birthday construction is finally complete!

ethan's construction birthday party a few weeks ago was so much fun. we had originally planned for it to be in our backyard, but when a storm was a brewin' about 2 pm, we knew we didn't want to cram 40 wet bodies in our little house! it turned out really well in our church's fellowship hall... there was plenty of room for the kids to play, and it was much cooler than our backyard would have been! here's a few pictures to get you in the bulldozin' mood...

we had construction gear set up for ethan's buddies when they arrived. this included hard hats (ironically made of soft foam), tool belt, safety goggles, sand paper, paint brush, tape measurer, and most importantly....proof of citizenship IDs! with all the illegal immigrants working construction in our area, it seemed only fitting to have bilingual signs and immigration papers. :) you can enlarge avery's picture below to see the ID a little better.






the boys really got a kick out of crawling through the "work tunnel", though ethan never did venture through it. he had fun watching everybody else crawl through it, and you could just tell he wanted to.... but i guess he took the "caution" sign seriously!! at the end of the party, the kids had demolition duty, knocking down the boxes over and over again.





for the workers' dinner break, they "built" their own sandwiches. we also had baked beans in a paint bucket with a paint stick attached to a spoon.


now, don't you just feel like you were there? ok then...on with the party! next is my favorite part... the cake! my mom and i put our heads together (with ideas we found online) and created one yummy pile of dirt! we displayed the cake on sawhorses and a piece of plywood. it looked really neat with different construction men and trucks all around it, but i didn't get a picture of it until most of the cake was gone.

ethan was more concerned with the vehicles ON the cake than with the cake itself. it was so cute to watch him lick the icing off the wheels... he needs a little training in the icing removal department, but i'm sure we'll perfect that in the years to come. the picture where we are blowing out the candles is especially precious to me... ethan is saying "fffffff", which is how he has always blown on things... it cracks me up!












one thing i learned from this party is that opening presents is an overwhelming experience for a 2 year old (anybody agree??). ethan opened his first present (a cool remote controlled car), and that was it. he wanted to play with the car. he didn't care about the other 20 presents waiting for him! so i convinced him to open another present, and that was it again. he wanted to play with that one. and i don't blame him! he got some neat toys! by the time it came around to our present, he was too far gone... so he opened it later at home. i think next year, we'll have him open our gift when he wakes up. i don't want his birthday to just be about the presents, so i'll have to think on that some more.... i'd love to know your thoughts on handling opening presents for young children. i know that i enjoy watching someone open a present i've given them, so i don't want to load up the presents and open them later.... well, i have a year to think about it!




and how did sweet caroline like the party? well, she was worn out but did pretty well getting passed from person to person. she finally found refuge on my grandma's shoulder, and this is truly blog worthy.... if you know caroline, you know that she doesn't cuddle much or fall asleep on people... so grandma, this was your special day!


here's one more picture of how ethan's birthday began. when he woke up, i surprised him with a "birthday muffin" with a candle in it. i came into his room with the muffin, singing "happy birthday". we lit the candle again at the table and sang again, just for the fun of it. :) actually, i think we did it a few times! ethan got the biggest thrill out of starting off his special day that way. i hope to make that a tradition with each child and each birthday. here is my big boy with the candle lit the third or fourth time! :)


wow! this ended up being an incredibly long post!!! but not nearly as long as my labor with our birthday boy! happy birthday to our sweet ethan. our family is so blessed to call you our son, our first child. we praise God for you and for the way God is growing you to be such a big boy!

road trip in progress

the kids and i have been trucking around visiting my friends for the past week, and we've finally settled at kristi's for a while. our five kids actually took their nap all at the same time, so kristi and i enjoyed some time hanging out this afternoon after a delicious japanese lunch! i've clocked over 1,000 miles on my good ole' van so far, and the kids have been pretty good travelers (we all get tired of being in the car eventually, don't we??). thanks to friends to call and chat with on the drive and john piper, the drive to my destinations has been easier that i'd imagined. i have so much to share from our trip thus far (as well as ethan's bday pictures and 4th of july). so hopefully i'll be able to catch you all up soon. we're having a great time, and yes, grandmother, i've been on my phone almost the WHOLE time i've been driving!! gotta pass the time! :)

brian, we love you and miss you! thanks for letting us be gone so long!

ah-sa-sauce...

more birthday pictures are just around the corner, as well as an "explosion" of pictures from the 4th. :) but it hit me the other day that in my list of "ethan is 2" facts, i failed to include one of the most original things about ethan right now. i cannot believe i left this out!

for the last couple of weeks, ethan has begun about 75% of his sentences with "ah-sa-sauce". i do not know WHAT he is saying if, in fact, he is saying anything at all! at first i thought he was saying "applesauce", but that wasn't it. when i realized that this little intro to his statements was sticking around for more than a day or two, i looked at brian and asked, "what is he saying?" and my dear husband replied, "if YOU don't know, how am i supposed to know?" so then i reflected upon my (little bit of) speech therapy knowledge, and all that i can come up with is that it is a form of developmental stuttering, which i know typically occurs when children are trying to say more than their brain can process. developmental stuttering usually lasts less than 6 months and is really nothing to be concerned about. the tricky thing is that he is not saying, "ah-sa-sauce, saw an airplane" or "ah-sa-sauce, soccer ball", where he would be repeating the first word of his sentence. it's things like, "ah-sa-sauce, mommy look at me" or "ah-sa-sauce, more water please". it's one of those things that's almost cute, but i also just wish it would go away! then again, he will most likely grow out of this soon, and before i know it, i'll realize that the "ah-sa-sauce" is ga-ga-gone!

to any of my SLP friends (or mommies w/ similar experiences)... i welcome your thoughts! here's a video for your diagnostic pleasure. :) he says it about 10 seconds into the video....

interpretation: "ah-sa-sauce, ah-sa-sauce, animal in box."

birthday party pictures under construction

what a fun day ethan's birthday was yesterday! the celebration started with him waking up to his "happy birthday muffin", and he finally wound down about 11pm last night (whew!). it was a long day! his party was so much fun, but we ended up moving it to our church fellowship hall because of the rain.... so it meant a lot of rushing to move decorations (including all the boxes you see below!) and all the food before the rain came yesterday afternoon. today i am resting and sorting through mounds of presents, construction gear, and a mess of party supplies! we have some fun pictures and videos to share from ethan's special day, but it will probably be a few days before i get a chance to properly post them. so until then, here's a couple of pictures to tide you over. ethan loved his cake, and i actually can't believe he hasn't asked for any yet today. (but the day's just halfway over!) below, you see ethan with his friend joseph surveying the "demolition site" before it all came crashing down. the little boys (and some big ones!) had a ball knocking down the boxes over and over. check back in a few days for more pictures. have a great week and a happy fourth of july!

happy birthday ethan!

today ethan turns 2 years old! he is such a ball full of curiosity, amazement, laughter, and heart. i can't believe he's 2 already. (i know that's a running theme on my blog these days, but he just does new things every day, and i am trying so hard to get used to this growing up stuff!) i wish i had time in my day to jot down the things ethan is saying or doing these days. i fear that he will be 10, and i will try to remember what he was like as this two year old, and i won't be able to remember much. so here is an "ethan is 2" list.... at least the things i haven't already forgotten.

-his favorite things to play with right now are anything with wheels... dump trucks and cars, especially. he loves to climb up on the couch and drive them on the arms and back of the couch.

-ethan is a "thinker" like his daddy. you can just see the wheels turning! when we're outside, he squats down, puts his hands on his knees, and just analyzes bug and leaves.

-he can spot the tiniest airplane in the sky or hear the faintest sound of a jet flying over our house. there have been several times that i've said, "ethan, mommy doesn't see the airplane" only to be wrong! maybe he has a future in an air traffic control tower!

-he loves "eeeee beeeee" (itty bitty) bugs, and when a roly poly ("ro-pee-oh-eee-oh") desides to visit us inside, he gets a thrill out of taking it back outside.

-he is not real into climbing onto things, getting under the table, or just running around all over the backyard. don't get me wrong: he's a busy little boy, but it's more along the lines of fine motor busy-ness, like stacking blocks, putting them in and out of a bucket, giving his animals a ride in the sailboat, things like that. he really doesn't stop all day!

-ethan loves his sister more than i could ever have prayed for! he honestly loves playing with her, although she is doing little more than sitting and watching him. lately, he has gotten upset if we've taken her from the living room to be fed or changed because he wants to play with her. he'll say "keh-yine pay v-v-vroom gint?" (caroline play living room again) he also gets so excited to see her every morning. though sibling rivalry will probably soon rear its ugly, sinful head, i am really enjoying watching the 2 of them together right now.

-his favorite song right now is "indescribable" (which he calls "amazing God" because that's in the chorus). he can hear 3 notes of it, and he will exclaim, "amazing God!" with the biggest smile on his face. he asks for this song many times throughout the day. move over, wheels on the bus! ethan also loves my fernando ortega cd that might as well be stuck in our van's cd player b/c it's all i play in there.... his favorites are "power blood" (power in the blood-- he echos the "power" in the chorus as if he were in a gospel choir), "crown him" (crown him w/ many crowns), and "Jesus Christ" ("grace and peace"- i think it's romans 1:7). he loves this whole cd, but he especially favors these songs. he knows where they are in the lineup on the cd and will exclaim the name of the song right before it comes on.

-ethan loves "hammer time" with daddy... anytime brian is hanging a picture or using any tool inside the house, ethan goes and gets his plastic hammer and screwdriver. the other night, we were hanging some portraits in the hallway, and ethan dragged his tool bench from his room to where we were working. he sat down, opened it up, got out his hammer, and stood up as if he was ready to work! he then found a small picture frame on the ground and tried to "hang it" like daddy, sliding it up the wall as far up as he could reach.

-if you're laying on the floor, he'll pull on your arm and GRUNT to try to pick you up. this gets a huge laugh out of daddy almost every night.

-he loves "ABCD"s and gets completely excited when he sees letters around town, around our house, or even on our t-shirts. he doesn't get all the letters right all the time, but he definitely can tell you it's an "ABCD!" he is so cute when he sings the alphabet song. it's hit or miss for about half the letters, but you know when he gets to the end b/c he sings, "next time...sing...ME!"

-thunder and rain really amaze him right now. if it has rained during his nap or in the middle of the night, you can betcha that the first thing he'll say when he wakes up is "funder boom boom!" or "rain aaaaaaallll gone".

-when we're at target or leaving a restaurant or something, he waves and says "hey" to every stranger we pass with a huge grin on his face, as if he's running for office. it cracks the people up. but then if we run into someone that i know or we're at church, ethan sometimes does this fake shy thing that drives me absolutely crazy.

-sometimes he walks like he owns the world. he takes these huge steps with his little bitty legs and swings one arm, and it cracks me and brian up.

-my mom and i were in joann's fabrics with the kids a couple of weeks ago. apparently, ethan had had enough of this girls' stuff, because he shouted, "home depot!" in the middle of the store. that really made his daddy proud!

-ethan loves to pretend he's on the phone. i know that's common for kids, but i had to mention that one. he uses just about anything for a phone if he can't find one of the 100 cell phones that his nana has supplied for his pleasure!! lately, he's been picking up the phone, saying "mmmhhmm.. k.... bye." and slamming the phone shut.

-since we've been talking up his birthday lately, he thinks any candle or anything sticking up out of anything LIKE a candle on a cake is a "happy birthday cake"....like brian's lunch yesterday-- a hamburger w/ a toothpick sticking out of it! "happy birthday cake!" "happy birthday cake!" so hopefully he'll be pretty excited about his actual cake tonite!

-he does not forget anything! this is a good thing and a bad thing....

i could go on all day, but i've got a two year old on my hands now!! :) if you have any memories of ethan that stick out in your mind, i'd love for you to share them. we are absolutely blessed to be his parents. he is a daily reminder of God's goodness in our life...as well as our need for a Savior!

happy birthday baby boy! we love you!