Thanksgiving Break, Part I -- Zoo Atlanta

The first half of our Thanksgiving Break was fun and relaxing. On Monday, we decided to put our membership to use and visit Zoo Atlanta. In many ways I think it was our best trip to the zoo yet. The highlight for Elijah was being big enough to ride the carousel and the train unaccompanied. He was beaming ear to ear on his first solo carousel ride. Of course, Keira wanted to ride, too. But, Keira and I kept a safe distance from Elijah so he could relish his independence. Here he is proudly standing in front of the height restriction board.


Another highlight for Elijah was the climbing wall. The zoo has a huge vertical climbing wall complete with harnesses and an automated belaying system. Elijah's never even been interested before. And, this time after watching a while he climbed three or four times! It was very exciting. He's getting very brave.

For Keira, spending the day at Zoo Atlanta was wonderful in it's own way. On our previous trip she was leary of the train and the carousel. She enjoyed the animals, but she was through with the zoo fairly quickly. This trip was different. At first, she was still a little nervous about the train, and she clung to me as she had on our previous trips.


Eventually, she loosened her grip and seemed to enjoy the train rides. Once again, she loved going to see the animals. In fact, she enjoyed the animals so much that I think we saw almost every animal. Yet, her overwhelming favorite of the day was the carousel. I think we rode it close to fifteen times. We rode it about ten times in a row once the carousel operator assured me that we didn't have to get off between rides since we'd purchased an all day pass. I almost had to tear her away from her beloved carousel to get her in the car to head home. Elijah was finished with the zoo, and I think Keira would've been quite content for several more hours!

Chuck E. Cheese Birthday Party

As I've said before, this year has represented a wonderful social change for Elijah. He's confident, social and seems to have lots of different friends. This became especially obvious to Scott and I in the beginning of October when we all attended Elijah's second Kindergarten birthday party. It was held at Chuck E. Cheese, and this was only Elijah's second experience at Chuck E. Cheese. His first experience, when he was two was only marginally successful, so we'd never gone back. During our first visit, three years ago, Elijah was overwhelmed by all the noise, and had no interest in staying in the same room as the animatronic characters. He stayed close to Scott and I the whole time, and wasn't disappointed when we left.

Our most recent trip was a completely opposite experience, thankfully. Elijah revelled in all the noise and madness, he was completely unfazed and even a little interested in the characters, and wanted to stay all night. Scott and I kept Elijah in our sights all evening, but he was perfectly content playing with his friends and even climbed on the little stage to sing and dance with his sister and other friends. He had an ear to ear grin the whole night. His expression was so animated that I was disappointed that I hadn't brought along my camera. Fortunately, Keira and I discovered a photo booth so we got some photo documentation for the night. For her part, Keira enjoyed herself, too. She liked the dancing, singing, photo booth and a little moving car the best. But, most of the attractions are geared at older children so she wasn't quite as absorbed in all the craziness as her older brother who would've been content staying all night.

At first, Keira was interested in the photo booth and quite content waiting through the process. Of course, she'd used up her wonderful smiles before the camera clicked. But, we still managed to get her looking at the camera for the first two pictures.



Eventually Elijah wanted to take his picture with his sister and I, but as you can see Keira was no longer interested.


He took one last goofy shot all by himself.

Halloween

As we anticipated, Elijah stayed home from school on Halloween. In fact, he didn't have a signifigant break in his fever until Thursday afternoon. Therefore, he only went to school one day that week. In terms of his fever, Halloween was the worst. Everytime I took his temp, it was over 102. One time it was 102.8. I called the pediatrician, and sure enough, they like to see anyone over 102. So, we spent our Halloween Day vegging with two sickies and going to see the doctor in the afternoon.



Fortunately, the doctor gave us the best case scenario. His fever was spiking from his ear infection, and his lungs sounded clear. He put Elijah on antibiotics for the ear infection and felt confident it would clear in a few days. Since the fever didn't indicated anything scary, we decided to medicate Elijah and take our two sickies out for a little Trick or Treating. Of course, despite his condition, Elijah acted like he could've gone door to door all night. Keira enjoyed it, too. Although she got cold and tired fairly quickly. I carried her most of the way and woke up the next morning with sore arms. Unfortunately, I hadn't thought of bringing the sling. Halloween made such an impression on Keira that she's been talking about it every day since. She tells me things that she remembers from that night like the scary poster on one door and the monster(?) that she saw. She's also said a few times that she wants to put her Tinkerbell outfit on and go trick or treating again, so she can get more candy. I've tried to explain how we'll do it again next year, but, of course, that sense of time is lost on a two year old.

Here are some pictures of our cuties getting ready to go out.






Elijah and I decided on their costumes once I realized that he wanted them to match again. First, we tried to look into "Jake and The Neverland Pirates", one of their favorite Disney Junior shows. We couldn't find anything for Jake or Izzie which was our original idea. Instead, I found a great Captain Hook costume. Captain Hook is the nemesis in the show, although he's more of a bumbling buffoon rather than a scary character. Then, we found a Tinkerbell costume for Keira. Even though, Keira's never seen a Tinkerbell movie, she's one of the only Disney characters that Keira recognizes since she's at the beginning of all Disney videos. And, Tinkerbell is talked about a lot in "Jake and The Neverland Pirates" since she gave Izzie pixie dust to use in emergencies. Both of them got into character this year, Elijah gave us lots of appropriate sneers and for a while Keira would only answer to Tinkerbell. :)

Pre-Halloween -- Elijah as Mr. Moore

As I said in my previous post, unfortunately, both kids were sick on Halloween. Elijah was especially sick, he ended up having a bronchial cold, pink eye in both eyes and a bad ear infection. By Sunday we knew that he wouldn't be going to school the next day -- his fever was still really high. He was crushed for one specific reason, he wouldn't be dressing up. Like many local elementary schools, the kids don't get into their Halloween costumes at school, but sometimes they use it as an occasion to dress up for a more academic reason. In Elijah's Kindergarten class, they used Halloween as an excuse to dress up as their future careers. They've been studying communities and this was supposed to be the culminating activity. We had been planning for weeks, and Elijah wanted to dress up as a teacher. This year (even before this activity) he's been talking about how he wants to be a teacher, and how Daddy can retire, and Elijah can take over his room. He says that way they won't even have to change the name on the door! Knowing that he wouldn't be dressing up the next day at school, we dressed him up on Sunday afternoon instead and took a slew of pictures, so we could send one into his teacher. To look official, Daddy even printed up a name tag for him. The first picture shows his huge grin when he first saw his name tag.



After putting on his name tag we headed outside to take his picture with our huge Halloween inflatable. Grammie got the inflatable at her store. It was a hit with both kids, but Keira especially loved it and reminded me every morning to plug in her kitty.


You can see his pink eye in these close up shots.



Daddy even got some jumping shots of his excited protege.

Pre-Halloween -- Keira's Storytime

On Thursday, October 27th, I dressed up Keira in her Halloween costume and took her to story time. It was a special Halloween Storytime where the kids were invited to dress up if they wanted to. Keira was excited to put on her Halloween costume once I figured out two things -- we needed to pull the Tinkerbell costume over her feet and she needed an undershirt to be comfortable. Once we figured all that out she was very excited to be Tinkerbell. One cute quote of the morning came right after I put on her costume. She tried to flap her wings and sort of run around, and she looked at me very seriously and said with a frown, "My wings don't work." I told her that she would just pretend, like she does when she's Baby Bird. She seemed content with that.

Here's Tinkerbell, all ready to go (although I hadn't checked the weather yet, and realized she needed another layer.)



Once we got to Story Time, I noticed that only about a third of the kids dressed up. But, I was still glad we did. It's nice to get as much use out of the Halloween costumes as possible. I had assumed we'd get plenty of use out of them the weekend before Halloween. But, both kids got really sick and we just barely wore them on Halloween.




After Story Time, Keira was in a great mood and seemed to have plenty of energy, so I decided to head to Grammie's work. Keira and I have visited Grammie at her store several times. But, the last few times, over six months ago were a little rough. Keira seemed overwhelmed with all of Grammie's coworkers trying to talk to her. This time however went wonderfully. Keira went to Grammie immediately, and she seemd to love all the attention. Although, she wasn't very interested in posing for anymore pictures. :)

Our Cute, Quirky and Quotable Keira

Keira is full of funny expressions, habits and quotes. I've been collecting these musings and quotes for about six months.


-- "by mysef"

She is a very independent little girl. In many ways this has been a relief for us, since from a very early age Elijah was very demanding. Even as a little, tiny baby he would fuss and whine if you weren't sitting right next to him, engaging him. Fortunately, as far is Elijah is concerned five has been a magical age. He has grown much more independent, helpful, sweet and compliant. Phew! Keira has always been much more able to entertain herself, and she really likes toys of all varieties. We had worried about all the money that people had spent on buying Elijah toys when he's usually most interested in paper/ pencil tasks, books and puzzles. (Although Legos seem to be a recent exception.) But, have no fear, Keira plays with each and every toy in the play room. Depending on her mood and health, she can happily play for very long stints at a time singing and chattering to herself the whole way. The interesting thing about her play is that she'll play with all toys -- baby dolls, stuffed animals, trains, trucks, cars and tools. Yet, even with the traditionally "boy toys" like cars and trains they turn into dollies. If you listen while she's playing one train is the mommy and one is the baby. Or, like last night, the cars were talking to each other saying that they were tired and were heading home for num nums. :) But, that independence has a flip side. "By mysef!" is often uttered in defiance, too. She is opinionated and fiery. Whereas, Elijah has rarely had a true temper tantrum. Elijah made a funny and rather astute comment about their recent behavior patterns. He said to Dendi, "Now she's the naughty one and I'm the good one!"


-- "I a big girl!", "I not a baby!", "Tha's mine!", "You got to ____."

Related to her independent utterance of "by mysef!" are "I a big girl!" For a while if anyone commented on how cute she was, what a sweet girl she was or any other comment about her she would retort, "I not ___ , I a big girl!" Another feisty comment along the same lines she said when Scottie and I were talking about Uncle Jason and Auntie Andrea coming over to babysit. She said, "I not a baby!" And, finally she's a very typical two year old. She says, "Tha's mine!" several times a day. Elijah wasn't this fiery at two, but as I've reminded him over and over he didn't have anyone he had to share toys, time and attention with, so there's really no comparison. And, a final feisty statement that she makes all the time no is, "You got to ___." Now to be fair, this one gets under my skin a bit since it sounds so demanding, but I truly think this one is more a matter of a lack of vocabulary rather than a demanding nature. I'm working on modeling alternatives, and fortunately, this one seems to be fading.

-- "Hi Eli, how are you?", "Whatcha doin'?", "I sorry, I din't mean to.", "You okay, Daddy?", "Oh! Tank you!", "Gow bwess you.", "You happy, Eli?", "That's okay, Momma, Daddy'll fix it."

Our little girl is quite polite and seems to have mastered the nuances of many social interactions. Whenever she gets up in the morning or from nap she likes to find Daddy and Eli, greet them and ask them what they're doing. She also reads facial expressions really well, and whenever some one's not smiling she's quick to ask if they're okay. Scottie had hernia surgery a few months ago. We talked to Keira about Daddy's owie on his tummy so that she wouldn't jump on him. She was very concerned, and constantly asked him if he was okay. She's also great about spontaneous thank you, bless yous and sorrys. Although, interestingly she says "Gow bwess you" when you cough. When I try to say it when she sneezes, she looks at me quizzically and tells me she just sneezed. As I said before she's very concerned about keeping everyone happy. If I remark that some thing's broken, she reassures me by telling me that Daddy will fix it. She's especially concerned about Eli and his emotions. If he's sad or has just gotten in trouble she will repeatedly ask if he's okay, to the point of annoyance. We've tried to explain to Eli that it's just because she loves him so much. The sweet thing is he often cries when she's in trouble, too. I love how much they love each other.


-- "Yat tickles!", "Beety-Bo!", "That siwwy!"

She's our little silly, jokester. She loves to make Elijah and Daddy laugh. Lucky for her, Elijah seems to laugh the most at her foibles. Although, interestingly, I'm not allowed to laugh. I can chuckle appreciatively about her antics, but if I'm laughing whole heartedly at someone or something else, she says, "No laugh, Mommy!" with a worried expression on her face. It's almost as if I laugh, she doesn't feel safe, I'm her rock and not allowed to get too crazy. As for her, she loves being tickled, and will often respond appreciatively with "Yat tickles! Again!" If she's trying to make someone laugh or she doesn't know how to answer a question she'll utter a nonsense word like "Beety Bo." For instance, if she's trying to tell me something, and she can't think of the word or loses her train of thought she'll start saying made up words with a huge silly grin on her face. The made up words put Elijah in stitches, so then Keira will fall into a complete silly word conversation while Elijah giggles. She also likes to comment on things that seem silly to her. She seems to appreciate absurdity with a smile. This has worked to her advantage many times, when some thing's a little scary to her, she pauses, as if she's trying to weigh her response carefully. Often, instead of saying she's scared, she'll comment that it's silly.

While she doesn't like me full out laughing, she does like it when I tell her she's being silly. For instance, we've just started giving her bubble baths and she LOVES them. She'll often request a bubble bath, even when it's not bath night, and she'll happily play until the water gets too cold. After her first bubble bath, I got her out, dried her off and went to get a diaper. When I came out of her room I couldn't find her, low and behold, she had decided to climb back in the dry, sudsy tub by herself. I laughed when I found her and went to get the camera, she gave me some great smiles while I told her how silly she was.



Another example of her being happily silly was about her love of Parmesan cheese. She loves Parmesan cheese, likes to shake it all over any appropriate dish, and will often eat a spoon full of straight Parmesan cheese. Lately, we've decided that I should help sprinkle it on, since she ruined a few dishes. One of the last times she dumped all the Parmesan cheese into her bowl, she was eating spoonfuls full of cheese and had it all over her face, too. I told her how silly she was while I snapped some pictures.




-- "When I grow up, I want to be a frog."

She has a big and very active imagination. As I mentioned before, she always has some complex game going on while she's playing, and it's usually some version of house. But, more interestingly, she likes to pretend she's different things and people, too. For a while, she loved to pretend she was a frog. She would hop around her bed, and wanted me to join in, too. Another perennial favorite has been pretending to be a baby bird. In fact, when we see books or videos with baby birds, she'll grin and say, "I'm a baby bird, too!" She likes me to "fly" around the house with her, I'm Mommy Bird and she's Baby Bird. We fly around, then we climb into our nest (Mommy and Daddy's bed) for a rest. Also, when she gets bored of riding in the cart while we're out shopping, she'll get down and flap her baby bird wings and fly all around the store.

Most recently, her favorite is being a pirate. Scott wrote and sung a math song that was a bluesy number about Decimals. To sing it, he put on his best gravelly, deep voice. At first, when we played it Keira wasn't sure about it. Then, she decided Daddy sounded like a pirate, and now it's her favorite song. When it comes on, she dons her pirate hat and glasses and she dances. She's even choreographed a little special pirate step that looks like a cross between a swagger and a gallop. The other day, out of the blue, she said to Elijah and I, "I like decimals, they're my favorite kind!" Elijah and I couldn't make out the word decimals, it sounded more like vegetables, after we struck out on our Keira translation a few times, I finally realized she was talking about Daddy's decimal song. Funny thing is, she usually calls it "The Pirate Song." I didn't even know she knew the word, decimal. Once I figured out her meaning, I put the song on for her and she happily got into her pirate gear, sang and danced along. Here she is in her pirate finery a few weeks ago.




A few days ago, the pirate dress up game mutated once again into dressing Daddy up as a pirate. Turns out, Daddy does a pretty good pirate impersonation. Keira couldn't be happier. While Daddy was at work yesterday, I was made into a pirate, too. Although, I was paltry substitute.



-- "Bye Bye Poopies!"

Finally, Keira's not potty trained yet, but she's very interested in everything to do with the potty. She practices sitting on the potty with her bare bum, while I read her potty books. But, she hasn't gone at all, yet. Instead, she's fascinated with Elijah going potty, most especially poop. Whenever he goes to the bathroom, she drops whatever she's doing and runs after him. She asks, "Are you going poopy?" If he answers in the positive, she stays and "helps." She gets a few squares of toilet paper to cover up the poopies. Then after Elijah's all done, he lets her flush while she gleefully cries, "Bye Bye Poopies!"

Elijah's Projects

Fortunately, despite my concerns and the emotional first day, Elijah loves Kindergarten. He has blossomed socially. He feels right at home at Braelinn and whenever I pick him up at school he's greeting everyone around him enthusiastically. He has made a ton of new friends, he talks about playing with about eight different kids at recess. And, his teachers have commented more than once (including on his report card) that he's "very well liked by his classmates." His social skills were what we were hoping he'd develop in school, since he's always been such a personallly motivated academic learner.

In fact, it's so funny, he taught himself to read this summer. Having been a Kindergarten teacher, I've always been interested in watching him develop academically. I knew by the time he was three and a half that I could've taught him how to read. But, I purposely didn't. I wanted him to wait and learn it in school if possible. I knew that he'd inherited Scott's math brain, so Kindergarten math wouldn't be too challenging. Therefore, I figured it'd be good for him to at least learn to read in school. But, nope, he had other ideas. All summer long, he asked for us to read to him. While this isn't necessarily unusual, this summer he had specific requests. Whenever we read to him he wanted to point to the words while we read. And, if possible, he wanted to read "adult" books. We ended up reading a lot of travel guides to him so that they'd be appropriate books with lots of words. Yep, by the end of the summer Scott and I realized he was reading.

Fortunately, there's another little boy in Elijah's class who's at his level in reading and math. The Kindergarten teachers were relieved to have two to put in a group together for centers time. Elijah's teachers seem to be very concerned about keeping him challenged. They have Alex and Elijah reading in first grade readers now, they try to give them separate work whenever possible and they even enlisted the help of one of the gifted teachers. Usually, kids aren't even tested for the gifted program until the end of Kindergarten, and they aren't served until first grade. But, I guess Mrs. Nash was concerned enough that she asked the gifted teacher to give her some suggestions. The gifted teacher even agreed to pull them on Fridays to work with them. Mrs. Taylor told Scott that the gifted teacher hadn't found Elijah and Alex's top level yet, but that last week they were working on second grade math. One of the reasons Mrs. Nash and Mrs. Taylor may be differentiating for Elijah so much is that they work with his Daddy, and they want to keep Scott happy. But, truly, Scott and I just want Elijah to continue to develop socially. We're tickled and amused by all his talents, but we don't want to be annoying, demanding parents. And, we want Elijah to be well-rounded, with a good head on his shoulders. I'm just so happy that he likes school and has become so confident and comfortable socially.

One of the reasons Scott and I have never worried to much about him being challenged at school is that he's always been a self motivated learner. Each weekend he has some intricate project that he creates and wants to work on. At the beginning of the year, we continued reading "adult books" and pointing to the words. Then he started playing school with Scott and I, making up worksheet for us to do and grading them. Next, he created worksheets for extended family and friends, addressed envelopes and sent them off. Then, he wanted to make base ten blocks out of paper. He's always been fascinated by Scott's math manipulatives, including the base ten blocks. He decided one weekend that he wanted to make his own set out of paper. Scott ran with the idea, created them on the computer and posted them on his classroom website as an extra credit option for his students. Elijah spent every moment of his free time for at least a week meticulously cutting out and glueing them together.




A week after making all the base ten blocks he decided to make pumpkins using some of his blocks. That whole weekend was spent making pumpkins, and once Daddy helped with the templates, kitties and ghosts, too.



Lately, the last two weekends his projects have been Legos. It was the first time, we introduced Elijah to "big boy" Legos. He's always had Duplos (Legos for toddlers). But after browsing the Lego aisle and buying a birthday present for a school friend's birthday party, we realized Elijah was probably the perfect age for Legos. He's always loved carefully following instructions, and we had a closet full of Star Wars Legos waiting to be enjoyed. Scottie is a huge Star Wars and Lego nerd and once he found out I was having a boy, he and Dendi have been stockpiling Star Wars Legos. They were a huge hit with Elijah as he loves following instructions and rocket ships. Daddy and Elijah spent many happy hours meticulously assembling and raucously playing with their spaceships.




It was some great bonding time for my boys.