Not too long ago Celia turned 4 and had a birthday party with a number of her friends! My parents once again opened up their house for crazy small children! Mother nature gave us a lot of trouble and we had to postpone, but even then an hour before the party it rained again for the first part. Then the skies finally cleared and we were able to go outside a little. The theme was Pandas! We had some panda arts and crafts, decorating goodie bags and assembling a panda face. Celia picked out all the food, tomatos, mozzarella cheese, carrots, celery, hummus and tortilla chips along with the cake!

After the eating, arts and playing we got outside for some bouncing in the favorite event for all 4 year olds!

Back inside for the cake and singing and before we knew it, all was done and it was time to send them home. But no worries since I think Celia is having 5 parties this year, so she was well feted!

These went home in the goodie bags. I liked the panda theme.

One game I’ve been playing with Celia we call the ‘alligator game’, it’s a math game. We’re super wild and crazy around here with our games 🙂 She likes it though.

She draws two cards that each have single digits on them, counts out the pom poms to match the number and then sets up the ‘alligator’ to ‘eat’ the bigger set. She’s got the hang of greater than and less than and number recognition. The challenge is counting out the bigger numbers (7, 8, 9) in pom poms without getting distracted. Or having her brother take them. Ewan thinks the pom poms are the best things ever and spent 10 minutes pouring and squeezing them next to us today.

This August we got to make a fun trip up to storyland with our friends Sarah, Alex, Anna and Sophie. We drove up on Friday afternoon and the kids did pretty well, Ewan slept almost the entire time and the girls made it through the long drive with only one stop for Panera. We checked into the condo hotel and headed right over to storyland to blast off for some awesome rides. This year Celia was much bigger than two years ago and so she could do almost everything, and Josie was big enough to do every ride she wanted to do, most of them she could do alone even.

First off Celia was mesmerized by the animatronic fruit and vegetables in the front. Sophie and Anna decided to spend their money on storyland drivers licenses. Up we went to the clock-cups ride. The first time we took the bigger kids, and then I tried with Celia and Ewan. Ewan tried to explore the door, Celia grabbed him because she didn’t want him to do that, and then bonked his head on the black center wheel. So before we even got moving, he was off.

The train was interesting for all, just Ewan’s speed and helpful for getting around the park for those who didn’t have to push the stroller!

On the way out of the park we met up with Cinderella to say goodbye!

That first day was short because we went for the deal where you buy a ticket in the last three hours of the day, and you can come back the following day. The next morning we were up bright and early and got to the park way before everyone else. Because I mis-read the opening time, oops 🙂 So we had a bit of time to kill and muddled around outside the gate.

Once we got inside we ran for the antique cars and enjoyed a shared loop around with Josie and Celia driving. For some reason this is the only ride that their height charts are messed up, every other ride Josie was over 48 inches, but apparently she had shrunk overnight and then grew again. Soooo some of the favorites of the day were the polar coaster (Celia and Josie), the new roarosaurus (my favorite) and the farm cars (Ewans). Josie has also taken a new liking to the tilt-a-whirl (called the turtles here) which was a favorite of mine as a kid. Now apparently my inner-ear fluid is solidifying and that ride comes close to making me sick. But of all four adults, I was the only one willing to go on spinning rides and roller coasters, so I got to go on a lot of rides! I let Jordi do the wet rides though, and went with Ewan to have some fudge and explore the nursery rhyme section.

In the early afternoon we also had booked tea time with Cinderella! She had a whole lot of tables all set up with tea and a rice krispie and talked with all her guests before reading them a story, taking a picture, and giving out a coloring book. It was very sweet

At the part and all weekend we had a great time, ate some ice cream, and took it easy back at the hotel. The less fun part was coming home, Ewan came down with a fever later on Saturday which came back on Sunday. When we stopped for lunch at a brick-oven pizza place, and were seated right next to it, it made his fever spike even higher and caused a febrile seizure. I had the hostess call 911 and I went with Ewan to the hospital in the ambulance where it took him a long time to feel better. Eventually Jordi and the girls caught up with us after finishing lunch and we kept waiting for him to smile but the poor kid wasn’t feeling so good. About 3 hours later he did finally get his fever down fairly low thanks to tylenol and motrin and we were able to bring him home. So the memories of the weekend are a bit overshadowed by the big scare, but they said that the fevers won’t hurt, and aren’t likely to happen again.

Josie’s a real stickler for realism in photos.

Ewan now keeps me extra on my toes, as he got up into this spot by himself.

This year at the end of July we went on our annual trip with my parents to Cape Cod for a week. This time we tried out a new house, still with a pool, but it was overall a bit smaller. We had a great time, but it’s always a pretty chill and relaxing week for us. We get there, play in the pool, go to the beach a few times, do an early morning trip of just me and the kids to dunkies and the beach, play more in the pool, do some grilling, eat lots of ice cream and pretty much that’s the week! The kids get older so their habits change a bit.

This year Ewan could do something on the beach other than just nap in the tent with me. He loved to dig in the sand and found low tide to be super fun to run around in the small puddles, jumping and throwing balls into them. We spent two whole days at the beach and low tide was near the end and they still all loved it. The water was warmer and shallower to run in.

Josie and Celia enjoyed their boogie boards going way out in the water with a grown up. They also liked finding hermit crabs and snails in the tide pools. Celia is still very big on digging and making castles whereas Josie wanted to spend more time in the water and even practiced a bit of swimming.

For our morning trip to the beach we were all a little too late with the super-early sunrise in July (rather than late August) to really get the good light, but we made an effort and they had fun digging and eating some munchkins.

The house this year was further from the beach, and so that made evening beach outings not so frequent. We only made it out once to fly kites and take pictures. But two of those days we were just barely getting home for dinner anyway from the beach. We also made it to one cotuit kettleers baseball game. (Note to self: no vegetarian food, bring dinner next year) We fed them a well rounded diet of popcorn, nachos with cheeze Celia refused to eat, ice cream and a cheese on a hamburger bun.

As always we spent a lot of time hanging around the house, letting Ewan nap, doing art projects and generally relaxing.

One of Ewan’s favorite activities, typical of a 1 year old, was play with the pots and pans. The kitchen was super loaded with supplies and we only had so many cabinet locks so he had his pick of several pots and pans and enjoyed stacking and banging them.

On Thursday night we managed to get a beautiful day, an early dinner and got us all clean and out to the beach to take pictures. Last year was a serious flop, but this year we hit it right and didn’t have any diaper blow-outs. I’ll leave you with some of my favorite photos of the year so far of us all!

Last month, Celia turned three and three quarters, or three and three turtles she might have told you if you were here. She likes to play with words. They aren’t always perfectly clear, strangers have some trouble understanding her at times but that’s often a case of nerves, but she loves to say silly things. Her idea of fun is definitely to play all day long. She moves constantly and is not a fan of sitting still. She loves her bike and will always find a way to include some digging in her day if possible. Celia’s more of a ‘do it first, and see if Mommy notices’ kind of girl so I’ve got to keep my eye on what she’s up to frequently. She’ll often find new and interesting ways to take things apart or get filthy.

Celia spends most of her days playing with Josie and Ewan. This summer she took a sports class at the YMCA where she got to try out lots of different sports (football, basketball, t-ball, soccer, kickball…) and her favorite she say was t-ball. She loved her class and was super excited every week to try something new. When she’s playing with Josie she likes to play pretend, often time the game is now ‘big sister, little sister’ and Celia likes to pretend to be the big sister. A big change from a few months ago where she was always insisting on being the baby.

Celia’s favorite foods continue to be fruit and fats. She loves tomatoes and cheese and will devour avocado, yogurt, berries and pasta. She eats a lot of fruits and veggies which is always a pleasure, at times the only trouble is getting her to eat food with enough calories to keep her from getting hungry too soon!

Most nights we try to do a math problem together from a website called Bedtime Math which gives multi-level problems and Celia has taken great pride in that she can answer the first two questions now from each set. She can tell greater-than and less-than and also add and subtract small numbers. She uses her fingers and sometimes needs help to set up the problem, and sometimes doesn’t. She knows her letters and is working on her handwriting and consistently can write her own name in order without prompting, although the C can still be a bit sideways! We’ve been trying to work on her concentration and focus by playing games of memory and uno together. Her favorite activity lately to choose with me in one-on-one time is to play with legos, making up vehicles and houses.

She’s a wonderfully brave girl and it’s so much fun to see her stretch and try new things. She doesn’t need encouragement for trying new things in her quest to keep up with Josie. Soon she’ll be starting preschool which she says she’s excited about, but also will miss us. I think it will give her a great opportunity to explore her own desires and approach toward life without Josie being right there all the time. She’ll also get to make some new friends her own age so she won’t have to work so hard to keep up all the time with the 6 year olds. She also enjoys climbing up the rock wall at the YMCA, even though she’s officially too young for it.

As Celia’s turned 3.75 one great development has been her ability to look back on situations and come up with ideas on how to handle them differently. She can stop herself sometimes when she’s upset and change tracks instead of her brain just being flooded and overloaded with unstoppable emotion. So we can brainstorm together on how she might handle things different next time for a new outcome.

• Size/weight: 4T’s getting small
• Favorite foods: cheese, tomatoes, blueberries
• Favorite toy: whatever Ewan is trying to play with
• Favorite book: Chrysanthemum
• Favorite activity: digging and getting dirty
• Sleeping: bedtime ~8; gets up about 6:30
• New skill: ability to reflect on her prior behavior
• Teeth: holding steady with all 20
• Literacy: picking out some sight words in some books, we’ll start up the formal reading training in a few months

When Ewan was born he ‘brought’ with him a family gift of a zoo membership, so that expired this July as he was born in July! The kids and I made one last trip down to the zoo together to enjoy all it had to offer. We spent the whole day there from opening till almost closing and still didn’t quite see everything! First off we learned that Ewan uses the word ‘woof’ to mean more than just dogs, because they don’t have dogs at the zoo and he said ‘woof’ for a few of them. He was also very impressed with the giraffes.

If I could have interpreted his baby language it would be ‘wow look at THAT THING! hey look dirt down here!’ Josie and Celia love to scamper all over the climbing structures that abound. Ewan was also suitable impressed with a kangaroo that looked like it was just showing off for us, hoping back and forth super fast. Ewan tried to jump like him, not a skill he’s mastered yet.

Then they played in the dirt some more, then we fed the budgee’s. No pictures here because I was trying to keep Celia from freaking out about the birds flying down and trying to land on us. You’d think someone had shown her Hitchcock. We bought some food to feed the birds who then flew right down to my hand and ate it. I was carrying Ewan on the front at the time so he made a few grabs for a bird and a few of the birds considered landed on him to see if he had food too. Celia was too scared but Josie tried a little but didn’t like the feel of the birds nails on her. Ewan and I thought they were pretty cool. I easily had six little birds on my hand and arms at a time, so cute.

We had a picnic lunch. Celia fell (not far) out of the tree and landed on a rock on her bum, ouch. Then we headed over to the Gorillas who were very sleepy at this post-lunch-time. Ewan managed to make the big one smile, and lots of other people watching the gorillas smile as he ran around and hid from me.

And here’s a realistic picture of what really happens when I try to photograph them. Celia hides, Ewan makes faces, and Josie doesn’t stop talking.

In this case, while it was a nice location, the photo just wasn’t worth it as they were not in the mood. Mostly they wanted to play with sticks and dirt.

Next we went to see the flamingos. Celia thought they looked thirsty I guess, and dropped her water bottle into their enclosure. Oops. And the dang thing has our name on it so the zoo people could track us down if they wanted to. Not like there are any more than five people in the world with our last name! Thankfully it didn’t actually fall into the birds, just the space around them.

We saw more birds, and more stuff that people dropped into the enclosures, sunglasses, pencils and such. Then headed back to the gorilla statue that had been monopolized by camps earlier in the day and got another mom to snap one of us.

Celia couldn’t manage to look away from the impending camp group coming toward us, we had been dodging the many groups all day as they were loud and rambunctious. Then she fell down the statue. Poor kid had a rough day.

After a nice recharging snack we went through the barnyard and finally I let them go to the massive giant expansive playground. I had been avoiding it because once they were there no way were they going to do anything else. It was so late the camps had finally cleared out though so it wasn’t super busy and I felt comfortable letting my eyes off of Celia and Josie once they promised to stay together. Ewan thought the place was fantastic and I chased him around for a while till it was time to head home or risk sitting in insane amounts of traffic. Plus Ewan hadn’t napped since the drive over, and he definitely needed to nap again. One more picture by a stroke of luck they were all looking. It was an exhausting but great final trip to the zoo for this years membership!

We just came back from the cape, and while I tried to stay in the moment a lot of the time, I also had fun pulling out the camera at other random times, like at IHOP where we stopped for lunch on the way to the house. If you want to see me, you can look in Ewan’s eye, otherwise here’s the rest of us waiting for the food.

Celia has been constantly shifting in her chair all dinner. We keep reminding her that it hurts to fall off and we want her to be safe. So she of course keeps shifting and falls off and we hear ‘I’m ok. I’m super super OK!’ Well then, if she’s super super ok, guess she should keep squirming.

I don’t remember why they were supposed to be quiet, but they’re cute anyway.