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.