Exercising Options

It's recommended that kids get at least an hour of exercise a day. I notice a huge difference in how calm Ethan is, and how well he sleeps when he gets some pretty intense running around. In the old days, we all just tumbled out the door and played with our neighbors, even when it was chilly, plus we usually walked to school. Now once it's cold, everyone stays indoors, and even preschool doesn't take the kids outside when it's below 20 with the wind chill (like, for example, most of January and February)

I estimate I spend somewhere around 10-14 hours a week trying to make sure Ethan gets enough exericise -- including driving places, making dates, and the actual exericse itself. I have the time -- lots of parents don't have that luxury (ok, when it's happening, it doesn't exactly feel like a luxury to be sitting there watching him play in a room full of screaming kids, but you get the idea). And people wonder why kids are getting more obese......

That's funny

My car died as well last week, leaving us down to one rental car for the family. It's back in working condition, but stress has been a little high. The other night Mark and I were discussing how much we should spend on a new car, when all of a sudden, Ethan commented, "money, money, money...", in the same ironic intonation people usually use with this phrase. Shocked (since we didn't know he even understood anything of what we were talking about), we looked over at him, burst out laughing and asked him where he had learned this completely appropriate phrase for the situation. Turns out Mr. Potato Head says it during the hold-up in the opening scene of Toy Story, after the piggy bank has been turned upside down.

We went to the DeCordova art museum last Sunday. Ethan did not like it at all. He kept protesting "That's funny! That's funny!" Now this is not at all what it might sound like. He's taken the phrase "Than's not funny" which is what we say to him when we're trying to get ready and he's laughing and being uncooperative, and transformed it into "That's funny" meaning something he's mad about. I think he just didn't hear the 'not' part of the phrase, but I'm not entirely sure on the origins of this phrase, which ironically, is indeed quite funny.

The Ethan's

Wheras Ethan never used to say any articles (the, a), now he's compensating by adding 'the' (not 'a' yet) to almost any object he can. His sentences are also getting longer, as in "This is the butter?" when pointing to aforementioned substance on his toast. Or, "This is the Ethan's?", meaning that it belongs to him. He's also starting to use pronouns, but mostly just the word "mine" to mean me, I, and mine.

My new plan is to get Ethan exercise every day after preschool, since in the cold weather they often aren't going outside. Tuesday we went to a place called "One Stop Fun" which has lots of slides and tubes to go running through. None of his friends were available to play, so mama tried to crawl through the tubes with him ("When in Rome..."). It was actually pretty fun! Especially the slides, which are about 15-20 feet high, and you get a lot of speed by the bottom.

Same thing at the pool yesterday. We spent almost two hours there, going from the kiddie pool to the big pool and back again. It's really neat seeing how much more comfortable Ethan feels in the water each time. One of the lifeguards had to tell him not to go down the slide until the kid below was gone, and I told her he didn't speak much English so she did a brilliant show with her hands of how to wait. I complimented her on the ability to explain so well with her hands, and she explained that she is a sign language interpreter. Oh, and by the way, mama goes on the water slide too sometimes (When in Rome....)

I have to admit that playground politics is a little baffling to me. When I was growing up we A) were largely unsupervised and B) were allowed to touch eachother. Because I can't ask Ethan what's going on, sometimes I'm left wondering who did what to whom when a cry goes out for "stop it!" or "mama!". Yesterday, it was clearly the other kid's fault (in my opinion). He kept following Ethan, then jumping in front of Ethan like he wanted to be followed, but when Ethan did, he yelled "Stop it!" in this really plaintative voice. From what I've observed so far, it seems like today's kids are getting the message to be afraid of everything. Very sad.

Ouchies

Mark got into a car accident Friday night. He's ok, but his car is probably totaled. I felt it was important to explain to Ethan what was going on, since mama and papa were going to be upset, and papa's red car wasn't going to be around anymore. So I pulled out Ethan's toy cars, and showed him how Mark's car had run into a car in front of him. Ethan understood immediately that papa's car had an 'ouchy', and even learned the word 'accident'. He then reinacted the crash using his hands, showing one hand running into the other, repeatedly, saying 'papa car accident, mama car accident no.' (picture the no as a long noooo with a few shakes of the head). We also took Ethan along yesterday to look at new cars. He decided that papa should get a black car, although Mark doesn't necessarily agree.

Meanwhile life goes on. At 8:30 this morning (Sunday), as I was standing underneath the slides at the park, trying to keep from getting wet in the 40 degree weather, realizing just how much my life has changed. My friend Lisa says that there is no such thing as bad weather, only inappropriate clothing. I like her attitude. Only today it was bad weather, AND we had inappropriate clothing. Oh well, so he got sopping wet on the slide -- isn't that what driers are for? Have to burn off energy somehow. When we were kids, we'd just go running outside in our neighborhood, even if it was raining. Now I'm spending my days, driving around, looking for places indoors where he can find other kids and get exercise. Something's not right here.

Later today Ethan goes to his first birthday party (indoors, with other kids, and exercise -- yipee!)

Goggles And A Watch

I bought Ethan a pair of swim goggles at the sports store last week. It made a huge difference when we went swimming, as he finally liked putting his head underwater. The same kid who screamed and dug his fingernailes into us when we put him into the big pool a couple of weeks ago, was now gladly jumping off the side of the pool into mama's hands -- even after she missed one time and he dropped to the bottom of the pool. He really, really wants to go off the diving boards like he's seen the bigger kids do, and we've explained to him that he can only do it if he knows how to swim. Now (happily for me) he is super motivated to learn to swim.

He loves telling people about the goggles. "Ethan small goggles" he tells anyone he meets for more than five minutes. "Mama, papa big goggles. Three goggles!" he elaborates. It's the same way with the little watch I bought him. "Ethan watch" he shouts and shoves his wrist out to strangers. There are two Ethans at his preschool, and he explains, "One Ethan watch, one Ethan no watch", shaking his head from side to side as he conveys the sad 'no watch' plight of the other Ethan. Of course he can't read the numbers on it yet, never mind tell time, but hey, who cares.

Brellas and Bubbolo

Ethan's vocabulary has been expanding rapidly. A few words he's still confusing include not saying the 'um' of umbrellas (I think because he doesn't say 'a' or 'the' before most words (as in 'Ethan two bicycles') and 'um' sounds like 'a', so it comes out 'brellas'). The other day when he was riding on his bicycle (ok, one of his two bicycles), he started shouting 'choo-choo train!' I thought he meant that he wanted to line two bikes up and make a train, but it turned out after some more arm waving and bike pointing that he meant 'training wheels' (hearing the train of training I guess). Meanwhile, I think he thinks that trains have three different possible names, 'train', 'choo-choo train', and 'Thomas'.

The other morning we were getting in the car and he kept saying "bubbolo?, bubbolo?". "Bubbles?" I asked. No, he shook his head. "Describe it", I asked him, but he just said "bubbolo? bubbolo?" again. Eventually I figured out that he was trying to say the name Roberto, a friend we were going to visit. Pretty cute.

The kid actually has a great ear for music and words. He blew me away the other day when he sang the complete ABC song. One month here, and he already knows his ABCs. Well, sort of at least -- he has no idea what he's singing, but he has the names of the letters and the tune at least.

The friendliness I saw in Kazakhstan is also coming back. He loves waving to complete strangers at the store or at school and shouting, "hello!". One father at the school mumbled something the other morning to the effect of, "Wow, he's got a lot of energy for so early in the morning". Yup.

Snakes in Yogurt

When we go to the store, I often let Ethan get engaged in selecting the items. Sometimes this leads to some strange choices, since the selection process seems to be based largely on color. For example, he really wanted a yellow pepper. That is until mama let him smell it, at which point he wrinkled up his nose and shook his head vigorously. But sometimes these random selections have more positive outcomes. Ethan picked out a lime the other day, so we took it home and cut it up. He likes eating lemons, so I figured maybe he'd like eating raw lime as well. No, he took a bite and scrunched up his face. But then he took the lime and dropped it into his water. Smart boy! So we crushed the rest of the limes, and he had a delicious lime drink.

The other day we were passing by the canned spaghetti section, and he started waving his arms frantically and pointing to the cans. I picked up a Spaghetti-O's can, but he gave me a disgusted look and said no. Instead, he pointed to a can of spaghetti and meatballs and autoritatively announced that he wanted the 'snakes in yogurt'. Mama bought it for him, and we'll maybe try the 'snakes in yogurt' out tonight. Should be interesting!

Pickup-up truck

After a busy long weekend, Ethan went to his first day of preschool today. The teachers said he did great, and he seemed to really enjoy it. Only small hitch was that mama brought lunch in a big plastic bag, not a lunch box like all the other kids. Ethan didn't seem to mind, but mama felt like she should go out in search of aforementioned container after school. It turned out to be a futile quest since one can only buy lunch boxes at the beginning of the school year (silly me!). We settled on a small Superman backpack that will suffice for now. Oh, except that he's filled it up with books. Oh well!

For some reason Ethan came home from preschool today insisting that pickup trucks were really pickup-up trucks. We had quite a few (friendly) arguments about whether it was pickup, or pickup-up trucks. Sometimes Ethan is quite insistant about things, and this was one of them. The other was that there was not, repeat not, pineapple in his fruit juice today -- because the pineapple is yellow, and everyone knows that yellow means banana, and an apple has to be red or green. Silly us!

By the way, the internet can serve as a fun kid's game. We look up pictures of familiar objects using google's image search. It has turned out to be useful for explaining the difference between tractors and fire engines, showing him what a harp is (try explaining that to someone who's never seen one and doesn't know the word 'string' or 'musical instrument'), or contrasting pigs and wart hogs (the latter of Lion King fame), and of course showing him pineapples. We also pulled up an entire page of pickup trucks -- woops, I mean pickup-up trucks.