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...