Guess who was named kindergarten student of the month for November at St. Anthony of Padua. (Scroll down.) Go on, I'll wait while you guess.
In other E news, he and Andrew will be here for Christmas. In fact, by this time two weeks from now, we'll be back from Baltimore. It's only two weeks, but it's really the only thing I wanted for Christmas.
That and Lost Season Four. In case anyone was wondering what to get me.
I know you won't read this, but Daddy loves you kiddo. I love you so much, and I miss you so much, and I can't wait til I get to see you again. I hope you have a great birthday, hope you like your presents, and I hope Mommy gets you a cool cake.
Ethan does really well with numbers. He knows his street addresses in both Iowa and Delaware, he reads off the street addresses of every house as we drive down the street, he can count to 100, and he can do basic addition. But he hasn’t been that good on his letters, and he still doesn’t really know his ABCs.
Kindergarten is just four months away, so we’ve started working on his letters. He can now spell his name, and it only took him two days to get there. We’ve spent a lot of time spelling names, and while he can’t spell them all, he knows that D is for Daddy, M is for Mommy, and A is for Andrew.
Last night we went through a long period of spelling names, every name E could think of. We finished, and for some reason I spelled the word “clock” – probably because clocks are among his favorite things, because they are always showing (and changing) numbers. In response, he said “Clock isn’t a name.” I patiently explained that clock was a word, and that all words, not just names, were made up of letters, and that anything made up of letters could be spelled. You could see the connections being made in his mind as I spoke, a whole new world of information opening up to him, and we spent the next twenty minutes or so spelling every word he could think of.
Ethan's gone, back with his mother, now in Delaware. More later. I just wanted to share this: we were standing at the Southwest ticket counter at Midway. Ethan was holding his Spider-Man pillow, and the attendant said "That's a cute pillow." She turned away and he motioned that he wanted to tell me something. I leaned down, and he said, exasperatedly, "It's not cute - it's cool." Which, as far as I'm concerned, is both cute and cool. That's my boy.
The cutest little boy in the world turned five today. Hard to believe it's been five years - seems like only yesterday he was born. To think that if he had been born a month earlier, he would have started school this year. Here are some recent photos, courtesy the Canon A630 (everyone should have one!).
Okay, blogger is apparently having a problem with uploading images right now. So I'll get those later. In the meantime, it's enough to post to say
When I was working my temp assignment, one of my old co-workers had just returned from vacation in Colorado. Prior to going, he had purchased a new digital camera at a shop in Cedar Rapids. He was quite taken with the camera, and had some great pictures. The kicker was, the camera was very reasonably priced. So, the day Ethan was scheduled to come back, I went up to the shop in Cedar Rapids and picked one up for myself. Camera (an 8-pixel Canon A-630 Powershot), 2 G memory card, and case were $300. Well, actually, $300.59.
So far, I'm loving the camera. Here's some shots I took this afternoon at the Family Fun Night at Coral Ridge Mall.
And we'll see if this uploads, but the camera even takes digital video. (Note: The video was huge - 37 M - and after an hour of trying to get it to load, I gave up. But it looks great.)
My son is now in the "Why?' stage of life. Almost everything he gets told is responded to with a "Why?" It's an interesting stage. On the one hand, it's an opportunity to educate, to inform, to teach. On the other, it's incredibly annoying. Plus, after you've said that the sun is hot because it's a flaming ball of gas, there really isn't a satisfactory answer to the question "Why is the sun a ball of gas?" other than "Because". Still, it's nice to be regarded as someone who knows everything, because I know it won't be long until I'm regarded as someone who knows nothing.
Somewhere along the way, Ethan started referring to things as "My friend" as in "My friend Grandma" or "My friend Magic" (or "My friend Gunner", depending on which dog he was talking about) or my favorite, "My friend Daddy". Well, yesterday I left him and his mother at Midway airport in Chicago, after driving him in and spending a couple of days together as a family again. And now, I sit here trying not to cry, thinking about the fact that my friend Ethan is not with me, and I won't see him for another four months or so.
So much will change in that time, so many changes I won't see take place. In the last few weeks he had taken to opening his car door himself, and he could pull the seat belt all the way to the latch (though he wasn't able yet to figure out how to latch it). By the time I see him again he will be able to, and he won't need me to do that for him anymore, just as there are a dozen other things he doesn't need me to do for him anymore.
I miss him so much. It's amazing to feel both totally empty and yet filled with sorrow. I guess sorrow has no calories. I miss my little boy, who won't be quite so little the next time I see him. I miss how he affects others - as we were walking into a restaurant in Chicago a woman walking out saw him, smiled, and then said "He is going to break a lot of hearts when he grows up." I miss the fact that his favorite thing in the world was to jump on me, oftentimes catching me completly off-guard with a pounce on the stomach. I miss my friend Ethan. I miss my son Ethan.
I've been quiet the last couple of weeks as the time came to say goodbye for awhile. I'll probably be quiet for a few more as I readjust to things. (And it's not just me - as I started typing that sentence, I got a call from Lesa - Ethan was missing me and wanted to talk to me. And while he didn't talk, he did listen, and I talked and sang and made him smile. I tell ya, that kid and I are in tune with each other.) But just to prove I'll eventually be okay, I'll leave you with this:
