Indoor February Fun

This week, Ethan and I worked on his spoon skills. He did pretty well with the tapioca pudding, but not so well with things that don't stick to the spoon. Either way, he had a lot of fun playing with it. Check out those four big teeth! It's funny how much older he looks with just those four teeth.

Ethan has also become quite the master of organization. Just like in last week's posting I wrote about how he puts things in lines on the tables, he also likes putting things into baskets, buckets, cups, or in this case, measuring cups. These are all of his refrigerator magnets shoved into one cup. Another relatively new favorite activity of Ethan's is to look at family pictures. Whether on the wall, on the refrigerator, or in a book, he likes to look at pictures, point at the people in them, and have Mike and I name who they are. Today he actually pointed at a picture of Mike and said "Da." This can go on for 20+ minutes at a time!!

On Friday, we went to Mike's grandpa's house in Rockford for a family dinner from Lino's (YUM!). After dinner, Lainey and Ethan had a chance to play. Kel brought a tent with an attached tube that they could crawl through. They loved it!

Ethan has also really grown to be pretty animated in his phone "conversations." He is becoming quite expressive with his hands and face and says "yeah" through the whole conversation.

Oh, and by phone I mean the actual play phone, an old cell phone, or in this case his fake phone and a play wrench at the same time!

Although Ethan already knew coffee was hot, he now understands how much Mike and I love it, which in turn means Ethan should also really love it. He was pretty serious in his drinking of my "coffee" (after it was empty).

We finally caught one of our favorite things Ethan does on camera! For the last month or so when Ethan is looking for something he walks around like this with a confused look on his face. He is usually looking for his juice, so it's pretty easy to point him in the right direction.

Last night, Mike and I went with Kel, Chad, Nick, and Heather to The Speakeasy for dinner then to the Northleaf Winery in Milton for a winery tour and wine tasting. It was a ton of fun and we got to sample all of their specially made wines. They were so good we bought six bottles of wine to take home and even Mike liked a few of them! Thanks for the great idea and a fun Valentine's Day celebration Kel!

Before we left for dinner, there was a knock at the door and it was the UPS man. Although the package arrived last night, we didn't take it out of the package until this morning. It was a mini big boy recliner for Ethan from his Aunt Courtney! Kileigh has one of her own at my mom's house and Ethan has loved sitting in it. So, Courtney got him one of his own. He has spent the whole morning climbing up and down, eating his treats and drinking his juice in it. He loves it. Thanks Aunt Courtney!

To finish out the morning, my dad and Kileigh came over for a little play time. Every time Kileigh comes over she asks Mike to please build her a house. So, Mike pulls out all of our old big boxes and builds the kids a little fort to climb through and they have lots of fun crawling loudly through the boxes. Kileigh even pulls out the play flashlight to make it a little easier to navigate.

Happy Valentine's Day!