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August 31, 2006

My little penguin

We've been doing our second round of swimming lessons, at Mt. Scott pool this time. The first one was at Matt Dishman, and the teacher there said he should go ahead and do the Penguin class, which is the next level up from Goldfish... but the teacher at Mt. Scott was very harsh, very abrupt, and didn't think he was ready. So we happily went back to Goldfish, and Ethan's done great. We did a two-week session with class every night, which is sort of a hassle because, well, it's every night... but he's really gotten used to dunking himself in the water, jumping in, splashing around, everything. So when it's finished, he'll try being a penguin again.

Posted by ktingey at 01:36 PM | Comments (0)

August 28, 2006

Park superheroes

On Saturday I had signed up Ethan and myself to spruce up Mt. Tabor - every month a group of volunteers does something to help maintain the park. He was very reluctant, but finally agreed to go since he'd get to use his new gardening gloves and his little gardening pad. The morning of, I had to convince him again, and it wasn't easy. But once we were there he was great.

He was the only kid. We had to wait a while because the park folks didn't show up to let us into the tool shed - eventually we just went to work anyway. Fortunately, there were snacks, which kept Ethan very happy.

Then we spread out along this particular watershed and started pulling up invasive plants. It was great. It was hard work, tromping in among the blackberries and all that, but fun. Ethan had his heart set on pulling out ivy, since we've talked often about how ivy is not a nice plant. It wasn't hard to find some climbing up trees, so we pulled that out. He wasn't actually much help at the pulling, but he was great at finding stuff. I sure felt proud of my little guy, for helping, and for wandering around yelling, "I found some holly, mama! Mama! Here's more morning glory!" It was very cute. Then after two hours he declared he was done with pulling up ivy - in fact, he was so tired he couldn't make it back up the hill to the car. So I carried him piggyback, and we played at the playground for a short while, until it was time to go home to lunch.

While we were walking back up the hill, we breathed in the good forest smell together.

Posted by ktingey at 09:26 AM | Comments (0)

Picky eater

Ethan's funny. I guess many kids are like this - put something new in front of him, especially if it's green, and he'll say, "I don't like that!" "Have you ever tried it?" "No... I don't like it!"

Last night I made some potatoes in the oven - kind of a gratin sort of thingy - that I was sure he'd like, but he didn't want to try. Finally he tried them, and then he said, "Oh, I DID try this before one time... I DO like it!" And then he gobbled them up. We'd be hard pressed to get him to try anything vegetal, though.

Still, I can't complain, as I realized on Saturday night. We went out to Nicholas - our favorite Lebanese place - and he happily munched a couple of felafel in yogurt sauce. (For which they only charged us $1.50, by the way.) I took a moment to be grateful that even though he's picky about many things, at least we can take him out to sushi, to Thai food, to Lebanese food, or whatever, and he'll find things he loves to eat.

There's this funny thing in the world called the kids' menu. At many, many places this menu is exactly the same: you can count on chicken strips and fries, probably mac n' cheese, quesadillas, pizza, a few other standbys. In New Zealand it was INCREDIBLE - everywhere you went, seafood, Indian, Thai, whatever - the kids could and did get chicken strips with fries. This is how you end up with kids who only want to eat at McDonald's. After we got back from New Zealand, we started noticing that kids' menus are similar here, though not quite as bad. Some restaurants offer small portions of their regular fare, though that's rare. We realized that we're often better off just ordering him something small off the regular menu, or sharing ours with him - he loves the beef stroganoff at Caldera, for example. Of course, he always wants to look at the menu and choose for himself.

At least he likes carrots, cucumbers, peas, soybeans, and corn.

Posted by ktingey at 08:59 AM | Comments (0)

August 22, 2006

My baby's 4!

He turned 4 on Sunday. Of course, there was plenty of forewarning leading up to the event, as for the last few weeks Ethan's been informing us every morning how many days were left until his birthday.

Dad and Martha (Granddad and Grandmartha) drove up last week, and as a pre-birthday treat took Ethan to OMSI, which he's been asking to visit again for a long time. They were gone all day and apparently had a great time. Ethan would have happily stayed even longer, but Dad and Martha were all tired out. They also watched both kids on Friday afternoon, playing lots of games. They'd driven up, and at Jeff's request brought a bunch of our old games from the Tulip house. So now Ethan has Sorry, Mastermind, Othello... he's having a blast. Who needs birthday gifts after all that?

So on Sunday we had a little birthday party - all the preschool kids, plus Kris from a few streets over with her two kids. I concluded afterwards that I really made too much work for myself by doing all the food - I guess it was easier last year because Erika helped. Plus I made two kinds of ice cream (Ethan's request: chocolate hazelnut gelato, and Jeff's request: mint chocolate chip) since we just got an ice-cream maker attachment to our Kitchen Aid. And a cake. With a stegosaurus on it. Next year, I might make the cake and ice cream, but then order pizza. :P

We played some games this time around: tape the horn on the triceratops was a big hit. We also made a little bean bag toss with Katamari cousins painted on it, and had a pinata. The pinata was kinda fun - the kids all lined up, eager to take a swing at it. Zoe was hilarious - she just whaled away at it with these big wide-legged swings. I think she'd be a great taiko player. They cycled through lots of times, but made little progress with it. Finally, when they seemed done, I handed the bat to Masa. Even for him it took three good hits to finish the job.

It's amazing how much he grew up between three and four. He's such a big guy in so many ways, but still my little cuddler too. I love him so much I can't stand it.

Posted by ktingey at 08:28 AM | Comments (0)

August 15, 2006

5 more days!

Ethan has taken to counting down the number of days until his birthday. Every morning when he wakes up, he says, "Only 5 more days!" Or whatever. This started around August 1st.

He's finally decided he wants a Devil's Food cake for his party, with a stegasaurus on it. I hope he likes the cake. It's from the Williams-Sonoma cake cookbook that he loves to read. Speaking of that, we also got the ice cream cookbook from them - and an ice cream maker attachment for the Kitchen Aid. We made our first ice cream on Sunday. We used real vanilla beans, and then made it decidedly non-gourmet by adding mini-M&M's. They made it all colorful and swirly. Ethan liked it, but BOY was he sugared up.

Sunday night we went to a new playground. I had bought this book called "Out and About With Kids in Portland" that I really like, and one of the entries was about Ibach Park in Tualatin, of all places. It's a very cool playground, and once Ethan warmed up to it he loves it. There are dinosaur bones, a creek, and a "ferry" that goes back and forth on a wire. Linna and I just chilled out in the shade while Jeff and Ethan played. Then Jeff and I switched, and Jeff asked me to tell Ethan not to get his pants TOO wet... I was too late. He was wet through and through, but it didn't really matter. He had a lot of fun. Next time we'll bring extra pants.

Matty has been saving us for the last few weeks. Brittain had a freak bicycle accident that involved slicing her heel in the spokes, and she's been out of commission. She's coming back today to see how it goes. Fortunately for us, Matty was able to fill in. I'm glad Brittain's finally doing better.

Posted by ktingey at 09:18 AM | Comments (0)

August 01, 2006

Ethan's version

A little more about Ethan's version of the "Up With People" song... there's a line that goes:

"If more people were for people..."

which Ethan has altered to make more sense to him. He sings:

"If four people were more people..."

You know, like five instead.

Posted by ktingey at 02:38 PM | Comments (0)