Happy Holidays

It's been awhile.

In my blogging absence, we've gotten a few things done.

1. Thanksgiving. At our house! Fantastic. I didn't cook the turkey, but did the sides, and it was so much fun having everyone here. (Especially the parts where they all entertained Ethan while I got stuff done. Thanks, family!)
2. Prepared for Christmas. Sort of. :)
3. BOUGHT A HOUSE. Yes, that's right. We're moving! To a place a 1/2 mile away, but still. It's pretty incredible.

Now, in the next three weeks, we will be 1) closing on our "new" house, 2) moving in, 3) spending Christmas in Cincinnati, and 4) putting our house on the market. Or at least getting it ready for the market, ASAP. The fact that the real estate market is not kind to sellers right now makes us both very nervous. But I'm trying not to think about it and am instead focusing on the excitement of a move to a bigger house. Ethan's pretty jazzed about it, too.

Three Year Old Boy!

(Sniff, sniff) My little boy is growing up too fast! We have a big three year old boy now - definitely not a baby anymore, and it's hard to even call him a toddler when he looks like he's ready for kindergarten.
We had a party for him on his birthday, October 23, with four of his little friends. I have to say, it was really fun. Total chaos, but really fun. While there were lots of toys to play with, the activities that interested the kids the longest were 1) bouncing on the exercise ball, 2) chasing cats, and 3) chasing each other around our little house. At one point I stopped, sat down in a chair, and just laughed at all of them. It was a good time. We had visitors from all over, too - Auntie Anda came all the way from Santa Fe for the event, and Auntie Kim and Grammy Barbara made the trip from Ohio as well. Yeah!

And Halloween is tomorrow! Whenever well-meaning strangers ask Mr. Ethan what he is going to be for Halloween, he has answered, "A butterfly!", "A ghost!", and "I'm three." :) But he is really a dinosaur.
Ethan's school does a little Halloween parade and party - here is Ethan enjoying the snack part of the party. My favorite is the tail. :)

He looks so happy...

But really, he is very, very sad. So sad, in fact, that our kitty salt and pepper shakers are being forced to listen to shameless propaganda about how much they are going to looooovvve school, even though Mommy/the black kitty has to go away and leave them. (Note: You will probably have to turn up your volume in order to hear the salt and pepper kitty conversation, which will make my voice unbearably loud when I come in, but you can't expect high quality film from an iPhone.)

But even with the deep scars I've inflicted on Ethan's soul by taking him to daycare every day, he is still a pretty happy kid. :) He was super sick about two weeks ago, with bronchiolitis (yes, I did spell that right) - a viral infection that messes up the little tubes in his lungs. Daycare called me because they thought he was going to pass out, and he sure looked sick. Pale, couldn't stay awake in my lap or in the car, wheezing, crying. Poor baby. But after one nebulizer treatment, he felt sooo much better. Given his propensity to get long lasting coughs at this point in the year, we (even his super-conservative doctor agrees) think that he will probably be diagnosed with mild asthma as he gets older. Just mild, since the nebulizer takes care of things pretty quickly. And that's OK, though Brian still remembers what asthma was like when he was a kid. (And doesn't seem to appreciate it when I tell him that it's been many decades since he was a kid, and asthma is treated pretty easily these days. :)

But soon after he got better, we went running!
And when I say "we", I mean WE. The Women's Fitness Run was a week or so ago, and since I haven't run a 5K in awhile, I thought I'd give it a try. Best thing: They had a kids' dash right before the run, and I signed Ethan up. You can see that he needs a little help going in the right direction, but he had a great time. After this was taken, he ran that route about 7 more times before the cough came on and we quit running. :)

Again because of the audio on my phone/videocamera, you probably can't hear what Ethan is saying at the end of the race. But he is very very concerned that we broke the red finish line tape. He wants to make sure that they'll be able to fix it. :)

The Wordsmith

So as you may have noticed, Ethan's speech is no longer a concern. He is talking up a storm, and 99% of what he says makes perfect sense. I thought I'd choose some of my favorites and post them.

1. My personal favorite, at dinner the other night, Ethan is dissatisfied with the food that I served up. His statement, "I want another...anything else." (FB friends, I know you've seen this one before, but I think it's worth reposting. :)
2. I'm picking Ethan up at school the other day. One of his little friends is crying. I say to Ethan, "Oh, is he a little sad?" Ethan replies, "No, he's a big sad."
3. Mr. Ethan is going through a phase where he doesn't want anyone to leave. No one. So one of my favorite/sad statements of his lately has been, "I sad to see Daddy go!" But then the other night at dinner, we reminded Ethan that it was Daddy's turn to do bath. For some reason, it's always Mama's turn, so we prep him when it is most definitely NOT Mama's turn. His reply: "I sad to see Daddy!"
4. I was snuggling on the couch the other morning with him. He got squirmy and I held him tighter. "Mama, I need my space!" Already?!

A Real Blog Post

Updates! Fun! Pics of a cute little boy! Now that's a real blog post.

Isn't he the most adorable thing you've ever seen?! I know I'm not supposed to say that (according to my mother, who has told me this over and over), and I have a few friends with seriously cute sons, but still. I may be biased, but I think he's pretty darn gorgeous.

Part of it, I will say, has to be the photographer - my boss, Kathy - who joined us at Prairie Farm with her adorable daughter Katelyn that day. Katelyn was trying her best to tell Ethan all she knew (which was considerable!) about the animals at the farm, but all Ethan wanted to do was dance around the cow, goats, and donkey. Oh, and look at their butts. I had to keep ushering him away from the hind ends of the animals lest he be in firing range.
The cow getting friendly with Ethan is named Storm (I know this because of Katelyn!), so of course I encouraged Ethan to go home and tell Daddy the cow's name. "Ethan, do you remember what the cow's name was?" "Ummmm....cow was brown." Good enough.Ethan also wanted to hug each and every goat there. I'm not sure they appreciated his affection.

Our trip to the farm was actually a couple of weekends ago. Bad blogger, I know. Most recently, we all went to one of Urbana's favorite end-of-summer activities, the Sweetcorn Festival. We told Ethan it was the "corn party" and he was pretty happy to join us for anything with the word party in it. We ate everything that is bad for you, listened to some really loud music (which Ethan was mesmerized by), and let Ethan throw himself around the bounce houses until I (literally) had to pull him out screaming. Very, very fun.
Above is the "before" picture. Below is post corn, post ice cream, pre-bounce house:
I mentioned that we ate everything that is bad for you. Yep. Ice cream, corn dripping in butter, and my meal Saturday was: a hotdog with pulled pork and mac & cheese on it. Needless to say, I've taken a step back from that. Hence my blog post from yesterday. The 100 Days of Real Food website caught my attention a couple of weeks ago when I saw it on Kim's FB page. After reading it over a few times, I thought, "We could do that! At least for 10 days, anyway." But whoa, it has taken way more planning than I thought it would. I never quite realized how much I depend on the quick fix when I'm hungry - a frozen meal here, vending machine snack there, pancakes when all else fails... But I'm getting the feeling more and more that I want to know what's in my food, where it came from, and I want to have as few ingredients as possible in what I buy. So we (I use the term "we" loosely, as I expect Brian will be making daily trips to Einstein Bro's for bagels or Dairy Queen for Blizzards) are two days in, and so far doing pretty well.

While eating "real" is harder than I thought (and disappointingly, more expensive), I'm having kind of a great time getting Ethan involved. I do love a bowl of cereal in the evenings, and all of the cereals I like have a ton of crap in them. So Ethan and I made our own granola tonight! Oats, honey, soy butter, pumpkin seeds (soooo much tasting before putting it in the oven) - and it turned out GREAT. Ethan ate more cereal for dinner than what I had actually prepared, which was fine with me. So far, so good! But two days out of ten isn't much. We'll see how far we get with this.

Real Food: Day 1

It's all Brian's sister's fault. She liked this site on Facebook, which forced me to look at it, which hooked me into planning a 10 day stretch of only real food. When I mentioned it to Brian, he was dubious. I think he said, "I don't want to eat nothing but sprouts for 10 days." :)

So I didn't force him into a full 10 days. I usually pack breakfast and lunch and take it to work, so that's easy enough for me to eat real on my own. However, everything I cook at night will be "real," so he'll get 1/3 of the effects of it.

This morning, blueberry banana pancakes. That was kind of a cheat, since I used non-real syrup and white flour. So I may have to add an extra real breakfast to this week to make up for that. But those pancakes were darned good. Even Ethan ate one! Lunch was a sandwich from our health food store, and dinner was farmer's market stir fry. Not bad!

I have to say, though, that I am dying for a Diet Coke. This is going to be harder than I thought! I like chemicals in my food. :)

The Countdown Begins

I should have posted this on August 13, but as usual, the weekend went by without me even noticing! But in a few short months (six), I will be turning the big 4-0. My mom is nice enough to gasp every time we discuss it, "Are you really turning FORTY this year? How can I have a forty year old daughter?!" Thanks, Mom. :)

To celebrate, I need to do something. Something that proves that I am not getting old and decrepit. When I was anticipating turning 30, I decided that I wanted to run a marathon before my 30th birthday. So, my first thought: A marathon. My second thought: Who the hell am I kidding?! I have no time for 4 hour training runs these days, nor do I really want to spend that much time away from home breaking my knees apart. So then I considered a half-marathon. There is actually one in Austin, TX the weekend right after my birthday. I would love an excuse to go back to Austin - the last time I was there was in 2006 for a history conference, and I really loved it! Great town. If you have to live in Texas, you should definitely live there. But the flights for the three of us would just be too expensive.

So I cheaped out. I revisited the Roadtrip!!! website and decided that's what I'd do. I found a "trip" that is reasonable for me to do in about six months, and I'm going to try to accomplish a tour of Michigan by the time I turn 40 on February 13. So far, I have 2.5 miles logged out of 297. I'm going to need to get a little more ambitious if I'm going to make it by February! Or, I could just delay this birthday thing entirely...that's looking more appealing by the minute.

Summer Updates

So since vacationing, it's been busy over here! Work, another trip for Brian, and (oh my goodness) potty training at our house. Yes, potty training. We have taken the absolute slowest approach to this, but the folks at daycare are encouraging us to speed things up. A week ago, we put Ethan in underwear (and I have the cutest picture of him in his little underwear, but I think we might be verging on creepy if I post it!) and prepared to do lots of laundry. He's had a couple of minor accidents, but so far, so good. What I feel badly about is how anxious the little guy has gotten about it recently. He's very willing to do part of his business, but the other part is making him very worried! Poor kid. And it's funny how I've noticed a little bit of regression - he is asking me to lift him into his car seat more now rather than him climbing in by himself, he wants to be carried a lot more (and he's HUGE), and every once in awhile he'll also ask me to sing "Rock A Bye Baby" to him.
This heat wave has finally, finally broken! Yeah! Since Brian's been gone, Ethan and I have been running in the mornings together - just a mile pushing what has to be 45 pounds with a jogging stroller and a toddler - and this morning it was actually cool. Yeah! Here's looking forward to Fall. (Though it's going to be hard to get Ethan to part with his swimsuit.)
Maybe once Fall comes and we start eating foods like chili, grilled cheese sandwiches, soup, etc., we can put some pounds on this kid. He just keeps growing up rather than out!

Summer Trip #2

As I look over pictures from this last trip (Nags Head, NC), I'm kind of disappointed in myself that I didn't use the camera more! The pictures I did take are awesome, though, so I'll try to describe everything else so that you can all picture the trip in your minds. :)

Given that three plane tickets to Norfolk, VA, a rental car to the beach, and eating out the whole way would be much more expensive than we are willing to spend, we drove to the beach again this year. If I didn't get so tired after two days of driving (each way!), I would prefer this route 100% each year - we can be flexible about when we leave, pack whatever we want at the last minute, and stop whenever we feel the need for some Dairy Queen. I have to say that Ethan was a real trooper the whole way. We packed lots of toys for him, brought a DVD player that we bought specifically for this trip last year, and once when we were really desperate, I gave him my iPhone for a half hour. We also sang songs, talked about what we saw out the windows (which we certainly weren't doing last year!), and even napped once in awhile:
When we got to the beach, Ethan was happy happy happy to see his Aunt Kim and his Grammy Barbara (who he calls Mimi). He was also showing off his best behavior the whole time - lots of "please", "thank you", and "excuse me". They were very impressed. :) (So were we, since we do a lot of prompting with that at home.) And he got right in the swing of things sleep-wise. We had a little air mattress for him, and while we rented a baby gate to lock him up at night, we almost never had to use it - he would come out and say good night once or twice, and then head off to bed. I LOVED that, since he was the exact opposite when we were in Colorado. We all got way more sleep on this vacation!

The beach - fantastic. I love being able to compare Mr. Ethan from year to year at the beach - last year, all he wanted to do was climb the stairs. This year, he was pretty excited about the sand and the water. My favorite video was a morning Ethan woke up fairly early, and we headed out for a walk on beach.

This may have been the day that we couldn't actually go in the water much, because of all of the jellyfish. There were tons! And I quickly learned (and then taught Ethan) the difference between the ones you can pick up, ("You hold that, Mama,") and the ones that we didn't dare go near, ("The ones that have colors will sting you,") so that we could at least take walks that day.

But most of the time we were in and out of the ocean. Ethan was so cute - he loved the water, but was a little nervous of the "big water" - the big waves that crashed - so he made sure to tell us every day what he was ready for, the big water or the little water. He was also very impressed when his daddy made it into the big water and stayed there for awhile - so impressed that he had to report it to his Mimi and to another little boy on the beach. Very cute.

Summer Trip #1

Brian, Ethan, and I are lucky enough to get to take two separate trips this summer. Last year, it was Santa Fe and Nags Head, this year, Boulder CO and Nags Head! Our trip to Boulder was fairly short, but we were able to pack in quite a bit while we were there.
This was actually Ethan's third flying experience, but he was at a great age for me to prep him a little bit for the flight. We talked about going to the mountains, who we were going with, and how we were getting there. Lots of books about airplanes, so Mr. E was ready this time. I fantasized about all of my preloading turning Ethan into a super flyer for the several hours long flight...but he was not as angelic as I had hoped. (But not as horrible as I feared, either, so that's good!)

Besides renewing my love of Boulder, the best part of this trip was that my whole family got to join us. Since I couldn't afford three separate trips this summer, and wanted to see my sister, Brian and I invited her to join us in Colorado. She in turn invited my folks, and it turned into this great family trip. Hotels for all of us would have been seriously expensive, so I found us a house on VRBO.com that was really beautiful. NOT toddler friendly - too much nice stuff and sharp glass tables, but a great place for all of us with plenty of room. Having everyone there was especially nice because Brian was toting his grad students around the whole first day we were there. So my mom and I took a little hike up a very modest hill right by our house:
Now if you have never been, I need to explain something about Boulder. Everyone there is healthy, tanned, and climbing something. Mom, Ethan, and I were passed repeatedly in our short hike by tons of runners skipping up the hills. When we ran into some high school students who were maintaining the trails and asked them where different paths led, they explained the layout but were careful to mention that one of them was "for real hikers". Harumph.

We also made some time to visit Chautauqua, this great area with trails, a park, tennis courts, and an amazing restaurant. On this particular day (we had no idea) there was this children's concert at a nearby building. After the concert, all of the animals came out to play with the kids - fish, turtles, lions, and a monkey who got a big hug from Ethan.

Another highlight (more than once) of our trip was Pearl Street Mall. Fantastic outdoor mall - great stores (I bought two of the most comfortable pairs of shoes I've ever owned there - and yes, I know that loving comfortable shoes means I'm getting old), good eating, and fountains for the little kids. Ethan was slow to warm up to the water, but we forced him into it. You can see that he adjusts. :)

The only negative of this trip was Ethan's sleeping habits. Worse. Than. Ever. Every night we were there, I laid down with him every night until he fell asleep, because he just wouldn't sleep - no napping (until we were in the car, then he was out in 5 minutes - reminded me of the newborn days!), less sleep than ever at night - we were kind of exhausted by the end of the trip! (Brian and I were - not Ethan, apparently.) So our task on the way home became: Wear This Kid Out Anyway Possible. The Dallas airport was kind of awesome to have this during our layover:
But you can see that he is not daunted by the exercise:
We'll go back next year. Definitely. But I'm going to get lots of sleep before we go!

Summer Has Begun!

It really began awhile ago, but I'm going to do an extra-long post with lots of cute pictures to make up for it. :)

Summer is here! And it flew in with a bang. Besides having storm after storm, I'm not sure where Spring was - it seemed like we went from fairly cool to shorts and much sweatiness. But I'm really OK with that. We are so enjoying the outside whenever we can, and all that the summer months bring with them. Examples include:

1. Urbana Farmer's Market - I have been bringing Mr. Ethan to the market since he was a pretty new little guy, and it's really kind of fun to think of the people there who have sold us fruit and rolls for several years now. Ethan is really getting into the spirit this year - besides giving me advice on what to buy, he is making friends all over the place! Advertising the upcoming Blues festival was this character, and Ethan was so excited when he got to play with him two weeks in a row:
I know it sounds very granola of me, but I really love the Farmer's Market and am very grumpy when I miss a day. It's not that I can't get blueberries anywhere else, but it's nice to be able to offer Ethan some right then and there without washing them, and know that all he's getting is a little extra dirt. There are a few folks who bring musical instruments and play for the shoppers, and Ethan is now very happy to drop a dollar into each violin or guitar case. (Which gets a little expensive every week!) We also run into lots of people we know while we're there, which is especially fun if they haven't seen us for awhile and make the familiar exclamations at how big Ethan is. I have also recently bought a bike trailer for him, so we usually bike to the Farmer's Market, have a snack at the Food Co-op close by, then shop. It's a pretty Urbana Saturday morning. :)

2. Our parks - We have been playing some at the park nearest to our house, but just last night we went to the larger park nearby for Strawberry Jam, an Urbana Parks program with live music, face painting, hay rides, etc. We didn't stay for long, but did enjoy a nice picnic supper and a walk around the place.

(Sorry, Brian, I caught you mid-bite here!)

3. No School for Brian! While he has been doing some serious storm-chasing, the fact that he isn't teaching has enabled Brian to have lots of fun with us on the weekends. Here he is trying to wear out his kid before bedtime:

Well, crap!

There have been a few events in the last month that have made us take Ethan's allergy to nuts a little more seriously. One, there is a new food allergy program here at Carle, with a food allergy nurse/patient educator who is wonderful. We went to a community program they had in May, and it was really informative. We learned that:

1. The reason that peanuts are getting so much attention as the allergy poster child is that of all of the eight most common food allergens, anaphylactic reactions to peanuts can lead to death. (We knew that, but still...)
2. No one knows what is causing the rise in food allergies. I asked if my peanut consumption during pregnancy/nursing ruined Ethan for all Reeses Peanut Butter Cups. No, thank goodness. Apparently research was done where pregnant mothers were asked to avoid some of the top food allergens, and all that happened was that babies were born at a lower birth weight. There was no decrease in the rate of food allergies. Cross that guilt-producer off the list. :)
3. Only about 15-20% of kids with peanut allergies grow out of them. The higher their blood test levels, the less likely they are to grow out of their allergy.

So because we are good parents (who want to eat peanut butter) and love our child (and want to eat peanut butter), we decided to check in with an actual allergist so that we could discuss our Ethan's future with the goober. Maybe he would be the 1 kid in 5 who was growing out of the allergy! We were a little disappointed.
Ethan has not in fact grown out of his peanut allergy, he has actually "scored" even a bit higher than on his first blood test. So, no PB, no almond butter, no cashew butter, no walnuts, pecans...and coconuts??? I really never saw the connection, but the guy has an MD in allergy and immunology, so who am I to question it?

One nice thing he was able to confirm for us was that Ethan's egg "allergy" is in fact not an allergy. Just because his first blood test recorded IGE levels to egg, he has never had a reaction to any foods containing eggs. So he's not allergic. The peanut allergy, however, is real - I guess we have to accept two blood tests and a full-body set of hives. Sigh.

Ironically, the day I pulled Ethan out of school early to go see this doctor, a boy in his class had a birthday and the mom brought in the cutest little train cakes for the class. The wheels - Nutter Butter Bites. Now, come on, this is a nut-free daycare. And you bring in peanut butter wheels? There were a few cakes that had mini Oreo wheels, and that was what she offered up when she finally remembered that some kids couldn't have nuts. But they were right up against the others, and who knows what the heck those snack cakes were made out of or where they were processed. I am guessing that she never thought about that, so we did not give Ethan any cake. He was NOT happy about this, and of course neither was I! I spent all night trying to figure out who to talk to, in person or in writing, and finally settled on a really carefully worded email to the daycare. Not accusing anyone of anything, but mostly offering to provide some information, talk to the Board (which I'm on - it's not as fancy or important as it sounds), make a flyer for parents, get the food allergy educator to come to a staff meeting, etc. So far we haven't gone beyond a strongly worded reminder in the newsletter, but it's progress.

My worry, and as Ethan gets older this worry gets worse, is that people think that food allergies (especially allergies to peanuts) are trendy as opposed to serious. Everyone who is anyone has an Epipen, right? Isn't it fashionable to say your kid is allergic to x, y, or z? Um, no. We don't know if he'll react with hives the next time he comes across a nut OR if it will be more serious, so we're careful!

Happy Days!

It's still May! I have a few more hours to get in a second post of the month!

We've been having a busy but fun time. The weather has finally improved, and we've been outside as much as possible. After my whining on Facebook about the Champaign Park District scheduling an awesome Touch a Truck opportunity during the day when I'm at work, I found an event in Savoy that allowed kids the opportunity to do the exact same thing. Here is a very happy Ethan climbing around a fire truck:

We also had Memorial Day off, so we made plans to meet at the park with some of Ethan's friends. Here is Nara leading Ethan to our car (sort of). Ethan was asking for her to hold his hand again when she finally let go and had to head home in her own car. :) My hope is to show him this picture again in 20 years when they're dating and planning to get married.
Ethan is also a big enough boy now that he has moved to the next classroom at daycare. You'd think he was graduating from Harvard with the way we prepped him for it. We talked about it for weeks, he went for visits to the class, and talked about all of the fun toys when I picked him up. (Apparently they have some super fun car set up where the cars go down ramps again and again. He's in heaven.) Absolutely no problems today - he pushed me out the door, took a great nap, he even tried to use the potty! Wow. A growing up boy.

He is also talking in full sentences right now. Last year at this time he wouldn't say a word. Still no pointing or waving or signing even though I was desperately trying to communicate! Some of my favorites lately are:
1. "You not funny, Mama. Just Ethan." Which of course made me laugh even more...
2. "I do not want to go to school!" Oh, sweetie, it's a little early in your life for that one.
3. And this morning's breakfast conversation:
Ethan: "I want jam."
Alexis: "On a roll or on toast?"
Ethan: "No roll. No toast. Jam."
Alexis: "Honey, we can't just eat jam by itself."
Ethan: "Jam with a spoon."
Alexis, getting a little exasperated: "No, Ethan, no jam on a spoon."
Ethan: "Yes! Yes, jam! Not no, just yes!"

Happy Mother's Day

Happy Mother's Day to all mothers! I, personally, had a great one. I pulled the Mother's Day card to sleep in until 7:00 today, which is a serious luxury in our household these days. If you aren't one of my Facebook friends, you don't know that I considered the possibility of selling (or at least renting) my adorable son if he were to escape from his new big boy bed too early in the morning. While he hasn't entered our rooms in the middle of the night, it's still way earlier than usual, and this weekend he decided that the new bed wasn't acceptable for napping. (And that is not acceptable to his parents.) Ethan still desperately needs that nap (and so do his parents) - he was miserable Friday afternoon and evening, Saturday afternoon and evening, and most of Sunday morning. Luckily, we convinced him to take a short nap today, which may have saved him from getting his cute little picture posted on Ebay or Craigslist.

Part of the enjoyment of Mother's Day came from my sister's visit - she completely surprised my mother and flew in from New Mexico for the weekend. Yea! So she and Mr. Ethan got to spend lots of time together. We went to the Little Gym (which Anda could really appreciate, having been a gymnast), we had fun at the park together, everyone came over for brunch this morning, and then we got to hang out for dinner tonight, too. Ethan had a blast with Auntie Anda. :)
Poor Ethan, though, had a rough weekend the rest of the time. Besides dealing with toddler sleep deprivation, he is heading back to daycare with several more bumps and bruises than he left with Thursday afternoon. Saturday, he collided really hard with another little boy at the gym, after which I said, "Oh, he was just surprised," after he burst into tears - Ethan rarely cries when he gets hurt. No, he really got clocked by this other boy. He still has bruises on his cheek, poor kid. Then this morning, he cracked his head on the corner of our table. "He's tired, " I said, when he started bawling again. No, again, he was really hurt. A bruise on his ear and a bump right behind it. Last but not least, he fell on the way to the park. "Just a scratch," I said, before I picked him up and got blood all over my shirt from his knee and elbow. Lots of ow-ies.

Eda Go Running!

#3! That would be the third annual Illinois Marathon. No, I did not run the marathon. While I still love running, I doubt very much that I will be spending that many hours on the road anymore. The half today was the perfect distance, and I took 12 minutes off of last year's time - yeah! Not my best time ever, but considering that I did a 5K as part of the "iChallenge" last night, I'm happy with it. And it felt really good!

Brian and Ethan spent the morning looking for me. :) I was able to catch up with them twice during the run, and could stop and get hugs and kisses before plodding along again. It is really funny to remember last year, and how Ethan was very content to be in the stroller when I met up with them, while this year, he was raring to go with me. "Eda go running! Eda go running!" He was very impatient to join me. (Maybe next year.)

Flashback:
Year 1:
Year 2:
Year 3!

(I have no idea what is happening to my hair in this picture. I'm going to chalk it up to no shower, I had just run 8 miles, and a very windy day!)

Easter Egg Hunt

Consider this our belated Easter post. I'm doing a lot of things belatedly these days!

Since last year's U of I playgroup, Ethan and I have been hanging out every month or so with some friends from that group - two little girls a few months older than Ethan. Zoey and Nara are lovely little girls, and it's really nice to hang out with their parents, since we are all sort of going through the same things with our kids - potty training, temper tantrums, and other things that are way more fun and cute. :)

Anyway, Zoey's mom got the idea of having our own, exclusive Easter egg hunt with some additional friends of hers with similarly-aged kids, since we didn't want our babies getting trampled by the older kids at the park egg hunt. I'm really glad we did this - the hostess of this party had this gorgeous backyard where she just scattered a billion eggs (stuffed with stickers, rings, and other toddler-friendly items) and let the kids go at it.
It was so funny - the group of kiddos was split pretty evenly between those who got it and in 5 minutes had a huge basket of eggs, and those (like Ethan) who really didn't understand what the point of the whole thing was. He humored us, and picked up an egg when we told him to, but he could have just explored the back yard on his own and been perfectly happy.
Please take note of the picture below. (Not the fact that Ethan has reverted to putting odd things in his mouth, like the bunny finger puppet he found in an Easter egg.:) No, I mean look at that outfit he's wearing. I think he's pretty sharply dressed, don't you?
Brian and I went to this event in jeans with holes, but Ethan needed a new outfit, of course. Anyway, he turned 2 1/2 exactly on the day we did this Easter egg hunt. What size shirt is he wearing? Not 3, not 4...yes, he is wearing a size 5 on top these days. !!! He is growing up so fast! And so BIG! No one believes how old he is. And while I'm really proud of having such a big, tall, healthy boy, that assumption that he is older than he is can work against him. He hasn't thrown many tantrums in public, thank goodness, but we have gotten some looks in grocery stores when he's beginning to melt down, and I want to explain to people that he's only 2 - he's supposed to do this! He has been the tallest kid in his class for awhile, which is why I'm doubly glad he's not too aggressive. There are some very cute new kids in that class, and they look like babies, while he looks like a little boy! (Sniff!)

Spring! Sort of.

I was thinking that it might be time to work in another post to this blog, given that it's been almost a MONTH since my last one! Yikes...

So, just to recap the last three weeks:
1. Ethan is getting cuter by the day
I could have taken a million pictures of Ethan and my Dad that day. There is a little park in between our two houses. It's a great little park, and Ethan usually loves it and hates to go home, but when we got there, Ethan didn't want to stay and play at the park with Papa. He wanted to walk back to Papa's house with him and play with the iPad. (Sigh.)

In related cute Ethan news, we had his first Parent Teacher Conference last night. As a teacher, I was soooo excited when they let us know they'd be doing this. A 2 1/2 year old gets a conference? How cool! And it was a real conference, too - she had assessments she had done in November and compared them to what she saw in him now, and we could see all the ways in which he is growing and changing. It was all fantastic news, with a few minor things that irked me (and I am sure the same will be true of future conferences, so I should just take a deep breath and get over it!). Like when his teacher referred to him as a "follower". Now, first of all, I think that term gets a bad rep. Not everyone can be a leader! It only makes sense that there must be a much larger proportion of followers in the world compared to leaders, or very little would get done and there would be even more fighting in the world than there is now. (Just my opinion.) But his teacher (who I really do like a lot, don't get me wrong) was mentioning that in the same breath as his love and interest in other children, that he always wants to be with other kids, and I think that's absolutely great. So there. (You'll have to imagine me sticking my tongue out now. I'm highly mature.) The comments of hers that I am going to spend much more time focusing on were her descriptions of him as a sweet, caring, empathetic boy. Whenever someone gets hurt or is sad, Ethan is right there to give them a hug. I'm kind of tearing up just thinking about that now, actually. What a sweetheart.

2. Spring teased us with gorgeous sunshine and warm temps, and then went away
I actually wore shorts to go running on the day this particular picture was taken, and came back to Ethan and Brian "cleaning" out the car. (Meaning Brian was cleaning it out and Ethan was turning on every button he could find while climbing back and forth between the front and back seats.) No shorts since. It got cooooold again. And stormy. And still cold. And more storms to come. Grump grump grump. Ethan and I are home tomorrow for Good Friday, and I'm going to do my best to keep him entertained indoors with the risk of strong thunderstorms coming our way. Luckily for me, he is not afraid (yet) of noisy storms. Earlier this week, I got him up out of bed because a big one was hitting town, and we hung out away from windows together. "Ethan, do you hear that thunder?" BA BOOM! "Yeah! Mo funder?" BA BOOM! (House shakes a little) Ethan smiles. "Funder!!!"

3. Easter is here!
Sorry, I know that last picture is a little blurry - it's definitely a motion shot in which Ethan is yanking off the ears. We are actually going to do something for Easter this year. I really thought Ethan was too little in past years, but now I think we're going to dye some eggs, stick some stickers on them, and call it a holiday. We are also invited to a friend of a friend's house for an exclusive toddler-friendly Easter egg hunt. I am really looking forward to seeing the little boy with other kids, scrambling for eggs. :)

Eda's Friends

Just today, I realized a sad thing. Ethan's Mama and Daddy are just not quite enough for him. I'm afraid that somehow, two fairly shy people have created an outgoing, multiple friend-making, stranger-disarming little boy who wants to be around many, many, many other people besides his parents. Examples to follow:

1. Ethan's Grammy Barbara (aka "Mimi") came and stayed with us for the weekend. Besides being a wonderful guest to have, she put the Ethan-boy in a pretty delightful mood - so much so that he is still asking for her and checking Brian's study to see if she's there. We totally wore her out - our favorite outing was probably the "round and round" at the mall, but the car trip to and from was apparently just as fun for these two:
While she was here, Ethan could be overheard saying the following things, which I'm not sure we'll hear again until she comes back: "Sweetie pie", "Thank you", and "Eda is funny!" You sure are, kid. :)

2. Ethan loves daycare. I am still not working full time, so I do get to pick him up earlier than I might otherwise be able to, but it's so nice to know that he is incredibly happy there! So happy, in fact, that when I got him today, he was happy to see me...BUT cried all the way home when he realized I wasn't going to stay and play. "My friends...my friends!" The whole way home. (OK, not the whole way home. About a half a mile away from our house I started singing to try to calm him down. "No singing, Mama." Oh, well.) For those of you who are having babies in Urbana, or who know people having babies, OR maybe you just want to check out the snazzy new website they have:

http://www.theccdc.org/

There used to be the cutest picture of Ethan in one of the galleries, but I can't find it now.

3. Last but not least, Elmo is still a fave. This weekend, while convincing Ethan that he needed a new diaper, I was convinced by Ethan that Elmo also needed one. Since I wasn't about to waste a perfectly good disposable on a stuffed monster, Elmo is wearing cloth these days. (He's a very eco-conscious monster.) Elmo stayed with Ethan all day Saturday - diaper changes, naps, and we even took Elmo for a walk around the neighborhood. (That ended very quickly when Elmo kept getting thrown into the street, where Ethan wanted to lay down on top of him giggling. Yes, I said in the street.) Snack time was a little more relaxing:


(By the way, those are NOT Cheetos that Ethan is snacking on. Those are Gerber tomato crackers. Totally different. :)

Wait for Mama!

Our trip to Chicago - two nights, taking advantage of a little time when Brian isn't teaching - was great. Not relaxing, really, but so so fun! Here are Ethan and Brian looking at the big, big buildings from our hotel room:
After the Pack & Play trial, we had the hotel reserve us a crib. Unfortunately, it was smaller than the Pack & Play, and way easier to get out of! I had visions of Ethan climbing out of it in the middle of the night, unlocking our hotel room door (which he can do), and heading down the hall to the elevator (which he loves). So we super-locked the door, put a chair under the knob, and yelled at Ethan every time he tried to get out of the crib when we were getting our room set up. (Not really yelled, but let's say "strongly discouraged".) And it was absolutely fine. No headers out of the thing, no missing baby in the hotel, and everyone slept just great. Whew.

And here is my hotel review: Families, if you need a place to stay downtown, I highly recommend the Omni. Not terribly expensive if you stay Sunday to Tuesday, and it is sooooo kid friendly. The snazzy hotel restaurant has homemade baby food, they gave Ethan a little paper backpack with some fun toys when we checked in, there were cookies and milk in a bag the morning after our first night there, and the doormen and women greeted Ethan with smiles every time we came in and out of the hotel. So fantastic! And being directly across the street from the Apple Store didn't hurt, either. I tried to get Ethan excited about a Dora computer game, but again, all he wanted to do was climb the cool stairs. "Going Apple Store" became a favorite refrain of his.

But we spent a lot of time elsewhere - the Chicago Children's Museum, which had Ethan twitching with overstimulation after about 30 minutes, a jog out to Navy Pier that afternoon, and lots of riding the escalator and elevators at Water Tower Place before the stores opened. All were big hits. At the end of the Pier, there was this gigantic anchor from the U.S.S. Chicago, and Ethan was happy to pose for us:

When we left this morning, we were tempted to head to the Aquarium, that having been a favorite place of mine when I was a kid. But we all woke up early and were a tad cranky, so when we saw the crazy price tag on entry to the Aquarium, we decided to wait until Ethan was a little older and we could really take advantage of a whole day there. We did pack in a lot in a short time, so I didn't feel badly about heading home a few hours earlier than planned and making sure that all of us got a little nap. :)

The funnest and most frightening thing about Ethan in Chicago was his temptation to just take off. He fussed and cried every time we came back to the hotel room, and took off running at full speed every time we left the place. I did lose sight of him once in the museum, and Brian and I decided that we really needed to do a better job of making sure he obeys us when we stay, "Stop!" Right now, he thinks it's a game and wants to be chased. (And since when he runs, we do chase him, I don't think we are correcting that assumption of his!)

Back to Blogging

Sorry for the long absence, everyone! (All 3 of you who read this, anyway...:) I can't believe how fast March has gone. And my last post didn't even include any cute pictures of Ethan, so let's take care of that right now.

(Can you believe this haircut??? He really needed one, but I didn't have any idea that she was going after ALL of his hair until it was too late to stop her. We are not getting it cut ever ever again.)

I have to say that while Ethan is a perfectly normal 2 year old (with all that goes with that age), Brian and I are really seeing his personality develop, and it's so nice to see that he is a nice boy. From what we observe when we're with him, and hear from a variety of people (including strangers at the library!), he plays really well with other kids. He'll be assertive when he needs to, believe me - I recently heard him to tell a girl to "move" when "go, go, go" wasn't making her go go go away from where he wanted to take his train...(That was corrected to "move please" soon afterwards, Mom, don't worry. :) I do sort of cringe when he gets bitten or hit at daycare, because he is always on the receiving end of that rather than the giving, but I guess if I have to choose between the two, I don't want him being the aggressive kid.

We're doing some pretending games lately, and he has done one of the cutest things ever. I pretend to go to sleep in the living room, and he goes to get the blanket and stuffed animals out of his crib...covers me up and puts all of the animals down next to me. I love it! Sometimes now he'll lie down on top of me so we are going "night night together," and that's even better. I usually only get to "sleep" for about 9 seconds, but it's totally worth it.

He is getting so big now, though! He is not our little baby boy anymore, which makes us both proud and nostalgic. I'm so glad when my work friend Kathy talks about her teenage son and how much fun the two of them have together, because I'm so afraid that he's going to get older and want nothing to do with us! In preparing for our trip, we tried out Ethan's Pack & Play, which is the wonderful portable crib that we have used forever, and you can see that this era of travel is over:

You can see that he is appropriately contrite. (Sigh.) I guess it's better that we found this out now rather than in the middle of the night sometime somewhere, but I loved that Pack & Play!

New Conversations

As a sequel to an earlier post, here are the latest fun conversations that Ethan is coming up with lately.

(Scene: A gorgeous 40 degree day...Ethan is dying to go outside.)
Alexis: Ethan, we're going to head home to see Sarah.
Ethan: Sarah. Outside?
Alexis: No, honey, Sarah is going to be inside. We'll play inside with Sarah!
Ethan: Sarah. Mama. Outside?
Alexis: Um, no, baby. Sarah and Mama will be inside with Ethan. We'll play inside!
Ethan: Sarah. Mama. Inside. Ethan - outside.
Alexis: (sighs)
-----------------------------
Alexis: Ethan, it's time to go home from the park and make dinner. We're going to leave when I count to five, OK?
Ethan: OK.
Alexis: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. OK, time to go home!
Ethan: Nooooooooooooo!
Alexis: Ethan, should I carry you or do you want to walk?
Ethan: Nooooooooooooo!
Alexis: OK, carry you!
Ethan: No. No carry you! No dinner! No way, Mama!
----------------------------
He is so fun right now! (No, really. These conversations aren't the only ones we have, just the most amusing.) He is interested in so much, and has strong opinions on everything. Naptime? No way! Fruit snacks? Yes! Finger paint? No way, Mama. But paintbrushes...

"Hug!"

We have a snuggly boy on our hands. I will never ever want that to change. Lately, he's been even more snuggly, and since his vocabulary is increasing, we are having even more fun with him.

Because we are a moderately touchy-feely couple, Ethan is becoming a touchy-feely boy. He knows several emotion words now - sad, happy, and mad, and can usually name them to the appropriate situation. (If he hears a baby crying in the store, he'll pay close attention and say, "Sad baby." And lots of pictures of characters in the books we read are "Happy" - especially the mommies of the babies who are using the potty - we are choosing a lot of those books these days. :)

His favorite word lately is "Hug!" This so sweet, though I am just beginning to realize that he is using the hugs to often times avoid things that he doesn't want to do - like get his shoes on, get his diaper changed, get his face wiped after a meal...But it is really hard to resist. We give him about a million hugs right before bed, and he is still holding his arms out for more as we leave the room - who can resist that? Here he is soon before bed (hence the half-clothed look) getting some much-needed cuddling and saying hi to Papa (Grampa) while mowing the kitchen floor:

Happy Birthday to Me!

Quiz: Think of a two digit number where the two digits add to 12, it's a multiple of 3, and the ones digit is three times the tens digit. If you worked through the math, congratulations, you know how old I am. If you didn't have the energy or simply didn't care, thank you. :)

Great weekend, though! My folks came over for waffles and bacon (yum) and brought my gift - an apple pie (yum) and Brian unveiled my birthday cake (yum!). So it's been good eatin' at the Jones-Jewett household for a few days here.
And Valentine's Day isn't a bad way to start a week, either. I was a little surprised when Ethan's teacher handed me a list of names on Friday - isn't the 2 year old room a little young for Valentine's cards??? But apparently they had made containers (fingerpainted on bags - kind of cute) for some treats, so I had to do something. Enter the crafty blogosphere, and an hour and a half later, Ethan's class had some cute little bags for fruit snacks! I've been wanting to pull out my sewing machine for awhile now, and this gave me just the perfect excuse. So easy and so fun.
(It's good that I'm doing this now when Ethan has 9 classmates as opposed to someday when he has 25 of them. :)

Digital Boy

SNOW DAY! Actually, that should be plural...we had two snow days this week, with the big huge winter storm that we got here in the Midwest. I was kind of looking forward to the 12-24 inches of snow that my husband promised me, but the atmosphere didn't deliver such joy...it was more like 7 inches of mix that was near impossible to shovel. Oh, well. Two days off in the middle of the week - I'm not complaining!

So Ethan and I stayed home together, and had an absolute blast. He is finally healthy, besides a little cough, so he is full of energy and ready for just about anything. (Brian and I shoveled out my car this morning, and put the little boy in the car - didn't turn it on or anything, just let him climb around turning on the hazard lights, finding stuff in my glove compartment, pulling out all the toys that I had just cleaned up in the car...he was happy for at least a half hour. Amazing.) One of his latest interests is my iPhone ("Upon"), and he can easily find an Elmo video to watch if I let him hold it by himself. He also loves the iPad, and you can see that he found a willing partner today (my dad loves his iPad) to play games with:
The problem is that if we let him play with gadgets all day long, I'm afraid he won't take a nap. And there is something required about a nap on snow days, so we are also trying to keep him as physically active as possible, within the confines of our small (but heated) house. Lately he has taken to "dancing", which for him is basically jumping up and down, though it does resemble Flashdance a little bit...(And what he is saying is "Eda, Eda, Eda's dance" - Ethan's dance. :)

Sick Again?!

Yep. The sweet cheerful boy is sick again. I hear that this is "normal" and "very typical" for a two year old who goes to daycare, but in my opinion, this just stinks. We are robbing Ethan of prime sledding and snowman-building weather since he has had a runny nose/watery eyes/cough/stomach bug for the last 10 days to 2 weeks. Brian and I have shared Ethan's joyful bug(s), putting all of us in just super duper moods. (Actually, as usual, Ethan has a better attitude about being sick than the rest of us...)



We've tried to stay creative in the midst of being a little homebound. The above video was the way we tried to help the little boy get used to his brand new sled. When he was healthy for a day, we tried to get him out in our backyard to ride on it, and he refused about a million times. Apparently he didn't have enough friends on the sled riding with him. :)