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January 31, 2005

New nanny

Ethan's new nanny, Jenny, started a few weeks ago. She's pretty much the best. We totally lucked out. Hooray for craigslist.

Two days a week she brings her 4-year-old daughter, and they have fun playing together. She's adorable. They play puzzles and Go Fish and stuff. Jenny often brings toys to play with, or a project to do. Last week they made a bead-and-string holder for a bottle, which they then put a geranium leaf in to root. Ethan was very proud of it.

They play lots of games. One of their favorites is that Jenny draws a bunch of pictures in one column, then writes the words in another column, and Ethan matches them up. He loves it.

Jenny comes two full days, plus two afternoons. I love knowing that he's in such good hands.

Posted by ktingey at 10:49 AM | Comments (0)

January 19, 2005

My face

A few mornings ago, Ethan woke up happy. He was studying my face, and then he touched my forehead and said, "It's like a semicircle!" I thought that was very clever, so I asked about Daddy's forehead, which was also a semicircle, and Ethan's forehead. Then he said my face was like an oval, my nose was like a triangle, and my ears were like ovals too. Entranced with all this shape-finding, I next asked, "What are my eyes like?" Ethan thought for a moment and then said, "Your eyes are like... Puffins!"

Not puffins the birds, you understand, but this cereal Jeff and Ethan like to eat, named after the birds. Puffins are little rectangular puffy brown things. Like my eyes.

Anyway, when I probed on how my eyes were like Puffins, it turned out he just meant the color. At least that's what he said. It did seem kinda like Jeff backtracking after he said my bottom was like potatoes...

Posted by ktingey at 11:03 AM | Comments (0)

January 10, 2005

Mama's a wimp

Sometimes Ethan actually behaves like a two-year-old, and when I'm the only one here (Jeff's out of town for a few days), I practically can't cope. I don't get it. Other mothers do this. Lots of them. But when we get into a battle of wills, I get so frustrated. Or maybe it's that I'm not well-rested enough, so I can't cope. Or maybe it's because when it's just the two of us, he tends to be very demanding of my attention, and I need time alone to recharge. Which I don't get.

Yesterday afternoon we had a run-in about a bowl of cheese puffs. We just couldn't agree, and distraction didn't seem to be working. I called Jeff for moral support, but he of course wanted to fix it, and being so far away, he couldn't. So we hung up without either of us feeling better.

Then I did get him to nap -- I suppose he was just tired -- and when he woke up, he absolutely refused to go to Ann and Zack's for dinner. But I kept talking about it, and eventually he got into the spirit of it, and we went over there. He LOVED Ann's black bean soup. Then he snuck off to play on their computer. True to form, he managed to launch a browser, but couldn't navigate to Thomas the Tank Engine, which is where he wanted to go. Anyway, they played with him for a while, giving me a much-needed break. And then he really, REALLY didn't want to leave. I guess I didn't give him enough warning. So he was crying, refusing to put on his shoes and jacket, even when Ann tried valiantly to coax him into it. So finally we just left, and as soon as we got in the car and turned the music on, he was perfectly happy. Go figure.

Then today, I'm here working and he's with me, since we haven't yet started with a new babysitter. And during my morning meeting, he happily played by himself downstairs for an hour and half.

Posted by ktingey at 02:01 PM | Comments (0)

January 06, 2005

Brags

Jeff gave Ethan his old laptop to play with, and he has three pieces of software from Disney: Mickey Mouse, Winne the Pooh, and Rolie Polie Olie. He does much better with the laptop mouse than with a regular mouse. He can play games that involve picking up objects and dragging them to specific locations... and just now he exited one program, changed the CD to a different one, and started it up. Guess he'll be computer literate.

One other brag, just to get them all out of the way at once: he can sound out simple phonetic words. You know, like bus, hat, sit. That kind of thing. There's another set of words he recognizes, like cat, go, stop, dog, Ethan, mama, etc. And he spells them too. He even knows how to spell "Jeff."

I'm done now.

Posted by ktingey at 03:20 PM | Comments (0)

January 04, 2005

Games Ethan likes to play

We got him some playing cards with Thomas the Tank Engine on them a few months ago. Since then, he's learned to play two games: Go Fish and Memory. He plays with regular playing cards too, and a Winne the Pooh deck we got him. He's gotten fairly proficient at Go Fish -- we started out just laying the cards down, but now he holds them in his hands. For a while, he'd ask for something, and if you said you didn't have it, he'd say, "You sure? I'll look," and look at your hand.

And at memory he does amazingly well. We usually play with about 24 cards, and he can remember where the pairs are -- better than I can. Must be his young brain.

A while back we started a new sleepytime game: made up songs. We take turns making up short songs about two words (for example, a cat and a tunnel is one of his favorite pairs). When he does it, it's pretty simple, like, "Cat cat cat cat... tunnel tunnel tunnel." Still, it's not bad.

Posted by ktingey at 08:54 PM | Comments (0)