Happy Birthday Ethan!

So we celebrated Ethan's 3rd birthday the other week. I can't believe how much time has passed. We had a big snowstorm here the weekend that we were planning to celebrate his birthday since Abe was gone on his actual birthday. Abe was a trooper and thought he could make it home in the snow but he had continual bad luck. The highway became a parking lot for about 5 hours and the rest of the way he had to drive under 35 mph. Needless to say a 4-hour trip turned into a 14-hour trip. He probably would not have made it home for the weekend except for the fact that all the exits had huge piles of snow from the snowplows and he couldn't get off the highway. Once he finally got home around 5am he still had a walk a mile to our house since the roads had not been plowed in our hilly neighborhood. So he gets lots of brownie points for the effort. It was nice to have him home while we were stuck in the house.

But we did have everything we needed to celebrate Ethan's birthday so we had fun. Ethan was so excited with his chocolate cake and ice cream. When everything has to be made completely from scratch it isn't often that we make that kind of effort. When we got done with the cake and presents Ethan said "Thanks guys for celebrating my birthday, thanks guys." It was so sweet.
Grandma Singletary got Ethan this great wooden castle for his birthday. We joke that it was a present for Ethan and Abe. Honestly, we have all had a great time using the castle as a backdrop for stories, puppet shows, and battles.

So in honor of Ethan's birthday this post is all about him. He continues to amuse us with the things he says and does. I had a video I wanted to upload but it wouldn't load. It may be too big. I'm stubborn enough that I will probably try to load it another time. The video was of him telling me a story. I love his stories. They usually start off "Once upon a time when I was bigger...." Then he continues with pieces from other stories that he has heard. They always make my day. But instead of the video I will just list off some of my favorite Ethan lines from the last several months. I'm afraid I will forget them so I'm saving them here for posterity. Here are my favorites. I may have posted some of them in the past so forgive me if you have heard them before.

- While talking to Abe on the phone "Dad, is it okay if I catch up with you later?"

- When he was told that he had to talk nicely to his dad if he wanted something he replied "Abraham may I have some milk?" (I don't know why he had to call dad Abraham)

- While saying the prayer at dinner he opens one eye and says "God made the animals so I can bless them too, right?"

- While visiting his grandma he sat down outside the bathroom. She asked him what he was doing and he replied "Just making sure you don't get into anything."

- When Grandma said, in a serious tone, that it was time to stop playing and lay down (while he was suppose to be in his bed asleep) Ethan said "WHO taught you to talk like that?" Grandma doesn't get serious very often.

- While Ethan was suppose to be taking a nap I found him in my room with a jar of vaseline and vaseline all over him. He quickly said "I'll get it off in just a minute. I just wanted to look like Santa Clause."

- Ethan is great at learning new words from books and movies and using them. The other day while watching a movie he said "Jesus' shadow is looming over the man." "Looming" came from a Winnie the Pooh book. He also came out of his room one night saying he couldn't go to sleep because "there are mysterious shadows on the walls."

-He has become a master at trying to get out of going to bed. The other night he had several trips down the stairs to avoid bed. Once he said "oh I thought it was morning time." I explained that I would call him when it was breakfast time. So 5 minutes later he came down and said "Umm, mom I just have to ask you something. Did I just hear you say 'Ethan, its breakfast time'?" When i said no he said "oh, okay" and went back to bed for good.

- I love the way he talks to Taylor. She was crying in the store because she wanted to get down from the cart. He looks at her and in a very sweet voice says "Taylor, we can't yell in the store. Okay?" And if I ever tell Taylor no or she gets into something he is very quick to defend her. He tells me "She's just a baby mom. She doesn't know any better."

- The other day Ethan says "Let's play David and Goliath. You be Goliath." I said okay and as soon as I turn around Ethan chucked a plastic screw at my head. I got really annoyed and lectured him about how we don't throw things at people. He looked confused and said "but you said we could play David and Goliath?" I learned my lesson.

- We are fully into the "why and how" questions stage. The other day he wanted to know why boys marry girls and why girls are different than boys. After our discussion I asked him if he was going to get married some day. He said "no, I can't." When I prompted him for why not he replied like it was obvious "because I can't dance." He continued with "I just know silly dances. I can't do real dances, you know, like Prince Phillip."

- In the car the other day he wanted to know what Heavenly Father had made us out of.

- After leaving the bathroom one day he said "Do giants have big penises?"

- While sitting on the toilet he says to Abe and I "can you hear that?" then says "try and smell it"

Thanks for humoring me. I just want a record of these things so I will remember all the fun times with this little boy as he gets big.

Slacker

I can't believe so much time has passed since our last post but I guess with the busyness of work, Thanksgiving, Christmas shopping, and not having Abe around it has kept me busy with other things. We had a long week at Grandma and Grandpa's house for Thanksgiving. It was nice since Abe was working in Richmond for the month. We got to see him in the evenings and he even had a couple of days off for the holiday so it was nice to spend time with him. We are counting down the days until his 3 months of out of town rotations will end. Christmas Eve he will be done and we will have him around for 2 months before he is off traveling again.

Ethan and Taylor did not want to cooperate for pictures. In every picture one of them looked cute and the other one had their eyes closed or something else weird was going on. Finally we just gave up and took their pictures alone.

Abe's sister was wonderful and made the trip from New Jersey to come see us. We had a great time visiting with her. We went to Williamsburg the day after Thanksgiving. Unfortunately the weather didn't cooperate all that well. Thanksgiving Day had been gorgeous so it was sad that it turned cold and rainy while we were out. Abe took this picture right before Taylor peed all the way down the both of us. Of course I had extra clothes for her but not for me.

There is a park near my parents house and Ethan loves to go anytime we are there. Taylor was getting into it too. Even some of the adults had a good time on the slide. I will spare them the embarrassment of posting those pictures.

Poor Taylor, her hat makes her already large head look gigantic. But unless it secures under her chin she has it off in a heartbeat.

Ethan has no fear at the park.

Ethan was a great "help" while we raked the leaves at my parents house. He got a ride both ways and Abe got a great workout.

Last week Abe had to work all weekend in N.C. so we went to visit him. We stayed with two different friends while we were down there and we had a good time. One family had a dog that Ethan couldn't get enough of and the other friends had several boys for Ethan to play with. I'm sure they were tired of playing with him by the end of the weekend but he loved it. He wasn't ready to go home at the end of the weekend. Taylor's favorite part was grabbing the boys hair and giving them wet kisses. This girl is a total flirt with the boys. She is so much fun as her little personality continues to come out more and more.

As some of you probably know, Ethan had a very attached tongue and it made it impossible for him to say some letters and to do things like lick his lips. We finally decided that we needed to have it fixed so we had the surgery done this month. It was very minor but because of his age they had to put him under. It is always a stressful process. Thankfully we have wonderful friends that watched Taylor since Abe was gone, of course. Ethan was a trooper about it, as he usually is. They have him some medicine to calm him before they took him back for surgery. He was pretty amusing. They had poked his finger to draw blood so he had a bandaid on his finger. He just kept starring at his finger and saying "bandaid, bandaid, bandaid" in this really spacey voice. Then he would would ask me if the bed was moving and the go back to "bandaid...." So here are a before and after picture. He didn't want to move it for a few days but now it is all healed and he is pretty excited with wiggling it around. Of course he will never keep up with Taylor and her crazy long tongue but at least now he can lick the batter off the beaters.

Happy Halloween

We had such a great weekend. For the first time in at least 5 months Abe hasn't had to study over the weekend so we got to spend a half day on Friday and all day Saturday together. We have some WONDERFUL friends that volunteered to watch Ethan and Taylor on Friday night so Abe and I could go out and celebrate. Saturday we had fun getting ready for Halloween. We decided to go with a Peter Pan theme for our Halloween costumes. Ethan has wanted to be a pirate for months and Ethan refers to Taylor as Tinkerbell so that was settled. Thanks to a costume from high school I was Princess Tiger Lily. Ethan had the most fun. He was told he could only swordfight with people at the ward party that also had a sword so he spent most of the time just wandering around looking for people with swords. He hardly got any candy, which only makes Abe and I sad since he can't eat it and we were hoping for more, because he spent the whole time provoking people so they would fight with him.

Abe doing his best "angry pirate" face.

Taylor was a trooper about her tu-tu. Friday night I decided I didn't like the onsie that I was going to put under her tu-tu so we whipped out a green dress in a couple of hours and I think it turned out so cute, well as long as no one looks too closely.

I put some gel in her hair to give her some little curls and she worked on ruining her hair do from the minute I put it in.

She loved to eat her wings all night long.

So Proud!

So today has been such an exciting day. Abe found out that four months of studying paid off and he passed the boards! I am so proud of him. He was a little worried after he took the test so we have been not so patiently waiting to hear the results. What a relief! He has had a great month starting his rotations and getting into being at the hospital. I know he will hate this but I'm going to brag on him a little bit. Last week, I think, he was helping the doctor in the operating room. The doctor was letting him do some parts of the procedure. Once they were finished and the doctor had left the room the nurse told Abe that the doctor had never let a medical student do that before. I have always know that Abe would shine once he got to the hands on part of medical school so I am so excited for him.

You guys will have to bare with me with all these random video posts. Taylor is growing and changing so much and I feel bad that Abe misses out on all the fun things. So these are for him. I was in the kitchen today, while periodically checking on Taylor to see what she was up to. I saw her trying to pull herself up for the first time by herself. So I grabbed the camera and was able to capture the moment when she finally got herself up. Being the good mother that I am I stopped filming before she crashed to the ground (actually she sat back down pretty gracefully). I love seeing all the new things she can do. She is so close to "really" crawling but gets around quite well with her little army crawl. Today she was rocking and picking up one arm and then the other. But she just can't figure out how to get it all together.

Today Ethan used his new favorite phrase "Mom, can you do me a favor?" I think he got this from my mom or maybe the babysitter says it. But it often is followed by something kind of annoying like "Can you do me a favor and not make a mess when we get home?" That would imply that he actually cleans up messes that I make. Even when I agree to do whatever favor it is he asks of me it is sometimes followed by a doubting tone and "do you promise mom?" Oh if only he actually did all the things I asked instead of just memorizing them and using them against me. Thanksfully even with the long weeks I can still find the humor in that little boy.

Just for you Abe

So Abe has been gone for the last week and was on call over the weekend so we didn't see him. I know he misses us so we made a little video of Taylor. It's not all that exciting but she gets so excited in her swing. I thought he would like it. I know it makes me laugh. Who knew a baby swing could go this fast.

We can't wait to see Abe on Friday. Love you Abe!

Our New Adventure Begins

So this week Abe left for his first rotation and another chapter begins. Needless to say it will be a challenge since it starts the first of 3 months that he will be gone at least Monday through Friday and some weekends. I'm not looking forward to single parenthood either. But we are so excited for him to be able to start 3rd year and be one step closer to being done. And so far we are surviving just fine. And Abe is doing great in his rotations. He is doing OB-GYN so he has been delivery babies all week. We are so proud of him! Keep him in your prayers as he takes the boards next week and we will be so excited when that is done. Then maybe we will get to see him on weekends.

Ethan and Taylor are both doing great. Ethan spent a couple of days with my parents a few weeks ago so I could get some projects done around the house. Ethan had a blast with all the attention. My mom called me with lots of great stories about things Ethan had said. We definitely missed the funny things he says. He sat down outside the door to the bathroom and when my mom asked him what he was doing he said "Just making sure you don't get into anything." I love when you hear your words coming out of his mouth.

Though we missed him it was nice to have more free time and the ability to get things done. Mainly we got a lot of painting done and we moved Taylor and Ethan into the same room. I like all the change and Ethan and Taylor have been doing great together. Ethan does end up in Taylor's crib many nights. Just now I was interrupted by Taylor crying and found Ethan and his blanket in bed with Taylor. He was totally asleep. We are going to have to break him of this habit somehow. But overall they have been so good in the same room.

We went to the pumpkin patch this week and Ethan had a great time with the pumpkins, petting zoo, and hay ride. He has no fear of the animals and was all about sticking his hands in to touch them all. Even Taylor didn't seem to mind the animals getting close. I would sometimes forget that she was in the backpack when I turned around and she was up close with the animals.

Ethan is obsessed with being a pirate for Halloween and he has a pirate sword from his costume that practically doesn't leave his hand. Well unless Taylor finds it first because she loves it as much as he does. And she loves to stick her tongue out also. I find it adorable because I'm used to Ethan's tongue that doesn't stick out. We took some family photos at my mom's house and Taylor's tongue was out most of the time for the pictures.

Taylor loves finger foods. This was a picture from her first attempt at eating cereal. She would get so excited when she got them between her fingers and figured out how to get them into her mouth. It's nice to have a way to distract her when I need to get stuff done.

So Ethan's new favorite toy is a rope swing that Abe put up under the back porch. He watched a movie where the pirates were swinging from a rope swing so that is all he wants to do. This little video is Ethan once he discovered on his own how to climb up the playhouse and swing off. We are waiting for the day that this little trick lands us in the emergency room.

Our Utah Vacation

It is kind of sad to be home from our vacation to Utah. I'm sure the best part was that Abe didn't study like he should have and we got to spend lots of time with him. But it was a really fun trip. I think Ethan probably had the most fun of anyone. Abe's parents house is like his dream come true. There are horses, cows, sheep, chickens, dogs, a pool, heavy machinery, plastic swords, swings and pumpkin pie.

We went up the canyon one evening for a picnic. Ethan had a blast with his cousin Peyton. Ethan was a little sad when Peyton told him that he "wanted to be alone." Ethan doesn't understand the concept of wanting to be alone but I'm sure he will learn it once Taylor gets big enough to want to tag along all the time.

This sword did not leave Ethan's hand for the better part of the week. He would have it sitting on the table while he ate his breakfast and didn't put it down for the rest of the day. Usually his eyes would barely open and he would mutter "wanna sword fight?" Thankfully there were two swords so everyone else had a chance at defending themselves. They were short enough and hard enough that he could get some good whacks across your knuckle. He was quick to remind Grandpa that "we only hit swords" when Grandpa got a little out of control. Ethan's sword fights involve a lot of sound effects, rolling on the floor, and an adorable little kick. It is really quite a sight. We learned from Ethan that "girls can't sword fight" when he took the sword away from Aunt Leah to give it to someone else to fight with him. We did finally convince him that he was wrong and he let Leah play.

I decided to get a new haircut while I was out in Utah. I'm still getting used to it.
I know I have mentioned before that Ethan LOVES hats. He was once again loving Grandpa's house with its never ending supply of hats. He had about 3 that he rotated between. Usually first thing in the morning it was the "pirate" hat that he would wear while he ate breakfast, with the sword close at hand. Then when it was time to feed the animals he would put on the cowboy hat, because Grandpa told him he couldn't ride a horse if he was a pirate so he had to be a cowboy. Then to the park he would wear one of Grandpa's ball caps mainly because he couldn't sit in his carseat with the cowboy hat.

We all had a good time playing in the pool. Though Ethan seems to have a death wish when it came to the pool. He tried to drown himself twice, unsuccessfully. We had a cookout on Saturday when a couple of Abe's siblings and their families came over. Taylor loved all the attention the whole week. She loves it when anyone holds her or looks at her. She loves to stare at people until they smile at her and then she gives them a big grin. She was loving all the people on the plane that she could look at through the seats or across the aisle. On the flights out to Utah things were pretty slow and most of the flight attendants had held her at some point in time. She is our attention junkie.

This is Abe's dad fixing something on the flag pole. I thought he was absolutely crazy for doing this. Though I'm guessing such feats are somewhat common since no one else seemed to bat an eye at this. Note Abe and Ethan are driving. Stephen wasn't thrilled with me for taking the picture so I'm sure he will LOVE me posting it.

We had a great time visiting our friends Becca, Brett, Aidan and Ethan. Ethan kept wanting to hold Taylor, well he called her "it". Of course Taylor loved it because Ethan has great hair for pulling, which is her favorite hobby. Our Ethan kept asking to go back to their house for the rest of the week.

Taylor is getting enough hair back for some hairdos and I'm loving it! Of course this one only lasted for a little while since Taylor loves to stroke her hair and pull out the clips.

We were lucky enough to be visiting Utah at the same time that our sister-in-law Leah and her daughter, Julia, were in town. Taylor and Julia are about 2 months apart and they were so cute together. Taylor enjoyed rolling on top of Julia and trying to suck on her feet. Can't you just imagine Julia thinking "put down the camera and save me!" I'm sure if Julia and Taylor had spent another day or two together Julia would have learned to roll just to protect herself.

Home is just utterly boring compared to all the fun we had in Utah. Ethan continues to ask to go to the pool or if we have any pumpkin pie (which his Grandma had made for him). Thankfully the day after we got back I had to go to work and he went to play at his friends house and that took his mind off our boring house. I thought to myself after the plane ride out there that we may never fly with two kids again but the kids redeemed themselves on the way home. They were really good even though we had to get off one plane and run to the next and immediately sit down again. So we can't wait to go and visit everyone again. Hopefully it will be sooner rather than later.

An Update

Thanks for all your concern about our babysitter quitting. Luckily we have found another babysitter and she is great! As of right now she might just be around until September when I have to rethink my plan for when I work because she has night classes that start at 4 (which she didn't mention until after she was hired, I didn't say she was perfect but she is great). Ethan seems to really like her and Taylor is actually taking a bottle from her and drinking a whopping 10 oz. of milk while I'm gone all day. This is a record since she was drinking 3 oz at most from the old babysitter. So that is one stressor down for the moment. I do have to complain about one thing with the new babysitter. You know how I had ranted in my last post about the horrible "goodwill" pants that the old babysitter had put on Taylor. Well I come home after the first day of leaving the kids with the new babysitter only to find that Taylor was once again wearing the "goodwill" pants. Either babysitters, by profession, have no fashion sense or Abe is trying to tease me by changing the children before I get home. I will also mention that Ethan had on a "belly shirt" (a shirt that was obviously too small and showed his little belly). My kids might be scarred for life from these outfits.

I just love these two pictures of Ethan. He was watching the Sword and the Stone the other day and he decided he wanted to joust. So in a moment of creativity, a fleeting moment, I made him a little costume. He was just so cute as he rode around on his "horse" with his stick. In the top picture Abe had Ethan make a mean face. He is just so cute.