The Ghost with One Black Eye

Ethan told me a story today. He asked me, "Daddy, do you want to hear a scary story?" I of course said I did. After which I was delighted to hear the story of the ghost with one black eye. What impressed me the most was his sense of theatrics while telling the story. He had different voices that he would use for the different characters, and whenever he was getting to a "scary" part, he would whisper very quietly. It was one of the best stories I've ever heard, though I'm not sure I could ever retell it as well as I heard it.

Ethan Skating 

Mission Accomplished

I’m sure I’ve been more proud of Ethan, but I can’t remember when.  Tonight Ethan showed me that he can snap his fingers.  About a week ago he showed me that he could whistle…  I think it was a couple of weeks ago that he had asked me on separate occasions how to whistle and how to snap your fingers.  I showed him what I knew, but ultimately, it is hard to teach somebody how to do something like that.  I told him to keep practicing, and he did.  He practiced, and practiced, and practice.  The payoff started about a week ago with whistling, when he finally figured out the right aperture for his mouth to make a sound.  Now, a week later, he is whistling tunes.  Then tonight, he finally figured out to snap his fingers.  I think he may have gotten some encouragement from his Grandma Grady, but he did it.  He said he wanted to do it, he couldn’t at first, but he kept at it until he finally did it!
This weekend was Thanksgiving.  Ethan is starting to get along better and better with his new cousin, Jessica, Tony and Michelle’s daughter who is closer in age to Ethan than any of this other cousins.  He is also starting to get better and better at sounding out his words to decipher the first letter of most words.  Of course, most of the time he just identifies the sound and adds the “ee” sound to the end of it.  Like I will ask him what “friend” starts with and he will say, “fff-riend – fee!”  There must be some kind of logic in that, and I’m sure he will solve it eventually as there are a finite number of letters to figure out.

Physical Achievements

In the past couple of days, Ethan has started doing a couple of remarkable things (in my opinion). He has a pair of roller blades that he got from our friends Maylee and Jason last Christmas. A couple of days ago he decided he was going to put them on, and now he's skating all over the house. It's really fun to watch him skate from wall to table to stairs all over the first floor.

The other thing he started doing lately was whisting. For some reason, he thinks that whistling and snapping your fingers are very cool. He hasn't quite cracked the snapping your fingers thing yet, but he is pretty close on the whistling.

He's been such a good boy lately. I wonder if it has anything to do with Santa Clause coming to town in a little over a month...

First Snow

Yesterday marked the first snow of the season. Unlike most years when it snows for the first time, this snow stayed on the ground. Ethan was so excited this morning to see snow. His eyes lit up and he exclaimed that "it's almost Christmas!"

Badger/Hawkeye Game

Yesterday we went to the Badger/Hawkeye game, a thing we intend to do each year. Todd and Theresa, my uncle and aunt who live near Madison, offerred to watch Ethan for the day. He had a fine time, and the Hawkeyes won the game much to many a Madisonion's chagrin. Ethan has always gotten along very well with Julia, the older of Todd's two children, but lately he has been doing more and getting along very well with John, Julia's younger brother. John, who is a year younger, is taller and bigger than Ethan. They really have started getting along very well together.

This morning Ethan came downstairs all dressed, he had dressed himself. He was bragging to his mom that his clothes matched and everything, even his shoes and the shirt he put on under his sweater. This is obviously a trait that he is picking up from Jenny's side, as I have absolutely no talent in that area. He was so proud of himself, and I was as well.

We've been working on our letters lately. He's doing pretty well, though they aren't quite as interesting as super-heroes. Maybe I'll try picking a superhero for each letter to help him learn that way. Oddly, he knows S and E almost anywhere, for Superman and Ethan (his other favorite super-hero).

Packer's won today over the heavily favored Falcons. I hope they don't blow their chance at a high draft pick...

Funny Things

Ethan has been saying some funny things, lately. First, since it's been Halloween season, he has seen the Grim Reaper walking around on TV and on the streets. He has been calling him the "Grim Reefer" however.

The other funny thing he has done lately is to sing the song Tootsie Roll. There's just something funny about a 4 year old singing "Let me see your tootsie role" to me...

Kalahari in the Dells

We went to Wisconsin Dells with the Abholds on Thursday afternoon. My parents obtained a free night stay since they were treated badly at the Kalahari. They gave us the free night stay, so we traded it in for $129 off of a suite. Not a bad deal.

If you’re not familiar with the Kalahari, it is a huge hotel and conference center with a large indoor and outdoor water park attached. We’ve taken Ethan to this water park in the past when my parents were staying there, but this is the first time we’ve stayed there ourselves. The first thing we did when we got there, then, was to put our swimsuits on and head over to the water park.

Ethan’s first order of business was to run around like a crazy person in the wave pool. This kept him occupied for a half an hour or so, but soon he decided we had to explore the other regions of the water park. After a minimal amount of searching, we found the kid’s area with an immense rain structure surrounded by fiberglass animals and water slides. Now this was fun. Ethan started out going down the smaller slides and playing around the fiberglass animals. After awhile he discovered a slightly bigger slide that he was happy to go down for quite awhile. All the while Ethan was vaguely aware of some bigger slides on the other side of the structure.

After about 15 minutes going down the smaller slides, Ethan walked over and discovered the “lizard” slide. He checked it out on several occasions. He would walk over, look at the slide, check out some of the people getting off, then leave and go down the smaller slide again. He did this about 4 times before he came over and found me and asked me to help him find the lizard slide. Half way up to get to the lizard slide he changed his mind and decided to go on the smaller slide again. After another 5 minutes, he did the whole thing over again from the start. This time we made it all the way to the top of the slide. He got in line, sat down on the slide, then decided he didn’t want to do it again, so he got off. After a couple of words of encouragement, he sat down at the head of the slide again, and this time he went down. Jenny was waiting at the bottom for him. I don’t know what he looked like getting off the slide, but when I met him at the top again he was smiling from ear to ear. He told me “I didn’t cry at all!”

Tomorrow we’re going to try to get him to go down the bigger slides that Jenny and I can go down.