Hipitus Hopitus

    

This past weekend was Easter, and the Shannon family made the trek up to "The Jerz" to see daddy's side of the family. We all had such a great time, and since we don't get to spend every holiday with our family, this Easter was very special. The night before Easter we all hung out at Grammy's house. We had a delicious Easter dinner with Grammy, Poppy, Uncle Keith, Krista and Jenna. Krista and Jenna just love their cousin, and they play so well with him. Krista even got to feed Ethan a bottle, and the girls picked out cute t-shirts for him. Between Grammy and Sandy, Ethan now has about 40 new summer outfits. We can't wait for summer to hit so we can put him in his cool new board shorts and get him in the pool.
      Easter day was great! The weather was absolutly beautiful, and although we didn't make the traditional walk on the boardwalk (occured during Ethans nap time), we did make it over Aunt Nancy and Uncle Bob's house for the post-walk Easter activities. We had the traditional Easter egg hunt in the front yard, and this year we added a twist. There was money in each egg, and whoever got the most money, got to pick first from the prizes on the couch. It was a very fun game, but the most fun was had watching Aunt Sue trying to get the egg out of the tree that daddy and Robert jr. hid 10 feet up.
We then made our trip over Grammy's house where Ethan played with the new toys that Uncle Keith and Grammy got him. We were all fully entertained at the fact that Ethan is hypnotized by the weather channel.    He will just stare at it for as long as it's on. We think that maybe Ethan will grow up to be a meteorologist. His name will be Ethan "Hurricane" Shannon.

Toothy McGee

So here we are. 9 months old. It seems like just yesterday that we brought Ethan home, and now he's getting closer and closer to the big ONE! He has grown and developed so much in these last few months, and is hitting more milestones every day. He now has 2 bottom teeth (hence the title of this post), and more are on their way. He has perfected the art of speed crawling, and can even walk the length of the couch with one hand holding on. At this rate, he'll be walking before he hits 10 months! He is using all of this mobility to explore the living room (aka Alcatraz) and manages to find every thing that he shouldn't play with. Ethan loves to wait till Daddy isn't looking and pull his drinks off of the coffee table (always a treat).

He is really adapted well to the routines that we've set up for him. He sleeps 10-11 hours a night, and takes his 2 naps a day. Mommy and Daddy's sleep training really paid off, we now can put him in his crib awake, and he soothes himself to sleep (eventually). His eating however, has taken a turn for the picky. He still loves his fruit and cereal in the morning, he tolerates his veggies at lunch, but he hasn't taken a liking to meats for some reason. Perhaps he will do better when he gets a few more teeth and can chew food.

We all can't wait for summer to come. we've been stuck in the house all winter, and we are ready to show Ethan the outdoors and let him explore the world. It was 80 degrees today, and Ethan took his first ride in the stoller like a big boy without the car seat. Ever since he was born, the outdoors really soothes him. This is going to be a fun summer!