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).