Fun with Coloring

Ethan has really enjoyed coloring the giant Thomas coloring pages that he received as a birthday gift- thanks Sam, Chris, and Brad! I don't usually require Ethan to wear a smock when he colors with crayons (just when he uses markers!), but he was wearing one of his nice polo shirts that I didn't want to get colored on. The smock worked out great! I love that it has ties on both sides and one on the back so it covers his clothes well. Ethan sat and colored for a LONG time and was so excited that he knew the names of the characters that he was coloring. It was fun to see what colors he chose to use and how the pages turned out. Here are a couple of his "finished" pages!

Blogger will not allow me to rotate this image for some reasonI think that he has a pretty good eye for "abstract art", don't you? ;)

Ethan's First 3-D Movie

We went to see a 3-D movie in the theater while Grandma Q. was visiting for Ethan's birthday. It is called "Fly Me to the Moon" and is an animated feature. I haven't seen a 3-D movie in forever, and I was curious to see what it would be like with today's fancy special effects and such. What struck me as funny was that, even though this movie is animated and geared toward kids, the 3-D glasses came in only one size- adult! So, poor Ethan (who inherited his mom's tiny pug nose), had to wear adult-sized glasses in order to watch the movie. I ended up holding him in my lap for most of the movie so that I could hold the glasses on his face. At first I wasn't sure if he was able to see the movie well or not, but several times he reached out to "grab" things that appeared to be right in front of our faces, so then I knew that he could see alright. He sat enthralled through the entire movie, and when it was over, he said "There'll be more" and wanted to put his glasses back on! We had to explain that the movie was all done and we needed to take our glasses off. I was really impressed with the 3-D effects and saved our glasses so that we could see some other 3-D movies in the future! There are 2 IMAX theaters near us that regularly show 3-D movies, so we'll have to look into those sometime soon.

Since the size of the glasses on Ethan's face cracked us up, I had to take a picture of him with them on!

Ethan's 2nd Birthday Party

We had a very small birthday party for Ethan this year, and he loved it! I made him a small cake (similar to last year's), and while I was fully extinguishing the #2 candle in the sink after helping him blow it out, he surprised us by picking up the entire cake and taking bites like it was an enormous cupcake! It was hilarious. We then cut a couple of small pieces out and gave him some silverware... Unfortunately we didn't get a photo of him picking up and eating the huge cake, but Grandma Q. did, so hopefully we can update this post in the future with one of those photos.

The "theme" of Ethan's party this year was Thomas the Train- Gee, I wonder why?

Grandpa and Grandma G. brought him a giant mylar Thomas balloon bouquet. Ethan kept pointing and saying "Big Thomas balloon!!"Ethan's own cake (aka the giant cupcake!)
Anxiously waiting to blow out his candleA picture taken just after he picked up the whole thing and took several bitesAlmost as messy as last year! ;)

Ethan's 2 Year Check-Up

I can't believe that Ethan is two years old now! Time has flown, and he is such a joy every day :) Unfortunately I came down with some sort of awful food poisoning right around Ethan's birthday and was unable to take him to his doctor appointment. (By the way, I don't plan on visiting Qdoba anytime in the near future, or maybe ever again!) Thankfully Dan had already planned to take today off from work, so he was able to go with Ethan to his check-up. He was 36 1/4 inches tall and 26 pounds 10 ounces. According to Dan, Ethan's pediatrician said that he was in the 50-75% percentile for both height and weight. It amazed me that he could be in that range for weight, as he's always been around the 10th percentile before. Despite all of the early feeding challenges that we experienced with Ethan, he has become a pretty adventurous eater and generally eats well. He loves and asks for broccoli, corn, and peas and carrots, but does not like potatoes (not even french fries!) Is he truly my child?? ;) I am not a fan of most vegetables, but would eat potatoes served in any way, shape, or form any day. Well, I digress- The check-up went really well, and he is completely healthy! He doesn't need to return for another appointment until he is 3 years old, which is fantastic. We are very thankful for his health, as I remember clearly the times when I dreaded his pediatrician appointments and the specialist appintments that inevitably followed.

Ethan opening a birthday gift

Ethan was all smiles on his birthday!

Ethan LOVED the warm monkey jammies that Grandma Q. got him for his birthday. We tried them on him for size, and then he didn't want to take them off!

My Extensive Coupon Binder and Dan's Ankle Injury

Some money-saving blogs that I have been following have recently motivated me to better organize my grocery coupons using a coupon binder. I purchased a zippered trapper keeper type binder, baseball card holders, tabbed dividers, and pencil pouches as basic supplies to create my binder. Although it took several hours to assemble initially, I am pleased with the outcome and have found it to be very easy to skim my coupons quickly at home or at the store to determine whether I have a coupon for a needed product or not and to easily view the expiration date of each coupon. The binder has also helped me keep my CVS coupons/deals better organized. Recently my CVS deals have included coming out $2.00 ahead on purchasing 4 bags of Dove chocolate candies, and spending $1 on 2 large packages of Stayfree pads, 1 container of 240 babywipes, and 2 big packages of gum. I thought it might be easiest to show some photos of my binder than to try to describe how I organized it:

The cover of my zippered binder

To the left is an accordion-type file which has CVS's weekly and monthly ads, Walgreens' EasySaver booklet, and any other fliers I might need for reference.
To the right is a zippered pencil pouch containing "must use" coupons like freebies, scissors, and a calculator. Behind this pouch is another pencil pouch containing my CVS coupons and manufacturer coupons that I will use at CVS.

I used 10 tabbed dividers to categorize/organize my coupons like "Frozen", "Drinks", "Toiletries", etc. And, yes, I did use my labelmaker to print labels for these tabs-
I LOVE my labelmaker! :)

I bought trading card holder pages at Target to file my coupons in.
There are about 80-90 pages of 9 coupons/per in my binder at this point.Am I a total coupon nerd or what??

Dan played tennis (or I should say tried to play tennis) this evening with Doug. Unfortunately he landed oddly on his right ankle and heard an unpleasant sound (never good) only a few minutes into their game. Dan returned home just in time for his ankle to swell up, and he could not put any weight on it. I called around to local pharmacies trying to find a place to rent crutches so that Dan could be mobile for work on Monday, but found that Sunday night at 7pm was not the best time to try to get ahold of a pharmacist. The only 24-hr pharmacy that we have locally (that I am aware of) is CVS, and they do not offer the service of rental crutches. You have to buy them, and they are pretty expensive. Since Dan wasn't planning on needing them again, we decided to wait and "rent" them from a Kroger pharmacy when it opened on Monday, so Dan didn't go in to work. That was probably just as well since he was in a decent amount of pain and really needed to keep his ankle elevated. I say "rent" in quotes, because Kroger offered this awesome service where you put a deposit down to rent the crutches, and the deposit is refunded in its entirety when you return the crutches. How great is that? Thankfully (as I'm typing this a couple of weeks later), his ankle healed just fine.

Ethan Swinging at a Local Park and our Sixth Anniversary!

We enjoyed spending some time today with Doug, Lori, and their girls at a local park. Ethan really enjoyed swinging, especially when Dan would swing beside him. Seems like he loves anything more if he has a little company :) He just recently has begun sitting and swinging on the "big boy" swings as opposed to the infant/toddler bucket swings. Ethan does a great job holding on and maintaining his balance, and Dan can push his big boy swing fairly high. He kept shouting "Whee!" as he swung. Here is some video of them enjoying the swings. Thankfully I did not record any video evidence of the meltdown that ensued when it was time to leave the park and say goodbye to the swings (it was not a pretty sight).



Today is Dan and my 6th wedding anniversary! It's so hard to believe how fast time flies... Unfortunately we didn't really get to celebrate yet (other than getting some carry-in from Outback Steakhouse, which was delicious). We are planning to celebrate with the very first evening where my parents are going to keep Ethan overnight for us in September. We are getting tickets to a Murder Mystery dinner theater which we are excited about. There are 4 acts to the murder mystery play along with 4 courses of a yummy meal served with each act at a local Italian restaurant that has a reputation for excellent food. I'll blog about how the dinner theater was after we go in mid-September. We are really looking forward to getting to enjoy some time with just the two of us!

Grandpa and Uncle Mike Were Successful: Ethan's Fascination with Trains

Grandpa G. and Uncle Mike are big model railroading and train enthusiasts, and Mike told me when Ethan was very little that he wouldn't have a choice as to whether he would like trains or not. He has succeeded in his "mission" to the extreme, as Ethan absolutely loves Thomas the Train and all of his friends, and really anything that has anything to do with trains. Before we became familiar with Thomas, I was not aware that Thomas has (literally) gazillions of friends, each with their own name and stories. When we went to A Day Out With Thomas back in June, we were handed a catalog of all of their current products. This has become what Ethan calls his "train book" that he "reads". Which essentially means that he brings the book to us and has pointed at each character over and over, having us tell him their names, and now he knows and says about 90% of the character's names. He can easily distinguish between similar looking engines (there are 3 that are the same coloring, just different expressions and slightly different sizes: Thomas, Edward, and Gordon), and he can identify which is which with zero hesitation. He is also mesmerized by the show and could easily watch Thomas DVDs for an entire day if we'd permit him to. I think that my recent investment in Thomas toys via ebay was well worthwhile, as I think that Ethan will enjoy Thomas for many years to come (especially if Uncle Mike has any say in it!)

Repeating and Mimicking

Ethan has been experiencing a word/sentence explosion over the last couple of weeks. He is stringing together many words, and we can actually hold an entire conversation with him now :) I think that he's really enjoying being able to express himself and communicate with us more. He has been repeating nearly everything we say, and it's so cute! In addition to mimicking us, he is coming up with his own unique sentences and sayings. He loves to use the word "too", and uses it correctly. For example, he'll ask for something for dinner and say "and sippy too!". When he's eating a meal and Dan and I are at the table with him, he'll say "Mommy and Daddy eat too!" (There is always emphasis on the word "too").
He also likes to mimic us in actions. Just recently he has taken to babying his stuffed animals. He put his teddy bear up on the end table the other day and said "Change little bear's diapee (how we say diaper)". We told him that he needed a diaper, so he ran out of the room and brought back a pretend diaper in his hands and changed the bear on the table. That's great practice so he can be a little helper with Baby Q! :)
He also likes to help his stuffed animals do different things. We had the blinds in our great room open, and Ethan wanted to help his big Elmo see out the window, so he carried Elmo over there and kept saying "See Elmo, See?" I asked what he and Elmo saw, and he said "Trees, leaves, and grass". He also likes to "feed" his stuffed animals and Little People animals out of his stacking cups. I think that it is so much fun to see his imagination blossom and watch his pretend play.

Ethan's Second Theater Experience- Wallace and Gromit

Since Ethan did well at the theater and really enjoyed the VeggieTales movie last week, I took him to see Wallace and Gromit at the free family movies this week. I figured that Ethan would at least enjoy watching the claymation doggie (which he did)! This time I remembered to bring my camera to take a photo of him at the theater. He wanted to sit in his own chair for most of this movie.
The theater was not nearly as crowded as it was for VeggieTales. Probably only a third of the theater was occupied. Ethan cracked me up when they showed in the film a huge garden with lots of vegetables (one being a yellow zucchini or squash that resembled a banana), and Ethan practically shouted "Banana!" He gets excited when he knows the names of fruits and veggies and can identify them in the produce section at the grocery store, so I guess he felt the need to shout out "banana" at the theater too.

Our First Camping Trip in over 5 Years!!

Our camping gear has been collecting dust for years. All sorts of dust (including drywall dust while Dan was finishing the basement)! We decided to try taking Ethan camping with a couple of families of friends this weekend at a local state park. We were planning to go for two nights, but unfortunately Ethan ran a 102 degree fever for about 48 hours and was waking in the night due to discomfort (we thought maybe some teething of molars was going on?), so we didn't go until Saturday morning.

Between the three families, there were 5 kids under the age of 5, and Ethan had a blast playing with all of the other kiddos. Thankfully all of the kids were very respectful of the fire pit and the boundaries of the campsites. Despite being pretty rusty at this, we were able to set up our tent and campsite fairly quickly, and the kids enjoyed playing at a nearby playground and going to the pool (with a waterslide) in the afternoon. I was not able to join the fun in the pool because I had a recent dermatologist appointment and the doctor had taken three biopsies of moles/freckles, so the incisions were still healing. I was able to sit at a picnic table with umbrella shade and watch the kids play in the water while reading my Bible study chapters which was very relaxing. The kids especially liked going down the waterslide, and I was able to snap a few photos of Ethan and Dan. For some reason Dan had a terrible time getting down the waterslide, as he kept getting stuck every few inches. Not sure if his swimsuit was a weird material or what, but none of the other adults had this issue! We enjoyed some smores later as well as some yummy burgers and hot dogs cooked over the fire.

Dan, Ethan, Kara, and Ben on the way to the pool.
It was cute how Ethan and Kara liked holding hands and hugging during our camping trip.

Dan and Ethan at the top of the waterslide.They made it to the bottom-FINALLY!

I was beginning to wonder if they got lost somewhere along the way!Joe's famous cherry cobblerMatthew enjoying a smore- they were delicious!Ethan and Kara coloring at the picnic table

Ethan refused to nap on Saturday, so we were relieved when he fell asleep quickly and easily in his pack n' play in our tent. He woke up a couple hours later though, was disoriented in the dark and confused about being in the tent, and went completely ballistic. Crying very loudly, I lifted him out of the pn'p and rocked him telling him it was mommy and he was okay. He continued to cry for what seemed like a very long time until Dan turned our flashlight on and he could actually see us. He calmed down and slept well the rest of the night, but I felt terrible for probably having woken up a good portion of the nearby campers.

On our way home on Sunday we stopped at a yummy restaurant specializing in gazillions of different ice cream treats and enjoyed great dessert. I had a huge strawberry shortcake, and Dan tried a sundae with crushed oreos, ice cream, and lots of hot fudge. Ethan loved mooching bites off of Dan, but was not as into the strawberries. It was a great way to wrap up our camping trip. All in all it was a very fun trip, and I think that we'll do it again, but we'll have to see if we're up for it once Baby Q arrives!