Life with Ethan

Ethan turned 4 yesterday. I can hardly believe he is that big already. We've had a great week of celebrating, but first I want to tell about what life has been like with Ethan in the final days of being 3.

He loves to help in the kitchen. He is our official "stirrer" and also helps put away the silverware and set the table. One day this week I thought he was ready to set the plates on the table. He took this job seriously and was extremely careful. However, one of the plates broke. In fact, it broke right down the middle, so we played a trick on daddy and set daddy's place with the broken plate and put the fork right in the middle. Ethan and I thought that was pretty funny. I should have taken a picture.

Here is Ethan making pumpkin chocolate chip cookies with me for his school Halloween party.

(Side note: Ethan could also take a treat to school for his birthday, but for the past week he would have nothing to do with the idea. . . until two minutes before he walked out the door on the day of his birthday, when Daddy suggested he take "Bengal Butterfingers" for his friends. The Butterfingers were our leftover Halloween candies. I had also brightly suggested that they would make a great birthday treat, after all my other suggestions had been rejected every day for an entire week.   Ethan had refused until Tim came up with a clever name related to Ethan's favorite football team, the Bengals. Score.)
 
Ethan wore his costume around for several days before Halloween. He was Super Why:

The highlight of Ethan's fall has been following his favorite football team, the Bengal Tigers. Every day we have to read the newspaper articles about his team, and when he got a football "magazine" (program) from one of the games, we read it front to back at least a dozen times, and Ethan took it as show-and-tell. Ethan's grandma is his football buddy, and his grandpa (who helps in the media booth) brings him M & M's. I was thankful to be a part of the fun one Saturday. It's cute to see Ethan be a loyal fan to this team. They are not a winning team, but we love them all the same.

Ethan's favorite birthday gift was a race track. It makes him laugh and laugh to see the cars do jumps and land all over the place. Here are Ethan and Daddy setting it up:

Ethan loves taking his own pictures.  This one he took of the card from Grandma Choo-Choo.  He informed her that these were NOT the Bengal Tiger colors. 

Ethan is just plain growing up.  He is quite the role model for all our little friends.  He really worked on sharing tonight when the younger ones wanted to play with his stuff.  Look at this big kid: