Ethan's Second Birthday and another November Update

The first slide show is random pics from the past 10 days. The second shows pics from Ethan's birthday.

He turned 2 years old on Sunday, Nov 16. I measured and weighed Ethan. He is now 35" tall (or 2 feet 11 inches) and weighs 27 lbs. Two years ago, he weighed 10 lbs, 10 oz and was 22" long. This puts his height at the 72nd percentile and weight at the 36th percentile. Overall BMI is 15.5 or the 20th percentile. This is in the healthy range for kids his age. (check out this website for a nifty calculator! blubberbuster.com )

I measured Evelyn also. She is 41" tall (or 3 ft 5 inches) and weighs 35 lbs. This puts her height at the 84th percentile, weight at the 57th percentile and overall BMI at 14.7 or the 27th percentile. Again, this is in the healthy range for kids her age.

We celebrated Ethan's birthday with his favorite supper (pasta, meatballs and spagetti sauce) and a Sesame Street cake. We opened presents first thing in the morning (kind of like christmas!) and the kids spent most of the day playing with Ethan's new toys.

The day before, I wrapped his gifts with Evelyn. She bought him a 'Mater' truck (from Cars). That evening, as she was going to bed, she started rummaging through her figures and told Ryan she was finding another gift for Ethan. She found her only 'Diego' figure and proclaimed "This is going to be for Ethan!" then she carefully wrapped her gift in a tissue and placed it with the other gifts. The next morning, when we opened the gifts, she immediately handed Ethan the Kleenex wrapped Diego declaring "Here Ethan! This is for you!" He replied with a hearty "Thank you Ella!" All around, it was pretty cute!

The day before she wrapped her special gift, she built Ethan an elaborate block city. Se worked on it for quite a while and declared it was "a surprise for Ethan for his birthday". He did'nt appreciate her effort, but the sentiment was nice.

In other news: It snowed, melted a bit, froze, rained, froze, and snowed again. Yah, the back roads are skating rinks and the car was covered in ice. At least the temperature has been mild!

I was the parent helper at Playschool. They did a craft involving glitter. yah. That was really fun to clean up. It was cute to watch them prance around like reindeer and be involved in thier imaginary play. The boys got a bit rambunctious and I believe there was a bit of a fight. I missed that part! Overall, the class was not having a harmonious day. I felt bad for the teacher - stressful days are hard.

The same day I helped, we also watched Evelyn's dance class. It is a 45 min class, but they are pretty much done after 20 min. It was nice to see her do her little routine and obsticle course.

During that class, Ethan started to get a bark-like cough. He still had lots of energy and ran around with Evelyn's classmates. That night (last night) he woke at 12:30 with a fever and very noisy breathing (stridor). Great. Croup - again. It seems like he gets croup with about 25% of his colds. So, I was up with him for a couple hours until he fell back asleep and his breathing started to sound better. His fever and stridor has continued intermittantly through today and he's had no energy. However, as I type this, he is clomping around in my winter boots, making monster noises. I think he's feeling a bit better! I will say I enjoyed all the extra snuggles ;-)

During Ethan's illness today, Evelyn has been learning about fevers and coughs and "Tiny Yucky Germs". She understands that fever helps kill the 'tiny yucky germs that make you sick' and she even knew that Ethan probably got sick because he did not wash his hands often enough (or he shared a spit covered toy with some other kid). She learned how to assess for signs of fever (flushed cheeks and listlessness) and how to feel his forehead. It was a good learning experience for her. She was very thoughtful and stayed quiet through the day and brought Ethan his sippy cup. Right now, she is saying "Ethan, you have to stay in bed. You have a cold! Now let me go and get Hank!" Ethan is being a bit reluctant to resume his role as invalid.... I should go.

Oh, they're happy again. The picture to your right was drawn by Evelyn. This is the very first time I have ever seen her draw a recognizable face. She said it was her teacher (Mrs.Romanyshuk) I showed the picture to Mrs.R and she said it was the best part of her day so far.