Dogs, lions and princes

Here’s a photo of Ethan being silly in the car one morning. How he comes up with some of these things, I’ll never know.

Yesterday we had a play date with Cameron, Ethan’s former best friend from school who now goes to a different school, much to the chagrin of both. It was quite adorable listening to their conversation in the back seat. It started out with Cameron pointing to a Subaru saying it was the same as our car, and Ethan correcting him that it was a different color. Then Ethan listed the kinds of cars he can identify (Volvos, hummers, pick up trucks, Audi’s Porsches, etc), and Cameron inquiring as to how Ethan could recognize all of them. Then Ethan asked Cameron if he missed him and liked playing with him, to which Cameron said yes. They both discussed another boy at school who cried, and said they liked playing with each other rather than the other boy. At one point Cameron also declared that his mom could cook anything. Not to be outdone, Ethan said that his mom and dad could cook anything too (if only!). Cameron also said his mom said it would be ok for him to stay over one night, which actually sounds like a lot of fun! Then the conversation quickly digressed into poo-poo and butt references accompanied by much laughing at which point I intervened.

It’s fascinating to me how complex Ethan’s language has gotten. There are still some really egregious grammatical errors, and a continuing persistent confusion about he/she, etc., but meanwhile some of his sentences are getting quite long and interesting. Last night my friend Carolyn came over to visit, and Ethan was able to ask her how many brothers and sisters she has, where she was from, and whether she likes playing on the snow (?). He also uses his budding language skills to direct elaborate role plays in which he is variously a baby lion, a dog, the bad lion scar from Lion King, a boy, a knight, a prince, or a dad. He’ll then tell whoever will listen to take on another role. The other day he and Zack were knights and Zack’s mom Karen and I were princesses. At dinner one night he jokingly told his brother Alec that he (Alec) was a princess (which Alec took very well).

Summer Adventures

A couple of weeks ago Sophie came over to visit. First we went to play at Walden Pond (Ethan’s first time), then we came home and he decided to pile various things on her head and down her shirt (very typical Ethan). Sophie is an elementary school teacher and knew just how to get into the 5-year-old mind set. She also recommended some great books on parenting, which have turned out to be really helpful.

Every day on the way to school Ethan and I drive pass by some cornfields. We got to see the fields right after the farmers tilled them, then we watched as the little corn plants began to grow. When the plants were an inch tall, I told Ethan that they’d be taller than him pretty soon and he wasn’t sure whether to believe me or not, since he thought maybe I was joking. Last night we got out of the car and he stood next to the corn. Sure enough they were taller than him. He said his very cute “Oh” when he saw I was right. Then he wanted to know if the corn plants were going to grow taller than Nicholas’ papa (the tallest person we know at 6 feet 9 inches). As we were getting back into the car, we found some little yellow snails that Ethan picked up and held in his hand. They obligingly retreated into their shells, then slowly re-emerged with their little antennae/eyes extending out.

We also had a big adventure a couple of weeks ago, going down to visit Julia and her moms Lyn and Joan at their beach house in Rhode Island. (Mark didn’t come because he was off watching car racing with Alec). It was the longest drive we’ve taken together at 2 hours. Ethan did very well, and was thrilled to hang out with Julia and play at the beach. Here’s a photo of them trying to catch crabs, which consisted of putting hot dogs on metal triangle thingies, and lowering them into the water where the crabs came running up and tried to grab on. Except that the crabs just weren’t that hungry. We could see them hanging out on the sand, but they ended up running away from the hot dogs instead of trying to eat them. I thought it might be because they were cheese hot dogs, but Joan assured me that the crabs had been perfectly willing to eat them a few days before.

Here’s a photo of Ethan and Julia on the country’s oldest continuously running carousel at Watch Hill. It was extremely difficult to try to snap their photo with the pathetic lag on my small digital camera, but you can just see them exiting the photo in this one.

Ethan had a blast at the beach during the day, running back and forth in the waves and building sand castles. At 10, Julia seems to like Ethan’s wild 5 year old antics as long as there aren’t older kids to play with, at which point she wonders at how anyone could be that silly. Ethan was so tired by the time we left that he couldn’t even talk. I asked him if he wanted something to eat, and he just mumbled “mmmmb” or something like that. On the way home we passed a kettle corn stand which kept him busy until he fell fast asleep. Thank you Julia, Joan and Lyn – we had a great time!