our little student

On Sundays we have our community group over for a weekly dinner. The last few weeks we have started to also host the Financial Peace University class (with Dave Ramsey) before dinner starts. Last night, Ethan decided he was ready to sit down and watch the DVD with everyone else. He watched for a good 15 minutes and was charming all the ladies on the couch. So precious!

new hospital, same plan

We had a consultation appointment last week at Children's Hospital with a new pediatric neurologist to discuss Ethan's MRI that he had back in December at Cardinal Glennon. We had the MRI done as a follow up after he had his seizure in November to rule out any structural abnormalities in his brain that may have caused the seizure. The results came back abnormal as they found a lesion in his left lateral ventricle. This was an incidental finding and had nothing to do with his seizure. Due to some poor communication after his MRI we decided to transfer care to Children's Hospital before we continued treatment.

Last week we got to meet with the pediatric neurologist at Children's and his recommendation is still the same as it was at Cardinal Glennon - for Ethan to have another MRI with contrast in order to determine what exactly it is that is in his ventricle. The doctor explained to us that it could either be a very benign cyst or possibly malignant. The contrast MRI will help to make the correct diagnosis and also see if it has grown since December. Then we can determine next steps.

I am posting this in hopes that you will pray for Ethan (and for us)! Please pray:
1. That Ethan remains healthy until his MRI (which will be scheduled in the next couple of weeks). He has to be sedated and cannot be congested at all when he goes under.
2. For complete healing of whatever it is in Ethan's brain. We take comfort that God knows exactly what it is and pray that he would be healed.
3. For wisdom discernment for the doctors as they assess and determine what it is and what the next steps might need to be.
4. Peace for all of us. Pete and I both definitely have peace to just take the next step and go from there, since right now we don't know what it is. Pray that God would protect our minds (mine especially) from worry and fear about the all the possibilities of what it could be.

sweet valentine

We hope you all (all 5 of you who read our blog :) ) had a great Valentine's Day! We have had a special Valentine's week celebrating with friends and making crafts.

Last Friday we went to a Valentine's Party with the mom's group at our church. There was yummy food and a room full of crafts. Not too surprising was the fact that what Ethan really wanted to do was run up and down the hallway and knock on the doors and open and close the doors. He did look pretty darn cute in his sweater.
Earlier this week we worked on Valentines for Ethan's friends.
Ethan opened up a special Valentine's Day package from Grandma Sheila and Grandpa Dean.
Kisses to the teddy bear.
We tried to take a Valentine's Day photo shoot, to continue our tradition from last year.
Speaking of last year, click here and here to see how much our precious boy has grown in the past year! Where does the time go?


Today, we had a Valentine's Day party with our Wednesday moms group. Here is an attempt at taking a pic of the kiddos - Jake and Ethan, with Violet on top of the couch.

Happy Valentine's Day!

return to the little gym

We are back at The Little Gym for a weekly class! Ethan is now a big Beast and has been LOVING the class each week where we get to work on new skills to help with balance, coordination, strength and have a lot of fun. Yesterday was a special treat because Pete was able to join us for the class on Valentine's Day! Here are a few snapshots of all the fun that was had!

At the start of each class Ethan does a great job of sitting and waiting for everything to get started. It's fun to see how he is learning routine.
Here we are practicing our "jumping."
And somersaults. Ethan LOVES doing somersaults.
We were especially glad dad was with since all the kiddos were supposed to take a ride on their parent's backs!
Hanging out on the parachute.
There are two things right now that Ethan wants to do over and over during our "explore time." One is the balance beam.
The other is hanging on the bar. The slight problem with this one is that Ethan is so tall that his feet often touch the ground and he can't really hang.
Luckily there are two different bars and he can sometimes hang on the other one, although he still can touch on his tippy toes.
Here he is with his friend Violet.
Just look at how excited our little man is!

snow!

We took advantage a small "snow storm" that came through St. Louis earlier this week and spent some time outside! Ethan had a blast and looked pretty darn cute in his little coat and hat. :)

superbowl party

We hosted our annual super bowl party this year and it was a blast as usual. Since we already had hosted Lindsay's shower the day before which required a lot of prep for this more easily tired preggo, we got creative and ordered a couple of party subs from one of our favorite local delis Mom's Deli and then only really had to create our annual mashed-patini bar (mashed potato bar in martini glasses).

Unfortunately we had a minor hiccup with that as well when all of our potatoes were green green green (which we had learned a few months ago from Russell that green means there is a poison in it - not harmful really unless a lot is consumed, BUT we had several preggos coming and I didn't want to poison the crowd). So, Pete, being the wheeler and dealer that he is, talked to the manager at the grocery store and let him know what had happened and the manager gave us 6 tubs of microwavable mashed potatoes for free that actually turned out to be great! It might be a new little trick we use next year too, we'll have to see!

Anyway, we had a smaller than usual turnout but lots of good food and good laughs.

At halftime we even got to witness a feat of strength when our friend Johnny ripped a phone book in half. Johnny is on the left in the red. He challenged Adam, on the right, to try it too.
Johnny, the challenger, won, which was not a shock, considering the hype.

auntie's shower

Last weekend we got to do a little celebrating of auntie and precious Baby Girl Schmaltz who is soon to arrive sometime in the next month or so! As a side note - Ethan has been getting to see his auntie a little more often lately and so now every morning when he wakes up and we head downstairs he says "auntie?!" thinking that she is going to be waiting for him downstairs. SO SWEET! He loves her so much.

Here are a few pics of the party. Unfortunately I took a lot of "before" pictures but not a lot of "during" pictures since I was hosting!

One of the only real "during" photos. Here is the soon-to-be mama tasting some baby food during our Baby Food Mystery Game. She is clearly deep in thought and hard at work. :)
All in all a fun afternoon to celebrate my beautiful sister and her growing baby girl. She is going to be such a wonderful mother and it was a joy to be able to have all of her friends gathered around to celebrate and encourage her. Can't wait to meet my sweet niece soon!