Ethan turned three 2 weeks ago. We had a party for him and Sienna the following Saturday, but I’ll talk about that in another post. For now, I’ll put some stuff on here that the family and a few others may be interested in reading/seeing.
We took the kids for their check-up on their actual birthday. Ethan is around the 50% for weight and around the 25% for height compared to other boys his age. We don’t think that Ethan is fat, but we are surprised that he doesn’t weigh more as much as he eats. His typical breakfast each morning consists of one banana, either oatmeal or 2 scrambled eggs, then granola, and sometimes Corn Flakes and Special K without milk. I recently fixed pancakes for him, and he ate 6 of them, granola, and then an apple for breakfast. An hour later, he wanted more food so he ate dried apricots and dried cherries. Then he had lunch about an hour later, and he ate a bowl of soup then yogurt with granola. All of this was eaten in a 4 hour time frame!
I made about 7 different soups to freeze in January. Ethan doesn’t like milk or cheese, but he loves soup, so it’s a great way to get some dairy in him if it’s a soup that I can put cream in. He tends not to like white sauces, and he doesn’t like any casserole that has any kind of cream of mushroom, chicken, etc. soup in it.
He seems to be understanding the concept of “favorite.”
In January he said that this was his favorite car. His uncle Bret got it for him a little over a year ago. In the picture he is “fixing it” (nothing was wrong with it… he just likes to “fix” things). His “favorite” toy seems to change pretty regularly, but he is really into cars now, so it’s usually one of his cars.
He loves using tools, especially real tools. Otherwise, he makes due with his toy tools or something that isn’t a tool, but looks like one. Here he is “fixing” the stairs to the attic; he absolutely loves going up and down the stairs and walking around the attic. (For those of you concerned about that… I think many attics in the US have woods boards to walk on, but if you step off, you step through soft stuff. Over here it’s all wood.)
In January Ethan asked if we were going anywhere the next day. I told him that I didn’t know. He said, “We need to make a plan.” I told Gary, and Gary said that he is his mother’s child. He has gotten into wanting to go through the schedule of the day and often asks what we will do after such and such.
He is all boy and loves to wrestle, run around, and play with balls and cars. He is very active, and doesn’t tend to play with one thing for very long. 
Ethan enjoys lining up his cars (actually, I should say different modes of transportation) in a row and is very proud to show us what he has done.
The Friday after his birthday was a big day for the Rickard household. Ethan threw his boppies (pacifiers) in the trash. This picture looks like he is crying. He actually isn’t; he is smiling. We have talked about this for a long time, and he was all ready and willing to throw them away. He loves the garbage truck and helps Gary empty the trash cans every Friday morning, so I think he was excited to be able to put them in the trash and for the garbage truck to take them away. So, in this picture he is carrying the trash can that has his boppies. Even now, 2 weeks later, he asks for his boppies when going down for a nap or bedtime. We ask him where they are, and he responds, “In the garbage truck.” I’ve also talked to him about how they are bad for his teeth now that he is older, so he mentions that. We’ve tried to get him to hold onto a stuffed animal or something (which he is doing), but sadly, he is still having a hard time going to sleep without his boppies. I wish that we would have done this when he was one (I read that it’s best to do it at 12 months or before). We tried to do it a year ago, but after he went at least a week of not taking any afternoon naps, struggling to go to sleep each night, and getting up hours before normal each morning, we decided that it was not a good time to get rid of them. For the first week he kept asking us what he could put in his mouth. His boppies were the only type of “lovie” that he ever had, so it may be more difficult for him than for many children. Things are going better than they did last year when we did this, but it’s still taking longer than I anticipated.
Every time it has snowed this year, the snow has been too dry to build a snowman, but finally it was wet enough. So Ethan recently built his first snowman (or shall I say observed Gary do it).
March 15th is a holiday in Hungary, so we went to the rock quarry in our village and walked around. Stephanie had never seen it before. It is a really cool place. Gary and I had one of the teachers take pictures of us there, which turned out to be our engagement pictures and the picture on our wedding invitation.
Seven of their friends came over to celebrate. Sadly, Seth was sick so he couldn’t make it. Zsuzsi seemed to have a good time despite only speaking Hungarian, and Kata was too young to know the difference.
