Beginning our third year of this journey...

I suppose it's actually longer than that, since I told Brent the other day between pregnancy and babies I don't think I've slept through the night in almost three years now. The blessings overflow, and the humor of it all is more obvious when you're sleep deprived, right?

Ethan had his two year check up last week. He was a little trooper, and only got upset about laying on the scale to get weighed. I'm pretty sure the automatic paper towel dispenser in the airport bathroom scarred him a bit emotionally to laying down on any surface away from home. Actually, he's never been a fan of public bathrooms. (My mom would tell you he doesn't get that from me, as apparently I never met a bathroom I didn't want to visit when I was a little girl.) The bribe of a sticker eventually convinced him he could do it, and the rest of the day he told me, "mory (what he calls nurse mary) sticker...brave...numbers (what he called the scale) scared." He is 32 1/4 inches tall (8th percentile), 24 lbs and 3 oz (9th percentile), and in the 85th percentile for his head size. At least it's not still the bicycle helmet cone head he was born sporting. I've never seen such a head shape!

Also last week we took a trip to the child research lab at the University for both the kids to participate in some research studies. Ella did one measuring whether 7 month olds would recognize changing number patterns. This involved being recorded while watching a tv screen. I had my eyes closed as instructed so I wouldn't influence her, but had a hard time keeping a straight face when my sweet girl let out a really loud belch in the middle. Ethan's study was trying to see how much two year olds trust adults to give them labels for objects. In the beginning of the study the researcher would pull out everyday toys/objects and repeat, "what's this...I don't know what this is." several times. When she pulled out the airplane, Ethan excitedly squealed "plane!"; each time she would repeat "I don't know what it is" Ethan would repeat "plane!" louder, as if to say, lady I have told you this repeatedly. For some reason when she pulled out the banana Ethan asked her to turn it on. Maybe too many toys with batteries?

Here are some frequent phrases from Ethan these days:
*What's Ella doin?
*Canyoufeelit? (usually about the air conditioner; he hasn't been practicing to be a pro wrestler!)
*What's that? (meaning "who's that?" about random people in the store)
*Ethan do it (or "I'se do it")
*Touch it? (usually said when it's something he suspects he's not supposed to mess with)