This handsome boy is growing up just way too fast!! I still can't believe he is in 1st grade. He absolutely loves school. He always gets home and says that school was "Awesome". Homework is a fight and a half. Every day he gets home and I tell him that he needs to do his homework and every day he rolls is eyes and gets all mad at me and says he doesn't want to do his homework. I totally understand him not wanting to do it right when he gets home but I have learned the hard way that it does not make it any easier to get him to work on his homework if I wait. So I try to get him to do his homework as soon as he gets home while he has his snack. That way he can just play the rest of the night. It is crazy how fast the evening goes with him not getting home until 3:30. I feel like there is no time to just enjoy having him home and having fun with him. Between getting homework done and eating dinner he gets a little bit of time to play and then its time to get ready for bed. We rarely get time to sit down and have him read. They also have spelling tests each week and we have practiced maybe twice in the month or so that he has been having spelling tests. It has just been super hard to get him to want to take the time to practice. Other than those struggles he really enjoys math and he is really good at it. He is still getting extra help with reading with the literacy teacher Mrs. Hewitt who he absolutely loves. Just the last week he has been doing so much better with his reading. He is getting more excited when he actually gets the words right and he is getting so much better with the sight words. It is exciting to see how much better he is getting. Other than the learning he is doing these days he is also such a good little boy. He can be so feisty and then so sweet. He has told us of times when his teacher tripped and spilt markers all over and he was the only one to get up and help pick up the markers for her. Or one time when someone at school couldn't find a seat at lunch and he let her sit by him. He also said that he has let other kids play frisby when they are not playing with anyone else. He gets so excited to tell us when he has done something nice and we are so proud of him for being kind to others. This year has also been really hard with Ethan because he has not been getting enough sleep. Even though it stays dark until 7:30 now, he and Wyatt will still wake up before 7 some days and then they are so grumpy! So if he starts sleeping more than maybe we will get past the grumpy phase too! haha He really is a good boy and when he has eaten enough and slept enough he can be so nice to his brothers and to others. There are times when he is just mean and hitting and pushing his brothers and then other times when he brings frozen grapes to Wyatt because he is getting some and thinks Wyatt would like some too. Another thing that has been interesting this year with Ethan being in full day school is that he is hearing bad words at school. We have had to tell him that if he hears something at school that he never hears us say that it is probably a bad word and to ask his teacher and or us if it is a bad word before he starts using it. We have had to use tobasco on his tounge one time because he said the Lords name in vain not meaning to too many times. It is hard going through all of this for the first time. It is so easy to just react when he does something that he is not supposed to just because we don't know how to handle it. Poor kid takes the brunt of everything because he is the first born. Oh ya, another thing that Ethan has started to do is burping really loud on purpose. He thinks it is so funny to tell his dad that he has a secret and then burp in his face. I guess its all part of him being a little boy but we are trying to stop him from doing that because it is just gross! We sure do love Ethan though and couldn't imagine life without him.
