February Vacation-Part 2

We spent Friday morning at Regal Reptiles Adventure Center in Providence. There were many animals for the kids to feed, touch and even hold!

Sienna and Luke got to pet a hedgehog

Sienna is sitting next to me as I type this and she said, "There's the hedgehog, Mrs. Piggy-Dinkle." (She meant Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle from the Beatrix Potter book)

Sienna bravely touched the snake

There was a big tank with alligators, and we got to see a feeding demonstration. Mike alarmingly wondered why I would let Sienna get so close to a hungry alligator. I'm not that crazy and Sienna isn't that brave! We were behind the glass, of course! Sienna still flinched every time the alligator snapped at the chicken leg.

What big eyes you have!

Isabella tried to lure one of the tortoises over to eat her lettuce. There were many kids there that day trying to feed the tortoises, so I'm sure they weren't too hungry!

Isabella holding an alligator
Sienna holding an alligator
Teamwork
Isabella holding a snake (I couldn't believe that she agreed to do this!)

The girls came home that afternoon and made their own zoo.

Here they have a snake and a lizard on their shoulders

They sectioned off our living room into different animal enclosures. I had to buy a ticket to see the animals.

February Vacation-Part 3

Mike has been working on making a trail through the woods behind our house. We took a family nature walk on Saturday to check it out!

We got a special delivery! Elijah loved peeking through the holes in the side of the box.

We ended our vacation week with pizza and a Wii tournament with John and Luke.

Siblings

Are these two related, or what?!?

Cupcakes

Since my sister knows that I like to make my kids' birthday cakes, she gave me a great cupcake cookbook called Hello, Cupcake! for Christmas. It has lots of cute designs, and the techniques seemed fairly easy. In preparation for Elijah's first birthday, I wanted to try out one of the designs. The girls and I attempted to make penguin cupcakes for my friend, Lorinda's, birthday. They were really messy and we didn't even eat them because each one consisted of a cupcake, a half of a small doughnut and a doughnut hole under a ton of frosting.

Note to self: don't have the girls help me if I want the cupcakes to actually be presentable (and edible)!!

Although these penguins were awfully messy, we had fun trying to make them! Stay tuned for Elijah's birthday creation at the end of the month!

Sledding

After a beautiful day at the zoo the other day, we had a cold and snowy day today that was perfect for sledding! We got together with our friends from the MOMS Club for some sledding in a friend's backyard.

Luke, Sienna and Lauren are ready for their first run Friends on the hill

Elijah likes his baby sled!
Sienna's snow angel

Holly took a ride with Sienna, Luke and Lauren!

Who needs a sled?

Winter in New England just wouldn't be right without a few great days of sledding (or sled riding, as Mike would say)!

Splasher!

Elijah still enjoys his baths!

Winter Visit to the Zoo

Since we have a family membership to the Roger Williams Park Zoo, we try to go there a couple of times in the winter to get full use of our pass. We spent a relatively warm February afternoon at the zoo with my friend, Kim, and her girls, Anna and Sarah. Kim already blogged about it here.

Sienna liked being the big girl by watching out for Sarah

Anna, Sienna and Isabella looked for the aoudads who were all perched on rocks
This funny crane pecks at the window if you put your hand on the glass

Elijah enjoyed the warmish weather, too!

Sienna, Anna and Isabella took a ride on the baby elephant

Check out the baby giraffe, Kenya, who was just born several weeks ago!

Sarah preferred splashing in this giant puddle rather than looking at the animals. Sienna watched from a safe distance.

We had a fun visit to the zoo and we look forward to going back in the spring when all of the animals are outside again!

On the Move!

As I wrote yesterday, Elijah is on the move!!! He has now ventured all the way around the first floor of our house (aside from the bathroom). This morning he found his way under his exersaucer.

We played peek-a-boo around the couch. Elijah likes to open and close doors, so he was happy to discover the play kitchen.
He ventured down the hallway and found...
...the stairs!! Time to get out the baby gates!

The baby tornado-knocking over chairs and taking names!When Elijah had his surgery, the neurosurgeon told us that there was a chance that he could be (temporarily) paralyzed on the right side of his body following the surgery or that he may have some weakness on his right side down the road. Thankfully, he came out of surgery just fine, and we haven't noticed any weakness on his right side at all since then. That's why it's so thrilling to watch him explore and get around on his own. He receives services through Early Intervention to monitor his development and to make sure that he stays on track. A physical therapist comes to our house once a week. Now Elijah is also seen by a Teacher of the Visually Impaired (TVI) every other week since he has a right visual field defect, or Homonymous Hemianopia, as a result of his tumor. From what we understand, he doesn't see anything in his right visual field of both eyes. He seems to be compensating amazingly well, though, by turning his eyes and head to the right, so it's hard to even tell that he has this issue. The TVI will give us strategies to help him as he becomes even more mobile. I notice that he bumps his head into things on his right side sometimes if he hasn't looked all around to see what's in front of and beside him. If this is the worst of his problems, we really can't complain! We're just thankful that he's happy and healthy and making great strides developmentally! We're also thankful to live in a place that has such great services to help us and Elijah!

11 Months Old!

Elijah is 11 months old today! It has been so fun to watch his personality develop over these past few months. He's a funny little guy who has a great belly laugh. Now that he's more mobile, I can see that he's going to give us a run for our money. I need to work on truly baby-proofing our house. He has a whole new level of curiosity than I remember either of the girls having. (My Aunt Sharon hoped that we would have a mischievous little red-headed boy. It looks like we have a mischievous little blond boy on our hands!) When he sees something that he wants, he goes for it!! We have a new cabinet for our TV, and he has already figured out how to open the sliding doors.

Elijah loves all dangling objects-hair, earrings, necklaces, and most specifically, any type of cord. If he spots a cord from across the room, he army crawls to it as fast as he can before I can take it away. He watches Mike iron his shirts in the morning, and Mike said that he fixates on the cord for the iron. We have to be really careful of that since the last thing he needs is an iron falling on his head!

Elijah loves taking a bath and he splashes like crazy! I always have to change my shirt after I give him a bath since he soaks me every time. We took him swimming at the Y a couple months ago and he loved that, too. He's our little water baby! The girls couldn't stand getting water in their faces when they were babies.
Elijah has 8 teeth now and he eats all sorts of table foods. He seems to prefer to feed himself so it's getting to be a challenge to spoon-feed him yogurt since he turns his head when he's had enough. He likes macaroni and cheese, yogurt, bagels, pancakes, waffles, chicken, cheese, graham crackers, all kinds of fruits, carrots, green beans, sweet potatoes, and Mike's favorite Polish dish, "pigs in a blanket" or Golumbkis (ground beef and rice wrapped in cabbage and baked in tomato soup).

Elijah loves to play peek-a-boo. He likes it when the girls peek around the sides of his high chair. When I flew to Ohio for my grandma's memorial service a couple weeks ago, Elijah got a kick out of playing peek-a-book with a little six-year-old boy in front of us on the airplane. Just as he started to get fussy, this little boy turned around and peeked between the seats. They must have played for 15 minutes straight and Elijah drew a lot of attention with his laughs. He was noisy but it was better than crying!! If I hide around the corner of the couch, he scooches around until he finds me and giggles.

Elijah is quite the wiggle worm now. It's hard to keep him in one place. If he wants to be held in a certain way, he can squirm his way around until he's comfortable. He's getting strong now, too! I hope that he doesn't catapult himself out of my arms one of these days!

Elijah still loves to jump and bounce on our laps, in his exersaucer or in the door jumper. Maybe we have a high jumper or basketball star in training!

From the time Elijah was a month old, he has slept on his belly. I know right now there's the whole "Back to Sleep" campaign, but this works the best for him. We have a special baby monitor that has a sensor pad under the mattress that monitors his breathing and movements. If he doesn't move/breathe for 15 seconds, an alarm sounds. This helped to ease our minds about having him sleep on his belly. I love how he tucks his arms under his chest and pulls his knees up when he snuggles into bed.
Elijah still gets a kick out of his sisters and he likes interacting with other babies now, too. He mainly paws at their faces and bops them on the head. Elijah and I participate in a baby playgroup through my MOMS Club when the girls are in school. It's fun to watch him start to interact with the other little ones who are close to his age. I can't wait to watch these relationships grow over the years. Before we know it, Elijah and his buddies will be heading off to school! Boo hoo!!! Time flies by way too quickly.

We're looking forward to having my mom and dad here to help us celebrate Elijah's first birthday next month! What a year it's been!!!! We'll be so excited to celebrate this milestone!

Face Painting

While Isabella was at school this morning, Sienna was pretending to be a kitty. She asked me to paint her face, so I gave her whiskers and a black nose. When Isabella saw her after school, she asked me to paint her face, too. Isabella and Sienna had four friends over to play today, and it turned into a face painting extravaganza!!! The four kindergarten girls had me paint four different things on each of their faces. Sienna and Lauren were content to be kitties with rainbows on their foreheads. My mom gave one of the girls a face painting book at some point, so we made good use of that today. I copied most of the designs from the book.

Lyvia, Isabella, Sarah, Hope, Sienna & Lauren

One tired kitty! Sienna rarely naps anymore. After everyone left, I found Sienna sound asleep in her bed. I thought that Sienna was just worn out after playing all afternoon with her friends, but she woke up with a fever. Both Isabella and Elijah had fevers within the past two weeks, so I should have known that it was only a matter of time before Sienna caught the bug. Hopefully, it won't last very long.