Another Ethan first: He found a lost screw.

I had disassembled the rear-facing car seat to remove the covers for washing. Although they were still in very good condition, there is nothing like fresh, clean fabric for a fresh, clean baby. Despite having attempted to take reasonable care, when I completed I found myself short one screw and one washer. Ethan was with me, so I showed him an identical screw and washer and asked him to help me find them.

Immediately, Ethan wandered away from the car seat over to his tricycle. I didn’t expect him to be of much use there, but he seemed like he was searching, so I didn’t want to discourage him. Next, he dumped the contents of the tricycle’s trunk. Finally, he reached into the trunk to extract two items that didn’t dump out: the screw and its washer.

Now how do you think they got in there?

Another Ethan first: He saved time with yard work.

Ethan and I went out to rake up a bit of thatch in the back yard. I raked it into piles, and he used a little rake to scoop it into the wheelbarrow. We weren’t very productive, because I always had to rake the thatch onto his rake first. Then Ethan got the idea to put the rake down and just pick up clumps with his mitten-clad hands.

This new approach worked great. Ethan picked up at about the same pace as I raked, saving me a few minutes of scooping into the wheelbarrow by the time we were done.

Another Ethan first: He prepped the pizza toppings.

Ethan has long enjoyed helping make pizza. He started as a cheese sprinkler. (You might say he “shared” the cheese with the pizza.) Later he moved to pepperoni and other toppings. In the last few weeks, he has taken interest in tasting the raw ingredients like flour, sugar, and salt (and baking powder if we’re making pancakes).

Today, he pulled up a chair, opened up a package of mushrooms, and started slicing them with a butter knife. Other than orienting the knife cutting side down, all I did was encourage his initiative. He ended up slicing about two thirds of the mushrooms.

After the mushrooms, he tried helping peel the garlic. That was still beyond him. But he did dump the flour in the mixer (before sampling some, of course).

I can see Ethan progressing to first-rate pizza making before we realize it. The day he no longer wants to “share” the cheese – that’s harder to imagine.

Another Ethan first: He uncovered a laser.

The CD portion of our combo iPod/CD/radio player had been on the fritz with a skipping habit. After breakfast, Ethan and I went at it. Plan A was to clean the lens for CD laser, but it was blocked by a plastic cover. I could tell it was designed to move aside in operation, but I didn’t know how. After patiently enduring my unsuccessful fiddling, Ethan asked to turn one of the gears. As he did, the laser moved from its initial inner-most position toward the disc outside position.

Immediately, the laser cover opened. The design quickly become apparent: the cover mechanically closes when the laser is in the inner-most position, probably a parking position used when the tray is open. With Ethan’s help, the lens was now easy prey for my alcohol-laden cotton swab.

It turned out that cleaning the lens didn’t help, or at least not enough. The solution was to adjust a tuning potentiometer (looks like a white screw) next to the laser. I’m still thankful for Ethan’s out-of-the-box intuition; he helped me get over the first hurdle.

Resorting to an oversimplified answer

Ethan has become very inquisitive. We get constant questions about how the world works. For example, “Why Daddy go work?”, “Why Mommy Daddy married?”, or “Where sun come from?” He’s not shy about follow-up questions either. When he asked, “Where thunder come from?”, we talked about lightning and how it makes a big boom. “Where boom come from?” That was a tough one, trying to explain in even the simplest terms about air pressure to someone who only partially understands what air is.

Today for the first time, I was at a loss for any semblance of an answer that would capture man’s knowledge of a subject into a buo-sized nugget. When we were walking down by the river, Ethan asked, “Why water moving?” That wasn’t too hard: high ground, low ground; water goes down, like in the sink. The follow-up was the trouble: “Why ground high?” I just couldn’t see cracking the lid on glacial carving, so I bypassed a few thousand years of history and went straight to, “That’s how God made the land.” I may not have been satisfied, but Ethan was. Of course, overall I am thoroughly satisfied with how many wonderful opportunities we get to tell Ethan about the wonderful world God has given us.

A poet in the making

Ethan’s reaction to noticing a beautiful sunset: “Daddy, look! It’s cheese!”

Another Ethan first: He balanced on his hinee.

Another random “Daddy, see?”…