a day out with thomas / edaville

Last Saturday we and our friends the Zivans took the kids for a trip down to Carver, MA to a small amusement park they have there. The draw: A ride on Thomas the Tank Engine. The park centers around a narrow gauge railroad that they have there, but for the 2 -6 year old crowd there's much more. (Actually, the parents can have fun too...)

Riley, it turns out, LOVES amusement park rides. He went on all the big rides and wanted more at each one. He started with the airplane ride that was one of the first as you head into the park. Once he found out that pulling back on the lever inside the plane took the plane higher he went as high as he could go and stayed there.

Natural born pilot? It is in his bloodline...















He went on a Ferris Wheel, Tilt-A-Whirl, Space Capsule, Merry-Go-Round and Flying Jumbo the Elephant ride, as well as the airplane and, of course, Thomas.

The video tells the tale, but there were some highlights. First was the Tilt-A-Whirl. Riley was hooting and hollering along with his Mom and Dad and didn't want to get off. It was actually the one ride that was truly adult style in the place. I loved how much HE loved it. Second, look for Riley sticking his head in the drum at the music tent to find the tambourine inside. He is a curious boy. Finally, Kendall didn't have much of a reaction to the place (being three months old) although she did look really cute while enjoying being held on the train ride. She HATED the train horn though. Poor girl. She took a cute picture though.

Funny, we went there for the "Day Out With Thomas" and that was the part Riley was least excited about. I guess he's just an adrenaline junky like his parents (who both LOVE rides!)

Here's the video:

We'll definitely be back to this place, Thomas or no.


Jonathan

father's day

Father's Day has always been a day that has brought up a lot of emotion for me. Prior to being married it was a day that reminded me of my singleness and all of my unfulfilled desires. Once I was married there was a sense of nearness to the fulfillment of my dreams that was actually quite sweet.

That sweetness was nothing compared to the joy that fatherhood has brought me. My first Father's Day was a couple of weeks after we finally took Riley home from the hospital. Sweet indeed.

Father's Day now is full of that sweetness, and a sense of completion for the longings I had for so many years. But it's tempered by sadness as I always, quite keenly, feel the loss of my Dad. His is a good act to attempt to follow though.

Dad & I - I was seven




















What I really want to write down right now however, are the impressions I have of my kids at this point in their lives. And also the things I love most about them.

Riley Boy



















Riley is a kid with a really sweet disposition. He's easy going and really fun to hang out with.

I love his inquisitive nature (even if it means that he frequently destroys stuff trying to figure out how it works.) It makes him really fun to show things. Today I took him on a hunt in the back yard to find out where ants have their house. He saw the little holes that they crawl in and out of and, most exciting, got to see an ant carrying food back home. His excitement at this type of "discovery" is an incredibly joyful thing for me.

He loves to play and will instantly insert himself into any group of kids that he comes upon. It's so funny to see him go and sit right in the middle of a big group of girls. But even more he loves to play with his parents. One of my favorite things is when he pats the floor or ground next to him and says, "Sit." If I have ANY time at all I'll give it to him when he does this.

He is a very bright boy; he learned to read by 2 yrs. 9 mos., he knows his colors and can count to eleven. He currently loves to count things (members of the family, houses on our street up to ours, A/C units...) He mastered jigsaw puzzles long ago, leaving therapists who were testing him for his speech delay in amazement.

He has always loved books and has been reading (or at least looking at) them for as long as I can remember. Reading books to him is one of my favorite activities and we have done so in many different locations...even when on mountain bike rides (great rest period at the top of a killer hill.)

Riley loves TV and video, which we do try to limit to a certain degree. That has been tougher with Kendall's presence though, as watching a video will keep him from pulling at Mom or acting out when his baby sister needs Mom's full attention to eat. His current favorites are Blue's Clues and Winnie-the-Pooh. He also loves all the Pixar movies and the occasional Bob the Builder or Backyardagains. Something I love is to see when he starts interacting with Steve on Blue's Clues. It's fun to watch him.

He's an adventurous boy, seemingly without fear when climbing but also one who enjoys things like fast bike riding with Daddy in the woods and our newest discovery...amusement park rides. I can't wait until he's big enough for Six Flags! He also loves swimming, hiking and kayaking. One of the things I love best about my son is that he's someone who is fun to DO things with.

Riley is a very independent boy. He always wants to do things himself if he can and he rarely asks for help. I have to ask him several times if he needs help with something before he'll respond.

He is also showing a depth of emotion that has surprised me at times. Once when he was with me at the office he was being very difficult and actually a bit mean to me. I sat down in a chair across from him and asked him what was going on and why he was being mean to me. I told him that it made me sad (which it had.) He stopped cold and sat quietly for a moment. I then saw a tear coming out of the corner of his eye. My first thought was that I had upset him or angered him further. Not so. He got out of the chair, climbed into my lap and gave me a big hug with tears streaming down his face. It made him sad that he had made ME sad. And I didn't think that I could love him any more...

I LOVE the fact that Riley keeps showing me that there is a lot more to him than I think there is (and I think there's a lot...) He keeps me on my toes.

Kendall Girl













This is one of my favorite pictures of her. Why? She was smiling at ME when the picture was taken...

Baby girl is still small enough that there's a lot less to say about her than her brother. She is starting to show some personality though, and I have to say that I'm liking what I see.

She's a very cute girl and this shows up most when she smiles. Lately this has been more and more frequent. She generally wakes in a sweet mood with big smiles. I love singing silly little songs and talking to her while I make lunch or whatever task I am doing in the morning. She is for the most part happy to just hang out with you...as long as she can see you. I put her in the bouncy seat or the portable swing and she's good to go. It's nice having her sitting there very contentedly.

Kendall is starting to babble a bit, and I really love listening to her start to give her voice some use. She does cry a bit (of course) but most of the time I know what she wants as her cries have become almost like language.

She does let us know what she wants more than her brother did. Kendall knows what she wants (for the most part) and stops sounding off pretty much as soon as she gets it. I think one of the things I get the biggest kick out of is the approximately 5 seconds of crying she does after I give her an adjustment. She lets loose and then just suddenly stops. Just wants to let me know she didn't like it.

With Mama heading back to work I get to hang out (and doze) with my baby girl in bed for a little while in the morning. It's a time that I really love, even if I'm only giving her a bink and occasionally rubbing her tummy to help relax her and send her off to her morning nap. It's generally a very peaceful time and I love to just lay there and look at her. She is such a cutie and I feel my love for her growing stronger with each passing day.

I have to say that before Kendall was born I really wondered if I could ever love another child as much as I love Riley. It was hard to imagine, even though everyone (including me) knew that I would. I can say now that I know I can. It simply amazes me.

I'm very grateful for the precious gift the God has given me in my family. There is sometimes truth to the old adage that good things come to those who wait. The wait was long but worth it. The depth of love I have for these people stuns me at times. My hope though, is that at the end of my life my kids will know that I loved them as much as I know my Dad loved me. If that's true then I'll have done a good job. Like I said, he was a good act to attempt to follow.


Jonathan

three months

Our baby girl is 3 months old today! Here's some of what's going on with her and what she's up to:

* She weighs 11 lbs 12 oz, which as of a month ago, she was in the 35th percentile for weight.

* She's nursing 6x per day starting at 5am with the last feeding around 7pm. I was able to wean her off of the nipple shield about two weeks ago, so her feedings are lasting between 30-40 min rather than the 60 min it was previously taking.

* She's sleeping about 8-9 hours at night, usually waking between 3:30am - 5am. When she wakes earlier than her first day's feeding, I bring her into bed and offer her a binky, which puts her back to sleep until 5am.

* Her daytime naps vary from 30 - 90 min usually, now that she's more interested in what's going on around her.

* She began turning herself 180 degrees in the crib through contorting her body this way and that. This led us to believe she might roll herself over while swaddled, so we stopped swaddling her and now use the sleepsack instead.

* Speaking of rolling, she began rolling from belly to back about 10 days ago, so tummy time doesn't last very long now!

* She also uses her heels to propel herself backwards so I often find her head up against her crib slats even though I put her in the center of the crib.

* She sucks on her hands all the time now and is using her hands to bat at her playgym animals and to grasp toys (briefly) that we put within reach. She'll put her blankets or burp clothes in her mouth when they're within reach too.

* She smiles and talks to us a lot now. I get big smiles from her first thing in the morning, which makes waking up at 5am easier!

Here's some of the latest snaps of our little beauty:









































Just about to roll over...













...so she can play with her playgym animals













Talking to mama whilst in the Bumbo













Rattle play













Whatcha talking about mama??













We had the kid's pictures taken last week, but none of the pics of the two of them together came out, so we did it ourselves:













In short, Kendall is a sweet little girl who is a delight to her whole family. We're so thankful that God gave her to us and we look forward to getting to know her more!

Shelby

cupcakes and purple houses

huh??

These are the topics that Riley has been fixated on for the past week and the inspiration for his first 3-word sentences.

A little background... Up until a few months ago, Riley spoke only single words. With the help of his EI therapist, he began using some simple two-word combinations such as "Blue House", "More Bear" or "Ball Please". He didn't use these spontaneously, but would do so when prompted.

By the time his third birthday rolled around last month, he was using two word combinations without prompting. Usually these words were descriptive words -- and adjective and a noun such as "Big Mall" and his vocabulary seemed to increase by the week. We were very encouraged that he was on the brink of his speech explosion now that two word combos and two syllable words were coming out of his mouth throughout the day.

Well, ever since his birthday he has been talking about cupcakes -- a word that he says very well and enjoys saying (as well as eating!). He asks for them for breakfast, lunch and dinner on a regular basis and I remind him that they are for special occasions, such as birthdays.

Last Saturday, his friend CeCe was turning 4 and Riley was invited to her birthday party. I told him several days before that he would have cupcakes at CeCe's party. For the rest of the week he would say over and over "CeCe house cupcake!". When I realized later that the party would be at a local park he revised it to "CeCe park cupcake!". I'm pretty sure this is the first 3 word sentence that he's uttered. All it took was some sweet inspiration!

This sentence has given birth to others since then. We hung out at CeCe's house after the party and he made two observations that he has been talking about ever since. He noted that they had two A/C units ("CeCe A/C two!") and that her house is purple ("CeCe House Purple!"). I would answer back that yes, CeCe's house IS purple to try and help him complete the sentence structure. He answered back "Riley House Red!". Then he continued with "Mama car white!" and "Daddy car black!", so he's beginning to get an understanding of how to put words together in sentence form.

We're still working on the verbs as he is more interested in labeling with adjectives and nouns right now. But we're encouraged by all the words that he is spontaneously uttering and his willingness to try new words. After being such a quiet child, it's great to hear him talking all day long and to enjoy the sound of his own voice.

Besides counting things, he's getting into rhyming now. He came home from school about a week ago and started rhyming with words that end with the "op" sound: Hop, Pop, Cop, Mop, Stop. He'll start off with a word such as "bat", then pause and say "hat" and I'll add "mat" and he'll say "cat" and on and on. I can see him searching for consonant sounds to put with the "at" ending so his knowledge of the alphabet is coming in handy.

The other thing he's interested in now is opposites. He'll say "up/down", "top/bottom","front/back", "tall/short", "big/small" and his favorite: "inside/outside". I'm trying to think of others so he gets those relationships as he doesn't have a book that's specific to this topic... he's just figured it out recently and enjoys saying them back to back.

In closing, here's a short sample of the kind of things he's saying right now. He's naming off the members of our family and counting how many there are:

We love our talking boy!!

Shelby

rollin', rollin', rollin'...

Keep movin', movin', movin'. So the song goes...

At 2 months and 22 days, our baby girl started rolling from tummy to back. This is how she got out of her neck & upper back exercises today:


I suspect that we have yet another athlete in the family if she's this anxious to get moving. Maybe I'll have a running partner after all!

Way to go Kendall-girl!

Shelby

potty training reprise

Back on January 16th, we blogged about our first attempt to potty train Riley. After 30 days of trying, it seemed clear that he just wasn't ready for it. One of the assurances that I had was that no child gets on the bus in diapers, so he had plenty of time to reach this milestone.

Well, I was wrong. On May 24th, Riley did get on the bus wearing a diaper as he started his preschool SpEd program that day. However, he was not destined to stay in diapers once he saw the other kids taking their potty breaks. Within days, he was taking off his wet diapers and handing them to me and asking Jonathan to let him sit on the potty while he was with him at the office.

So we figured we should exploit this opportunity to go cold-turkey and see if he was ready to give diapers up for good. Starting last week, I began letting him wear his trainers in the afternoons -- with success, mostly. I think that because he was going back & forth between diapers and trainers he would possibly get confused and that was the cause of the accidents that he had.

One thing that became clear is that he did not like to be wet and as soon as he started leaking, he'd have this worried look on his face and let us know he was wet. Another thing we saw was that he would sense that he had to go and sit on the potty all on his own -- he didn't wait for me to ask him if he needed to go. These were two more indicators that he was ready, as we did not see this back in Dec/Jan when we first tried training him.

So last Friday at 11am I told him that we would be taking his diaper off and he would wear underwear from now on. We restarted the award system in which he got to reach into the trail mix jar and pick 1 treat for pee and 2 treats for poo. In the first 24 hours he had several accidents, mainly due to getting used to not automatically going in his pants like he did with his diapers. After the first couple of accidents, he did great. The relapse occurred again on Saturday morning -- as he wears a diaper overnight still -- when he needed to remember to stop himself from going in his pants. Again, after an accident or two, he did great the rest of the day.

He has been accident-free since Saturday morning -- and it's now Tuesday morning. Can I get a WOO HOO??!!

I should also mention that Friday, Saturday and Sunday afternoons, he was gone from home at least 3-4 hours at a time and stayed dry the whole time! He's always been finicky about using public toilets, so this was a big step forward. He prefers his child-size potty to the big one, so I've purchased an insert so he can fit on it better. He still doesn't like to use it as he feels like he's going to fall in, I think. He does like using his Cars potty seat however, so we now keep that in the car and just stick it in a bag for him to use. Whatever keeps his pants dry is what we're willing to do.

We are so proud of our son taking this step forward and doing so well. It's just one of the changes we're seeing now that he's started preschool. His language skills are improving too. But more on that in a future blog.

Shelby

the many faces of kendall

J made a slide show of Kendall's expressions captured a couple of weeks ago...

We love our l'il cutie pie!

Shelby

kendall (by request)

A certain relative of mine informed me that there was a lack of Kendall pics and videos being posted, so this entry is to try and remedy that situation. As so much seems to be going on in Riley's life for the past several weeks, I suppose he has dominated the news as of late. There hasn't been much to report on Kendall -- newborns just don't do much -- but we have been taking pictures and making notes of some of the changes we're beginning to see with her.

For starters, she's not sleeping as much during the day. Her naps tend to be naplets of 30-60 min max, if that. So she's spending a little more time in the swing, for instance. She didn't like it at all at first, but now she good with it. I usually put her in it in the late afternoon where she intersperses mile-long stares with short snoozes.


















When Kendall's not sleeping or on one of her marathon feeding sessions (45 - 60 min!), she's often sitting in the bumbo while I'm busy with Riley or doing some housework. Now that she can sit straight in it, she enjoys it more.


















Kendall's last check up was about a week ago. She weighed 10.7 lbs and moved up from the 26th percentile to the 35th in weight.

Probably the biggest change in her life is that she's graduated up to her crib, which means she gets to enjoy her mobile now. We got this awesome mobile from a friend called Symphony in Motion and both of our kids loved it. Besides the mobile, this picture also captures one of her new discoveries -- sucking on her hands:















Like Riley, Kendall stills needs to be swaddled to calm down and go to sleep at night. She is a magnificent squirmer however and on two occasions managed to move completely off her sleep positioner. This is how I found her in the morning:














She's taking notice of her brother too. Riley still dotes on his sister and I was reminded again of why I can't leave them alone together in the room quite yet. The other day I left Kendall in her bouncy seat to get myself a glass of water when Riley took her out of it to move her to the activity mat for tummy time. I hear this cry from Kendall and after running back to the living room, she's lying there on her belly with her face planted nose-first on the ground and crying. Riley looked surprised as though he didn't expect things to go so awry. That's my helpful boy. Well, that won't be the last time he inadvertently makes her cry now, will it??













Please don't be fooled... Riley's not stroking Kendall's hair but rather he's sticking his thumb into her ear. She let out a holler as I was taking the picture to let him know she didn't like it.














(You may have noticed that Riley's naked as a jaybird in these snaps. Well, he's showing an interest in the potty again so I let him run around naked that afternoon as he was practicing his potty skills. He's mostly done very well, so we're going cold turkey again this weekend to see if this time we can ditch the diaps for good during the day. More on that later...)

Lastly, baby girl is showing us her strong neck & back muscles and will consent to tummy time for more than a couple of minutes now. Check her out:
















We love our baby girl!!

Shelby