The Elijah Update

-- A Rough Patch. These last few weeks have been bumpy for Eli (and us). I think I mentioned a few posts ago, how all four of us had a stomach bug. Eli seemed to get the mildest case of it, but his has lingered and lingered. It has resulted in bloating, nausea and generally potty unhappiness. I took him to the doctor and she suggested laying off of dairy for a while. While helpful, the suggestion was devastating for him. He LOVES dairy. He drinks milk almost exclusively, he loves cheese, he likes yogurt and he loves cheese and creamy sauces with most of his favorite dinners. We've done the best we can, with Lactose Free Milk, substitutions and concentrating on other foods. But, it hasn't been fun. Fortunately, his milk issue seems to have almost resolved itself, and I'll be happy to have him back to his spunky self soon.

Possibly related, Eli's had separation anxiety at school ever since starting back after his super long Christmas break. He's never been extremely gung ho about school, but the mornings have never been especially hard. Yet, since Christmas, he's shed tears a few times and pleads me not to leave him each day. Thankfully, it's a little bit less of a process each morning. This week was optional, and out of the twenty students only about six have consistently attended, but I signed him up. Mostly, I didn't want to get him out of the school routine and lose ground again. His teacher, Ms. Via, said that she remembered her son went through a similar bout of separation anxiety right around his fifth birthday. No fun.

-- Emmi! The good news about school is that even by his own admittance, the second I leave he's fine. Then, when I pick him up after school he's usually bouncing to the car, glowing and bubbling over with news. Even though dropping him off in the morning can be rough, I know school's been amazingly good for him, especially socially. It's broken him out of his shell. When we go to parks now, he often will greet other kids and even initiate games.

Even though he's become more social, he will usually just talk about his favorite highschoolers when he talks about school. He loves Kerri, Lindy and Allison. I've offered to have friends over for a playdate, but until recently he didn't seem interested. Then, over the vacation, he started talking about Emmi. One Grammie day, he told Grammie that he LOVES Emmi and enthusiastically reported that he got to hold her hand on the way to the gym. A few weeks ago, I saw Emmi's mom when we were both dropping off and I told her about how Eli talks about Emmi. We hit it off, became facebook friends and finally, last Friday, got together for a playdate. It went wonderfully! Often I find that the kids can be a good match, or I can be a good match with the other mom, but it's hard to find both. I think with Emmi and her mom Niki, we both found a match. Emmi has a little brother Max and Emmi, Max and Eli played well together. Emmi also loves Keira. All in all, a good time was had by all. Here are some pictures that Niki took at the park of Eli and Emmi. Eli looks like he's working on his camera smile. :)






After the park, we all went to a cafe, where Niki snapped my favorite picture of the afternoon.



-- Literacy Centers. Being a teacher, it's always been interesting to me watching the kids develop. Especially of interest to me, is how Eli absorbs so much information, teaches himself things and practices his skills voluntarily. When I taught Kindergarten and First Grade I often used Literacy Centers. Literacy Centers were something the rest of the class did while I worked with a small group on Guided Reading. They involved all facets of reading and writing. Interestingly, Eli creates his own literacy centers. He loved writing his Thank You cards this year and has even asked me if we could write more, which we have. He also has invented an activity where he copies books either on to paper or types them on the computer. His latest fascination are crossword puzzles. If he's working independently, he will painstakingly look at the answers and copy down the appropriate letter into each box. Or if an adult is handy, we'll work on solving them with him. He even addressed all his Valentines cards this year, once I got him started he went down his class list addressed the card and crossed off each name as he finished them. Sometimes, I think he has a longer attention span than me!

-- Math. The boy has definitely inherited his Daddy's math brain. The other morning he told Scott and I that half of twenty-four was twelve. Then a couple of weeks ago, he successfully added sixteen plus sixteen on his fingers. I have no idea how he accomplished that since we don't have sixteen or thirty-two fingers! His math mind regularly floors and amazes me. A few weeks ago, Mrs. Via said he was doing division in school. She said that one of the teens asked him a question, he got it right and then they asked him a few more, which he continued answering correctly. I laughed and told her that I hope that she knew that I didn't sit around making him do math with me or forcing him to do flashcards. On the contrary, I just try to get him to play with me and get silly. She said that she knew, she could tell that he came to it naturally. Crazy stuff.

-- Amazing Big Brother. One of my very favorite things about him is what an amazing big brother he has continued to be. Even when he's being difficult with Scott and I, as he has been this past month, he's always sweet with Keira. He calls her "little." He is patient, kind and gentle with her. He will help her whenever he can without any prompting. He tries to entertain her and play with her and says to her, "Come on Baby Girl." I had a lot of anxiety about sibling relationships before I had Keira, yet their relationship takes little or no coaching or interference from us. It blows me away. We're so lucky. Keira's so lucky! They regularly hug and kiss several times a day, often for no reason at all.

Valentine's Day

Valentine's Day morning felt a little bit like Christmas morning lite. Eli, as usual, was up at around six. He spotted the Valentines on the mantle and waited patiently (or not so patiently) for Keira and I to surface. Scottie waited around a few extra minutes before going to work, to watch them open their cards, chocolates and books. It felt magical. It's so fun to watch how excited and spell bound they can get. It's definitely one of the many hightlights of having kids. So fun. Interestingly, I think the cards were the biggest hits. Not to say that they didn't enjoy their chocolate, and we haven't read the books several times already, but the cards held their fascination the longest.

Keira got an M-I-C-K-E-Y M-O-U-S-E clubhouse card that sings.



But, the overwhelming hit was Eli's talking robot card. The robot magically knew his name, where he lived, his favorite food and his favorite game. Both of the kids were entranced and kept pushing those buttons over and over again. Eli, being the amazing big brother that he is, generously gave his sister a turn.

Keira Tidbits

-- She's still my smileroo. She has an amazing, open, beautiful smile and she's always smiling. Strangers comment on it in the store and it never fails to brighten my day or mood. As you can see from the picture that Dendi took, she is a very cooperative smiler for the camera and will generally say an enthusiastic and unsolicited, "CHEESE!"

-- She's talking up a storm. Although, I feel like I'm always saying that. For her 18 mos. checkup I figured they'd ask me how many words she was saying, so I started jotting them down. I got to 85 words right before we moved, and right before her appt. Now, she's regularly speaking in four word chunks. It's amazing. She can generally convey her meaning about anything that she needs, even if it's in the other room. Of course, when she can't convey something to me or when I say "show Mommy" and it doesn't work, she gets to use one of her favorites, "MAD, MAD, MAD!!!" This is a little gem that I picked up from one of my favorite books, "Happiest Toddler on the Block". When she's about to throw a tantrum I mirror her emotion and speak in "Toddlerese", so far it's averted many disasters. We said it with Eli, too, but Keira has actually picked it up and uses it herself.

-- She sings constantly. She's usually singing a tune, like when she's playing or riding in the car. Sometimes, I can pick out the tune, and sometimes I can't. Not only is she always singing, but at times, she sings her requests, too. During the holiday season, she would sing many requests to the tune of Jingle Bells. "Num num couch, num num couch, num num num num couch..."

-- At night, she likes to pause in the bedtime routine and talk about her day. She did this a lot right before Christmas, when she was starting to put together thoughts and words after things happened, and often many hours later. It was so neat to hear her talk about things that we had done hours beforehand. Amazing to see her little mind working. Now, before bed, we talk, but mainly read. Sometimes we read about 20 of her books. Some of her favorites are, "So Big!", "Brown Bear, Brown Bear", "Time to Eat", "Elmo and Abby Want to Play", "Let's Build" and any Maisy book.

-- She has an opinion. :) I find myself saying at least once a day, "My children definitely have opinions." I say this to some of the teenagers at Eli's school who talk to Keira. She eats up the attention for a moment and then tells them, "No!" when they get too close. I also say this at Kroger, WalMart or Target when strangers love her huge smile and then try to get too close and engage her further. They often get the same response as the teenagers do. Attention, especially from strangers, or anyone outside her nuclear family, has to be on her terms.

-- She adores her brother. When he's sad or in trouble she always seeks him out to give him a kiss. It works wonders on him. As many younger siblings do, she loves and wants to be just like her brother. Her version of dress up so far is dressing up like Eli. She puts on his crocs and his hat, usually backwards. We call her Eli Jr.



-- Monkey See, Monkey Do. Not only does she want to dress like him, she wants to do everything he does. After he takes his inhaler, she has to "take" it too.


-- Speaking of monkeys... many animals are cows and monkeys. This is related to the earlier tidbit. She has an opinion... When we went to the zoo before Christmas, she was absolutely fascinated by the animals. Eli is interested in the animals very temporarily, in fact, on the way home he told us if he owned the zoo he would put in more rides. But, Keira stood transfixed in front of the giraffes, zebras, elephants, lions, tigers, pandas, gorillas and many more. I almost had to drag her away from each animal. Interestingly, when we got home and talked about the zoo later, and I asked her what animals she saw, she said cows. Hmmm. When I tried to correct her or expand with other animals. She said, "No Mommy, cows." Okay.

Monkeys seem to be another favorite. She calls many non monkey animals, monkeys. For instance, for Christmas, she got a pink and purple unicorn pillow from Uncle Jason and Auntie Andrea. She loves it. And, she insists on dragging it into bed and leaning on it every night when we read. She calls it her monkey pillow. Huh? I've tried to correct her, and say it's a unicorn pillow. She just looks at me, a little incredulously and says, "No Mommy, oooooh ooooh aaah aaah, Monkey pillow." I guess the monkey noises settle it. :)

-- She has amazing manners. She says unsolicited "thank you"s and "no thank you"s most of the time. It's incredible, she rarely misses a beat. She's so consistent that it actually turned into a game with Ashley Kate the other evening. We were across the street playing in Ms. Shannon's back yard. Ashley Kate was doing her best job sharing, as we all know that's HARD for someone who's about to turn two and is having to share on their turf. Both girls were playing in the sandbox and at one point, Ashley Kate handed something to Keira, at which point Keira promptly replied with a thank you. Ashley Kate handed her another toy, Keira thanked her. Then, Ashley Kate ended up giving her almost the entire contents on the sandbox. Too cute.

-- She says, "I got it." I'm not sure where she picked it up, as I don't think she understands the pronoun "I" yet, but she uses it correctly all the time. She says it when she's finally opened something, or climbed up somewhere.

-- She says "try." This is her response when I tell her that we can't do something. For instance, she looks longingly out the window and says, "Outside, outside, outside!!!" I look out the window at the snow on the ground and look back at her with no socks, no shoes and her pajamas on, and I tell her that we'll have to go out later. She promptly responds, "Try!" Scott thinks she got it from her brother the master negotiator, who will often be heard saying, "Let's just try, Mommy." Her "try"s are slowly morphing into "please"s which are much more socially acceptable, but a little less giggle inspiring.

-- She says "right here" all the time. She says it when answering many questions like where's your nose or where are your shoes? It's usually accompanied by a pointing finger. "Right here" can mean on her face or on the other side of the house. Interestingly, Scottie remembered that at this age, Eli always said "over there (dare)" and it, like "right here", had no specific distance requirements.

-- She counts to ten. She's been doing this for a few months now, and is now working on counting to twenty by hiding her head in her arm and pretending to be Eli when he's counting for Hide and Seek. When I catch her doing it she lifts her head and flashes a big grin at me, almost sheepishly.

-- She working on learning her colors in a unique way. She calls orange, "Dendi" and sometimes she gets blue right and calls it "Daddy". As I did when Eli was learning his colors, I talked about the colors by telling her about people's favorite colors. She's taken it one step closer and actually calls orange "Dendi". :)

-- Finally, she's fascinated with personal grooming tasks. As she has been for a long time, Keira still loves water. I haven't encouraged her playing in the sink since we moved to the new house -- it's winter, and having a bigger kitchen means I can't stand right next to the sink and put the dishes away. She seems to have forgotten about the sink, but is definitely interested in washing her hands, brushing her teeth and taking baths much more often than personal hygiene requires. She's also been interested in trying to put on clothes for almost a year now. Her skills have improved a lot. The other night she played for almost an hour -- putting my sports bra over her head and her pants on one leg or the other. Then, she would take it all off and start again. About a week ago she kicked off this new bout of dressing by putting my underwear proudly on her head over and over again.

Christmas Midmorning at Dendi and Bapa's

After opening presents at home and playing for a little while we kept the kids in their jammies and headed down the street to Bapa and Dendi's house. Besides the joy of presents and spending time with their grandparents, I think the highlight for the kids was spending time with Uncle Jason and Auntie Andrea. You'd think living on the same street would mean we'd see them all the time, but our lives keep us busy and too much time passes. We had a wonderful time, and the kids especially loved all the attention.

Disney Memory

I've entered a Disney contest with a picture of Eli from last summer. He's happily posing in Dumbo. To see the picture and read the memory click on the link below. If you do decide to follow the link, feel free to "like" it. It may help my chances in the contest. Thanks!

http://memories.disneyparks.disney.go.com/?int_cmp=dcom_memories_hub_cta__Intl#/detail/24008

* I've just looked back at the post, and you will probably have to copy and paste the address in your browser. Then, it'll work. By the way, you don't have to sign in or leave any personal info to get to the page.

** If you're willing, I think you can go back each day and "like" it. Who knows, it may help my chances! Thanks!!!