Modern Art

On the way to school today, Ethan saw a cocker-spanial type dog with long flowing fur. He said, “That dog has feathers!” I laughed and explained that it was just a lot of fur, and he said knowingly “Oh, that dog has 100 fur”. I think he meant that 100 is a lot, and the dog had a lot of fur. But who knows!

Modern Art. You know how you sometimes see certain paintings in a modern art museum and say to yourself: “A five year old could have done that!“ Well, here’s a photo of something that Ethan drew completely by himself (so it actually was done by a five year old) which I think has a lot of stylistic similarities to modern art. “Note the Picasso-like quality to it, the simplicity of form, the crisp lines, the use of white spaces, and abstract shapes” they might say if it hung on a wall (or not) . By the way, just like Picasso went through his “blue period”, Ethan is going through his “orange period”, with his best work being in that color or one closely related.

One Year Anniversary

Today is the one-year anniversary of first meeting Ethan. I have such a vivid picture in my mind of meeting him. My first impression was that they were showing us a different boy first, since he seemed too gorgeous to really be him.

I have been wondering all year if we would want to celebrate "adoption day" or "gotcha day". For some reason, today seems more significant to me than the court date -- somehow more personal and important. October 16 is also my big sister's birthday, as well as Ethan's best bud Cameron's birthday as well.

We celebrated tonight with a few gifts, and we called Tania, the other girl (3yrs old) who was adopted at the same time. It’s really interesting to hear the two of them having a conversation in English. Ethan had a huge grin as he was talking to her. I asked him why later and he said he was happy that Tania had a mom and dad too. How sweet!

Wedding (real) and War (pretend)

This past weekend was Ethan’s big sister Jen’s wedding. Here’s a photo of Ethan all dressed up in a tux for the occasion (isn’t he so cute!). Ethan was supposed to carry the rings, but at the last minute, when he looked at the 150 people who would be staring at him as he walked down the isle, he bagged. He was also running a fever, the poor guy. The wedding was great, and we couldn’t be happier for Jen and her new husband Tim. They’re honeymooning in Disney World, hopefully getting better weather than we are right now.

On Sunday, we went to see a WWII re-enactment at the Collings Foundation in Stow MA. The place is fascinating, since no one knows about it (they purposely keep a very low profile), and they only open their doors to the public twice a year, once on father’s day, and this past weekend. The re-enactment was very, very cool. There was a blue and yellow bi-plane (one of Ethan’s first words in English, by the way) that buzzed the spectators, a German plane (see photo) that took off, and a bunch of guys dressed up in authentic costumes and real guns running around with real guns shooting off fake bullets and pretending to be dead.

It was weird being around the guys dressed in the German uniforms, especially as they were telling us to move back behind the line (decades of movies depicting them as evil has it’s effects after all). When all the Germans were dead (one of them complained to me ahead of time about this), we went to see the collection of planes inside. There was a red tri-plane (very cool), a lot of racecars (which Ethan and Mark thought were cooler than I did), a canvas plane, and a plane that could fold up its wings to fit on an aircraft carrier.

After we do things, Ethan likes us all to compare notes on what we liked best (and the rule is you can’t choose the same thing as someone else, so if his favorite animal is the bison, then yours has to be something else like the lion). After the air show, Ethan chose three things he liked best: the soldiers running around shooting at each other, the race cars, and the tri-plane.