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.