Oh, Mexico

We are hoping he likes the place as much as the song.

My 2-year-old...

...likes to party.

... is obsessed with trains.

... smiles most of the time.

... blows his birthday candles out by fake sneezing. "Aaaaachhoooo" works just as good.

... finds frosting to be delightful.

... is a lollygagger until he knows I need him to stay close, like in a parking lot or a crowd of strangers. Then he makes a run for it.

... always eats his entire hamburger.

... is not so terrible - yet.

Funny snow day

It was cold yesterday and we were bored, so we pulled out some old baby toys and played away.we decided to head outside...

... because Ethan had been begging all morning to "make snowman balls!!!"

We made just snowballs - be we had a lot of fun.

Grandma Maughan goes to Washington

We were so lucky to have my mom come visit this last weekend. She got killer plane tickets because she left the day of the inauguration.
Ethan trying to impress Grandma right off the bat by flexing his oh-so-humongous muscles.
We planned on driving up to New York City on Friday, but Ethan's body temperature clocked in at 103.9 degrees the night before, so we canceled our hotel reservations and stayed home. It was a definite downer, but we found our own fun here. Like at the American History Museum, where we took photos of nothing but ourselves:
The First Lady exhibit was awesome (though brief). No photos allowed.

It was so cold here that we spent much of our time in our little apartment, sewing. I know, fun vacation right? Ethan tried his best to entertain.
Making faces at each other.
Action shot.
This is inside the Paper Source in Old Town Alexandria, where Ethan formed an instant bond with the fake bears. He kept hugging them and backed into their arms for photos.
Maybe we enjoyed a little too much of the molten chocolate dessert at the Chart House in Old Town.

We miss you, Mom!

Christmas in Arlington

We stayed here for Christmas and had a really great time. Weeks before Christmas, we would ask Ethan what he wanted Santa to bring him and he would say, "bring Thomas." Neither of us remembers teaching him that so we knew he really wanted Thomas for Christmas.

A few days before Christmas I realized I hadn't been so excited for the big day since I was 10. I could not wait to see Ethan's reaction.

Santa didn't disappoint. And neither did Ethan. He was so excited about Thomas the Tank Engine.
Every morning since, the first thing Ethan says when I get him up is, "play Thomas."
These photos aren't in order but I'm too lazy to move them. On Christmas Eve, we went ice skating on the sculpture garden fountain. It was a beautiful night and the setting, sandwiched by the National Archives building and the National Mall, made it perfect. I was shocked to see little skates just Ethan's size. We took him out and he loved it. You can't really tell by his facial expression when he is skating (or Ryan is dragging him by his belt loops - see video) but the moment we stopped skating, he started kicking his feet and screaming like we were kidnapping him. So we skated (despite our hurting backs from leaning over the kid) until close.

And, of course, Ethan was not happy to go.

After skating, we went to see the trees and trains at the White House. There were too many people there, but it was still fun to be out doing stuff on Christmas Eve. We also went tubing that weekend. Tubing was not Ethan's favorite activity, but I'm blaming the extremely sticky man-made snow on that.
More photos will follow. We are having issues since we lost our camera charger and I accidentally erased every photo on our computer ;(. I'm still getting over it, but once I do, I'll be a blogging fiend.

Merry Christmas!

Ethan loves St. George and cousins!

We visited St. George for Thanksgiving and had so much fun. Ethan's favorite parts were......throwing rocks/jumping in puddles. He could spend all day doing that and would have had I not lugged his screaming body back inside every once in a while.

... hanging with cousins, especially Chase. Ethan would beg for Chase and try to play with him. But when it was the other way around, when Chase showed interest in playing with Ethan, he would run to me, terrified of Chase. This, of course, diminished as the trip wore on and I think Ethan finally got used to his awesome cousin, Chase.

... riding scooters. There was this paved little hill between condos that he loved speeding down. I will attribute this to his new obsession with Caden, his 12-year-old cousin, who hauled down that hill as fast as he possibly could (by himself, of course). Ethan still asks for Caden.

...playing on the rocks, though it was more like tripping on the rocks. At one point, someone said, "Whose child is that?" and I looked up the hill to see two little feet sticking straight up in the air. Aunt Robin went up and found Ethan laying at the bottom of a pile of rocks.

I can't stop thinking about this awesome trip. A big thanks to Ken and Judi for the awesome condos and to the entire Roe family for the great company!

Somebody got a haircut

Fun times with Grandma Roe

Ryan's mom came to visit this month. We had so much fun with her! Ethan still looks for her around the house and asks for "Gamma." Fortunately, we will see her again on Tuesday!

Our little puppy

We were outside the Washington D.C. Temple visitor's center eating lunch when Ethan dropped his peanut butter and honey sandwich on the concrete, fell to his hands and knees and ate the food off the ground like an animal.

I would have stopped him but...

I couldn't put my camera down.

What do a cowboy, a cat and a man with two heads have in common?

I know, my costume isn't the most creative, but Ryan's more than makes up for that, I think.The two-headed man a la Michael Scott... sort of. Ryan made his twin head by himself with balloons, paper mache and paint. He won the "funniest costume" award.Ethan bull-leggedly stomped around all evening, like a true cowboy. We have no idea how or why he decided to walk this way but it fit his costume well.

Meganopia

I started my very own blog. I was getting sick of posting about myself on Ethan's blog. Click the image on the right sidebar to view it.

Hooray for fall walks

There is no better time for site-seeing, discovering and crunching things under your feet.

Learned this one the painful way

Ethan doesn't wake up in the middle of the night often, but when he does I become a super grumpy mom. I try to be civil, so I enter his dark room and lift him out of his crib, lay him on the bed nearby and lie down next to him. My mood transforms as he reaches around my neck with his stubby arms and pulls my face to his. He places my cheek to his cheek and we lie there, breathing in each other's hair.

We were locked in this embrace a couple of mornings ago and when Ethan finally let go of my neck, I noticed that my cheek was wet. In the dark I traced around his face with my fingers and noticed that his ear was also damp. I imagined that tears had fallen into his ear as he was crying when he first woke up.

Ethan talked and sang but never fell back asleep, so after a couple of hours I finally decided to get up for the day. When I reached for my son I noticed his ear was still wet. I picked him up, turned on the light and felt my stomach twist.

Out of my son's ear and reaching across his cheek was one of those humongous worm boogers that hang out of kids noses while they are playing outside in the dead of winter. Only this was no snot, and when I gently pushed on the outside of his ear, more of the gooey stuff flowed out.

I immediately knew I had failed my child. Earlier that week, I had decided that at 20 months he had already reached the terrible twos and that would explain his extremely whiny behavior. I remember thinking he must just be really tired when he was grabbing at his ears. I had wondered why, during his recent baths, he had freaked out when we laid his head down in the water. And after who knows how many days of my ignorance and inaction, Ethan's eardrum - under the extreme pressure of infection - had finally ruptured.

I thought he would be deaf and angry with me for the rest of his life. But the doctor acted like it was no big deal. We just need to give Ethan some antibiotics for a couple of weeks and his ear will heal!

The bad news: there is still puss oozing out of his ear and getting all over everything. More good news: without the earache, my kid is pretty happy now so I think we still have a few months until the terrible twos.

Bodily functions one-oh-one

Yesterday afternoon Ethan belched. After a few seconds he looked at me like he'd just discovered America and began to yell, "Fot, fot, fot!"

"Close Ethan! But that's a burp, not a fart."

Fall on the farm

We harassed the chickens,
drank freshly-pressed apple cider,
conducted a large wooden train,
conquered our fear of tunnels -
and of animals our size -and picked out a "punkin." Check those off our list of fall activities.