Mother's Day

Ethan woke up at 6:30am bright eyed and bushy tailed on Mother's day. He couldn't contain himself. I was really sleepy, so didn't get up for another 45 minutes. When I got downstairs he was jumping from foot to foot, and bubbling over. He finally told me to cover my eyes, then brought out two gifts for me. One was a pair of earrings he had made at school (very cool!), and the other was a bouquet of hand prints (that looked like flowers), with nice phrases written on them. It was so sweet! He explained how he had hidden the presents in his stuffed animal pile.

Another mother in our life is the cardinal sitting six inches outside both our living room window and our breezeway window. (I thought she would abandon the nest when she saw how often we walked by, but she has persisted). She laid three eggs, and now has three chicks in the nest, and Tom got some great photos of them on Mother's day. (I sent the link to Ethan's teacher, who showed them to the class, since they had just done a unit on baby chickens in their eggs.) I love watching this momma cardinal -- I think she actually now recognizes Mark, Ethan and me since she doesn't get up from her nest anymore when we walk by her, but she does get up when someone else walks by. The bright red male shows up in the mid-day to help with the feeding. Watching her makes me appreciate: having a roof, umbrellas, heat, babysitters, and a husband who spends the night at home. (On the other hand, she only has to do this for a few weeks, and then is done.)

Here was my morning with Ethan today: He woke up at 6am and whispered upstairs. I was awake, so decided to get up with him. He tried on several shirts and pairs of pants before deciding on what to wear (he ended up changing his shirt one more time later in the morning because he spilled milk on it). Today he wanted to wear jeans for the first time ever -- reason is that he's going to his friend N's house after school, and wanted to be able to put on a holster.

Then Ethan started moaning about his homework and getting hysterical (he was too tired to finish the math last night, so needed to finish it this morning. The question he was stumped by was: his teacher is 5 foot 11 inches -- how many inches tall is she?) He also had to alphabetize the spelling words from this week this morning so he could go to N.'s house after school (I've found that getting Ethan to do his homework before playing after school has many benefits -- he does it faster, and he's not all tired by the time he gets to it. This is somewhat of an issue because most days I don't pick him up from after-school care until 5pm, so he's already had a long day. Today I'll pick him up at 5:30pm). He absolutely loves going to N's house, by the way.

I was brushing my teeth this morning, humming a Xmas song. Ethan asked me to please stop. I did stop, but then he said again, "Please stop." I pointed out I had, but then he said, "But you were still singing it in your head, weren't you." Yes. Pretty funny!

Since Ethan turned 8, and no longer is required to use a booster seat, we can have him ride in the front seat of the car. Today I drove him to school at 7:25am, and he hopped out of the car by himself. He will be tired tonight!!