Moments with the Morings: January 2016

Ethan,

At age 6, you are a little over 45 inches tall (114.5 cm) and 44 lbs. You wear size 5T, 110 cm, or size small (kids) clothing and size 11 shoes with room to grow.

You are still very snugly, very talkative, and very inquisitive. Not much has changed since I wrote those same words a year ago! You love to talk to the cashiers at the store, neighbors that we encounter on our walks, and pretty much anyone who will listen! From the moment you wake up to the moment you go to bed you are asking questions. Big questions and little questions. You are always thinking about how things work whether man made or even the human body. So many questions. I love hearing your theories on things. I'm pretty certain I never thought things through to the extent that you do!

You've started opening up a bit on the foods that you will eat. Even if you don't love a food, you are getting to where you will try a bit of everything before you eat the food you like. Casseroles and mixed foods are a huge hurdle for you though you'll eventually try a bite. You prefer foods that are whole and recognizable. Still, you have made huge leaps from where you were and you have added apples, carrots, kale and regular pancakes and broccoli pancakes to your list of foods that you like. Your favorite foods are still banana, pizza, toast, grilled cheese and yogurt and sometimes chicken nuggets. You happily eat 1-2 carrot sticks and will eat a whole pound of broccoli if I turn it into broccoli pancakes.

It turns out you are a little bit of a night owl. 8:30 is usually the best bedtime we can expect. Occasionally you will go down at 8 pm but you'd prefer to stay up much later if we'd let you (like 10 pm). Bedtime tends to drag out. You are a talker and want to talk about everything in detail and ask lots of questions. It's usually never as simple as reading a bedtime story and then saying goodnight. Any earlier and you have trouble sleeping and staying asleep all night long. You'll usually wake up around 7 though sometimes earlier and sometimes later. Since we home-school we are okay with your bedtime since co-ops and planned activities don't usually start before 10 am and a later bedtime allows you more family time in the evening. Most mornings when your Dad leaves he finds you asleep in the living room. You have trouble staying asleep all night in your bed and have ever since the toddler years.

You have evolved a lot since your toddler years and have embraced the messy. I caught you writing on your face with chalk. You were giving yourself a disguise.

You dream of being an explorer. You love pouring over our book of maps and asking us where certain gemstones are usually found. You have a long list of countries that you are going to visit for their rocks, waterfalls, landscape etc. You are determined that one day you'll travel all over the world to find a T-Rex tooth. You have also decided that you are going to travel by hang glider and check out some mines along the way. Lately you are pretty stuck on Madagascar, Tanzania and Sri Lanka. You've decided to avoid the Gobi Desert because of the myth of the Mongolian death worm (which you firmly insist is real and are fascinated with).

Sometimes I'll find you with your pants on backwards. You tell me its on purpose because its backwards day and even though your pants fit funny you aren't interested in changing them around.

"Rainbow Lightning" the Rainbow Boa. You are super into snakes at the moment and really want a pet rainbow boa. You also ask to read your snake book, shark book, or dangerous creatures book every day.

If absolutely necessary, you can write your name neatly and legibly. However, you find this very boring and prefer inventing your own "fonts". Your handwriting practice quickly turns into a creative and almost picture/story like activity if I'm not sitting next to you reminding you to practice your best writing. Usually we find a compromise that keeps it fun for you. My favorites are your "electrified letters", "curly writing", and when you give your 'E' a very long tongue and write the rest of your letters on the E's tongue.

Dr. Ethan saved many animals over a two day period. For two days we heard a lot of animals in trouble that needed to be brought into your clinic. Among your patients there was an animal that got bit by too many vampire bats, the kitten that needed tweezers to pull out all the shark teeth in his fur, the owl that flew into glass and banged his head, and the dog that was just plain starving and needed a hotdog and some peas.

Questions:

When you turned 4 and later 5 I asked you these questions. I wanted to ask them again at age 6!

What brings you the most happiness? Rocks

When do you feel the most loved? When I snuggle with my Mommy every morning.

What are you afraid of? Death

If you had one wish, what would you wish for? rocks all over the earth on every single spot.

What makes you mad? When Landon breaks my lego creations and destroys my breakable rocks.

What is the meaning of love? Fire Opals. And families and friends.
What is your name? Ethan Garrett Moring
What is your favorite toy? A rock (you love collecting rocks. You said your goal is to collect every type of rock on earth)
- What is your favorite drink? Chocolate Milk
- What is your favorite food? Dove Chocolate
- What is your favorite thing to do outside? Everything!
- What is your favorite thing to do with Mommy? Everything!
- What is your favorite thing to do with Daddy? Everything!
- What is your favorite animal? Snakes!
- What is your favorite song? My made-up songs
- What is your favorite number? 102
- What do you want to be when you grow up? A rock collector
- Best friend: Gabi (you've decided you are getting married when you are 10)
- Favorite color: Orange
- Favorite cartoon: Dragon Riders (for the moment)
- Favorite holiday: Halloween!

Quotes:

"...and the projectile is the seed that shoots out so fast you can't even see it!"
"...and when you pull up the colossal carrot it is already cooked because the heat from lava underground penetrates all the way to the carrot without burning it up."
"I think it wasn't dirty bad pirates they were nice clean pirates! Because they had nice treasure and gave band-aids in case we get owies!" (Ethan on the treasure chest at the end of a treasure hunt. The kids got small toys, candy and band-aids)
"I Ethan, the inventor, will invent the printer-lattic! It will print videos on paper!"
"When is corn ready to harvest seeds for planting? When? You don't know? Why Mom? I want to learn everything in the whole world!"
"I just made an orange bat with a blue mouth and green eyes. If you ever see that kind of bat, DON'T mess with it! It's a poisonous bat! And it can bite through BONE. If it chomps through your bone, you will surely die as soon as it chomps you. It also might bite if it smells something yummy in your pocket. So be careful."
"...poisonous green pumpkins that hatch and can eat planets and even take away their gravity. They can make the whole world EXTINCT!"
"...and that pumpkin shoots poisonous snakes out of his stem!"
"Mommy, I will love you for 102 years. I will never stop loving you. And I will never stop loving my brother. Because sometimes he does things that are helpful!"
"I have a crazy lot of questions."
"Someday I'd like a pet owl so I could get my own owl pellets and see what it ate!"
"Mommy, I'm so sick. I'm so sick I couldn't go to dreamland..."
"There are so many things I want to be when I grow up! And I have to choose ONE!"
" When I'm bigger, my inventions are going to be in stores around the world!"
"Landon...? You wanna play in the mud? LET'S MAKE A MUD HOLE!"
" I want to travel all around the world. Not just around the outside of the Earth's crust, but allll over zigzagging. Of course this means I'll have many adventures and run into many dangerous and scary things. I'll need a knife and a razor sharp blade. I will invent it!"
"I found this ancient rock in an ancient treasure chest in the ancient roman forest. It's near the dangerous desert AND the Gobi desert. But its a good thing it's not in Tennessee. They are doomed because the Kudzu vines are taking over everything!"
"I'd be so sad if I lost my friend Gabi. Even if I had all the friends in the world" (during the big Kindergarten transition when our daily schedule changed)
"Okay okay. So there are two things about diamonds I just stored in my docu-file. That's where all my memories go to be stored until I die."
"I dreamed I was riding a horse. I felt it's head and it had a horn on it. It was a unicorn indeed and it would never get tired. So I rode it all the way to Arkansas to go to a diamond mine."
"I would like violet colored Halloween lights on our tree to attract the girls to our house".
"I wish there were really such things as Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. I wish they were real and alive. The world could really use them!"
"I dreamed that I rode a flying reindeer to Tanzania. I had to find out how to make make my reindeer fly from Santa Clause."
"Not to be used without adult supervision...How come adults have super-vision?"
"Do you know how this was formed?" (shows me a rock) "In the time of the dragon, an orange stink-breathing dragon blew his stink right in that spot and over time it made this...It's called the sacker-stone. Without sacker-stones there would be no diamonds. When the light shines on it though it looks like a curlstone. Those are made by red peppers that have been fossilized."
"Hey Landon! Stop subtracting!" (Landon was taking away Ethan's toys)
"One day I'm going to have a daughter and name her Ue (you-ee) so she will have a name of all vowels because that would be special. Most people have consonants AND vowels!"
Not 10 minutes after telling Ethan he can't have a Rainbow Boa snake... "Hey, you're going to help me make a snake transporter, got it?" "What's a snake transporter?" "It transports snakes from one place to another." "I see, that sounds interesting...What will you do with it?" "You'll see! It's a surprise!"
"I want to invent a nano-bot for kids that don't like to wash their hands very often. It will stay on your body and shoot poison into the germs mouths so that the germs die and the kids don't get sick."