Sunday, December 27, 2009

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.







Saturday, December 19, 2009

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.