Ethan Reads!

This is a seriously proud moment for two parents. I know that this is almost certainly a phase, and Ethan may decide that books are annoying and uncool sometime in the near future, but until then...I'll revel in this.

One new development of Ethan's is wanting to take things to bed. Not stuffed animals - books. Our bedtime routine includes a book right before bed, and he now wants to grab a book and take it with him. (A pretty funny discussion ensued between Brian and me at this. Brian: "It's too dark in there. I think we need to give Ethan a night light." Me: "What, you think he's actually reading?!") It's just so sweet to see this little boy, who used to fight sleep tooth and nail, run (yes, run) off to bed at night with a little book in his hands. The video below shows Ethan's post-breakfast activity this morning. As we cleaned up the kitchen, he occupied himself for a little bit. (And you should know that I do occasionally clothe the little guy. It's just so hot these days that I can't see putting clothes on him until we go out and society expects it!)

Big Shoes to Fill

(OK, so how old will Ethan be when it's not cute that I let him run around in a diaper and post pictures online of him half-naked? When does it become creepy instead? I think it's pretty darn cute, but I'm the mom....)

I can't even explain all that we've been doing to keep us busy since the last blog post in JULY, for goodness sakes. But I'll give it a shot. The biggest thing is job-related rather than Ethan-related, which is why the gratuitous diapered boy picture is at the top of the page. :)

The last week in July, our history grant staff had our yearly Summer Institute. This year's topic - Civil Rights. We've waited awhile to do this one well, and I think we succeeded. That's our group standing next to one of the co-founders of the Black Panthers. Yeah, I'm standing right next to Bobby Seale. Had dinner with him, too. I'm just that cool. :)

Oh, and our Tuesday morning keynote speaker? That would be Ilyasah Shabazz. Name ring a bell to anyone? Malcolm X's daughter. Yep. That's her. Looking gorgeous (10 years older than me and she looks way younger) and professional and gracious...
Our Thursday keynote was none other than Julian Bond. For more information, check out Wikipedia. And when you read it, pick your jaw up off the ground, and come back to this blog, you should know that he really is just that cool. Smart, smooth, funny, amazing.

One of our special guests that week was Dawn BarbouRoske, my boss's sister-in-law. I was one of two people who got to go to dinner with her, and it was the most interesting, thought-provoking, and FUN evenings ever. You can check her out on MSNBC. And she's not just a leader in a movement that should and will be gaining more ground in years to come, she's a seriously cool person.

So with this caliber of speakers and amazing guests, we were just a tad bit stressed out. :) But the teachers all remarked on how this was the best institute ever, how life-changing it was, how they were talking about this one with family and friends....how can you ask for more than that?

We didn't actually get any time to settle down after July, unfortunately. Few people know this, but "summer" isn't really summer in the land of Staff Development. (Which is actually fine with me - I know it's practically sacrilege to admit this, but I always kind of got bored with summer vacations when I was a classroom teacher.) We moved right on to welcome new teachers, prepare for the return of all staff on Monday, outline Fall budgets, etc., etc.,....and in the midst of that, Brian and I both got the stomach flu (luckily it came and went very quickly). I write this in order to elicit sounds of sympathy from all of you, even though I can't hear them. Thank you. :)

But let's get back to the Ethan-boy! I've been hoping to catch these cute new developments on videotape, but can't seem to get him to do them when the camera's on.
1. He sings! Yep, the boy who is making his parents wait to hear more than a few real words can sing. "Da da da, da da da..." All to the tune of either Twinkle Twinkle OR our Clean Up song. SO CUTE.
2. He can drink out of an open cup. There is a reason there are no pictures of this. There are many towels involved in this process. :) Actually, he's really good at it. We're holding on to the sippy cup tops, but we don't use them very much now. (And I'm not embarrassed to admit that I'll be a little nostalgic when they go away altogether!)
3. He gives kisses. These are few and far between, but just precious when he actually does them. He'll grab a face with his two little soft hands and plant one right on ya. Which is when I ask him to do it again and again and again, which might be why he doesn't do it too often....:)

2000 miles

We drove 2000 miles with our little boy last week! And he was really great....up until the last day when he kind of had a cow....but I was pretty impatient to be home by then, too. :)

Brian and I decided to drive to Nags Head, NC this year. Were we crazy? Possibly - crazy and cheap. But it went really really well. We had lots of little toys to give the little boy on the trip, and purchased a portable DVD player for those moments when we could really use them. And he was great! The drive took two days, and Ethan adjusted fantastically well.

The view from our condo - not bad, huh?

For those of you work friends who are anticipating a radiant, tan Alexis, you'll be sorely disappointed when I get back to work tomorrow. I'm still the same pasty white. :) Brian, Ethan, and I turned out to be beach wimps and only stayed out for a few hours each morning. Ethan seemed to really love rushing down the beach to the water, but not so much when the waves crashed around him. I understand completely!

Super-cool beach boy!

The less sunbathing we did, the more we could do other beach things, though! We took a jog with the boy in his little rented jogging stroller....you can see how much he enjoyed it. (Actually, this was the best thing for him - he woke up at 5 EST and couldn't go back to sleep, so he really needed the little cat nap that morning....)
We visited Kitty Hawk Kites, this great store with kites (of course), jewelry, toys, clothing, and a small climbing wall. This picture is not posed. Ethan went rushing up to the wall more than once. I sense many, many gray hairs in my and Brian's futures!
And best of all, we were able to spend great quality time with Ethan's Grammy Barbara and Aunt Kim. He found them both delightful! Ethan spent a lot of time giggling, running all over the condo, and giving hugs and kisses (a fantastic new development!). Awwww....:)He also became about 100 times more vocal in this last week. He has found his tongue, so a lot of the babbling we hear from him sounds like "dee diddle dee daddle da" which I'm sure means something incredibly profound, but I can't translate yet. My favorite latest new vocalization is his version of "Uh oh," which I've kind of been waiting for! (It's not like he doesn't hear it several times a day....) It sounds more like "Ah-Ho", and is so darn cute. I am drafting a complaint to Blogger right now demanding an explanation why my adorable video won't upload tonight - stay tuned!

Our Happy, Happy Jumbo Shrimp

As with just about everything we've done with him, Ethan has amazed and impressed us with his ability to almost instantly love something new. (The new daycare was a notable exception, but he's loving it now - he actually fussed when I picked him up one day last week!) We tossed around summer activity ideas and settled on swim lessons at the Urbana Aquatic Center. We're heading to the beach soon, and knew that we should get Ethan ready for the water. How do you think he likes it?

Blogslacker and the Boy Beat the Heat

Where does two weeks go?! Wow. As always, we've been busy, though trying to stay active and not melt in these 105 heat index days we've had recently. Mr. Ethan is an outdoor kind of boy, and though I like the outdoors as well, I really hate this humidity! We've worked our way around it as best we can, and it usually involves stripping down to the diaper.
Here is this awesome $10 sprinkler that I got at Meijer - little snakes of water that go everywhere. This is Ethan meeting the sprinkler for the first time, and he's not sure if this is going to be a friendly encounter. After awhile he decided the water was pretty neat, and kept sticking his face in there like a dog to drink the streams of water - lots of giggling!
He's also really getting into the car. And I mean getting INTO the car - he still likes his car seat, thank goodness, but now he wants to crawl all over the rest of the car. I can imagine a million things going wrong with this scenario, so the emergency brake is always on, and I am of course always right there for the few minutes that we're playing around. But I have a fun time looking at these pictures and imagining showing them to him when he's ready to get his driver's license. (Which, of course, he won't be getting until he's 30, which is also when he'll be allowed to start dating. Maybe.)

And daycare is going well! He still cries when we leave, but they tell us that he's fine shortly thereafter. Unfortunately, the case of hand, foot, and mouth disease that they had a few weeks ago made it to little Ethan-boy, and he and I have been home together for the last three days. Poor kid! I hadn't planned on this impromptu time off, but we made the most of it.
A goal of mine? To help Ethan learn to color without eating the crayons or markers. The bathtub boat is my latest purchase (yes, from Meijer again) in this attempt, and we might be getting somewhere - coloring on the floor is OK by me, as long as those crayons don't end up in his mouth!

To Time Out, or Not To Time Out?

My goals for Ethan are simple: To raise him to be just slightly less weird than I am. I'm not sure how I'm doing these days! :P

As many of you know, we have switched daycares for Ethan. This was a very hard decision, as we loved Vilma, and she loved Ethan so very much. However, we knew that at some point, Ethan would need a bigger setting - more kids, more opportunities for actual field trips and group activities. And unfortunately, she decided to close down for one of the busiest weeks of my and Brian's summer....so we decided that now might need to be the time for that switch.

Brian and I really like the new place we chose, but I'm not sure if Ethan agrees yet. This is the first example of separation anxiety we've ever seen from him - crying many tears as soon as we say, "Ok, Ethan, bye bye!" It would be so easy to sneak out, but I keep reading and hearing from the folks there that it's best in the long run if he sees us leave - then he (eventually) learns that after we leave, we'll come back. And I think that we probably anticipate his tears and look nervous and fearful - we're going to have to start looking way more cheerful, or Ethan is going to think that we really are leaving him somewhere terrible!

The nice thing, and a total surprise, is that one of Ethan's best friends from Vilma's is actually at this new daycare! Mari was the oldest of Vilma's kids and absolutely the sweetest. Here she is watching out for Ethan on one of his first visiting days there:
She followed him around for that whole hour we were there - watching him on the slide, sitting next to him, handing him little chairs to sit on in the dirt...it was so darn cute. They aren't in the same classroom, but it's kind of nice to think of him seeing a somewhat familiar face during playtime outside!

Now, I'm not saying that they're connected, but right around the time we started making this switch to a new daycare, Ethan started his "I'm independent!" toddler behavior in full force. My sweet, good little boy will now put a knee on the glass coffee table (that he is well aware he's not allowed to climb on), look at me, smile, and climb up on it. When I say no and pull him off, he'll smile again and jump right back up there. !!! Same with dinner time - fling the cup and toss the blueberries...."No, Ethan!" Looks at us, smiles, and does the exact same thing. Are we in the land of time outs yet? Do I ignore this behavior that is obviously acted out knowing it's going to be scolded? Hmmmm...When I was teaching, I was pretty darn good at doling out the appropriate consequence for particular behavior. But this toddler has me all confused...

Fun in the Sun!

We had SUCH a great time in New Mexico! Brian and I took tons of pictures, but I realized as I was showing some work folks today that our pictures have a certain theme - Ethan in the car, Ethan at a restaurant, Ethan at Whole Foods.....you'll just have to trust me as you look at these that we are actually in Santa Fe. :)

I was kind of worried about our plane trip. Ethan is such an active guy that I was nervous he'd be all over the place! (On the way back, he totally was, which is why I only have pictures of well-behaved Ethan. :) On the way there, he was enthralled with the seat belt, the lights above our seats, the tray table, his socks...who knew that planes were so exciting?! The best discovery was the seat belt we bought for Mr. Ethan. In preparing for this trip, I got tired just thinking about hauling around his humongous car seat, so we found this CARES restraint, which is just this awesome seat belt that you can hang around the seat and strap the boy in. Fantastic.
He was even tired enough at one point to take a little nap on me, which was GREAT. He doesn't usually fall asleep in odd places anymore, but on this trip, he fell asleep on the plane trip, several times in the stroller, in the car, etc. We're back on a regular schedule now, thank you very much. :)
Ethan also decided that he was going to be a super cool boy. Here he is in the car (rented car seat) on the way to the grocery store to pick up the requisite applesauce, cheese, and crackers. We made trips almost every day to the Whole Foods store in Santa Fe. I love Whole Foods! We so need one in Central Illinois, but I don't see it coming anytime soon...The interesting thing is, as healthy and environmentally-conscious as Whole Foods is, EVERYTHING has nuts in it there. (Or at least the threat of nuts....processed in a plant where an employee ate a peanut butter and jelly sandwich when they were five or something...) I expect nut dangers in trail mix and granola, but white bread and bags of dried fruit???
We didn't stick with yogurt and applesauce every day, though. There are way too many great restaurants in Santa Fe, and most of the ones we visited had wonderful outdoor seating that we took advantage of. Here we are at Louie's, a place we liked enough to eat at twice! I now have to find a recipe to make Ethan banana and brown sugar crepes again, since I ordered it for the two of us to share, and he ate it all. :)
We didn't just shop at Whole Foods and eat, though. :) Canyon Road, a narrow street lined with all sorts of galleries, was a short drive from Anda's house and a great opportunity for a walk after naptime (for all of us) one day. Here we are looking at a huge pink pig that moved when you pushed on it - Ethan had some fun with that one. Of course, every single item on the entire street cost more than what I make in 6 months, but it was all fun to look at.
We also took the opportunity in New Mexico to visit with one of Brian's best friends - I haven't seen him since our wedding in 2005, and have never met his wife or his adorable son! Here is our photogenic baby at this great Audubon Center in Santa Fe where we all took a little walk on Monday. (Shortly after this photo, Ethan did a belly flop in the dirt beside this bench, so I'm glad I could capture this shot before the tears. :)
The grounds of this place were gorgeous, and the walk was nice, but I think the best part of that day was spending time with Tim, Inna, and Daniel. Daniel at 7 ("almost 7 and a half") is just one of the kindest little boys I've ever met, and loved Ethan instantly. After our walk, the two boys played and played while we grownups talked and talked. I so rarely get the opportunity to see Ethan play with other kids!
Now I can't wait to see Tim's family and my sister again sometime soon! However, I think that they'll have to come to Urbana. I'm tired. :)