All Worth It

Ethan, who is in 1st grade this year, can be a challenge. His first year on this earth was bliss- he was an extremely easy baby who rarely cried, fussed, or woke up in the middle of the night. Then reality set in. The combination of a very strong personality and two older brothers who live to tease has made him challenging at times. When he was three, I took him for a preschool evaluation. He answered exactly one question- and that was by pointing. The others he absolutely refused to cooperate on. That summer, I enrolled him in a "Mom and Me" swim class. Each day, for all eight days of lessons, I had to drag him, kicking and screaming, into the water, and then try to keep him from drowning while I struggled to pry his arms off of my neck. Potty training was a complete joke. Ethan must hold some record for the number of treats and prizes earned for going to the bathroom. He would cooperate exactly long enough to earn the candy, or the plastic dinosaur, or the big red firetruck (yes, I was getting desperate), and then would immediately revert to wet pants. When he turned four things improved immensely... he was suddenly potty trained, he excelled in preschool, and he went to his preschool swimming lessons willingly. Ethan does still give us a few challenges, though. At the beginning of the school year, his teacher told us that although his reading abilities were off the charts, he frequently growled at her. We very often hear high-pitched squealing screams coming from wherever he and his brothers are "wrestling". He is a very stubborn child. Yesterday, though, he made it all worth it. This was the letter he wrote to me at school: