Skip to main content

Boys will be boys

Ethan continues to say things that cause laughter and amazement. In no particular order:

1. This morning he expressed frustration about having to go "#1" and then almost immediately "#2." He hurried back to the bathroom where he idled away sitting on the toilet frustrated "that is just won't come out." Heather laughed and offered him a magazine indicating that's what guys did. Ethan declined but did say "I'm gonna be here till tomorrow."

2. Ethan has picked up on some negative sayings at pre-school, but that is typical I suppose. When he gets frustrated he lashes out verbally indicating that we are not his parents. The other night when he was frustrated about going to bed, he said, "I'm not tired. I'm not hungry. I'm not going to bed. Ever." When I sternly put him to bed, he said, "You are NOT my dad. Dad." The irony was lost on him.

3. The other day, he was coloring in his Transformer's coloring book, and Heather complimented his improved coloring skills. He sighed, and said, "Yeah, I'm good at everything."

4. Ethan has recently become interested in exercize (mainly, I suspect because he expects to grow up and battle Decepticons from Transformers), and he routinely just drops down and does at least 10 push ups (real ones actually) followed by a couple sets of crunches. He then jumps up, pulls up his sleeve, and says "Wanna feel my guns?" (See the photo above!)

5. After working out, Ethan said recently, "I can't lift our house up, but I can lift up our TV."

6. His ideas on what he will be when he grows up vary with the day, but because he loves race cars, he often says "I'm gonna be a mechanic when I grow up."

7. Last weekend in McCall, he donned his Spiderman life jacket, and I swam with him out to a floating trampoline where he had a blast jumping and splashing. When we were swimming back, his teeth chattered, and he kept saying "Don't let go of me Daddy. You won't let go of me Daddy, will you?" Never buddy. Never.

8. Also last weekend, I was giving a speech outdoors, and in the middle of it, I felt a tug on my pants. Interrupted, I turned to find Ethan behind me at the podium. A bit irritated, I covered the microphone, leaned down, and said, "Ethan! I'm working. What do you need?" He looked up at me and said, "I just wanted to tell you that I love you Daddy." I returned to the speech and told the audience what he said. Doesn't get much better than that.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

The Two Faces of the American Dream

The massive wave of Norwegian immigration to Minnesota from the 1850s through the early 20th century wasn't a casual choice; it was an escape from crushing land scarcity and economic desperation.  My ancestors, the Dunhams, arrived in 1851 and built a life in Otter Tail County in Minnesota. My great-great-grandfather, Jens Christian Dunham, didn’t just survive—he thrived. He served in the Minnesota legislature as a Republican from 1888 to 1890 and later became a staunch advocate for President Teddy Roosevelt. He was the literal embodiment of the American Dream: an immigrant who fled poverty to become a lawmaker in his new home. Fast forward a century, and a new wave of immigrants—this time from Somalia—is following that exact same blueprint. Like the Norwegians before them, they fled hardship to build a future in Minnesota, and many have run for office to serve the state that welcomed them. Yet, the political rhetoric surrounding these two groups couldn't be more polarized. Don...

Phantom Blindness and Taking a Break after Strokes

I met with my eye doctor last week about taking some time off from my vision therapy. I have been doing therapy since my stroke almost two and a half years ago. I am tired, and a need a break. My doctor said, “This is completely understandable. Take some time off.” At the appointment, my doctor tested my vision. Because of the strokes, my vision was affected, and I have a problem in my field of vision on the right side. I have a deficit with my right side peripheral vision. However, it is getting better. During the test, I told him that I “sense things on the right side of my peripheral vision.” It seems that I know that something is there, but I cannot really distinguish what it is. He told me that there is a body of thought describing phantom vision or phantom blindness. A Polish researcher, L. Bieganowski, described this phantom blindness this way:    “The subject of the paper is the phenomenon of phantom vision. It occurs among the blind (or almost blind...

Greek orthodox and Catholic‘s

Being a history buff, I’ve always understood that the Catholic Church was split in about 1000 A.D. Our Greek tour guide mentioned the differences a little bit yesterday, but she did not capture the full history. Today I saw a small Greek orthodox by the roadside and I’m going to insert about the history. Eastern Orthodox Catholics and Roman Catholics are the result of what is known as the East-West Schism (or Great Schism) of 1054, when medieval Christianity split into two branches. The Byzantine split with Roman Catholicism came about when Pope Leo III crowned Charlemagne, King of the Franks, as Holy Roman Emperor in 800. From the Byzantine viewpoint, this was a slap to the Eastern Emperor and the Byzantine Empire itself — an empire that had withstood barbarian invasions and upheld the faith for centuries. After Rome fell in 476, Byzantium was the only vestige of the Holy Roman Empire. Charlemagne’s crowning made the Byzantine Emperor redundant, and relations between the East and...