Friends,
I wanted to send a quick update so you don’t think I’ve fallen off the earth. We’re finally starting to find and accept our new “normal”–one that has us constantly on the go, with higher highs and lower lows than I ever remember experiencing in my life.

Ethan is growing and changing every day. He’s eating solids, still breastfeeding with gusto, and will eat anything we give him. His dexterity is getting better–he can feed himself bigger bits of food, and he’s trying so hard to master the pincer grip. He crawls, cracks up at everything, and pulls up onto anything. I’d say anything nailed down, but he tries to pull up on everything he comes across. He’s sleeping well, although he still wakes up a few times a night to eat–but we’ve finally nailed down a bedtime routine that works for him. Dinner, bath, play time, and then he nurses to sleep. He moved up to the “Little Waddlers” class at school, where he’s one of only two (of the five) who moves independently and eats table food. He loves his teachers, and has started napping for extended times on his little cot.

At home, we’re starting to figure out a routine. We’ve started taking walks every night after work since I haven’t been able to figure out a new workout routine yet. We’re getting Ethan’s bottles and diapers and the pump bag ready to go the night before so our mornings run smoothly. We’re menu planning, and managing to eat pretty cleanly and without dairy and gluten. We’re even to the point where we’ve taken on a few weekend projects on the weekends we’re home–our most recent was to organize the garage. We have a few more things to do before it’s perfect, but we hung hooks, pegboard for tools, organized the shelves, and gave it a good spring cleaning.

Next up on our projects list is to work on our master bedroom. I’m going to be making a headboard and base for our bed, finding bedside tables and lamps, finding and reupholstering a stool or two for the foot of our bed, moving the glider into our room, finding and hanging curtain rods and curtains, and finding and refinishing a small dresser for the far wall. I hope we’ll be able to finish this project by the end of the summer. Eric and I are looking very forward to having a peaceful retreat that we can retire to every night. We’ll also he starting to work on Ethan’s first birthday party theme. I’m leaning toward a forest friends theme, but we may end up doing a Very Hungry Caterpillar theme, since Ethan loves the book and toy so much.

That’s all for now! I’ll be back soon with regular features as life continues to normalize! I’ll leave you with a few recent pics
Mary