Treats

Eli celebrated his half birthday in preschool by bringing in treats for his classmates this week.  While his real half birthday is actually in December, it sounded like there were quite a few other kids with summer birthdays, so his teacher suggested that June birthdays could be celebrated in January to try to spread them out.  We created dirt pudding cups topped with gummy worms as his special birthday treat this year.  Birthday treats - yet another fun and special milestone to celebrate as Eli grows up and gets a little older:)

Speaking of treats, we were able to get a little head start on Valentine's treats too.  After we worked together to create his own personalized bag to hold valentines from his classmates, Eli helped assemble his treat bags with the message:  "The world needs S'MORE friends like you!"  The bags contained chocolate, graham crackers, and pink strawberry flavored marshmallows to be used to create s'mores.  Eli helped assemble the bags and also signed his name on the tags.  Good thing there are only 12 other kids in his class since he had to redo some of them and ended up signing his name more than 12 times after some did not quite meet the standards of quality control...

Three Months

During Aliyah's third month, she experienced overnight stays with both sets of grandparents.  Eli still adores his baby sister but needs more frequent reminders to be gentle as he is sometimes a bit too confident in his ability to handle her.  As for Aliyah's eating habits, she just increased to taking 5 ounces of formula every 3 hours throughout the day.

Aliyah is ready for bed at the end of the day after her 8:00 feeding.  She will usually sleep around 8 to 10 hours at night.  Her napping pattern is still a bit sporadic throughout the day.  Usually, she will be awake for 2 hours and then sleep for an hour and continues to follow this pattern.  I am hoping she will soon consolidate her naps so that she takes fewer but longer naps rather than many short ones. 

A few of Aliyah's new favorites include watching the ceiling fan and taking more interest in toys and books.  She seems to have an attention span that is getting longer as she is able to focus more on things.  She also loves being talked to and will respond back with smiles and sweet little coos.  She moves her arms and legs really fast to show her excitement.  She has been learning how to coordinate the movements of her hands a bit more but is still learning how to firmly grasp things with a real purpose. 

She is still quite petite and is wearing size 1 diapers yet at the time.  Most of her 0-3 month sized clothes still fit while a few outfits are starting to get a bit small.  I always wait until she has grown out of the majority of her wardrobe before switching everything over to the next size. 

Overall, Aliyah's emerging personality seems to be one that is easygoing.  She is usually quite content and is able to adjust to the many errands we go on along with the drop-offs and pick-ups at preschool with Eli, in and out of her car seat many times throughout the week.  Some days, it still seems surreal to me that we are parenting two kids now while at other times it seems Aliyah has been with us all along.  Ian is really good about helping out too as we have made the transition again with a new baby.  I enjoy watching their dad-daughter relationship develop, similar to his bond with Eli yet unique in its own way with a little girl.

Mini Vacation

This past weekend, we took Eli to Grand Harbor in Dubuque for a visit to the water park and an overnight stay.  A bonus of the trip was we were able to use a gift card Ian received from work that covered both the hotel stay and the brunch the next day.  This trip also gave us the opportunity to spend time with just Eli, which I think is important to do since he has taken on the role of big brother.  Aliyah spent the night at my mom and dad's.  My mom and I were both a little worried Eli would want to go with Aliyah to their house when they picked her up but he actually seemed a lot more concerned with spending time away from her.  He even looked a bit sad as we parted ways but soon perked back up once we arrived at the hotel.  

Ian and Eli both enjoyed the water park.  We have only visited one other time with him when he was quite a bit younger, so I don't think he really remembered it.  Maybe next time he will be more interested in going down the slides. 

Eli also experienced his first time in an arcade.  

This ride caught his eye at the beginning:

There was a huge variety of games to play.  We ended up with 79 tickets at the end.  I was explaining to Eli how he could pick out certain prizes based on the number of tickets he had.  The one thing that grabbed his attention right away was a package of Sour Skittles (I'm still not sure how he loves those things!).  As I was telling him the Skittles were 200 tickets whereas we only had 79, the guy behind the counter took notice and said if he wanted the Skittles he could have them.  The worker reminded me of a stereotypical arcade worker that might play the same role in a movie, with the monotone voice, only working there because he had to at the moment.  I kind of had the impression they give out prizes that way a lot regardless of the actual number of tickets you have.  Ian also scored a bonus token that someone left behind at one of the games along with noticing (twice) that there was a leftover credit still on one of the games.  All in all, we ended up with a $5 (worth of tokens) package of Sour Skittles by the time we were finished.  

The good deals kept coming our way, too, when we ordered pizza for supper and they offered Ian another large pizza for just 50 cents more (Papa John's pizza is our favorite delivery pizza that we take advantage of when staying overnight in a hotel; it's the simple things for us that are a true treat...lol).  By the end of the night, all 3 of us were in bed by 8:00.

The next morning, we enjoyed the breakfast buffet at Tony Roma's.  Ian and Eli also went back to the water park one more time before we left to go home.  I think he was excited to be reunited with his baby sister when my mom and dad brought her back on Sunday.

Winter Carnival

This afternoon, our local library hosted a Winter Carnival.  Eli had a lot of fun while Aliyah slept even through all the commotion.  We have attended the Sacred Heart summer carnivals the past couple of years that were held outside downtown, so this was a fun indoor carnival to try out.  Each of the kids was given a list of the activities to be used as a punch card at each station.  Once 9 of the 11 games were completed, the paper could be turned in to a container that would be used for a drawing for big prizes at the end.  There were a lot of different options to pick from, and Eli had his eye on a set of Disney toy characters.  I attempted to explain how the raffle works and that only one kid would win each prize and that he had a chance to win along with all the other kids that put their names in the same container, but he was still a little bewildered as to why he wasn't able to leave with the big prize, although he did still get to pick out a lot of small prizes from the other games.  The whole event was very well organized and seemed to draw a large crowd, especially as there was no school today.  

Noodle race cars

Pin the carrot on the snowman:  Almost, Eli...almost...

Prizes galore!
(By the way, what is it with balloons and beads as prizes kids love so much?!)

Lollipop tree

Mini "Plinko"-like game

Snowman coloring activity

Eli's first Bingo experience.  I'm also pretty sure the older gentlemen calling numbers were the true, professional bingo callers.  They seemed to take their number calling task very seriously.