Fun Times with Brothers!

Part of what has made this summer so much fun is that we've not only provided Hallie and Lea with the opportunity for playing with their cousins pretty much every weekend, but we've also managed, somehow, to get the kids together with their siblings. There is, of course, the famous July 4th reunion. But our fun didn't end there.

As regular readers know, we've been lucky to have Jake and Gina in our lives. It's hard to believe that we've only known them a year (we first met at Jake's 3rd birthday party and he just turned 4 this past week) since it feels like we've been in each others' lives forever (in a good way, naturally). Anyway, we enticed the dynamic duo up to Philly on the first Sunday in August to accompany us to the Academy of Natural Sciences, which is a small, pretty user-friendly natural sciences museum on Museum Row (Ben Franklin Parkway) in Philly.

It's a taxidermists dream, too, so if you are a three year old who loves running around saying things like "tiger!" "zebra!" "bear!" and "antelope!" while your mothers have serious qualms about the life-like manner in which these specimens have been stuffed, you are in the right place. They also have a very cool butterfly exhibit where butterflies (live, not stuffed) fly around you in the tropical rain forest environment they've provided for them and where you can watch butterfly larvae and cocoons ripen and hatch. But the best feature is the third floor (which is mysteriously hard to access) which is a hands on place where children can explore the natural world. It's called Outside In and the kids thought it was pretty awesome. There are always several live animals wandering around (well, not really wandering so much as taken out of their living quarters regularly by handlers who help facilitate petting and such), skins and shells of creatures that kids can touch, rocks and stuff like that to play with, and a big giant sandbox. Oddly, no sand tools are provided but that did not prevent Hallie from innovating: she grabbed some creature teeth and shells and imported them to the sandbox and began digging away.

There are also lots of books and puzzles about the natural world in bookshelves in a nook for the kiddos to read and do.

Hallie enjoyed petting the turtle and bunny rabbit but she was particularly fond of holding the hissing cockroach. Yes, I kid you not.

All that digging, running, puzzle-completion, and cockroach petting worked up our kids' appetites and so we headed over to Jones, which is a Brady Bunch-themed comfort-food restaurant in Center City. The kids were well behaved and so the adults actually got to eat. That doesn't mean they didn't have fun, of course. Gina, ever the prepared mother who puts the two of us to shame, had barrels of monkeys and crayons and such for the kids. And the kids made their own (utterly harmless and entirely amusing fun). Here's a shot of Jake being silly (and, no, that is not his beer bottle, but it is his ice cream sundae):

And Hallie copied everything that her big brother Jake did, including feeding herself a huge amount of applesauce. She topped off a couple of pieces of her goat cheese, a bunch of fries and a lot of applesauce with a humongous portion of chocolate cake:

It might not have amounted to the most balanced meal in the universe, but we were thrilled, as I am sure any parent of a food averse not terribly enthusiastic preschooler would have been. (We were equally ecstatic that the cake, which no doubt contained a vast quantity of cow dairy and eggs, stayed down. That's happening more and more lately and, in passing, let me mention that we are now on 162 vomit free days this year and hopefully many more to come).

The kids all posed for a nice shot with Sharon and me before Gina headed off to New Jersey with brother Jakey.

The following weekend, Gina and Jake were headed right back to our neck of the woods. Rebecca was passing through Philly with brother Ben and we all met up at Franklin Square Park.
The park, which is the site of a pretty recent addition to Philadelphia's playgrounds, is one of the five original squares laid out by William Penn and features a carousel, a sand castle, miniature golf, and a bunch of other fun stuff.

The kids climbed on the climbing structures (some of which are quite awesome but a bit beyond Hallie's gross motor skills and confidence level) and swung on swings:

Jake ascended the climbing structure with aplomb:

Hallie loved the slide, of course:

But she did not quite get the tilt wheel thing (I have no idea what it's really called) that Ben adored so much:

They all rode the carousel multiple times:

Here's a shot of Ben on a rearing elephant, which was his absolute favorite creature:

But the most fun they had was during the "water event." It's not entirely clear to me why the park workers (likely volunteers) had devised elaborate games for the kids, who were mostly ages 3 to 6, but our kids had no problem whatsoever ignoring the rules they laid out for the water balloon toss and the water emptying race (which amounted to sponging up water in one bucket and emptying it into another. Fastest team wins). Instead, they decided that shattering water balloons and having them splash all over the place was a heck of a lot more fun than pummeling your brothers with them:

The trio grabbed more than their fair share of the water balloons but no one seemed to mind:

And they got a real kick out of standing and splashing in the tubs:

My sense is that the parks volunteers should have organized a game called "dump water on your siblings":

When we left the playground, all the (older) kids were wet, happy, and exhausted. That is as it should be.

In closing, it's lovely to see our extended family. Hallie gets a real kick out of seeing these pictures (she was standing over me on the chair as I wrote part of this post and kept narrating it in her one-to-three-word-construction fashion). And we hope there are many such get-togethers to come.

Meeting the Extended Family (The Belated Fourth of July Post)

 

As those of you who have followed this blog for a while probably know by now, we have a pretty unconventional family. This goes way beyond being a two mom household; while we chose to use an anonymous donor when we decided to have kids, we've been very open to the idea of meeting and getting to know the other parents who have chosen to use the same anonymous donor. So, one of the first things we did, even before Hallie and Olivia's birth, was join the Donor Sibling Registry, where we discovered that others who had also used our girls' donor (henceforth '1876') had already established a presence. We quickly found out that there was also a Yahoo group dedicated to our families and we joined that, too. Over the past three years we've corresponded and shared pictures with the other parents who have chosen to identify themselves to the group and this is how we've gotten to be such close friends with our girls' big brother, Jake, and his lovely mom, Gina. Jake and Gina have gotten to meet another brother in Florida and a few of the other kids and their parents have met up in various places.

This past spring, several of us decided to try to get together on a bigger scale. It would have been really hard to get everyone together in one place since we're all spread out (from my recollection, there are kids in Oklahoma, Texas, Iowa, Florida, New Jersey, Missouri, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Virginia, Maryland, and Puerto Rico. I am probably leaving some out, too). A couple of the Midwestern and Southwestern families were planning on heading East for vacation and so we settled on the Washington DC suburbs, which was convenient to a good number of us East Coasters and Mid-Atlantic types. And, to make it possible for as many as we could to attend, we chose one of the summer's long weekends. This made our 4th of July celebration extra special this year.

On Friday the 3rd, Gina, her mom, and Jake headed down our way in a rental vehicle (since we needed to accommodate three car seats, four adults, tons of clothing and toys, and an ice chest full of goat milk products for Hallie) and we all piled in and had a great drive down to Maryland. The kids had a fabulous ride and Hallie adored sitting next to her big brother. The traffic on the way down wasn't terrible, either, which made up for the rental car SNAFU that Gina had experienced earlier in the day (when the rental car company down by them gave her a way-too-small vehicle. They ended up locating an adequately-sized alternative at the Philly airport but had to drive up here, figure out where to leave their car, and then pick us up).

Anyway, the kids would have been thrilled just at the prospect of racing up and down corridors, running in and out of one another's room, and jumping on the bed (a la Five Little Monkeys).

But we had a whole lot more fun planned for the weekend.

Eight 1876ers, one 1876er's sibling from another donor (yes, I know that's confusing...sorry, but our family really is pretty cutting edge), and Olivia, in spirit, spent the better part of Saturday gathered at Ben's house for a sibling meet-up of what seemed like epic proportions.  As one of the moms put it, "Thank god there aren't 1876 of 'em."

Gina, Jake's mom, had fabulous t-shirts made up for the event:

 

 

And Ben's moms had rented a moon bounce for our very active kids to enjoy.  Hallie had a grand time climbing up it, sliding down it, and jumping in it:

 

 

The professional photographer whom we hired got some gorgeous shots of our girl.  You can totally see the contrast between the photos that we took with our silly rinky dink camera and her professional apparat:

 

 

 

Hallie had a great time on the tire swing, too.  

 

Vestibular motion appeals to many of our 1876ers.  Here's a picture of Jonah, the oldest of the bunch (at least insofar as we are aware) enjoying some swinging:

 

And here's one of Jake (with Gina):

 

And one of Jessica:

 

While she was a bit too young for the tire swing, Lea enjoyed some swinging of her own, courtesy of Mommy:

 

Lea got a lot of holding and loving time from everyone that day:

 

 

Alyssa, in particular, thought that it was way cool that she--the oldest girl there--got to hold the littlest girl. Here she's getting some help from her sister, Jess.

 

While all the 1876ers look a lot like their birth moms, they also look a lot like one another. They seem to fit into two types--the blonde-haired 1876ers (Ben, Asher, Jess, and Ellie) and the brown-haired ones (Jonah, Jake, and Hallie). I'm not sure which group Lea belongs to, yet, since she kind of doesn't really have a lot of hair. But even though they may have different hair color, there's definitely a family resemblance between these kids:

 

 

Anyway, a great time was had by all and we were thrilled to have been able to participate. Hallie's big smooch with Ben at breakfast the next day says it all: we are grateful that Rebecca and Claire opened their home to us and that we had a chance to meet a good portion of the rest of our far-flung family. We hope to do this again some time soon!

 

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More posts to come about preschool and our weekend trip to New York. But for those of you who tune in to see what our tally is of days without spew, we're now up to 136. That's more than double where we were at this time last year!