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November 27, 2006

Infinity

On the way back from Carmel on Saturday, Ethan amused himself the whole way by making up songs. (Jeff got tired of it, actually, but I encouraged him to just let Ethan be as long as he was content.) He made up a song all about infinity.

"Infinity... bigger than a googol! Infinity... bigger than a googol! You can't count to a googol, it's impossible! Infinity! In-in-infinity-ty-ty!"

Ethan and Nicholas had a good time together. They went to the park, played with many toys, and then helped Dave make pancakes in the morning.

We had a good time earlier in the week, too. I missed Ethan and Jeff when it was just Linna and I, though I have to say we fit a lot better in whatever bed we were sleeping in without Jeff and Big Boy E. We had another comically awful night at Erika's, not quite as bad as when Jeff tried to sleep in Ethan's sleeping bag on the floor, not realizing that it was actually a kid-sized sleeping bag. This time I ended up sleeping on the floor for a bit, and that was OK.

Anyway, we took down the wallpaper in Erika and Mike's bathroom (small payback for when they helped remove yards and yards of it from our house). Ethan helped. While Erika and I cooked for Thanksgiving, Jeff and Ethan spent a lot of time in the patio at Tulip, playing Monopoly in Russian, since that's the only version there was there. They also played Word Mastermind. And, more age-appropriately, Strawberry Shortcake in Strawberryland or some such thing. Jeff bought chess last week, so that's Ethan's new favorite -- unfortunately, I had never played before. I'm not much into it but I guess I'll learn to like it. My first game? Ethan won, but Jeff helped him so I don't feel too bad.

Can I just slip in a quick yay for Martha? She's great. Great with Ethan and Linna, great to have around, just great in general. Her daughter Sara and her boyfriend stayed at our house over Thanksgiving, which was also nice, even though we didn't get to see them. I like the sense of an expanded family.

Posted by ktingey at 04:24 PM | Comments (0)

November 13, 2006

Open House

Last week on Thursday evening we went to Ethan's preschool for an open house. Earlier in the day I'd gotten a flat tire and had to abandon the Toyota about a mile from home because I was too lame to put on the spare by myself. And I had no cell phone, and blah, blah, blah. But anyway, the open house was fun. The idea was for Ethan to show us around the classroom. It turned out he had this one huge "work" spread out over half the rug - the golden beads set. He'd done one addition problem earlier in the day, and did four more while we were there - and so that was the only thing we really got to see. He was very excited about it, though. But since the teacher hadn't shown him all the details of how to do the problems where he had to exchange 10 10's for a hundred, or 10 hundreds for a thousand, we had to keep asking for help. It was neat to see. Except that because he knows all the simple addition facts, he tends to look at the numbers and just add them up, rather than counting the beads. But then I guess he does get a sense of the quantities after all, if he has to change them to higher units and all that. He's so pleased when he finishes.

Also last week, we went to see Mya play at the Red & Black Cafe, on Wednesday. I'd seen her once at Artichoke, and Jeff saw her at Artichoke, and when I told Ethan it was Daddy's turn to see Mya play, he asked, "When is it MY turn?" Since the Wednesday gig was a little earlier than the others, we all went out for it. It was great, and Ethan really enjoyed it. He was slightly disappointed that she didn't play "Old Dan Tucker," but he did recognize a lot of her own songs that she played.

Posted by ktingey at 03:14 PM | Comments (0)

November 06, 2006

Ethan the ghost

Ethan decided long ago to be a ghost for Halloween - the first year he's decided for himself, since last year we were on a plane to New Zealand on Halloween. He decided at the end of Happy Zoo preschool, when Leah painted their faces one day, and never wavered. So I made him a ghost costume - basically a poncho with a hood, elasticized. Remnants from Fabric Depot. I painted his face and he looked pretty scary. Linna was a flower fairy (tooooo cute - pictures soon, I promise), and the three of us trick-or-treated on about half the block while Jeff manned the house here.

In other news, we had our first parent-teacher conference at Harmony. The thing we were most happy to hear was that the teacher said Ethan was a very calming influence on the other kids, and that a lot of kids looked up to him. That was nice to hear. He often comes home telling us about doing an activity with another kid at school.

When Dan and Carolyn were here last weekend, we went to see a barbershop concert - the group Dan used to sing with. One of the quartets sang "Kiss the Girl" and the lead singer used a shaker to good effect. As soon as he started using the shaker, Ethan perked up in my lap and started moving his hand. I asked him about it later, and he said he was trying to figure out if he was shaking on the down beat or the up beat (something he and Mya have been talking about a lot). Pretty cute.

Mya continues to be fantastic. We're really happy we found her. I went to see her play at Artichoke a few weeks ago, with Molly. She was great. Then Jeff got to go see her last night. We're planning on taking the kids this week when she has an earlier gig in our neighborhood.

Ethan continues to be obsessed with Monopoly and other board games. Jeff's dad (a.k.a. Baba) brought a few new games with him when they visited, and those are good too. I was happy on Saturday because Ethan got very into Mancala (one of my favorites) and we played many games in a row. But we also played Monopoly both days, which I'm getting a little tired of.

Saturday we went bowling with the preschool crowd, Ethan's second bowling experience. There were some issues with sharing Ethan's selected ball with another kid, but they did pretty well.

Posted by ktingey at 09:42 AM | Comments (0)