Frosty the What?

Ethan's vocabulary has been increasing relatively rapidly over the last few weeks and I am proud to say that he can now carry on a conversation with you. This is, of course, provided that you are willing to drastically alter your definitions of "conversation", "carry on", and "with". Also, you must be willing to listen to a whole variety of non-sequiturs generally involving Anakin Skywalker, penguins, or his bodily functions. He is very focused on bodily functions.

Along with these issues comes his seeming lack of knowledge about anything followed immediately by a statement which answers the question. A question like, "Hey Ethan, do you want a cookie?" will be answered with "I don't know yes," with no pause between the avowed ignorance and the emphatic answer. I have spoken to him many times about this, but it doesn't seem to make much of a difference.

As an example, the other day I asked him, "Ethan, who is your favorite Star Wars character?", and he responded with "I don't know General Grievous."

"Do you know who General Grievous is?"

"I don't know the leader of the droids."

"You know you don't have to say 'I don't know' before every sentence, right?"

"I don't know yes."

"In fact, you could change the 'I don't know' to 'I know!' and make it more of a positive thing."

"I don't know I know!" he said emphatically.

"What?"

He paused for a second and then said, "I don't know."

I gave up. "Me neither."

This evening at dinner we were having a lovely conversation involving all sorts of things. The topics were coming fast and furious and covered everything from Star Wars to Clone Wars with an occasional foray into Legos and animals. Sometimes we talked about Star Wars Legos to spice it up a bit. Anyway, a few minutes into a discussion with Ryan about the fact that the Chicago Fire open the season this weekend, Ethan threw in his two cents. "I like penguins," he said earnestly. He held aloft his stuffed penguin and stated, for those of us who were not looking directly at him, "Penguin is here."

"That is great, Ethan," Jen said. "But should you have Penguin at the table while we are eating?"

"I don't know no," said Ethan, and tossed his stuffed animal on the floor.

"Thank you," said Jen.

"I farted," said Ethan who hadn't actually done anything of the sort.

"Eeeww!" laughed Ryan. "Dad, Ethan just said he farted!" That is Ryan, always one to point out the obvious.

"Got it, big guy," I said. "Don't encourage him."

Ethan then made a noise like in the old Transformers cartoons when the robots turned into cars and proceeded to "transform" himself into a robot.

Trying to keep a straight face, I said, "Ethan, we don't transform ourselves at the dinner table. Transform back and eat your dinner."

Dutifully, Ethan made the transforming noise again and was now back to being a boy.

Jen asked him, once again, to eat some of his dinner, to which Ethan responded, "I farted again." This set Ryan laughing again, and by this time I was having a hard time keeping a straight face. I have practiced long and hard so I don't laugh at times like this, but most of the time all my practice comes to naught when I crack up anyway. This time, my stern-father look held firm.

"Ethan," I said, "stop talking like that and eat your dinner."

He smiled, looked across the table at Ryan and said, "I pooped a snowman."

Ryan immediately lost it and fell on the floor, but it took Jen and I a beat to figure out what he had just said. After it hit us, we both tried, in vain, to keep from laughing. Eventually Jen was able to ask, through bits of giggling, "Did you just say that you pooped a snowman?"

Ethan, still smiling, said "I don't know yes!"

Jen tried to get him to say it again on camera, but he became bashful and wouldn't speak while the little red light was on. He did, however, transform himself into a robot one more time for the camera.

Goal!

Ok, for the record, Jen has a slightly different interpretation on the ending of this story than I do, but, for the record, I don't care. I don't have to - I am writing it.

A few days ago while the boys and I were downstairs, we did what we normally do when we want to blow off some extra energy. And when I say "we" needed to blow off extra energy, I am, of course, referring to the boys and their copious amounts of it. I have no extra energy to blow off while they seem to be fully capable of running nonstop for days or weeks at a time, stopping only to refuel, go to the bathroom, or laugh uproariously after one of them farts or burps.

We decided to play soccer, the go-to sport of the winter, and as we normally do I put on a soccer highlight show to give some inspiration. In the past I did this solely for myself because playing with the boys often resulted in lots of downtime when Ryan would get distracted by something or Ethan would steal the ball and run into the bathroom with it. The show gave me a chance to catch up on all the English Premier League games I missed over the weekend. Now, however, the highlights give Ryan something to try to emulate. Apparently the tricks his old man can pull off pale in comparison to Aaron Lennon whizzing down the wing or Wayne Rooney pulling off an amazing turn. He now watches for a while until he sees something he likes and then attempts it himself, often with consequences that often fall just short of life threatening for either himself or the dog.

As an example, last week we were watching the highlights of the Spurs v Wigan game when Tom Huddlestone, one of the best strikers of the ball in the English game, cranked a shot from about 30 yards away and forced a save from the keeper. Ryan immediately tried to see if he could to that. He placed the ball on the ground about 20 feet from the wall, backed up, and ran at it. He struck it with venom and, had he also struck it with accuracy, it would have smacked into the wall about 3 feet from the ground right in the middle of our makeshift goal. However, accuracy is not a strong point yet for the little dude and instead he hit Hope, our dog, right in the face. It was all rather impressive, really, especially considering that Hope was under a table at the time.

Undaunted, he tried again and this time was more successful. He hit the wall in pretty much the dead center of the goal area with quite a bit of power. Apparently he had paid attention to another part of the highlights show that evening in which a player scored and, in celebration, pulled his shirt up over his head to reveal a message written on his undershirt. As soon as the ball hit the wall he wheeled away, grabbed his shirt, pulled it off, threw it into the make-believe crowd and ran around with his arms up shouting "GOAL!" Ethan, the little sponge, absolutely LOVED this and attempted to pull his shirt off. He couldn't quite get it, so he ran over to me, said, "Daddy! Shirt off, shirt off!" and again tried lifting his shirt over his head. Of course I couldn't let Ryan celebrate without his teammate, so I helped Ethan remove his shirt so the two of them ran around shirtless for a few minutes before dressing and starting over again.

Approximately 2 minutes later, Ryan passed Ethan the ball and he kicked it into another wall to score a goal. Ethan immediately ran over to me for a repeat of the "Daddy! Shirt off, shirt off!" episode while Ryan pulled his own off, again throwing it into the make believe crowd. It is difficult to put into words how proud I was as a father at that moment in time.

This process continued for a while longer with the boys taking turns scoring goals, pulling their shirts off (or, in Ethan's case, getting his dad to remove his shirt), running around, and then getting dressed again. Ethan eventually lost interest in having me remove his shirt after each goal and found some Legos to play with while Ryan and I continued in our quest to save the world while playing Lego Star Wars on the Wii.

A week later we were invited to what can only be described as a warehouse party. It was held at a warehouse and was organized by members of a friends church as a way to give all of our young kids a chance to ride their bikes and scooters, play in a bouncy castle, and shoot some hoops all in the middle of February. It was a great idea and a rousing success. The boys loved getting a chance to run around and play with their friends and Jen and I had a good time chatting with the other moms and dads.

Jen and I were eating some of the great food that people had brought when I looked up to see Ethan playing soccer near the basketball hoops. He would kick the ball, struggle with his shirt for a second, and then go get the ball and start it over. I glanced down to continue eating, and when I looked up there he was, standing near the basketball hoop, smiling, with his pants around his ankles and his arms raised in the air. I couldn't hear what he was saying but he was clearly saying something. I ran over to him to help him pull his pants up when I heard that he was cheering "GOAL!" Apparently he couldn't get his shirt off so he went for the next best thing and dropped his pants to celebrate.

Apparently in the future I'll have to ensure that all of his shirts are easily removed to avoid this problem.