Just one picture from our visit to the park yesterday
He was in too much of a hurry to use the rail and be safe going up the stairs, so he opted to climb/crawl them instead.
He doesn’t sit still long enough for me to take any pictures these days. He refuses to look at the camera. For a while he would cry when I pulled out the camera, but thankfully he isn’t doing that right now. I was shocked the other morning when I asked “Can mommy take your picture?” and he said “yessssss. Mommy. The E. Pic-sure” And then he proceeded to give me a goofy cheese face, but I’ll take any cooperation I can get.
Snuggling with “cat cat”
And yeah, here’s a decent example of what I usually get when he looks at the camera. He gives a sour face which is almost instantly transformed into screaming and tears. “no mommy da camera. noooooo pic-sure!” This look, however, quickly went away because he was having too much fun playing at the park.
I should really take some time to write about all the things he is doing now.
For a while he didn’t talk much at all, but all of a sudden, sometime between Thanksgiving and Christmas, he started talking up a storm. I have no idea how many words he knows now, but I would say he knows about 300 or so. Maybe more. I dunno. He learns new words every day and his language gets better every day. I can understand almost everything he says, but I don’t know how well others can interpret the Ethan speak. A good bit of what he says makes sense to other people, but I generally have to translate. We can actually hold small conversations and read books and sing songs together.
He seems to know everything, and you only have to tell him once for him to remember. Its a bit scary how much he remembers, even from months ago.
Ethan still loves to read books, and now he will actually look through them on his own and recite the words that he remembers. His favorite this afternoon was “The Very Hungry Caterpillar”. He kept telling me about the “fat catpiller” coming out of the “coo-coon”. And “da egg lay leaf!”
He asks all the time to “go mommy’s white car. the park!”
He knows all the basic colors (red green blue yellow orange purple pink white black brown) and he also knows a few random ones like tan and gray.
He knows how to count from one to ten and will recite them with me sometimes. Generally though, when I ask him to count, he just repeats 3, 4, 3, 4, 3, 4 but it sounds more like this “treee oh treee oh treeeeeeee ooooooooh” getting louder and more insistent with each repetition.
He runs all over the place and jumps on the bed and does kung fu. He says “he haaaaa” and chops his arms and spins around. He can identify right from left. He can stand on one foot and balance with his arms out. That is a pretty funny sight because he concentrates so hard on not falling over. He loves to jump on the bed or the couch and sing 5 Little Monkeys. “no mo monkeys, jump da bed. Fall! bump da head!!”
Tonight he even asked to brush his own teeth and actually did a good job. I told him to make sure he brushed his back teeth, and to my surprise he took the tooth brush out of his mouth and tried to brush his back. That was pretty hilarious. I had to let him know that he didn’t have any teeth on his back.
Despite all the things he is learning, he is still a shrimp. He is getting bigger, but he is still so little! That is OK though. If he was heavier, I would have a sore arm from toting him around. And I would be in trouble when he decides to “stomp da mom” which involves him pushing me to the ground and jumping on my belly. Seriously, jumping and stomping on me while I groan and act tortured. He finds it hilarious! I have developed abs of steel to protect myself from the stomp mom game.
That’s enough for now. Good night!