Pre-St. Patrick's Day Cookie Decorating

In preparation for Isabella's and Sienna's friends coming over to decorate shamrock cookies this week, the girls helped me roll out and bake some sugar cookies.
Isabella is having a few kindergarten friends over tomorrow afternoon to decorate shamrock cookies and have a little St. Patrick's Day party. Since I didn't want Sienna to feel left out (and I wasn't brave enough to have a bunch of 3 and 4 year olds over at the same time), Sienna had Lauren over today.

The girls took the cookie decorating very seriously. First they tinted their frosting green with food coloring.
Then they went to town with various sprinkles.
Mmmm... the best part!

Sienna is ready to rock on St. Patrick's Day with her shamrock sunglasses!

Sticky, Sleepy, Smoky Saturday

Mike kept telling the girls that he would have a fire in the backyard so that they could roast marshmallows. Today was finally the day! He needed to burn some sticks anyways, so they made a little campfire out of it!

Sticky faces!

Two happy girls!!

Sienna took a break from the campfire to come inside and dress-up. Since she was Snow White, I pretended to be the witch disguised as the old lady. After eating my "poisoned" apple, she fell fast asleep!

Elijah (aka Prince Charming) tried to "bop" her awake to no avail!!!

Prince Charming

After her long slumber, Snow White set up a tea party for the two of us. Lemons were the food of choice!

Sienna headed back outside in time to roast hot dogs over the fire!!! What a treat!!! It looks like they're ready for another campout in the backyard!!!

Meet "Waggy"

They just finished up a unit on dinosaurs in Sienna's preschool class. Today Sienna came home with a dinosaur egg (and her friend, Lauren).

First Sienna tried to break it open with her hammer.

She gave it a few good whacks with no luck.
Then she resorted to using the plastic screwdriver.

That did the trick!

It's a baby dinosaur!!

I asked Sienna if the dinosaur had a name, and without hesitation, she said, "Waggy!"

Sienna has always been quick to come up with names for her various animals. A few months ago, everything was named something like Mahas, Sha Sha or Rashash. She has a black bear named Freddy, a bunny named Rock Star, and a dog named Lovey. Now we have Waggy, the dinosaur!

Isabella also came up with interesting names for her baby dolls. She received several baby dolls when Sienna was born and Isabella was only two years old. They are named Baby Oprah, Baby Guinness and Baby Bulldog. Although Baby Oprah is white, Isabella knew the name since I watched Oprah on a fairly regular basis at that time. Those days are over! Baby Guinness is named after one of our former neighbors' dogs, Guinness and Dublin (not the beer!). Mike came up with the name Baby Bulldog for the last baby because she has a squished up face. He should have known that a name like that would stick!!

My cousin, Megan, used to give her dolls funny names, too. She had a Cabbage Patch Kid Preemie doll named Preemie along with a doll named Arastis (named by her dad, my Uncle Ken). Come to think of it, I used to have dolls named Miss Wiggy and Baby Naked!! I guess it runs in the family!

Dressing Up With Julian

Today my friend and old teaching partner, Corinna, came over with her son, Julian, who is almost two. Julian had fun dressing up with the girls!

Julian ("Tigger") and Sienna ("Sunday") take a break on the couch

Elijah checks out the big kids
Isabella's spider web cape

Quote of the Day

Sienna just cleaned up some yogurt that she dripped on the table, and she said, "There, you don't have to panic!" I asked her where she heard this, and she said that one of her teachers says this. Silly girl! Don't worry, I won't panic!

"Real" Crawling

Elijah has been doing the army crawl since the end of January as I posted here. Today he started doing typical crawling on his hands and knees! I asked the physical therapist about this a few weeks ago, and she figured that he would do it when he was ready. It wasn't necessary to push it since he could get around just fine on his belly, but I guess he's ready now!

Spring-like Weekend

After a big snowstorm this past week, we were glad to have a warm weekend that melted most of the snow. Mike fired up the grill, and we enjoyed some hamburgers and hot dogs for lunch .
Elijah liked eating out on the deck, even though it was really sunny! The girls took their bikes for a spin. Sienna remembered the lightning on her helmet, and she renamed her bike the "Speed Crocodile" (formerly known as the "Crocodile Cruiser"). Mike usually calls Sienna, "Peanut", but with her speedy bike, she became "Lightning McPeanut"!

Isabella learned how to ride her two-wheeler last summer. She wanted to give it a try again, but she kept tipping. She'll get the hang of it again in no time!

One Year Stats

Elijah had his one year well-visit today. Here are his stats:

Height: 29 inches (23rd percentile)
Weight: 20 lbs, 6 1/2 oz. (15th percentile)
Head Circumference: 49 cm (98th percentile)

Elijah had two shots and a lead test, too.

Great News!

Yesterday I took Elijah for his second visit with Dr. Luisa Mayer at the New England Eye Low Vision Clinic at Perkins School for the Blind. Dr. Mayer is "an internationally recognized expert in visual field testing of children and individuals with multiple impairments." We were referred to Dr. Mayer back in August after Elijah's surgery. At that time, the doctors suspected that he had a right visual field loss as a result of the brain tumor and cysts squishing his occipital lobe on the left side. Although Elijah was only five months old when we first saw Dr. Mayer and she couldn't do her full assessment, she determined that he had a "dense and complete right hemifield defect." In other words, he had no right field of vision in both eyes. This is why the Teacher of the Visually Impaired got involved with us. I described this a bit more at the end of this post. We were told that Elijah may regain some of his right field of vision due to the plasticity of his brain. We weren't sure that this would happen, but yesterday Dr. Mayer seemed confident that he has regained some of his upper right field of vision. There still seems to be some loss in his lower right field, but he has made definite progress!! Dr. Mayer was very pleased with this news, and we were thrilled!!!!!! She also thought that his acquity has improved from 20/360 (at the very low range of normal for a 5 month old) to 20/100 (average for a 12 month old). I'll do another post about this once we get Dr. Mayer's official report since I'm sure that I'm not explaining this as clearly as she will. Either way, we were so happy to hear this great news yesterday!

Nana and Bobu's Visit

We just enjoyed a great week with my mom and dad here visiting. I always realize after our visitors are gone that I didn't take enough pictures of them. At least I got a few before the stomach bug went through our house. Mike and I were supposed to go away for a night, but our plans were foiled when I came down with the stomach bug on Saturday night. Oh well, at least we were able to go to dinner and a movie on Sunday. We highly recommend "Slum Dog Millionaire" (as does the Academy)!

Sienna found a comfy spot to snooze

My dad likes to keep busy when he visits, so he helped me reupholster our dining room chairs.

Bobu (Baldbu) baked some delicious cookies with Isabella's help.

This shot is for Uncle Nathan!

We taught Nana and Bobu how to bowl on the Wii.

My mom and dad helped us celebrate Elijah's first birthday, too!