Happy Birthday Ethan!!

Since Uncle Mike is here in town for a visit, we decided to throw an impromptu family birthday celebration for Ethan. Happy Birthday to our sweet sweet little boy! I can't believe that in one week he will no long be a little baby and instead be a big boy. Mommy and Daddy love you soooo much!

The Theme:
We decided to have an animal themed party. I think it turned out well considering we only had a few days to prepare.


The monkey cake was based on Martha Stewart's. I'm no Martha Stewart and my cake didn't look anything like hers - apparently it is not a good idea to sub baking powder for baking soda after all! =P Even though the cake didn't rise, it still tasted pretty good. It was Ethan's favorite - bananas!



Celebration Time!

Ethan liked batting at the balloons.

Happy Birthday!

We tried to get Ethan to smash the cake, but he just daintily poked at it. This was the most frosting we could get on his face. I guess we have a baby that doesn't like to get messy!


When we held up the monkey cake for Ethan to see he gave it a big ol' kiss! He does this thing when he sees his stuffed animals where he will hold it and rub his forehead on it's forehead and then kiss it. I think he thought the cake was another stuffed monkey!

Our sweet little boy! Muah!

Just a lazy Sunday at the pool

Since Ethan loves all kinds of water play we decided to take him to the pool. The pools here are really nice, I don't know why it took us so long to take Ethan but he had a blast:

We played in the bubble pool with jacuzzi jets

and tested out some ride on toys

There were 5 pools all next together. We didn't go into all of them but I can't wait to take Ethan to play in them when he gets older:

A pool with water toys

a splash park

and the bubble pool

B-A-N-A-N-A

Ethan sure loves fruit, especially bananas (or 'ana' as he likes to call them). He will often eat a whole banana for a snack and this after downing 8 ounces of formula right beforehand. Since he thinks we often are too slow in handing him baby friendly tiny pieces of fruit we decided to let him feed himself (okay he decided this himself after lunging after the banana and refusing to relinquish it back to us).

More adventures with fruit!

Our new car

In this crazy little expat resort town we are only allowed to drive golf carts. We finally got our HK driver's license so we no longer have to be subjected to the burning sun, high humidity and frenzied typhoons that onslaught us here daily. Ethan, being a typical guy, insisted on testing out the wheels himself. He makes driving look good baby.

Splish Splash!

How much fun is this kid having with his new water table?!? Since this was one rainy weekend we decided to give Ethan his birthday present early and he had a blast splashing around indoors.

His swimming trunks are bigger than he is!

Couldn't resist a nekkid shot.

Play time with Max

We met Karmell and her baby Max at a play date last Friday. Yesterday Max came over to our house to hang out with Ethan. It started out well - Ethan was excited to see Max again and ran (well, crawled) up to him and gave him a big smackeroo right on the mouth. Good thing they are just babies otherwise Daddy and Mommy would be going 'uh ohhhhh'. They played happily together for a bit:



But the fighting over toys soon commenced:



And by the end Ethan was swatting Max's hand away from every toy he tried to reach and even pushed him away when Max tried to say good bye. 'Uh ohhhhh' indeed. Mommy thinks now would be a good time to work on sharing.

My Protector

Today I took Ethan to the playground where we met an older baby boy to play with. The boys were contently playing side by side (but not with each other) when the other baby spied a red diaper wipe case in my purse and grabbed it to play with. Ethan noticed and suddenly crawled right over and they played tug of war with the diaper case. Finally Ethan wrenched the case from the other boy and then promptly crawled over to me and handed it over. I told Ethan that it was okay to share and I gave the case back to the other boy to play with (the boy tried to take it from me again anyways!) but Ethan went and tugged it back over to me again. I thought at first he was mad that the other boy took one of his 'toys' but since he handed the object back to me twice instead of playing with it himself that probably meant he thought the other boy was stealing something from me and he wanted to help me get it back. Hmm...shouldn't I be the one that is protecting him at this stage? Ethan sure is super sweet.

And we are 11 Months!

Ethan sure is one mobile baby. He is always on the go...crawling, cruising, climbing, and he even stands by himself for a moment or two (before toppling into my arms). I think he is more excited about getting to the walking stage than I am. As a result I am constantly chasing him around. In fact one of his favorite games is getting me to chase him. He will crawl out of a room and stop just past the doorway and peek over at me smiling. Then he will zoom out giggling, expecting me to chase him. If he doesn't hear me coming, he will pause again and then crawl back and stare at me while babbling to make sure I notice him and then zoom off again. I always make exaggerated loud footsteps to let him know I am coming and then grab and toss him gently in the air (his favorite part) before catching him and setting him back on the floor where the chase begins again. Don't worry, I make sure I'm not actually becoming fit with all this working out by eating pints of ice cream every day.

Some other milestones:
-Signing. He can make the sign for no, more (as in more food), hi/bye. He also recognizes some songs and will clap his hands (to 'If you are happy and you know it') and kick his feet (to the hokey pokey) when we start singing.
-Pointing. He now can let us know what he wants by pointing. If we are too slow to respond, he does a full body lunge and grab.
-Follows simple commands. He can roll a ball to us or hand over X when we ask for it.
-Recognizes all his books by name. If we ask him to show us 'Barnaby the Bear' or 'Yummy Yucky' etc. he will crawl over the right book and pick it up and hand it over to us (well, he doesn't really hand it over, he just holds it up and toward us). We only have 6 or 7 books though so this could be a sign that we need to buy more. =P
-New sounds. He says Da Da and it actually refers to Daddy. He also says quack quack (it sounds like gawah gawah) whenever he sees a duck (of which he has many- rubber duckies, stuffed duckies, and his lovey).
-Third tooth!!! Okay, Mr. Ethan got his first two teeth at 2 weeks and 4 months respectively. It only took seven more months before another tooth decided to pop its way out. I think I see more coming however...or maybe it will just take another year before we see tooth number 4.

In other news, our little monkey also loves other kids and has absolutely no fear. I could have told you that when he first learned how to crawl because he always is trying to dive off the bed or slide down the stairs head first. He loves the indoor play structures at the Club because it is all padded and has steps/ramps/slides/tunnels galore and he can crawl/climb around to his hearts content. When he sees a bunch of older kids playing tag what does he do? Not sit and watch that is for sure. He tries to crawl to the middle of the fray and join in the chase (I say try to because of course I am a wet blanket and will not allow him to get trampled). Ethan's way of making friends with other babies? He first crawls over and sits next to them. After this brief introductory period he thinks they are best friends and then feels free to grab their toy or hand or foot or just crawl over their lap. It's the baby version of a sneak attack.