Overdue... lots of pictures

Ethan asked me to draw a picture of him dinner on the children's menu the other week... he was being so well behaved this is what came out of me.

Playing at the park.

Ethan and his friend Asa

Same... they're the two in the middle holding hands

With his easter eggs

Dying the easter eggs

Blue popsicle or sucker... i can't remember which. He was pretty proud of himself either way.

This was a LONG time ago. It was still wintery... Ethan was supposed to be napping. Instead, I walked in and found this.

Easter

Finding his easter basket

Finding eggs

More Ethan/Asa

Riding his trike

Turns out white men can jump...

His new scooter

Picking and smelling dandelions.

The bucks never stood a chance...

I'd bet every dollar I have we were watching spongebob.

The new park... or Ethan calls it, the 'red park'.

Same

Chuck E Cheese with mom and dad

Papa and Ethan driving the semi

Apparently no smiles during this game... our business was killin'... and business was good.

Ellen's birthday.

More Chuck E Cheese

Same

Well, to say this is a little overdue is like saying the new healthcare plan is just going to cost us taxpaying citizens just a little bit of money. I’m going to contribute my lack of posting to being busy, having nice weather and my default excuse of laziness. It stays light now until Ethan’s bedtime so we’ve been spending a lot of time outside and then when he’s finally down I don’t have the energy to write one of these.

Obviously a lot has happened since I last updated. There may have still been snow on the ground when I did… I can’t remember. Ethan continues to be… well, himself. He’s very sweet, loving, funny and an incredible booger all rolled up into one little blond haired, blue eyed boy. I think now more than even he is convinced he is the funniest person on the planet. He does totally random and/or naughty things, looks you right in the eye and busts out laughing. For the most part, when he’s not being naughty, it is really entertaining. He is still very hesitant in social settings I’ve noticed. Every time we’re at the park he kind of takes some time when we first get there to assess the kids already there and who he feels like will be good playing partners. After that he really only wants to play where the other kids are. He seems to really enjoy following the big kids around and doing what they do. He’s getting braver though which means I can convince him to do things he probably shouldn’t like go down this really steep slide head first. Seemed like a good idea to me until he launched off the end of it and face planted into the wood chips. He got up laughing though. Speaking of which, what is the deal with wood chips in parks now? You can’t run barefoot on woodchips. What’s wrong with a big pile of sand like when we were kids? I’m tempted to Google to find out why but I think the reason would just get me all wound up.

Let’s see… Ethan attended quite a few of my hockey games as the season wound down. It was fun to look over and see him watching while I was out playing. He continues to get more and more interested in the game which I really enjoy. We’ve gotten back to playing on the driveway with the weather being nice again. Sadly, he still weight less than 30 pounds. I’m really going to need him to bulk up. Even a puck-moving, offensive minded defensemen has to have more bulk than that or he’ll get worked in the corners. I don’t know how he doesn’t put on weight. All he eats is fat filled foods and fruit. Any other normal human being would be perpetually wearing sweat pants and waddling if they ate what he ate. I’d be lying if I said it didn’t piss me off a little…

A couple weeks back my parents came down for the weekend. Well, mom came down on Wednesday night and she spent Thursday and Friday watching Ethan while we were at work. She had a blast. Though, she’s around him only enough to think that it’s funny when he’s naughty. She doesn’t deal with it daily to the point you want to pull your hair out. I really hope the switch to logical thinking inside his head turns itself on pretty soon. Anyway, Papa came down Friday after work and we spent Friday night in the pool with 8-10 girls around the age of 12 I’m guessing. Even now just thinking about how loud it was in the room makes my ears bleed. Each girl out trying to out scream/out yell the next. I couldn’t hear myself think. I’ve decided when I become king of the world I will ban girls from congregating in groups of more than 3. It’s just better that way. Saturday morning we went back to Chuck E Cheese. We got there early enough that it was pretty dead so that was nice. After nap time it was back to the pool. Sunday morning we got some breakfast and then went back to the pool one more time before papa and grandma headed back to MN.

The week before Easter we dyed some easter eggs. Mostly it was me holding the eggs and Ethan telling me what color should be where. But, it was still a lot of fun. Ethan spent the weekend in Winterset where he spent some time in town with Linda and Kari and got to drive the tractor up to Vera’s with Jim. They also got to move so dirt around with the scoop and he was very excited about that. Sunday night we did an Easter egg hunt at the house. I believe he had somewhere in the neighborhood of 22 eggs to find before he found his basket that had more candy and some toys. He really enjoyed that. And, it was fun to watch him run around the yard looking for the eggs. I remember doing the hunts when I was younger and I always thought they were fun… but I find it so much more enjoyable to watch him do things like that now. You can’t help but smile watching the excitement.

About a week and a half ago Ethan got sick… again. I took the afternoon off and got him home to nap hoping it would make him feel better. That didn’t work out so well. He woke up from his nap wheezing pretty bad so I tried his nebulizer to no avail. So, I called the doctor and we took him in. His blood/oxygen level was way low. So, they did another treatment there and it seemed to help a little. So, they gave us a prescription for more steroids and sent us on our way. By the time we got home he was wheezing and coughing again so we called them back and they told us to take him to the ER cause there was nothing more they could do there. That was kind of scary to hear. So, we got him there and to make a long story short there gave him another treatment using pure oxygen and another steroid and then kept us there for about 90 minutes to watch him. Between the 3 treatments in 4 hours, and the 3 doses of steroids they finally got everything under control and his blood/oxygen level returned to normal. The downside of all of that is Ethan was beyond wired. His resting heart rate was over 150 cause of all the steroids. To say he was bouncing off the walls wouldn’t really do his energy level justice. We met with Ethan’s regular doctor the following Monday and they think it was an allergy triggered Asthma reaction. We already had a allergy appointment scheduled so the doctor said he really doesn’t want to do anything until he gets the results of that appointment. So, in a couple weeks Ethan gets to do the poke test to figure out all that he’s allergic to. I’m sure it will be incredibly unpleasant for him. I still remember mine and it sucked but I was much older. It will be hard for him to understand what is going on so I’m sure we’ll all be pretty miserable. But, I’m hoping they figure something out so we can get some sort of preventive measure in place so these stop happening.

Those are the major things I wanted to write about. So this doesn’t turn into a full fledged novel I’m just going to put some random stuff below to give you a further glimpse into life with Ethan:

Like my mom, Ethan likes to take words from the English language and make them his own. For example, trailer is now trailier, fix is fisk… I realy should have more examples but I don’t. Just take my word for it. It’s amusing.

The TV is the devil. Well, commercials more than anything. Ethan sees something and then decides he has to have it. And to say he is persistent is an absolute understatement. But, due to his persistence he is now the proud owner of the game Hungry Hungry Hippo (which I dominate at) and a scooter.

Recently, we found a new park in Altoona so we take Ethan there quite a bit. It has a couple different playgrounds and some diggers for digging up the sand. I enjoy that the most. I dug a sweet hold the other night but the next day it was all filled in cause of some brat kids.

Last week I was watching monster trucks with Ethan and I said the trucks go ‘vroom, vroom!’ and Ethan said, ‘no, dad, that’s what race cars do.’ I said, sorry and we went back to watching. A couple minutes later I slipped up and said, ‘vroom vroom’ again and ethan said, ‘no, dad! That’s what race cars do.’ A couple minutes later I did it again and this time Ethan said, ‘Dad! This is the 3rd time! That is what race cars do.’ I didn’t slip up again after that…

With the nicer weather it was time to get Ethan some new sandals… He now has some Lightning McQueen strap sandals that light up each time he takes a step. He’s very proud of those. For some reason he decided he also HAD to have flip flops. I tried to get him some at Target last week but he got all high maintenance on me and decided he didn’t like either of ones they had in his size then went ballistic when I made us leave sans flip flops. This weekend Ethan finally got his new Toy Story flip flops. The first couple times he shuffled like he had deuced in his pants but he figured out how to walk normal in them now.

His new favorite phrase to call people a stinker. Not sure where he picked that up…but for once I can’t be blamed.He also likes to say ‘he’s being very silly about that word’ when he thinks someone is acting silly. I have no idea what the ‘about that word’ means but it’s amusing none the less.