Ethan had a very busy birthday weekend!

Friday

Saturday

Sunday

Uncle Alex came over the Friday night to have some of Ethan’s first birthday cake (carrot cake), which Ethan got his grubby little hands into before it was served.

On Saturday we went to a birthday party for one of his friends (born a few days before); Ethan had fun playing with the other kids, and having more birthday cake (banana cake).

Today we polished off the rest of the carrot cake and opened up his 紅包, which he always likes.

Today we brought Ethan to the playground to play on the rides for the first time. He sat on the swing and the rocking horse. He is still too small for the swing (it is sized for 2- and 3-year-olds). He likes the rocking horse; he actually complained when we pulled him off to take him back home.

We also gave Ethan his first real haircut today. He moved and fidgeted around a lot. We didn’t have the idea of parking him in front of YouTube until most of the damage was already done :(.

Before

After

Happy Chinese New Year! Here are some pictures of Ethan with his first 紅包:

His two bottom teeth have come out, and he is a very intrepid explorer, crawling everywhere and pulling up on everything to stand up.

Ethan used to eat a lot in the middle of the night (about 4oz or so). Last week he stopped eating that much, so we decided it was time for sleep training. We decided on the “extinction method” (also known as “cry it out”) – we would just let him cry himself back to sleep, with no comforting from us. We steeled ourselves for two weeks of sleep deprivation.

Saturday night was the first night of training; he woke up around 2am and cried for an hour before going back to sleep.

Sunday night he did the same thing, no surprise.

Monday night he cried for about 5 minutes … did we dare to hope?

Tuesday night he also cried for about 15 minutes.

Things are looking good so far.

Next we’ll have to work on nap training. That will be harder for us because we aren’t home during the day. Ethan currently goes to bed around 9pm and wakes up around 6am, with two naps during the day. His daytime naps range from 30 minutes to 2 hours; we’d like to get those more consistently up into the 2-hr range.

Ethan is growing up! He is now able to pull himself up onto his wobbly legs:

Look to the right ...

Look to the left ...

Climb up ...

Make a break for it!

Given his eagerness to climb, we had to lower his crib mattress to its lowest setting to prevent him from crawling out of his crib and falling to the floor.

I slept through my first earthquake. According to USGS it was a 4.1, centered somewhere in East Bay.

Grandma is such a task master. Even during Christmas and New Year’s break I have to practice reading:

What a drag ...

Ethan’s been smiling in a less-gassy, more-social, kind of way, but such moments are still quite fleeting.

Today had the perfect confluence of events:

• Clean diaper
• Full stomach
• Fresh from nap
• Doting grandmother
• Cowed parents

The result:

Loving Life

I had never known about babies’ gastrointestinal quirks. I think passing gas will always be funny to mankind. I was going to make a video, but quickly realized that it has already been done many many many times.