Hard at Play

Every time someone asks me about Ethan's milestones, I search the blog.  It's only been four years, but memory completely fails me when I'm on the spot to report on when he started sitting up or crawling.  Luckily, I don't have to have that information on hand.  Whenever he did anything new, I wrote about it.  My posts were my digital baby book.

Poor little Everett will not have the same type of bloggy documentation.  There are so many reasons, not just that he is the second child.  We're equally amazed when he does new things, and delight in all of his developmental milestones.  I'm just doing a really terrible job of keeping up with my digital baby book.  It's much easier to throw a pic up on Facebook than it is to find the time to write a whole post.

For example, here are some amazing pictures from when he was about six months old.  He looks pretty much the same now, just a little older.  *Almost* wanted to pass these off as recent, but that would defeat the whole purpose of the blog being an accurate documentary.  Also, friends who have access to my aforementioned Facebook account would call me out, since they all saw these pictures pretty much as soon as Ryan shot them.

A few of the many faces of Everett

It's high time to play catch up.  You know - just in case I ever need to know the dates of all of his firsts.  Or prove that I love him just as much as Ethan.  So, without further ado or excuses, I give you my "All About Everett" blog entry:

Weight:  24 lbs. at 12 months

Height:  30.5 in. at 12 months

Food:  Weaned himself at 11 months, completely switched to table food at 12 months.  Kissed his bottles goodbye, switched to sippy cups, and never looked back.

Sleep:  Phenomenal sleeper.  He doesn't really sleep much at daycare, but he's great on the weekends and at night.  On weekends, he'll wake up at around 7:30, eat breakfast, play for a little bit, and then take a two hour nap at around 9am.  He may or may not take a short afternoon nap as well.  He is usually in bed between 6:00 - 7:00, falls asleep without even a smidgen of protest, and is out cold all through the night.

Motor:  Rolled over at 4.5 months, sat up at 8 months, and crawled at 8.5 months - on my dad's birthday!  To keep the trend going, Everett started walking on his first birthday!  Not as his main mode of transportation, but took multiple steps in a row, several times throughout the day.  I'm gonna go ahead and call that walking.  He'll push anything that will move around the house for as long as you'll let him.  This applies to *actual* push toys, his musical table, dining room chairs... if it can be pushed, he's on it.

Social:  Loves his brother, his daycare teachers, his aunties (official and otherwise), his parents, the stranger in the grocery store that smiles at him... he's a lovey boy.  He bee's-knees-adores Ethan, though.  Everything that Ethan does elicits a hearty belly laugh from Everett.  This has resulted in my boys discovering and perfecting pratfall slapstick comedy.  It's not nurture, it's nature.  I'm convinced.

Speech:  I thought his first word was Mama ("I'm sure you do!" says Ryan from the peanut gallery), but now that I'm typing this I'm remembering that it was "bye."  He can say mama, dada, uh oh, this, bye, and so many other things that we just can't interpret yet.  He has a habit of saying, "Mamamamama!!!" when he wants something.

Other:  Cut his first tooth a few days before his six month birthiversary.  Has a mouth full of 'em now.  At last count, there were at least twelve visible teeth, with a few more coming through.  It's possible there are more, but I'm not willing to stick my fingers in his mouth to investigate.  They call them chompers for a reason!

Play:  Is officially playing with toys, rather than just putting them in his mouth.  Videographic proof of Everett hard at play is found below:



In a nutshell, this kid is awesome.  We totally lucked out.

Cue the Second-Time-Around Guilt!

Wow. On December 22nd, (which was almost three weeks after Everett was born, by the by), I wrote the following phrase on our birth announcement post:

"Birth story to follow soon!"

It's now January 30th. Over a month later. Doesn't exactly fall within that whole "soon" window, does it? Everett is almost two months old now. I've yet to tell the tale of his arrival, give you stats on height and weight and developmental milestones, brag about what a good big brother Ethan is, and plaster pictures of my baby boy for all the world to see.

I posted a photo and announced Ethan's birth on THE DAY he was born. That's right, I blogged from the hospital, peeps. Four days later, I wrote his birth story, complete with more pictures. I blogged about all of his "firsts" a week after he was born - his first car ride, first visitors, first bath... you get the idea. By the time Ethan was two months old, I had written eleven blog entries and Ryan had conducted multiple professional photo shoots.

And here I find myself, three years and some change later, two months into holding a tiny snorting newborn in my arms again. And all I've done is posted one picture and made an empty promise.

Mother. Of. The. Year.

I've totally let Everett fall prey to the stereotype of a second child. You could wallpaper the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel with the number of pictures of baby Ethan we have. I have a few great photos of Everett, but they're mostly from my iPhone, as we've not had time to do any "real" photo shoots with him yet.

Ryan tells me to rest assured, that since "all newborns look the same" we can just show Everett's first girlfriend embarrassing pictures of a random newborn we found on a Google image search, and nobody would be the wiser.

Here's where I ask myself the tough questions: Do I love Everett any less than I love Ethan? Absolutely not. Do I enjoy being a mommy to a newborn any less than I did with Ethan? No way - I may even enjoy it more, now that I'm not a trembling, terrified blob of irrational fears. Does the fact that I've neglected my blog mean that I'm neglecting my child(ren)? Not in a million years.

I have a baby, a three-year-old, and a husband who works full-time (as opposed to his full-time grad student status when Ethan was a baby, which meant that he was home a whole lot more). Our household is so busy right now that sometimes it's all I can do to remember to eat lunch. If I had to give myself a grade for my daily accomplishments, I'd have to say that I'm rocking a solid C+ average. Calculated as follows:

1) Baby loving: A+
2) Big brother doting: A+
3) Daily shower opportunities: B-
4) Cooking: C+
5) Cleaning: C
6) Newborn photo ops: D+
7) Blogging: F

If I have to fail in any areas (and those who know me well will know that I consider anything less than an A a failing grade...), I'd rather fail in items 3 - 7. My boys mean the world to me, and if all I have to give right now is zapped after making sure that they're happy and healthy, then so be it.

So, Everett, if you're reading this twenty years from now, please know that you are so very loved. I can't prove it by showing you post after post about your first few glorious months on this planet, but that's only because I was too busy enjoying every minute.

(PS, dear readers - Birth story to follow soon!)