The mind of a 2 year old

Ethan has been cracking me up lately. As well as testing my patience. But that is for a whole other post. The biggest thing i've noticed in the past few months is Ethan's ability to think and speak for himself. He has been talking for a while, but a lot of it is mimicry as well as saying what he sees. Now he is able to think for himself, request certain things, and talk about his day. Here are a few short stories from the past week.

• The other night Granddaddy and Grandee took us to dinner. When they were leaving our apartment, Ethan (unprompted) said, "Thank you dinner Granddaddy and Grandee!" It's nice to know that the manners we are trying to instill in him are being reciprocated.
• Today when my mom took Ethan and I to lunch, she was getting out of the car and coughed. Ethan said, "Bless you mammy!"
• Last night when I got home from volunteering at the consignment sale, Ethan wanted me to hold him, then he proceeded to tell me, "Time out, no to daddy". (He said no to Matt and had to go to time out) "Share toys...play basketball with daddy...eat peanut jelly...share chips with daddy." In between every thought was a few moments of silence and you could see on his face that he was thinking and recalling what he had done for the night. I usually ask him how his day is when we go to his "school" 3 mornings a week. So he is getting used to recalling memories and telling me about his day. I know in the future he won't want to tell me when he misbehaves, but for now that is the first thing out of his mouth.
  
• Every day I ask him what he wants for lunch. (Not that I will make what he requests all the time, but it's nice to hear what he says) The first thing out of his mouth every day is "Chips!" He wants chips. Although his most favorite thing right now is "peanut jelly", which is peanut butter and jelly sandwich, just in case you couldn't figure it out ;) .
  
• Whenever we pass construction sites, which is on almost every road here these days, he can point out excavators. He knows exactly what they are what they look like from all his truck books. The boy is obsessed with trucks. He sits in his Granddaddy's truck every Sunday while they unload the trailer for church. (We meet in a daycare, so we bring a lot of our own equipment- chairs, staging, etc.)
• The past 2 nights Ethan has been up for several hours in the middle of the night. I can't figure out why. The night before last he was pointing to the ceiling and saying, "hippo....alligator"... maybe he's having bad dreams or something, but he clearly thought he was seeing these animals.
  

Anyhow, I am sure there are more I am missing. Matt's laptop completely died the other day and it is just over a year old. A good friend is looking at it for us and is hoping to fix it. So until we get it back I won't be posting pictures. My laptop is archaic and takes FOREVER to load pictures and it frequently stalls. So unless I get the desire to sit and work with it, you won't be seeing any pictures until Matt's laptop is fixed. Please pray that it is fixable. We do not have the money to replace it and he uses it for work and seminary, as well as personal use.