How's Ethan?

Ethan is great! He's pretty mellow (again, I was totally wrong on my 1st impression) and has started sleeping very well - his best stretch being 7-1/2 hours so far, but I never get to enjoy it since he goes to bed around 6:30.  The rest of the night it's 2-3 hour stretches.  He gets up about 7:00 each morning, stays up til 8:30, naps for an hour, stays up 'til 11 and then naps until 4.  If it's a good day, that big ol' nap happens in his cradle, like so:

See how much he loves it? He's smiling! If it's a not-so-good day (like he's too gassy to sleep) I stick him in the bouncer because he WILL nap there.  Then, like I said, bedtime around 6:30.  Since he's still so young he's SUPER flexible so I feel free to interrupt and switch around those times to fit my life as needed, but we're pretty lame and stay home a lot so it's definitely become the norm. Then, when we do stray from the schedule (or from our living room) I haul the bouncer around because he's SO TAME in it I know I won't have to worry.  The bouncer has now been to Kari's house, Captain D's for dinner,  Olive Garden on a date, Denver for Thanksgiving, and two friends' homes for  playdates. It's like your credit card - don't leave home without it!

Other than sleeping, the relatively few hours he's awake, he's very happy and likes to kick around on the floor.  Neither grandma found that satisfactory and I'm pretty sure they thought I was just ignoring him until they experienced Ethan being DONE being held and then happy kicking around on the floor instead. It's weird, but true!  I think he needs to work those legs to get the gas out.  I've mentioned it twice now in this post, Ethan is the gassiest! My diet just doesn't agree with him or something (Laurie, I DID take milk out of my diet for a week or two and it seemed to help spitting up, but it turns out I like dairy even more than I like not having throw-up on me.  That's a lot of like!) but when he toots, which is ALL THE TIME, it stinks like something died inside him. NOT cute new-baby toots. His poops were causing concern for a few weeks because he seemed constipated - not the frequency of messy diapers, I know it can be few and far between with breast feeding, but when he DID go it was thick and sticky like peanut butter and he cried (both signs of infant constipation) but ... one day while I was changing his few-and-far-between-poop he was grunting out another squeeze and POP! It was like a cork popped and poop shot THREE AND A HALF FEET, over the changing table, over the trash can, and onto the floor, leaving a nasty green baby poop trail behind.  I screamed when it happened. Now things seem to be moving much smoother for him, so that's good! After he got that out he laid there like he was dead, he didn't even twitch or blink, and he promptly fell asleep for and slept for 5 hours. CRAZY boy.

He's happy and giggles and smiles as anyone who stops by to talk to him, so come on over! Say hello! He's the cutest. And call him Beef, it's his nickname :)