First Month

Well, we have now officially made it through our first month as parents. Ethan is 4 weeks old now and doing well. TJ is back to work 6 to 7 days a week and I'm adjusting to life here at home- trying to find the balance of taking care of Ethan and getting chores done and food made. It's a whole new world and finding what our new normal is will take a while I think. I am off work through the end of January for sure. I hope to be off through the middle of February but we'll see. Here are some highlights of the last month:

Ethan has a had a lot of firsts: first car ride, first doctor's visit, first bath, and really anything else that he does is a first!

He also had his first Christmas!

My mom was able to come visit us when Ethan was born. It was great having her here to help in those first sleepy ouchy weeks home from the hospital.

This is our core family here- Craig & Donna w/Natalie in the middle and Bryan & Lisa w/Issac on the right. Each of the kids is spaced out about 2 - 3 months.

He has had several sets of visitors. I think this is a cute photo of Scott, Wes and Ethan. Wes was 6 months in the womb when I moved to Portland and is now six years old!!

This is my friend Katie with her new son Caleb. Ben & Katie had Caleb exactly two weeks after Ethan was born. We are excited to see our sons grow up together.

Ethan was introduced to our church family the first Sunday in January. At our church the baby is announced and then the father walks down with the child to pick up a rose from one of the pastors. This was our rose. It was great to see TJ go get our rose.

I'm learning different wraps (thanks Adele for this wrap!) to carry Ethan in. It's great to be able to wrap him up and get things done- we're both quite happy with the arrangement and from all the studies done on carrying I'm doing good things for him too!

I celebrated my 31st birthday this month. Lisa & Donna came over and treated me to supper and an ice cream cake!

Ethan is becoming more and more alert as the days pass. It's fun to see him grow and change.

I will continue to update photos of Ethan to our picasa web album here (scroll down to end for most current photos): http://picasaweb.google.com/tjandcheryl/EthanWillard?authkey=Gv1sRgCMCO7Yap87fjEg#

That's about it for the updates. I'll probably be updating this blog monthly for a while, but will update our photo sites weekly.