Total cost for fabric was about $35 - waaaay cheaper than the cost to have them made which would have been about $100.  So I busted out my trusted (read super old) sewing machine and got busy.  They took about 2 hours from start to finish to make.  With about 1 hour of that time trying to remember how to thread my machine :)

All in all I LOVE the finished result in our nursery and I know Ethan will love it too!