First Feedings

When we finally sat Ethan down to start solid foods, he went through the whole gamete of emotions. First there was the typical...

What the hell was that??




However, once he realized what he was supposed to do, he couldn't get enough!!  We had to practically hold him down because he would lunge for the spoon and try to jab it in his mouth.  This ended up being the most difficult part of the feeding, just keeping hands off the spoon.

 Eventually he learned to sit back, relax, and to enjoy just letting the food come to him.  You can't get much better than that!

For more photos from Ethan's first few feedings, follow this link.

Rollin', rollin', rollin'.... Keep those babies rollin'...

One of our jobs as first time parents is to keep a keen eye on those ever-so-useless "milestones". Although, we understand that they are general guidelines and every baby progresses at their own speed, there is still a difficult-to-control desire to see Ethan hit those milestones on time. As such, we have been eagerly awaiting Ethan's fourth month so that he could start rolling over. So we had the calender marked for April 16 as the day for Ethan to roll over for the first time. Well, as it turned out, Ethan decided that he would not be happy with merely hitting that milestone head on, he wanted to be early. So on April 14, he rolled over for the first time. He was a bit shy with it at first and rolled over when no one was looking. His aunt Ashley put him down for a little "Tummy Time" and turned around for a few seconds just to turn back to see Ethan on his back with a look of pure shock on his face as if to say "What the hell, just happened???!!!" Well, by the next day Ethan had the whole rolling over thing down pat and would no longer tolerate ANY "Tummy Time". So at only 3 months and 29 days, Ethan beat the 4 month milestone by a full 2 days. Now, does this mean Ethan is going to be a genius, you might ask?

Yes, I think it does.

Easter 2010

For the last four months Ethan has been hearing about the huge parties and festivities that he gets to enjoy as a Greek, so he was very excite to finally be awake for one of them. Sure enough EVERYONE came, as usual for Easter. Ethan had got hang out with Dad's Nouno, Nouna and Nounitsa, which I guess would be his Nounopous, Nounia-yia and Nounia-yitsa?
       And he got to bond with his own Nouno and Nouna as well. His cousin, Gianna had a great time with "Baby Ethan", especially considering that this was her second Easter and she felt that she was well seasoned in the matter. She loves to play with Ethan and had a blast trying to trick Ethan into trying this years Magaritsa soup (which for those of you that don't know is a lamb based soup and when I say lamb, I mean the ENTIRE lamb... you can use your imagination from there). Luckily he is still just on formula so the little prank did not get too far.  However, Gianna still got a great reaction out of him, classic.

 For more pictures from Ethan's first Easter, follow this link.

More laughing!!

I promised everyone more video of Ethan laughing, so here it is! I am not going to say much because there is nothing I can say which will top how adorable Ethan is when he laughs. Enjoy!

Got Drool?

Ethan's baptism is coming up so we decided to try a "professional" style photo shoot for Ethan's announcement.  The pictures aren't quite professional, but they didn't turn out too bad and I think that they did a decent job of capturing Ethan's fun-loving, happy-go-lucky, loving-the-word personality.  In the picture below, I believe that this is Ethan's trying to be flirtatious with a look that says: "Hey baby.  Got drool?"

For more pictures from this photo shoot, follow this link.

Life of the Party

Mom and Dad have been telling Ethan all about food from various countries and he has been very eager to check it out.  I think, in part, it was because he was kind of confused as to how there could be that many different flavors of milk.  When Mom's friends from residency,  Sarah and Greg, came into town and Mom said she was going for sushi, Ethan promised to be a good boy if she took him along.  He know it was a big deal so he wanted to dress as fashionably as possible for sushi.  So he put on his Burberry shirt and slacks and then threw on his fishing hat to go along with the whole sushi theme.  He ended up looking a bit like Padington Bear, but it was way too cute for us to say anything.
    Sure enough, Ethan kept to his word and was a VERY good boy.  He laughed and played and ended up being the life of the party.  If this keeps up, Mom and Dad are going to have their hands full, if they don't already.

   

For more pictures of Ethan being the life of the party follow this link.

3 Months Old!!!!

Today was a big day: 3 months old!!!  Now why was this such a big deal?  Well it is for several reason:

1) It is the first birthday in which is age didn't at least double.  I mean his first month birthday was exciting because it was his first.  However, Ethan was a little depressed on his second birthday because he was concerned that his age had exactly doubled, going from 1 to 2 months.  Can you imagine if every birthday your age doubled!!???  It is enough to make anyone depressed.  I think to some extent Ethan was expecting his age to double again on his next birthday; needless to say, he was a little apprehensive about it.  In the end, though, he was quite relieved that  his 3rd birthday only resulted in a 50% age increase from the last.  I think he is starting to settle into this whole birthday and aging thing and is now excited that on his next birthday his age is only going to increase by 33.333333...%.  Oh, to see things from a child's perspective.

2) He is Greek, and as we all know 3 is kind of an important number.

3) It is the only time in his life that he will ever be able to celebrate his birthday AND Saint Patrick's Day (one of his mother's favorite "holidays") at the same time.

So we all had a great time and looking forward to the next one!

For more photos from Ethan's 3 month birthday (and St. Patty's Day) follow this link

Aunt Ashley Arrives

This was a very exciting week for Ethan.  His (almost) Aunt Ashley finally arrived.  He has been so excited for her to see how big and grown up he is.  He spent a good part of the time before her arrival practicing his sitting.  When he started to get that down he thought that he would be even more impressive if he showed her how he can sit in a big persons chair.  Well, I tried to explain the size proportion thing, but he was quite insistent that it would make him look even more grown up.

   When Ashley finally got here he was thrilled to finally meet the last of his Aunts.  That had a great time catching up and in the end Ashley really was quite impressed with how big Ethan had grown.


For more pictures of Aunt Ashley's arrival, follow this link.

Sibling Rivalry

Although Ethan is still an only child, he is lucky enough to have a lot of cousins around him who are part of duo: Luke and Cole, Gianna and Alessandra, and Aiden and "Chochilla-part II" (I guess that kind of sounds like movie sequel, but I am not sure what the going term of endearment is).  Well through his interactions with these cousins, Ethan is starting to appreciate the subtle nuances of the sibling relationships.
     The other day we went to visit Luke and Cole (oh, ya, and we got to see Uncle John and Aunt Kris too).  They both adore Ethan and are eager for him to hurry up and grow, so that they can play with him: "Is he grown up yet?" they frequently ask.  But for now, they do what they can, to play him as they can.
     When we got there Luke decided to show Ethan how he likes to rock out to Ol' McDonald on his Sponge Bob Square Pants Gee-tar.
 Well Cole saw this and decided that he would pretend to be someone more important than a rock star.  So he played a Holy Priest, to which Ethan played along and kissed his hand appropriately.
Well, Luke saw that and decided that he could do even better and proceeded to do his God impression from Leanardo's Sistine Chapel.

Unfortunately, that was a hard one for Cole to top so he seceded to his older brother.  They all had a great time and are looking forward to the time when Ethan is finally "grown up" so they can all play together.


For more pictures of Ethan's visit to Luke and Cole, follow this link.

The Many Faces of Ethan Andreas Stoddard

You have all heard me brag about how expressive Ethan is; however, until now you just had to take my word for it. Well, this weekend Ethan's Aunt Samantha visited and he gave her a little show of his full repertoire of facial expressions and impersonations. Yes, that is right, he even does impersonations! So without further adieu....

We all know the smiling Ethan








The Surprised Ethan









The "I'm gonna stare you down!" Ethan

The "OK, you win" Ethan

The "Whatcha talkin' 'bout Dad?" Ethan

And last, but definitely not least...


      Ethan's favorite impersonation....


          (don't ask me why he chose this one, but....)

Ethan does......

Billy Idol!!!

ROCK the Cradle of Love!!!

BABY!!!!

 Impressive, huh?

For more of the many faces of Ethan (and of Aunt Samantha's visit) follow this link.

Laughing!!!

Ethan has finally decided to take his big smile to the next level with a beautiful little laugh. He is still working on it so it doesn't come out as frequently as we would like, but on rare special occasions it does come out. To further complicate things, he always gets distracted whenever we take out the camera making the capture of these rare events incredibly difficult. However, we were able to successfully capture a few in this clip. We will keep on trying and upload more as they become available.

The Philadelphia Flower Show

Despite the fact that both Elena and myself have lived in Philadelphia for longer than we care to admit, there are few standard Philly events which neither one of us has ever been to.  We figure that now that we have Ethan, we need to start exposing him to as much as possible.  No more excuse for not going.  So last weekend, we finally went to the Philadelphia Flower Show.  It was the first thing that we have done as a family for which it was the first time for ALL of us.  Mom and Dad had a great time, but Ethan seemed more interested in sleeping.  Oh well, I guess we will have to try again next year.

      Dad especially had a good time playing with his new camera.  For more photos from the Flower Show, follow the link below.  Just a warning, though, there really aren't too many photos of Ethan this time.  This is more of an excuse for Dad to show of some of the pictures that he is particularly proud of.  Hope you all enjoy.  More of Ethan on the way....

For more photos, go here...

Sitting and Standing!

Ethan seems to be growing faster than we ever imagined. From day 1 he was holding his head up and at only two and half months he can sit up...

and is even pulling himself up to standing. He is so proud when he does and gets so excited to look around at the world from higher up. He gets that huge grin on his face and at times will even get angry if you leave him sitting for too long! It seems like it won't be long until he is running around. Look out Mom and Dad!

Alessandra Eleni Chiaravalloti is Born!!!

This was a VERY exciting weekend!  Ethan's newest cousin Alessandra Eleni Chiaravalloti was born on 2/18/2010.  Mother and daughter are doing well and got to go home on Saturday.  Luckily, they made a quick stop to Yiayia's where we finally got meet the newest member of the family.  She is absolutely adorable.

Ethan was very excited to finally be "the big cousin". He spent the afternoon telling Alessandra all the things she had to look forward to in the next two months such as how to best handle difficult parents who just won't do what you are crying for them to do, and how to mess with Mom and Dad at the changing table (be careful Mike and Ariana, she learned from the best!).  He was a bit disappointed that she slept through much of his advice, but didn't take it personally.  Infants these days!

For more photos of Alassandra go here.

 

Ethan's First Piano Lesson

For weeks now Ethan has been asking about the strange, big, black, boxy looking thing at the bottom of the stairs so we finally gave Ethan his very first piano lesson.  He was pretty interested in hearing the Moonlight Sonata and Fur Elise but then he started to get a bit bored.  However, when Dad switch gears and started playing (and singing) Ol' McDonald, his eyes lit up!  Move over Beethoven!!!



For more pictures of Ethan's first piano lesson, go here.

Telegadis Boys' Surpirse Visit

We had a surprise visit from the Telegadis Cousins the other day and had a blast. We had missed Lukes birthday a few weeks back because of a HUGE storm so it gave us the chance to celebrate, sing "Happy Birthday" and open presents. Ethan was so excited that after an hour or so of playing he passed out from exhaustion. Ethan had a great time, though and is looking forward to playing more with his big cousins Luke and Cole

For more photos, go here.

Ethan's First Play-Date

Ethan was very excited to have his very first play date yesterday with Mommy's Co-Fellow's Daughter, Farida.  He was initially concerned to be going out on a date with a girl who was a month and half younger than him.  I tried to explain that six weeks was not a big difference, but when he pointed out that at his age (ie two months), two weeks is actually 1/4 his age, I didn't have much to argue with.  When he put it that way, it would be like a 30 year old dating a 120 year old.  Well he eventually agreed to go and ended up having a great time.  Ethan, Farida, and the two parents went out to a nice Indian restaurant where both Ethan and Farida had a friendly competition as to who could  sleep the deepest throughout the entire dinner.  We then accompanied the two kids up to her place where Farida was kind enough let Ethan swing in her Little Lamb Swing making him feel just at home (he has the exact same one).  After nap-time the date was over and Ethan agreed that he had a great time.

For more photos of Ethan's first play-date, go here

Ethan Finds his Voice

Perhaps one of the most frequent comments I hear about Ethan is what an amazing smile he has and how expressive his face is. Well he is now working on taking that to the next level and is starting to practice using his voice. Mostly he like to talk to his two best friends, the Baby Einstein Under the Sea Octopus and the Baby Einstein Around the Worlds Bouncer Lion (and for those of you wondering, no I have no financial connection to Baby Einstein, Ethan just seems to really like them). I am not sure why he talks more to a toy Octopus and Lion. Perhaps when he hangs out with them he feels obligated to fill the silence since they seem to be unable to talk all together (or even make sounds for that matter). Just another example of how mature he is: when the threat of a potential uncomfortable silence looms, Ethan steps up to the plate, finds his voice, and fills the silence with his cooing so that Mr. Lion and Mr. Octopus don't feel awkward about their complete lack of vocal cords. Pretty impressive for a 2 month old, I think.

For more videos of Ethan, go here.

For more videos of Ethan, go here.

Ethan's 40 days

This Sunday Ethan was presented to Greek Orthodox Church for his 40 days.  In actuality, he was really 46 days at the time.  Although part of him was a bit annoyed that we were 6 days late, he understands that tardiness is probably in his genes so there is only so much he can fight it.  Both his parents are notoriously late for things, you see.  They were even late for their own wedding for goodness sakes!  So Ethan did a great job for his first time in church.  He slept through most of the ceremony and then was wide awake for his presentation.  His mother was a little jealous that he got to get a peak behind the alter, which she is very interested in seeing.  However, apparently there are some top secret something-or-others back there and Ethan was asked not to reveal those secrets.  So far he is keeping his silence like a champ.  He definitely knows how to guard important secrets; admirable, I might say.

     Ethan had a great time hanging out with his Yia-yia, pro-yiayia, his Nouna and Nouno, Cousin Gianna and of course is Uncle Peter.  He also got to meet his Uncle Jake for the first time and learned his first handful of old Jewish jokes (a must have for any child with a sense of humor like Ethan).  Mazeltov Koukliki mou!

For more pictures from Ethan's 40 days follow this link.
  

Grandpa Visits

This week grandpa came to visit. And with it Ethan's musical journey progressed from Lady Gaga (via Mommy and Aunt Helena) and Pearl Jam and Pink Floyd (via ,Daddy of course) to include Mozart, Beethoven, Puccini, and other classical composers. This also gave Mommy and Daddy a much needed break from the repetitive tunes of Ethan's Baby Einstein Around the World Bouncer.

We all had a wonderful time with Grandpa and were sad to see him leave. We are looking forward to Ethan's first trip to California this summer to see everyone again.

For photos of Grandpa's visit, follow this link.

Aunt Helena visits

Aunt Helena came to visits this week and gave Ethan his first glimpse into artistic genius. As a "Welcome-to-the-World" gift she agreed to paint a painting for Ethan. What she created was by no means short of the most brilliantly, artistic, and creative scene of Pooh (the bear that is). In the mean while, Ethan learned about sketching, composition, how to use techniques such as hue and line to create feeling and emotion, and other techniques far beyond the comprehension of his parents. Ethan watched in awe, absorbing it all like the little sponge that he is; you could tell by the serene silence that overcame him as he watched is Aunt work. Now how did this "serene" silence differ from "I'm-an-infant-and-can't-talk-anyway" silence? Well it was subtle and pretty much indescribable. But trust me it was definitely there.
I am his father... I know these things.

Trust me.



For more photos of Helena's visit, follow this link.

Definately NOT gas!

Why is it that whenever an infant smiles people always say the same thing: "Oh, it's just gas". Is that meant to suggest that their smiling is just a reflex? Or perhaps that as an infant the only joy that he can experience is from farting. And if it is the later, is that such a bad thing? I know a lot of adult men who still get a goofy grin on their face whenever they break wind. Perhaps when Ethan would smile while passing gas he was really just showing its maturity, trying to fit in with adult male society in the only way he knows how. He really is quite advanced for his age, you see.
Well the days of "It is just gas" are officially over! That is right, Ethan is now smiling socially; there is no doubt about it. All you have to do is Ohh and Ahh and the biggest grin you ever saw, from such a tiny mouth, would creep across Ethan's face. It is definitely NOT gas anymore (although he does still seem to get joy from going to the bathroom on Mommy and Daddy whenever they let their guard down. He seems to know that poopie jokes are timeless so he is starting to practice early.)

For more photos of Ethan smiling (not from gas) follow this link.

Sweet Dreams

At only a few weeks old Ethan is proving himself to be a very happy child. Even in his sleep he has dreams which bring a huge grin to his face and warms the hearts of those who get to witness it.


For those of you who ever question the nature of humanity and our inherent good or evil, look no further than a sleeping Child. Amid the pristine slate of an infant you can see first hand the happiness at the core of our souls. Our goal in life, and as parents, is to ensure that it is never lost and that Ethan can continue to spread his happiness to others even after he becomes aware of the harshness present in the world. If he can keep that joy throughout life, then I will consider our jobs as parents a success.

Christmas Continues

So after an action packed Christmas at Yia-yia's house Ethan was visited by his cousins Aiden and Gianna who were kind enough to give Ethan his very first dancing lesson.
Aunty Angela and Uncle lack were also there for the week helping Mommy and Daddy out and of course showering Ethan with a never ending supply of love and effection.


Aunt Alexis and Uncle Don as well as Aunt Tanya and Uncle Dimitri were also able to join the party and contribute to the never ending Christmas. Our only fear is that once Christmas is over, Ethan will be upset because by that time, he will have been celebrating Christmas for the majority of his life. When pretty much your entire life has been Christmas and suddenly it is over... well I can't imagine. We will just have to look forward to next Christmas.





For more pictures of Ethan's post-Christmas through New Year, follow this link.