Anneliese Turns Two!

We had a great time with visits from all three sets of grandparents at various times to celebrate Anneliese's birthday.  As usual, she is totally set for clothes for some time.

A few weeks ago, she went for her two-year checkup and the stats are in: 24.5 lbs (20th percentile), 32" (8th percentile) but a 19" head (85th percentile)!  The craziest part is looking at the growth charts in their room, she's about as tall and heavy at two as Ethan was at one!  The visit concluded with some shots.  After crying for a bit, she uttered with her lower lip pouting, "I want stickers."  Her vocab continues to skyrocket and she's linking four or more words frequently.  She says "sorry" a lot, especially after she's bit or pulled Ethan's hair.  She also can repeat almost any word such as "awesome" but unfortunately that includes learning the S-word from Mommy.  When she drops something and says "Oh s__t" Liz has a hard time not smiling and just ignoring it.

Click here or the album for more photos from our whirlwind April!

Soccer Resumes

So Ethan's back in soccer but he still drags his feet and mopes beforehand every time.  Could be because he doesn't like getting 'schooled' by his coach (see picture).  Actually, I was really proud of Ethan during this shot as he figured out that the smart way to steal the ball was not to follow the mob of kids chasing after the coach but to instead leave the pack and cut the coach off!  He has fun once he's out there but he still just doesn't like being separated from us.

Ethan's First Grand Prix of Long Beach

So just one year after my first time, I took Ethan to the big finale day of the Grand Pix of Long Beach.  It was unbelievably loud when the formula cars were zooming around.  Ethan enjoyed watching some pit stops and taking a picture with a Lamborghini which he still says he's going to buy some day.

Infomercials

Ethan's finally taken to a show that I first enjoyed when channel surfing on a Jet Blue flight: Phineas and Ferb.  This has since been followed up with Kick Buttowski.  One of the drawbacks to watching Disney XD is that there are commercials for toys, Sketchers, and even infomercials.  Ethan is surprisingly more taken by the claims of many of these magical devices than toys!  After his show he'll tell Liz about the amazing Turbosnake, Space Bags, or Topsy Turvy.  It's kinda cute.

No training wheels

Liz and Anneliese were off at an afternoon birthday and Ethan wanted to ride his bike.  I asked him if he wanted to take his training wheels off.  He said, "OK."  So I lowered his seat, tool the wheels off and got some exercise running along side him as he weaved back and forth with the handle bars and leaned against me.  After five minutes, he told me to go ahead and let him go.  He crashed a few times, but then started getting the hang of it!  We decided to celebrate by getting a "big boy" haircut, finally off the ears and neck and much thinned out.  It was quite a shock to Liz when she got home (but she held back any tears) and it took us both a week or two to get used to it.

Ethan Runs a 1k

Liz ran 5k of the Seal Beach 5k/10k this weekend in 28 minutes.  Ethan and his friend Emerson (Liz' Stroller Strides partner's daughter...say that five time fast) did a 1k kids fun run.  Ethan started off running in and out of the crowd like he was running from a monster, leaving Emerson behind.  I told him to pace himself but he was too energetic.  He got winded half way through and we walked a bit before sprinting to the finish.

Easter

Ethan had some minor competition this year for finding Easter eggs around the house.  It didn't really cost him many eggs but it sure made him move a lot faster to make sure Anneliese couldn't find them first!  Anneliese was content to open up all the eggs and see how fast she could fill her mouth with chocolate eggs which quickly turned into chocolate drool.  Not the most nutritious breakfast.

Ethan's First Movie in a Theater

Ethan and I double dated to see How to Train Your Dragon this weekend in 3-D. The thought was going with a more experienced 5-year-old might help Ethan be brave. He was very concerned about who the 'bad guy' was going to be. When I tried playing up how neat the 3-D was going to be, Ethan responded "Can't we just do 1-D?" Ethan was a little spooked when the giant mean dragon burst out of a volcano but overall it went well and everyone enjoyed themselves.