Happy Halloween!

This year for Halloween Ethan went as Tigger. Halloween could be my all time favorite holiday.



We spent the afternoon at the plaza. There was a haunted house, lots of fair food, and of course cute kids all dressed up.



At 6 o'clock, trick-or-treating began! There is only one street within our community that is designated for giving out candy and everyone just flocked over there. Someone mentioned that they bought $1,000 HKD worth of candy and it was all given out in 30 minutes. That's a lot of candy! We just went to a few houses then gave up because it was so crowded and it was past Ethan's bedtime. But it was amazing to see all the people out there and when we went it was even before the official start time for trick-or-treating.

And because I can't resist, here are some pictures of vintage Ethan from last year's halloween.

Word Explosion

All of a sudden over the past month Ethan has been learning 1-2 new words a day. I counted all the words he could say and it was way over 75, and of these about a quarter are Putonghua. I don't know what is normal for a 15 month old, but I think all toddlers go through a language explosion before reaching two years old. All I can say is that it is really fun to communicate with him and not have to guess at what he wants. If he wants to go he will say 'bye bye' or 'home' if he wants to go all the way home, if he wants to drink he will say either 'wa wa', 'juuuuice' (we just started letting him have watered down OJ since both Bob and I are sick and don't want him to get sick), or nia nia' (for milk), if he wants to sleep he will start clamouring for his duck lovie 'ya ya' and his binky 'bin bin'. Now when Bob gets home he will say 'Da dee' and then 'bao bao' for daddy to pick him up. And I am now officially 'Mommy' after first being 'Ma Mum' then 'Ah-ma' (I guess to a 1 year old a 30 year old does make me an old lady) and then 'Ma Ma'.

I think it's neat how he can recognize specific things within the same category. For example as we walk down the street he will point out the 'busss', 'kaa' (which actually are golf carts since there are no cars where we live), 'tuck' (truck), 'ain' (train). Vans still confuse him and he calls them buses. When he first learned the shape circle he called it 'bub-ble' since a playground we go to is underwater themed and I used to point out the white bubbles surrounding the fish. After awhile I started letting him know that only bubbles are formed from water, so now he says 'irk-le' for circle when he sees the outline of a circle or 'dot' for many solid circles that are together and 'ssspot' for circle patterns on an animal. Usually though when he is excited and first sees a circle shape he will yell out bubble first but then corrects himself.

First Steps

Last week Ethan suddenly decided he was ready for his first few steps. One day he would only walk if we held onto his hands and the next he was ready to try his hand at toddling a few steps. Some may call it the drunken toddler walk but I think he is doing his best impression of Steve Urkel. Our little boy is growing up!

Missing Daddy

Everyday when Ethan hears the front door open he excitedly calls out for his 'DaDa' because he knows Bob is coming home from work.

Even though Bob is out on a business trip this week, Ethan still sometimes questioningly asks for his Daddy. Today when Ethan woke up (early) I brought him into our room so we could snuggle for a bit in our bed before breakfast. When he saw our bed, Ethan got really excited and started calling for 'DaDa'. He searched for his Daddy everywhere - peeking under the comforter and even lifting up a pillow to see if he could find him underneath. Suffice it to say, we both miss you Bob a lot!

I'm stuck on you

P.S. Yes those are dried legumes all over the floor. The result of what was a harmless game of filling and dumping containers made way more fun by Ethan when he decided to see how far he could throw and scatter them instead.