Ethan - My Little Man

It’s hard to believe that Ethan is already nearly two years of age. It’s one of those surreal sort of feelings. Two years is a very short period of time and yet what was life like without him? Well, it was certainly less messy. And quite a bit more calm. Probably most mothers can say that about life before sons.

Ethan is my second born. Whatever that may mean for his personality, it also means I have contemplated on his life and achievements much less than I did Emry’s. Which is why I want to post more blogs not just about my little man but also about Emry. I hope these posts will remind me of the little things, make me laugh in years to come and be stories they can have when they are older. Maybe, too, my handful of readers will find them entertaining. For one things is certain: as exhausting as kids can be, they can also be quite amusing.

Ethan has turned out to be my great communicator. He has learned to talk much faster than Emry and, others have told me many times, much faster than most kids his age. You truly can hold a conversation with him. And, he’s learned to be quite literal. The other day I asked him if something he had eaten was “yummy in his tummy”.

“No,” he shook his head with a curious look on his face. “In my mouth.”

And while he’s always been thoroughly a boy, you can certainly tell he has only a sister. For a long time, Disney princesses were his main topic of fantasy conversation. Then we moved to Indiana and his older cousin Beto (10 months older than him) has had an impact on his imagination: Spiderman! (And Flash, and Batman, and Hulk, and…well, you get the idea. But mostly Spiderman.) Such an impact, in fact, that as he sat on the kitchen counter while I prepped dinner the other night I asked him if he liked his train set. He shook his head sadly and said no. His cars and car mat? Again, a shake of the head and a no.

“What do you like, Ethan?” I asked.

“Beto’s Spiderman,” he answered matter-of-factly.

And if you ask him what he wants on his 2-year birthday cake, he will promptly tell you Spiderman.

Ethan’s imagination also seems more vivid than Emry’s at his age, but that may be because he has someone to teach him to pretend. Not only does Emry dash about the house imagining monsters, or dinosaurs, or whatever but when at my parents they run up and down the hall with Beto, armed to the hilt with flashlights as monsters chase them about. So, if I come across Ethan dashing out my bedroom, he’s bound to stop, give me his best I’m-scared-but-not-really grin and declare, “Monsters!”

In the midst of all the fun, Ethan is proving to be as bright as Emry. He happily sings the ABCs with her and gets most of them spot on. He will also happily count to ten with you, only skipping the number four. He sits at the table when Emry is working on her school and repeats back the sound of whatever letter we’re working on in her phonics book. And he has picked up on the Scripture verses we’re memorizing quite handedly. I confess I am a bit surprised.

Even potty training seems to be going a bit better with him. He’s certainly not there yet. For one I haven’t given it my all for three days in a row like I attempted with Emry (which didn’t work). However, within a couple of weeks he is already coming up to me and telling me he needs to go potty after he has just gone in his diaper. In that sense, he is ahead of Emry. Which tells me I probably need to make a grand three-day attempt. But he is the second born…some things I just let fall through the cracks.