This apple did not fall far from the trees!

So a brief history into our childhoods.

Philip was a very orderly child. Every toy in his room had a place. His parents even joke that they would go in and move toys to see what he would do. Philip would get very upset by out of place toys and immediately set things right again. Mrs. Cindy said that growing up Craig was Philip's greatest adversary. Not just because they were brothers, but because Craig was not an orderly child and would not like to put things back in their place.

Philip also had his own special language growing up: Juice = Juey, Computer = Doodaloo, Finger = Bimmy, Philip Boudreaux = Fal-lap Boo-dough. For a while they thought he had a hearing problem, but no, he just had a better way of thinking about the world.

I, on the other hand, was a "testy" child. My parents tell stories of me disobeying them just to see what they would do. I once pushed an ashtray off of a coffee table all while my father was sitting out of reach saying, "Bridgette Marie Stelly, don't you push that ash tray off of the table." I stared him straight in the face and pushed it right off. Whew, it's a wonder I survived those years.

Well, Ethan is proving to be a mixture of us both. At 17 months of age he will clean the entire living room. Not just picking up his toys, but also putting them in the correct locations: puzzle pieces in the puzzles, hot wheels in the little plastic bucket, big cars in the big plastic bucket, blocks in the canvas container, and all other toys in the metal basket. Every toy has a place and he knows where those places are.

One of his favorite activities is lining things up: lining up cars,
or refrigerator magnets.
He recently has been aggravated by our dog Emma who leaves her two stuffed toys around the living room. Now when he finds her toys unattended he returns them to her crate. It is really cute that he is picking up after the dogs. The other day Emma busted one of her toys and before I had a chance to clean the stuffing up, Ethan was gathering up all the stuffing and making trips to the trash can.

Another thing he is orderly about is the dinner table. He does not like food to be off of his plate. If I am pushing his chair away from the table he will scream for me to stop so that he can put all of his food back on this plate.

Now for the "testy" side of him. I'm sure this will get worse but recently he has began to test his limits. The other day I told him not to touch the lime bush. He stood with his finger 1 mm from the bush until his foot slipped and he ended up touching it. Arg! Or earlier this week, he picked up a Christmas decoration that he knows he is not suppose to play with and just stared me down. "Put that back where you got it, Ethan." Blank stare. "Put it back, or you will be in trouble." Now, those are big words in our house Ethan knows that trouble is our code for you are about to get a spanking. Blank stare. So I get up out of my chair and what does he do? Yep, you guessed it, he immediately put the decoration back and ran the other way. Too bad I can still run faster than him.

On a lighter note, Danielle is coming to stay with Ethan in January and I think I should warn her that he has a list of vocabulary that do not make any sense to normal adults. For example, he calls a bagel a "Da" and (as you know from our Christmas card) he calls a ball a "gall". He can say baby so I know he can make a b sound, but he does not say ball, only gall.

Oh well, that's it for now. I'll post about Christmas soon. I hope you all had a good one.