Ethan: 4.5 years old!

Ethan at age 4.5 your stats are:

- Weigh 39 lbs and are 41.5 inches tall. 

- Wear size 4t/5t pajamas and size 4 clothes. 

- Size 9.5 to 10 size shoe.

You are full of never-ending questions. You introduce yourself to people wherever we go. Most of our neighbors know me as "Ethan's Mom" because you make sure to introduce yourself to everyone we meet. Your favorite part of our grocery store trips is chatting with the cashiers. It's usually very cute but sometimes the stuff you come up with makes my jaw drop! You've got quite an imagination on you and sometimes it runs a little heavy on the precocious side. I often wonder where you come up with stuff since you lead a pretty sheltered life and we closely monitor what you watch. In fact, your screen time is pretty limited. 

In the picture below you were looking for "tiny bad guys" in the 'Cave of Crumbs'. You are using two toilet paper tubes taped together with a pink easter egg on top (and a flashlight inside) as your "bad guy finder". You said that when bad guys are near it lights up so that you know that they are there.

You are not a huge fan of the outdoors and its a bit of a struggle to get you to go outside and play every day. We usually have to talk about what we will find and look for when we are outside. Going on a rock hunt usually convinces you! Your other favorite thing is to pretend that we are on a magically journey. You spin some pretty fantastical tales. Yellow flowers make you invisible and you run from sunshine patch to sunshine patch and try to avoid the shade monsters. We also look for tiny dragons and hide from monster filled mist. 

You call yourself a "rock collector" and love to fill your pockets so full of rocks that you have trouble getting them out again. You've even have to walk around holding onto your pants with both hands to keep your pants from sagging off your body with the weight of all the rocks.

You are no longer on the side of the "bad guys". Darth Vader is no longer cool, but Yoda  and Luke are! You like to create "jails" for the bad guys out of empty tissue boxes, blocks, legos, etc. We've tearfully looked for many a lost "bad guy" to find him days later in the most random places.

You are fascinated with the concept of TNT and explosions and love to include them in your play complete with elaborate sound effects. When you build with legos, you often make exploding things and "bad guy getters". 

Funny Quotes:

• Ethan on seeing me scrub the tile grout with a toothbrush "But Mom, you don't need to do that. Dirt is part of the house!".
• "Baby seeds, do you know what? You are GWOWING! You are gwowing up to be RADISHES!"
• "Mom can you just feed me all day?"
• "When I'm 13 I want to have a different name. I want to be called Dave."
• "Mom, can you say these words?... 'This must be the Ethan we asked for at the Ethan store'..."
• "Mommy, how far are we?" (me "16 minutes") "That's HORRIBLE....I want it to be ZERO minutes." (At the end of a 7 hour road trip)

Halfway to five. Four has been so much fun, I'm not ready for it to fly by so fast!