Ethan's Birthday!!!!!

Ethan turned T-W-O on Sunday. Wow...can't believe it. We decided to keep it low key this year, since Valentine's was on a Sunday, and we figured everyone would be doing 'date night' on either Friday or Saturday. Soooo, we just gathered the fam and a few friends for lunch after church.

Okay, the pictures are in backwards order and I don't feel like fixing it... sorry! Pretend it's that Seinfeld episode where everything happened backwards.

We got Ethan a real bike - he's kind of outgrown his tricycles and we figured by summer he'll fit on a big boy bike, but we were wrong! He's still about 3 inches too short, but hopefully he'll grow fast. He really liked it, though!
Party at Lin's Garden:

Our best attempt at a group picture of all the kids. Don't know why Ethan is crying - he just randomly started screaming for a few seconds, then he was fine.

Ethan reading the Elmo card from Lance and Amanda. They give the BEST cards. Ethan still plays with his monkey card that he got from them LAST YEAR!

The whole crew (well, most anyway):

Ethan LOVED his Elmo cake, but did not eat a single bite of it! It was past his nap time by this point and he was sooooo tired. Very uninterested in actually eating birthday cake!

The kids all loved the Elmo balloon:

Okay, backwards all the way to morning. We had kept the Grubblets over night, so they got to join in on the birthday fun.

We got Ethan a fish!!!! He LOOOOOVES his fishy! We've taught him how to take care of it himself. It is tooo cute to watch him care for the fish. He feeds him every morning when he wakes up and again right before he goes to bed. The fish tank has a light on it that he turns on to feed and turns it off again when he's done. It's amazing how much he loves it already.

His conversations with fishy:

Morning: "Hi fishy! Morning! Eat breakfast!"

After school: "Hi fishy! How day? Swim? Hi fishy!"

At bedtime: "Hi fishy! Eat! Nigh nigh. Love you!"

A short version of what Ethan's up to:

He now knows ALL his letters, all his shapes (not just the easy ones - he knows octagon, pentagon, crescent, etc.), he can count to 14, recognizes most numbers to 10, knows his colors most of the time, he loves to ask us how are day was "how day?", he is already into the 'terrible twos' and throws tantrums when he doesn't get his way, he's obsessed with Elmo, he's a lot more interested in TV in general, especially Handy Manny, he's very nurturing - he likes to make his bears kiss each other and us, he pats our back when he hugs us, he can also NOT be nurturing - he likes to hit/swing at us, enjoys spitting his food on the table and floor, he's still very picky but will eat pasta at every meal if we let him, still LOVES to read and knows a lot of books by heart and can 'read' them himself, loves to play with his tool workbench, he's getting more into trucks - especially fire trucks and his new ambulance, and well, I could go on and on but that's the gist.

Happy birthday sweet Ethan! You will always be Mommy's little Valentine!