How's Ewan Doin'?

It's been a while since I've written much about Ewan. Last month, he turned 2 1/2, and he's going through some cute and interesting phases that I wanted to document before he outgrows them and I forget they ever happened.

I've mentioned that he's adjusted to being a big brother better than I expected. I would still say that's true. He definitely loves Asa. Although he usually doesn't pay him much attention, when he does interact with him, it's generally in a very affectionate way. He's definitely tested the limits several times, though. He went through a brief hitting phase (which included hitting Asa, not hard, but still...), but we quickly realized it was all about him trying to get a rise out of us, so once we learned to keep our emotions in check, he got bored with our reactions and, for the most part, stopped experimenting with this behavior. He still has his moments, but mostly we're just dealing with more minor 2-year-old kind of stuff, like not wanting to get dressed in the morning and getting too hyped up before bedtime.

If you spend any time at all with Ewan these days, you'll quickly learn about his obsession with cars. It all started when he was between 18 months and 2 years old and he started recognizing all of the neighbors' cars and commenting on them when they drove by. ("That's Elisabeth's car!" "That's Eric's truck!") Before long, he was able to recognize them better than I was. Since then, he's started his own little car collection, and the fun was brought to a new level when my parents got him an awesome parking garage for Christmas. He now has dozens of cars, ranging in size, but he definitely has five favorites. These fabulous five are Nanas' Car, Woody, Monster Car, VW Bug/Coupe, and VW Bus. He named most of them himself, obviously in some cases with a little help from the actual make and model of the car. If he could, he would take these five everywhere with him, and would sleep with them, too. (We had to create a rule about no cars in bed.) The fab five are best friends and generally don't leave each other's sides. They can usually be found on our coffee table or one of our couches parked in a neat row.

In addition to his toy cars, Ewan has become an expert on identifying the makes of various real cars. He can now identify Hondas, Toyotas, Mazdas, Volkswagens, Mercedes, Fords, and Jeeps, all by their symbols, and he knows the specific models of some, too (Honda Element, VW Bug, Toyota Prius, etc.). A typical ride to daycare might sound a little something like this: "There's a Toyota! Can you say 'Toyota?' Yay! There's a Mazda! Do we drive a Mazda? What happened to our old Honda? Did we trade it in for a Mazda? I love our Mazda! I miss our Honda! I want our old Honda back! (moment of silence). I just cried a little. That's a Mercedes! There's a Honda Element! Does Asher have a Honda Element? Does that Toyota have blinkers? Is that Todd's Toyota? Maybe someday we should get a Mercedes Civic." And so on. I now know cars better than I ever imagined I would. (By the way, the whole Mazda/Honda thing is because we recently traded in our Honda Accord for a Mazda 5, the minivan that we can pretend is not really a minivan, although Ewan usually insists on calling it a minivan. I think he's mocking us already. Anyway, we love our new six seater that can fit all of us and the dog and some extra gear or an extra person or two. Katie and Alden, thanks for your influence on this purchase!)

Besides cars, Ewan still loves riding his bike more than almost anything else. Other favorite activities include swinging, playing in the sandbox, being read to, painting, and, unfortunately, watching TV. He also loves his daycare/preschool, Butterfly Garden, which he attends 2 1/2 days a week. He has several little friends there, as well as some other friends whom he sees outside of school. He is definitely starting to play more interactively, too. Another cute thing he's started doing recently is taking on different personas, like those of other kids he knows or TV characters. The other day, he introduced himself to several people at the park as Pablo, a character from a TV show called "The Backyardigans." I don't think many of them had ever met a blonde-haired, blue-eyed boy named Pablo with a mother named Uniqua and a grandmother named Tyrone.

I could go on and on, but hopefully you get a sense of what our big kiddo is up to these days, and I've sufficiently documented enough of his 2 1/2-year-old quirks that I'll actually be able to look back on this time and, with a little help, remember what he was like. Somehow, having a second child has hammered in the fact that they get big so incredibly fast and that it's impossible to remember all of the great (and not so great) things they do along the way.

Ok, I'll leave you with this video of Ewan practicing his "serious face":