you speak english?

Ethan is definitely learning how to talk! And he's using it to make jokes already, which is totally hilarious. He likes to say "boo" to me, and when I jump and pretend to be scared, it makes him laugh like a maniac.

And today, my mom brought in a hot coffee. She has had a long-standing thing with him where she'll touch his hand to the hot coffee cup and say "hot", trying to teach him what the word means. So today he wanted the cup, and when she brought it near him, he sneakily brought his finger up to it, touched it, pulled away fast, and yelled "hot!" And chuckled, of course :) And then he did it again...and again...and again.

doggies

Sometimes I wish I was a lot better at confrontation. For example, there was a lady that came to the playground today that had her pug dog off-leash. There were a couple dozen kids at the playground, most of them under 4 years old. The dog was bounding around everywhere, trying to lick everyone. He came up to Ethan and before I could stop him, the dog had knocked him over, tossed sand in his face, and licked him all over. Ethan was SCREAMING. I shoved the dog out of the way and picked up Ethan. He got over it fairly quickly, but still. There were dozens of kids, some of whom were already scared of dogs and were crying as he was bounding around all over. AND to top it off, the lady was so...out of shape...that she couldn't even chase down the dog to get it back ON the leash. My friend had to grab the dog and bring it back to her. The dog wasn't mean or huge and the lady was apologetic, but still, I wish I had given her a piece of my mind. A playground full of small children is NOT an off-leash park!!

little fish

I'm so proud of Ethan! We've only been to the pool a handful of times, and everytime we go he freaks out and clings to me most of the time. But this time, he was quite interested and even giggling! He even walked around quite a bit in the kiddie area. And one time he fell and went under, and when I pulled him up he sputtered a bit, but didn't cry! He even willingly went into the part that's "rainy" and totally loved the slides. I think we stayed for an hour and a half, we had so much fun! Then we both got hungry so decided to come home. :)

And now he's driving his fire truck around the basement. Seriously, we have not encouraged him playing with cars any more than with anything else, but he LOVES driving his cars and trucks around, so we just had to get him some more! (hooray for the Salvation Army :) I think it's what he spends half his days doing. I find it interesting that as much as we say that boys and girls are the same, they're really not. I've met a lot of children, and most little boys gravitate towards cars and guns, and girls gravitate towards dolls and dress-up. There is some crossover, and there are indeed lots of things that both boys and girls like to play, but you really can't deny that there truly is a difference in the way they're wired!

Scoundrel!

Ethan is starting to get into EVERYTHING! In the past 45 minutes, he has eaten mud, harassed the bird we are pet-sitting, emptied the DVD cupboard, tipped over a play car, and just about pulled one of my tomato cages out. I haven't minded too much (except when he was harassing the bird and my tomato plant) since he's not putting himself or anyone else in danger, nor is anything he's doing "wrong" per-se. And frankly, I don't feel like following him around the house saying "no!" all the time.

But what do I do when he really is doing something I think is wrong? He was banging on the bird's cage and scaring it, so I pulled him away and sat him down on the chair, thinking maybe I'd try this time-out thing. But he just laughed like a mad-man and I almost started laughing too! What to do, what to do...