Child labor

While I would have preferred my first 2 kids less than 2 years apart instead of more than 3, there are some definite advantages. Ethan loves to help out around the house. He will even give Colin a bottle if he's crying and I don't respond fast enough. Ethan looks kind of disgusted with me in this picture, doesn't he? Look how much Colin has grown in a few short months! Here Ethan is still feeding his younger brother, although this time they're both so distracted by the TV that neither seems to care that Colin's not really getting fed.You can't really tell, but Ethan doesn't have any pants on in the above picture. This is a common situation at our house. He doesn't have any on in the first picture, either, though I tried to take it so you can't tell. Ethan prefers to be in the fewest clothes possible at all times. I would explain that he gets it from his dad, but I think that would be oversharing. I wish he didn't like to help with the toilets, but he loves it for some strange reason.Another one I wish he'd skip...pumping gas. I'm convinced he's going to end up covered in it one of these days.

The morning of his costume party at school last Halloween, I was putting Colin in the car when I heard a scraping sound. I turned around and Ethan was dragging the full recyling bin to the curb because Jason and I hadn't done it. It was so cute to see him in his little Diego costume struggling up the driveway. I didn't get a picture, but he has repeated that chore several times.

It started very young. Here he is just after his second birthday, stitches in his forehead and mopping the floor. Again, no pants. These children are clearly in need of a primary caregiver who will spend more time feeding and clothing them and less time taking pictures. Colin likes to help, too, but more in a must-be-right-in-the-middle-of-the-action kind of way. Before he could sit up on his own, I stuck him in the laundry basket in the laundry room so I could move the clothes to the dryer. Ethan walked up and asked what I was doing. When I told him I was going to wash Baby Colin, he panicked, threw his body in front of the dryer, flung out his arms, and yelled, "You can't wash Baby Colin. You can't!" I shouldn't mess with him like that. It might give him ideas, but I couldn't help myself. I'm relieved that he doesn't want to see Colin hurt, but a little disturbed that he thinks me capable of throwing my baby in the washing machine.

Productive Day

This little cutey is 6 months old...almost 7! As Jason said, "He was just born. Seriously." We're not sure where the time went and we're a little sad. This is how he looked this morning when I had to wake him up at 9 to go to his checkup. He is cuteness wrapped in sweetness and covered in a layer of adorableness. I know I gush excessively about him. I can't help it. Spend 5 minutes with him and you'll understand. Or maybe not...I admit to an extreme bias where my kids are concerned. He can roll from his back to his stomach but hasn't figured out yet how to get to his back again. This makes him very mad, especially when he wakes up and finds himself on his stomach. He's getting a little more used to it. He's been on solids for a few months now and loves food. The other thing that makes him very mad...when you put his bib on him and don't stick a spoonful of food in his mouth stat. Or when he's determined to eat paper and we take it away. His little temper tantrums make me laugh (for now at least!). He got his first two teeth (the two on the bottom) last weekend. He's in the 98th percentile for height and 90th for weight. According to his pediatrician, he's the weight of the average 9-month-old, the height of the average 11-month-old, and has the head circumference of the average 15-month-old. We just adore him. No one can make him belly laugh like Ethan can, and it's so cute to watch them together. Besides Colin's check-up, the other big event of the day was that we bought a house! We are so, so excited to have settled on something and have this house-hunting process over with. We are never moving again. Ever. As you can see, it's under construction. It should be done (fingers crossed) end of May or first of June. It's bigger than we need, but it was the only one that felt right. If I could move it just 20 or 30 minutes closer to my family it would be my dream house, but nothing closer to them worked out with Jason's commute, so we think we made the right choice. Wish us luck!

Dream, dream, dream

Ethan has been telling us about his dreams lately when he wakes up in the morning. I don't think he gets it yet...I think he thinks it's all real. When we were at Grammy and Papa's I went in to his room in the morning where he very excitedly told me a detailed story about how he went swimming in the ocean and there were lots of jellyfish and he tried to turn into a swordfish to fight them but one stung him on the cheek. He even showed me where. We had just been to the aquarium, which explains part of it. Then the other day he told me how we all went to outer space together in a spaceship. No clue what prompted that one, but it's cute to see how into it he gets. Here's a great shot Grammy got of Ethan at the aquarium. The kids were an absolute dream on the flight home as well. It was a little freaky how perfectly everything worked out. After lots of experience with New Yorkers and NY airports, I am the first to claim that the stereotypes about the attitudes there are well-deserved. I have to completely take that back now. There was no traffic getting to LaGuardia, the curbside check-in guy went inside for me, checked me in and booked me on an earlier flight that was boarding 5 mins after we arrived (and 2 hours before our scheduled flight), someone came and helped me through security with my massive stroller and carseat, and we walked up just as they announced boarding. The flight attendant went and retrieved my carseat from the jet bridge so I could put Colin in a seat next to me, and Colin slept the whole flight while Ethan happily watched out the window or his DVD player. It was great. We were so happy to get home to see Jason, although it took about a week for me and the kids to accept that no one was going to clean up after us, cook for us, or entertain us. Last weekend we went to Wilmington. We rented a beach-front condo in Kure Beach, about 30 mins south. The location was great but the weather was lousy. It was warm on Saturday, but so windy that the only people out on the beach were surfers taking advantage of the waves...and me and Ethan, who lasted about 5 mins before he decided getting blasted in the face with sand was not so fun. Here he is moments after we arrived and before we headed in.

Jason competed in the triathlon again this year and did great despite having a nasty virus we've all been dealing with. Ethan loved cheering him on and would yell "Go Dad Go!!" at each transition. It was so cute. We spent the afternoon at the indoor pool. Colin loves the water and would have happily stayed in all day. He's got a pretty powerful frog kick. Here he is cheering dad on.

Sunday we went to the aquarium in the morning, where Ethan bonded with this puffer fish. Ethan had been coughing occasionally and complaining all weekend that he was tired, so we figured he was getting sick since Jason was also sick. We stopped at my parent's house for dinner on the way home. Ethan didn't want to eat and crawled onto the couch and fell asleep while his cousins played outside. Very unlike him. He slept all the way home, then woke up Monday morning with a fever that peaked at 103.1. Colin and I proceeded to get it over the next 24 hours, so we have spent the week in bed. Ethan's best friend Ryan called last night. I turned on the speakerphone so I could hear the conversation: Ryan: Ethan, are you better yet? Ethan: A little but not really. Ryan: But I miss you. Ethan: I miss you, too. This is after Ethan missed one day of preschool. Those two are so cute. They see each other at least 3 times a week at preschool and playdates and are going to go into serious withdrawal when we move to Raleigh this summer.