Ralph's World, 2010

One of our kids' favorite artists is Ralph Covert, of Ralph's World fame.  A rocker-turned-dad, Ralph's music is witty and easy on adult ears as well as fun for kids.  We discovered his music nearly a year and a half ago, when Hallie came home singing what she called the "lemonade song" (Happy Lemons) and then performed another, "Surfin' in My Imagination," which has become the song that Lea now most frequently requests by name.

Anyway, the kids were thrilled that we got ticket to the World Cafe Live Peanut Butter and Jams concert at which Ralph was performing.  They were accompanied by cousins Hannah and Adam, who had a blast, as well as by their friends Taylor (Renee's and Kim's little girl) and Mia and Sebastian, who are two of our friends' Carmen and Vicky's grandchildren.  

Hallie was excited to wear her guitar dress to the concert:

She had a great time dancing to the music, though it turns out that she was a bit scared about performing on stage (she went up with her little friends and a bunch of other kids when Ralph invited them to join him but was a bit put off by the whole thing).


That did not stop her from joining a kiddie conga line when invited by the little boy (standing behind her) who had his eyes on Hallie for the entire concert.

And it certainly did not keep her from dancing with abandon with her big cousin Hannah:

But it did mean that she kept looking to us for reassurance, which translated itself into snuggling into our arms.  Here, Sharon is holding both Lea and Hallie, whilst Renee is holding Taylor, who has somehow managed to fall asleep:

While Lea appears to be asleep in the above photo, she is not really dozing off.  Indeed, she popped up and began to dance and sing (through her binkie) when Ralph played the "Ringmaster Song" (the title track of The Rhyming Circus).

And Hallie, as usual, was excited to meet and greet Ralph in person, both before and after the concert.

A great time was had by all and Adam, in particular, has been converted to a groupie of cult rocker Ralph Covert.

Cousins!

This is a seriously belated post, but I am going to try to catch up with the posts that I meant to compose and publish.  I guess we were too busy trying to catch up with life to tend to our real one over the past few months...

Here are some very cute shots of Hallie and Lea from a November weekend that they spent hanging out with their 'little' cousins Hannah and Adam. 

In these two, the kids are all lined up and walking hand-in-hand in the drive outside of Grammy's condo:

Here they are the sole audience members at a children's puppet show in Atlantic City.  While it was sad that they were the only ones who came to the show, Hallie got the opportunity to get in some face-to-face personal time with one of the puppets.

 And here they are, lined up and walking along the walk in AC.

And racing along one of the AC piers:

And here's a close up of the girls doing the same thing:

 Alas, Sharon did not get any good shots of the kids from their slumber party or the AC Aquarium, but suffice it to say that the kids really enjoyed themselves no matter what they were doing and no matter how badly the photos that the grownups took turned out!

Stay tuned for more updates as I try to continue to catch up on the posts I failed to compose over the past six weeks!

Christmas and Beyond: A VERY Belated Post

As Sharon just helpfully pointed out, I never did manage to do the Christmas post. I have also not managed to post much of anything else. The heart is willing, but the blogging hands are tired is all I have to say. Things have been nutty around here lately: we are currently experiencing a rare moment (that I am no doubt jinxing as I type this) when both kids are well, but between Thanksgiving through the end of the first week of the New Year, one or the other kid was sick, and quite dramatically so. Then they both recovered but Nadia, our mother's helper/nanny, contracted pneumonia (unrelated to Hallie's; she came back to work on Monday already showing symptoms of distress) and she's been out of work most of the week. So I've been doing pretty much all of the daytime childcare AND trying to prepare to start teaching full time again in a couple of days. Needless to say, blogging has suffered.

So, in the spirit of trying to catch up before the proverbial crap hits the fan, here goes:

Christmas:

We have crappy pictures that do not do justice to how much fun the kids, and especially Hallie, had at Aunt Laura's on Christmas eve (sadly, Santa neglected to leave us a D-SLR under the tree; we are trying hard not to believe we were on the naughty list). Both of the girls were thrilled to see their cousins and things got even more fun after Hallie cracked open a Christmas cracker and found a very small ball inside. She located a cardboard tube from some wrapping paper and initiated a game of 'blow the ball through the tube' with Hannah. What's notable here is that it was Hallie who came up with the idea for this game.

As usual, Hannah was thrilled to play with Hallie. She is a great older cousin and Hallie has benefited so much from being around her quite a bit this year.

Lea had a lot of fun, too. She spent a considerable amount of time at the chalkboard practicing her writing skills:

Now, while she did not in fact write the names on the board, she is really interested in writing/drawing because she sees Hallie doing it so often. She can smell a crayon a mile away and she has successfully drawn a few scribbles on our easel at home. She also enjoys biting off and swallowing the tips of crayons, so we tend to keep her away from them as much as possible.

We ended our Christmas eve soiree by going outside and scattering reindeer food for Rudolph & co. As you can see, we still had a whole lot of snow left over from the two-foot snowfall of the previous weekend. I find it much easier to believe that Santa comes flying in on his reindeer-driven sled when there is some snow to cushion the landing. And, since Sharon had been tracking Santa's progress via an app downloaded on her iPhone, we knew that the big guy was getting near and that it was time to get the kids in bed.

By the time we got back to Grammy's that night, Hallie was thoroughly exhausted. Perhaps she was coming down from a slight sugar high (her Christmas eve dinner consisted of two two-bite brownies; what they lack in nutrition, they make up for in calories). She opened her Christmas jammies, put them on, hit the bed, and crashed for the night.

As is typical, Lea completely came into her own just as Hallie was going down for the night. (This has become a source of great distress to me, by the way, since it bodes poorly for me getting my work done in the evening after Hallie goes to bed).

The first project that Lea undertook was stealing (and eating) Santa's cookies:

Then she moved on to Grammy's dish of Peppermint Patties. She found the shiny silver paper very alluring and the minty chocolate contents even more:

The kids slept in, but we finally shook them out of bed around 10:00am. Hallie clearly had no idea that Santa, Mommy and Mama, and Grammy had left a huge number of presents under the tree for her and Lea. It took a bit of time for us to manufacture the requisite excitement of opening presents on Christmas morning, but by the time Hallie was done, we think she got it. She certainly was into the presents -- which is not at all surprising and, for several weeks running, would regularly ask to open more presents from Santa. This, of course, was reinforced by the fact that we saw lots of good friends and family after Christmas was over and exchanged gifts with them then. I think that by the time New Years Day came around, Hallie was pretty convinced that every day is Christmas.

Anyway, I digress. The big ticket item that Santa got Hallie was a red guitar.

By evening Hallie was strumming away at it quite naturally. We've downloaded an iPhone app to help us tune it but we've yet to find an app that will prevent Hallie from turning the keys and loosening the strings again.

Hallie especially enjoys playing along with the Wiggles and Muno (from Yo Gabba Gabba). Lea's gotten in on the act, too. While the little red guitar is way too big for Lea (which of course does not stop her from cruising over to the guitar stand and plucking at the strings and occasionally threatening to drag the whole thing down on top of herself), she has taken to putting the guitar strap over her head (yes we watch her carefully when she does this, and the strap has a 'breakaway' feature) and playing the toy electric guitar that we inherited from brother Jake. She is so cute and so smart and reminds us a lot of Hallie in a very, very good way.

Of course, Lea got her own musical gift from Santa. Here she is unwrapping her Bee Bop Baby Band set:

She enjoyed the band set, but her real thrill came when she emptied her stocking. Here she is sampling her binkies:

In this next shot, Hallie is posing with her favorite gift of the day, which Grammy got her:

This remains her favorite and, today, several weeks after Christmas, Hallie took a bath with the Wonder Pets figures (we think she is partial to Ming Ming) and had them floating in a makeshift flyboat.

Grammy let Santa know what she was getting Hallie, so he also brought her a Super Hallie cape so that she could be just like her heroes. Unfortunately, the tight velcro around the neck bothers her, so we need to fashion a device to make it a bit looser for her. I think that one of the new mitten clips that we bought would work just fine. (Several times now Hallie has helpfully informed me, when I have inquired about the whereabouts of one of her mittens or gloves, that she 'put it on the floor' -- meaning that she had thrown yet another mitten onto the sidewalk during one of our walks. Even at three dollars a pair on sale at the Children's Place, all of these lost mittens have begun to add up so I've diverted our resources toward the purchase of super cute mitten clips from Etsy; one of them can be repurposed for our little super hero's comfort).

After we finished unwrapping our gifts and had time to test all of them out, Aunt Laura and Uncle Bryan and the extended family brought over Christmas dinner. The kids had a blast playing together and Hallie was very much part of the mix. Here, Hallie is playing with her cousins Hannah and Adam and their cousin, Quinn. The three older kids got Nintendo DS's for Christmas and Hannah shared hers with Hallie after Hallie asked for a turn. Hallie loved being part of the older kids' games.

She also really enjoyed pretending to be one of the five little monkey jumping on the bed and alternatively rough housing and cuddling with her cousin. Hannah makes Hallie very happy and I know that the feeling is quite mutual:

Lea also enjoyed playing with her cousins in her own Lea-like way. Here she is running her hands through Adam's hair (which is super thick). Adam was great because he also tolerated lots of face-patting (and slapping) and hair pulling from his littlest cousin.

We left Grammy's exhausted and in good spirits. The next day, more fun was in store because we had Boxing Day plans with Anne, Eliza Grace, and her Nana. Hallie was super excited when we pulled up at Nana's condominium complex. She knew exactly where we were (she has a phenomenal memory and sense of direction; perhaps she can get us out of all of those jams where we get lost and circle round and round when she gets a bit older). And she was thrilled to be there.

Here's a lovely shot of Anne with Hallie and Eliza:

We hung out all day, exchanged gifts, played hard, ate a couple of meals together and generally enjoyed the company of good friends. We love it that we manage to get Hallie and Eliza together pretty regularly and wish only that we all lived even closer to one another.

The girls ended the day with a nice bath and had a brilliant time splashing around in the tub and playing with Eliza's excellent array of tub toys:

After her bath, though, Hallie's face got very flushed--which is always a sign of a fever--and I became a bit worried. She seemed a tiny bit warm, but the condo was very hot (we had the oven on to cook dinner), and we attributed her slightly more subdued nature to lots of play and no nap. Hallie kept wanting to pretend to take a nap in Eliza's bed, and I suspect that she really did want to sleep, but there was too much going on to really settle down.

That was the evening that Hallie came down with pneumonia. Thankfully that's a thing of the past...at least where Hallie is concerned. Now let's keep our fingers crossed that Nadia (our nanny) recovers in time to take over for me when I need to return to work on Tuesday...

Stay tuned for more (and hopefully shorter and less delayed) developments in the life of our little family during the month of January....

Raising the Nicest Kid on the Block

Hallie's in the middle of a developmental explosion and we're loving it. As she communicates more, and more fluently, with us, it's become clear to us that we've managed to raise a little girl who has a great deal of empathy with others and who is generally helpful and nice. We're not really sure what we did right, but we could not be more pleased with the results.

The other day, I was preparing dinner in the kitchen while Lea was in the exersaucer and Hallie was playing in the living room. Hallie came running into the kitchen and announced to me: "I go help Baby Lea!" and ran back into the living room. Of course, 'help' can take many forms in the three year old mind, so I did what any moderately sane mother of a preschooler and infant would do in such a context: I followed Hallie, just in case her notion of 'helping Lea' differed from my own. What I saw was this:

Hallie, as she is now wont to do, was narrating to Lea: "Mmmmm...Water good! Drink water Lea!" And Lea, being the little sport that she is (and very adventurous and curious in her own right), was playing along. She tried her very best to master the art of drinking water from a straw cup but couldn't quite get it together. Still, she very much enjoyed chewing on the straw (something that her big sister gets a kick out of, too, which accounts for our many jagged silicone straws). And Hallie felt very helpful.

Hallie also enjoys trying to give Lea her bottle. I caught one shot of this on camera:

You'll notice that Hallie doesn't quite get the whole gravity thing so she isn't aware that she needs to tip the bottle at an angle so that the milk can flow. She also doesn't quite understand that Lea must latch onto the bottle to drink milk. So occasionally Hallie's ongoing efforts to provide Lea with her bottle at all points has led to a little spilled milk around here. (No crying over it, though. It's been a month since we had to supplement Lea's diet with some formula since it's impossible for Sharon to find sufficient time to pump at work, but Lea is still about 75% breast-milk fed and we no longer feel pressured or guilty about this since Lea is obviously thriving).

And Hallie is just generally a wonderful and adoring older sister. She loves to bring Lea toys (sometimes depositing these on top of Lea while she is asleep) and every morning when she wakes up, all she wants to do is hug and kiss and play with Lea. We took this shot of the girls (on Hallie's prompting) this morning (with Hallie very happily smiling for the camera, which is also a recent development):

And most days, when I go upstairs to get Hallie after she wakes up from her nap, she announces to me: "I go find Lea Pia!" (this is one of our nicknames for Lea) or "I find Baby Lea NOW!" And, if Lea is upset for some reason, she asks us to sing her, and chimes in on, the silly Lea Pia song that I made up for Lea. She vastly prefers this song to her own (which is equally silly and entitled "Hallie Go-Bally")

But Hallie's sweet streak is not reserved for Lea. It turns out that Hallie has become a very polite kid who is pretty good at sharing. I credit this not only to lessons learned at home but to the excellent teachers who emphasize this skill at her preschool (which she sorely misses and which starts up again tomorrow--though she was all prepared to return today...when I got her into the stroller to take her to feeding therapy today, she announced to me: "We going to fun preschool now!"). Case in point: this past weekend, Aunt Laura and the kids gave Hallie a Radio Flyer scooter as her belated birthday present. All the kids were excited by this and, even though Hannah and Adam got out their own more advanced Razor Scooters, they both were interested in taking turns on Hallie's shiny new red one. Hallie was a bit upset at first when Adam started to careen through the house on her scooter, but did her 'waiting sign' (we have taught her to sign "Wait" in ASL when she needs to wait for something and she now does this reflexively...it's a great sign since it allows one to fidget with one fingers which is pretty perfect for kids with sensory issues who have trouble waiting and need to do something with themselves in the meantime). When Adam returned on the scooter to where Hallie was standing, Hallie turned to him and said, "Now Hallie's turn, please!" Sharon convinced Adam to more or less graciously disembark and let Hallie have a ride around the house. Hallie took the scooter for a spin, returned to Adam, got off the scooter and said to him, "Now Adam's turn!" We were very proud of this behavior. Turn-taking is not something that comes naturally to kids (who are, after all, pretty darned egocentric) but somehow Hallie really has begun to assimilate this skill. She's demonstrated this recently at play with her peers and we couldn't be more pleased about this.

And speaking of playing with peers, this past weekend when we were down at the cousins', Hallie began to initiate play with them, and not just follow along or do parallel play. She did this again last night when Karina popped over for a bit. She was very comfortable saying "Come on, Karina," and showing Karina the toys in which she was interested and how she wanted to play with them. We're very much hoping that Hallie is able to do the same thing with her friends at school tomorrow.

And, speaking of tomorrow (which is, indeed today), I've got to go turn in so that we can get up early, feed Hallie breakfast, and get her off to school by nine.

But one last note on the feeding front: Hallie, who is very susceptible to peer pressure, decided to finish off Hannah's peanut butter sandwich on Saturday and had no bad reactions to it whatsoever. She's eaten bites of peanut butter sandwich a few times since then at home (she can make it through about a quarter to a third of one sandwich). This is exciting because it gives us a new protein source and one that is naturally packed with calories and fat and easy to bring to school (her school permits peanuts since there are no kids who are deathly allergic to them, at least at this point in time) and pretty darned age appropriate. And Hallie has been enjoying toast with butter (fake butter) and cheerios for breakfast a lot, too. She's also become a fan of spaghetti and other long noodles (like lo mein) and the other night had some spaghetti with tomato sauce that also contained a nice quantity of spinach and some Italian sausage. She even entertained the concept of eating a piece of broccoli that accompanied a veggie lo mein I bought for her at Whole Foods (she identified it, told me it looked like a tree, touched it to her lips, licked and nibbled it and announced "Mmm....broccoli good" before discarding it). She doesn't eat much, but she is eating enough. More importantly, we've taken much of the stress and pressure out of eating and hopefully this will make mealtimes more enjoyable for her. And, along with this, she continues to not have major vomiting episodes. We are up to 170 days without spew this year and are loving every day of it!

Fun Time With Cousins!

While we've been doing a lot of hard work around here, between Floortime/DIR, Occupational Therapy, Hippotherapy, and pre-school based OT, Speech, Special Instruction, and now, finally, Physical Therapy, we've also managed to provide the kids with an extremely fun-filled summer. One of the reasons we decided to do Hippotherapy at ARCH is because it's located a few minutes away from both Grammy's condo and Aunt Laura and Uncle Bryan's house. To avoid shore traffic, we leave right after dinner on Friday nights and spend the night at one or the other of their homes and drive the ten minutes (usually running late) to Hallie's session on Saturday afternoon. Then, most weekends, we hang out with the cousins at Aunt Laura's house or the pool to which they belong and the kids get to play with one another. This is a vast improvement over the once a month or so (and sometimes less) that we were able to get the kids together last year.

The first week we did this, upon our arrival home in Philadelphia on Sunday night, Hallie spontaneously turned to us and said "Fun time with cousins!" She keeps saying this every time she sees them but now sometimes recounts what it is that they did together, be it swimming, swinging, going on rides at the Ocean City boardwalk etc.

Here's one nice picture of the little girl cousins:

And here's one of all the little cousins:

And here they are on the Ocean City boardwalk (with big cousin Sarah's legs and part of her torso in view, too...sadly we can never get a shot of all six of the cousins together in one place at the same time):

In this one, Hallie is making eyes at Adam, with Hannah in the background, at Mack and Manco's Pizza on the boardwalk.

It turns out that Hallie really enjoys Mack and Manco pizza. We've been giving her some regular dairy products lately (just watching to make sure she does not overload her system and that the reflux is in check) and she definitely is grooving on pizza, cake (chocolate cake is her favorite...we mostly opt for Amy's quite tasty Vegan Chocolate Cake which is moist and yummy and readily available at Whole Foods and Essene market, but we have been pretty willing to have her eat any chocolate cake at all...more on this in the next post), and some ice cream. That night on the boardwalk, Hallie ate a little pizza and enjoyed licking a soft custard cone with jimmies.

She also had a great time on the rides at the boardwalk. Driving the firetruck and riding the carousel were her favorites.

Anyway, all this fun time with cousins stuff made this past weekend a bit sad. The cousins were off camping and there was no one with whom we could play (our other Jersey-based friends and siblings all being spoken for, too). So we were going to just go down for Hippotherapy, spend the afternoon with grammy doing something fun, and then head back up to Philly. Or so we thought...

Saturday afternoon, we had a nice time at the Castle Park in Egg Harbor Township. Both kids enjoyed swinging and Hallie enjoyed climbing up the wooden structures to the tall 'curly' slide.

By the time we got back from the park to Grammy's, it was clear that major storms were heading our way. After wading (no other word works) through the flooded roads from the shore to the Princeton area to visit our friends Anne and Eliza Grace a few weeks ago, we weren't really willing to brave this again. So we decided to have dinner and stay the night at Grammy's.

We're really happy that we did. As it turns out, Aunt Laura, Uncle Bryan, and the cousins experienced a lot of storms themselves while camping. The first night and day were fine, but the second storm came on suddenly while they were away from their tent, which was open to the elements so as to prevent the internal temperature from reaching sizzling proportions. All of their stuff was flooded and needed to be dried out thoroughly. When it stormed yet again on their penultimate vacation day, they decided to cut their losses and head home (and in the process experienced flooded and closed roads that scared the bejeezus out of Aunt Laura, who was doing the driving of one of the cars---they needed to take two to accommodate all four kids, both adults, and all their stuff. Poor Hannah will probably never settle for less than a five-star hotel with 500TC sheets and a jacuzzi on future vacations).

Anyway, they came home on Saturday evening and were available to play with Hallie (and Lea, who slept more than played) on Sunday.

We decided to take the brood to Storybook Land for a fun afternoon. I had no idea that the rides were going to be so kid-friendly and the venue so comparatively uncrowded and appropriate for ages 3-6). The kids had a grand time.

They drove a classic car around the park:

They enjoyed the ferris wheel:

Hallie, Adam, and Hannah really liked going up the Jack and Jill hill and sliding back down again.

(Aside: Hallie was just peering over my shoulder looking at the pictures as I inserted them into this post. She named the rides and attractions and her cousins and then said "Tea Cups". The thing is, that I don't have a picture of the "tea cup" ride that she took, over and over again, on Sunday with her cousins. She just remembers that she did this with them and that it was fun. Hallie's memory and attention for detail never cease to amaze me).

Speaking of tea cups, Hallie, Adam, and Hannah also posed as the White Rabbit from Alice in Wonderland:

But as much fun as all that was, the trio REALLY grooved on the dragon roller coaster. Hallie thought it was hilarious and the sound of Hallie's scream morphing into uncontrollable laughter was enough to quell Sharon's nausea at accompanying Hallie on the ride (though she did add that Aunt Laura, who loves roller coasters, gets to join Hallie when her roller coaster needs advance to something more challenging).

And, speaking of Sharon, the whole visit to Storybook Land was kind of a walk down memory lane for her. Back when she was in high school, both she and Aunt Laura worked at the site, operating rides and such for the kids. The amusement park (which is family run) is open from Memorial Day through Christmas, and hosts events like Hallowe'en trick-or-treating and Thanksgiving and Christmas Pageants for the kids. Given the theme of the park--children's stories and nursery rhymes--they require well-suited human stand-ins to act out the parts in parades. Sharon's complexion and dark hair made her perfect for this part:

She was slightly mortified that I made her pose for this shot and that I promised to blog about this. But what I cannot wait to do is figure out if we can find a digitized version of the Atlantic City Press's article covering her appearance as Snow White back in (gasp!) 1988.