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. :)