Ethan sucks his thumb the minute he touches something soft, like a plush animal or someone's hair. Usually he has to chase after his brother for a feel of his hair, but now that Ethan has a little puff of fluff of his own, he is all set.

We find him like this a lot.

Aden had his last baseball game last week - last one of the season that is. He had a lot of fun so I imagine we'll sign him back up again soon. The coach had a little trophy party for the team at McDonalds. I will miss this team. It was a random YMCA draw, but every single kid was well behaved and sweet. (Very unlike some of the teams we played).

Aden got his and was SO excited!

Ethan was pretty sure it was his. He kept raising it above his head like a Stanley Cup and cheering. He DID just learn to walk backwards about 5 minutes earlier, so that's trophy worthy.

Ethan's first time to run around a McDonald's playground. First time with me anyway. I guess I should revise to say - first documented time.

Later, we did some of Aden's favorite things - drawing letters in his "work book." I hope he always has a love of learning.

Ethan just about knocked people over trying to color in Aden's book, so we got him some paper of his own to practice on.

Look who's sitting at the "big boy" table!

We've had the sickies around the house the last couple of weeks, so we really haven't done much. Which is incredibly boring for Aden, who was the only one not sick. So this weekend we wanted to show him a good time. The plan was to take him to see Despicable Me at the movie theater, but a few hours before we were going I showed him a movie trailer and he was not enthusiastic.

So we had to revise the plan. Anytime we ask him what he wants to do, it involves playing arcade games. So we decided to bite the bullet and take him to Chuck-E-Cheese. It was a better plan anyway because Ethan could go. Aden had a blast. Ethan did not so much.

Ethan was not digging the rides, and really couldn't do any of the games yet.

He finally found the Chuck-E-Cheese ride tolerable.

We could barely get pictures of Aden, he was running around from game to game like this was his last day on earth.

They had a cute toddler-sized basket ball game and even Ethan got in on that. (His new favorite word is "ball," and he's so proud to know it that he goes around the house finding various balls and telling us about them.")

You can see how incredibly excited E is about the racing games.

Back at home where his... I mean Aden's toys are - that's where Ethan wanted to be!

No pictures yet, but Aden's weekend was further made wonderful by having a pizza party at church, and then going to Academy with Gigi, who bought him new soccer shoes, a new soccer ball, new soccer socks and new shin guards. He's such a lucky kid!

The last baseball game of the season is tomorrow night. Soccer starts in a couple weeks!

Well, that was quite a blog break! This has been a roller coaster of a month, and I've not even stopped to blog about it. First, the new job is going well so far. I'm jumping right back into the working world with both feet running - and learning a lot!

Aden and Ethan started their new school. Aden was super excited to be going back to circle times and playing with friends and learning and snack times. Here's his official first day of preschool pose:

Punky got to go to school the first day too.

He helped Ethan adjust to being in a room with strangers all day. To Ethan, he might as well be in a pit of snakes. He does not do well with strangers.

The first day went well for Aden - as expected. He dove right in to playing with the kids and such. It was not that great for Ethan. He cried... a lot. For a few days.

Then, some sort of weird thing happened. Ethan became accustomed to school, and even had reports like "starting to socialize at meal times," and Aden began hating school. It began with the fact that their enrollment is down, so they only keep the "teacher" for half the day. (More on the reason for the quotations in a bit). So the other half of the day, Aden goes to a holding room for the big kids who just came from school. These kids want nothing to do with a little 4-year-old, and have gone out of their way to not include him and to call him names. He'll try to play with something, they take it away and when he says something about it, they call him a crybaby.

It takes a lot of prodding to get the story out of him. He doesn't like to talk about it and feels depressed when he does. But he asks to not ever go back, and for a while was even begging us to take him back to the old school. I called and begged - they still don't have a spot for Ethan.

My contention is that if there were viable, adult leaders in the classroom, these kids would never have the opportunity to treat Aden this way. But basically they play fooseball and watch TV all day and the "teacher" just walks around sorting things. I've stood and watched.

I have called several times to discuss my concerns with the director and asst director. In addition to the taunting, Aden isn't learning anything. He never does any artwork, never sings songs, they don't read stories or any of the things I was told they would do when I interviewed them.

I finally broke down and gave them a piece of my mind today. I made it clear that they were not up to par with their competitors (who, by the way, are not only at full enrollment but have a waiting list. Hmmm), but that my kids wouldn't be there if the other place had a spot for Ethan. They are concerned. Again. They want to have a parent chat. Again. In the meantime, it absolutely breaks my heart that my kid isn't happy. It's preschool... he's not supposed to be depressed already.

Enough of that... the fun stuff is that Aden has been playing baseball. And he's pretty good too! And super, duper cute in the helmets.

Ethan went to a few games but frankly it was hard to keep him off the field so he's been sitting out the rest of the games at Gigi's getting some one-on-one loving time with her while we watch Aden play.

Along with grief from the daycare, we also got germs. After 2 days, Ethan's nose started running. Which quickly turned to pink eye in both eyes, a mild fever and an upper respiratory infection. Which the antibiotics didn't cure, thus turning it into full blown pneumonia. The side effects including getting us all sick for a few weeks and then earning him the nickname Typhoid Ethan. (Of course Aden with his rock hard immune system skipped the sickies, thank goodness.). We're all still getting over this, but thankfully Ethan is feeling fine now.

We cherish our weekends now since it's my only big block of time with the boys. When we aren't sick, we actually venture out into the 104 degree weather for a swim.