Ethan is 2-Years-Old!

I know this is the fourth birthday post in two weeks, but this is just our birthday time of year :) Yesterday (on Easter Sunday), Ethan officially turned 2-years-old. I know that he is my baby and it should be weird to me that he is already two, but it actually feels weird to me that he is only two. He has always seemed months older than his actual age, partly because he is so verbal, and partly because he spends all of his social time with older kids. Up until this week, if you asked him, he would tell you that he is "three, like Bubba!" I have finally gotten him to say consisently that he is two (at least for the past week).

Since Ethan's birthday fell on Easter Sunday this year, it was a little hard to give him the "birthday boy" day that we gave Caleb a couple weeks ago, but we did our best. Sunday morning we went to the Easter Service at our church, and we let Ethan stay with us in church the whole time instead of going to the toddler nursery, which he LOVED. (He was surprisingly good and quiet the whole time; he even fell asleep on me for about ten minutes during the sermon.) After church, we went out to eat at T.G.I. Friday's with another family for lunch, so that Ethan could have his meal of choice, which was chicken nuggets (just like Caleb chose). After a long afternoon nap, Ethan spent the rest of the afternoon in his favorite place: outside. The boys rode bikes, played in the back yard, and played in the sandbox on the deck until dinner. For dinner, Daddy grilled steaks and Mommy cooked fried potatoes and asparagus, as well as apple pie with ice cream for dessert. Ethan asked us to sing Happy Birthday to him about five times during dinner, and we obliged each time.

Marcus thought up a cool idea of watching videos from when the boys were younger as a birthday tradition, but, after he already told the boys what we were going to do, we realized that all of our old videos are in the safety deposit box at the bank for safe-keeping, except for one DVD we made of newborn Caleb. Well, you guessed it, we watched that video. Ethan kept asking, "Where picture of me? Where baby Ethan?" We felt really bad. But he eventually gave up and went to play with his train set while the three of us finished the video. Poor Ethan...I hope this doesn't start him down a road of birthday pity-parties like others before him :)

On to the developmental stuff this month...it's been two months since Ethan took off his diaper and informed me that he wanted to go pee-pee in the potty. Overall, he has been super easy to potty train, but he did have a relapse for two days last week. He had like ten accidents within 24 hours, and I was afraid he had called it quits on the potty. But I ramped up the rewards and praise and encouragement (all of which had kind of lapsed), and he got back on track. Now he is back to 2 or 3 accidents a week, which is where we were before the relapse.

Behaviorally, this month has been better than the month before, but he is still hitting and instigating conflict regularly. According to Miss Margaret at the Rec Center, he has been acting much better when I leave him there, and I haven't had any bad reports from his teachers at church lately, so it appears that he is mostly saving it for me and Caleb. Not ideal, but better than the alternative :)

Miss Margaret put it best when she said, "He can be so bad when he wants to, but then he'll run into your arms and kiss you and you completely forget what he just did."