fun with water

And now he's not really sure why mama doesn't let him do this whenever he wants to!

I also have to jot down this super sweet story that took place today at the library. Ethan is normally very timid about other kids potentially playing with toys that he wants to play with, like any other almost two year old, if he wants it, it's his. Well today at the library he was playing with one of those bead toys like this one when another boy around age 4 started watching. Ethan looked over at him and when I started to think I'd have to explain to Ethan that he can share, he looked at me and said "kids play beads too"! I translated for the boy, "yes, he can come and play with the beads too, if he wants to". So the little boy came and sat down with Ethan and played with the beads, and Ethan was really excited about it. Major break through :) The other boy was able to make the beads go a lot faster than Ethan, so Ethan was thoroughly impressed, and oohh-ed and laughed and said lots of "whoa"s which was fun for the other boy to be looked up to.

Then, I was blown away when Ethan ran around to our stack of books that we were going to check out, and grabbed an Elmo book and said "Ethan share Elmo book" and handed the book to the other boy. Oh my goodness, Ethan sometimes breaks down into tears when someone looks at his Elmo books, so when he handed this little boy an Elmo book and then went back to playing beads while the other boy read through the book (and I was so glad that the other boy took the time to page through a simple book that was way below his age-level) I was so proud of Ethan's growth in learning to share. When the other boy handed Ethan back the book, Ethan said thank you and put it back on our stack of books, and they went back to playing with the beads together. They then went on to play with a couple of other toys, a puzzle, and a magnet toy, then we had to go. It might just be a one time thing, I'm sure we have much more progress to be made in the sharing area, but two of his favorite things were shared joyfully today with a stranger at the library, and it made me one proud mama!!