No More Baby!

We visited the farm- here Ethan and Uncle Bob are hanging out with the llamas and alpacas

Ethan loves looking at pictures of his family!

Checking out the sheep cupcake that he and Daddy picked out for my birthday treat!

Check out the new kicks!!  He loves these new boots!

New favorite place to hang out- in the lego box!

The candles are lit on the cake- love his face in this shot

Blow!

Papa and Grandma

Uncle Bob and Auntie Margo watch the animal show at Jack's birthday party

Everything is right in his world- a lollipop and a birthday balloon

bowling!

Pete and I are amazed at just how much Ethan is changing from week to week!  It seems like a month ago we couldn't understand much of what he was saying, and now, he is talking like crazy. On a few occasions he has even put together two words.  Last night in the bathtub he said, "More bubble" and he says "oh boy."  He is a huge fan of the words, "more" and "again."  Smart guy!  He asks us to name everything- he'll hold up an object and wait for us to name it, and then he'll try to repeat what we say- sometimes it's only the first syllable, but other times he's able to repeat the whole word.  It just seems like over the course of a week or two his language has exploded.  I love hearing what he has to say!

As you can tell from the pictures, we've had a fun couple of weeks.  We celebrated my birthday and Ethan was able to practice his candle blowing skills.  Grandma and Papa Fowler visited, with my favorite cake in tow, and were good sports about lighting the candles about ten times so Ethan could blow them out again and again- he'll be an expert by the time his second birthday rolls around!

Over the weekend we also celebrated cousin Jack's birthday.  Ethan sat at the birthday table all by himself like a big kid and ate brownies and ice cream.  He hit the pinata with the rest of the kids and scored a lollipop from the fallen bounty!  Where did my baby go??!!  We finished off the festivities with a trip to the bowling alley.  Ethan loved watching all of the people and the flashing lights.  He pushed the ball down the lane once or twice with me, but was more interested in driving the cars in the arcade and hanging out and eating pizza with his Papa and Grandma and Aunts and Uncles. 

We are continuing to attend our weekly story time. Ethan's new tradition is that he'll go in, sit patiently through one story because he knows that after one story comes the graham cracker snack.  After he finishes his cracker, he gets up to leave because the train table is outside of the story room.  Last week, after we had our cracker and had left the story room, Ethan was playing with the trains.  There was a group of  boys clustered together trying to get back into the story room.  They were peeking through the glass door, banging on the window pane, trying to get back in.  Ethan watched them curiously as he continued to play trains.  Then he stopped, worked his way through the crowd, and within one second had pulled the door handle and opened the door to let all of the children back into the story room.  All of the moms looked at me in amazement- we're in big trouble with this one!  

Finally we went for Ethan's 18 month checkup today.  He continues to be between the 90 and 95 % for height and weight- he weighs 30 and 1/2 pounds, and is 34 and 1/2 inches long.  Our doc says he looks great and was very impressed by how much he understands!