A Little More About Elijah

Yesterday after nap time, I took the kids to the local pool for some fun, something I really need to do more of.  Elijah took to bossing me around like Shayna does her sitters at which point I realized he was using two-word sentences, just a day after I said he was still having trouble with that.  They consisted of my title and a command.

"Mama, hep" (help): which meant he wanted me to swim him around a bit.  He puts his chest in my hands and holds onto my forearms.

"Mama, back": when he wanted to be taken back to the ramp where he could run and splash in the water on his own.

"Mama, bo": when he wants me to swim up to the ramp next to him.  ("Bo" means "come" in Hebrew when one is speaking to a male. As this is what he hears a lot, this is what he repeats.)

It's like his language skills exploded in the last couple days and he's so excited to use them.

In addition to bossing me around, they both enjoyed jumping off the side into the pool to me.  Shayna is back to walking down the ramp to neck-deep level but instead of going back up she walks to the side to climb out.  She fell under once during a stroll but righted herself within a second, just as I got to her.  I helped her balance, told her how amazing she did, and, while startled, she didn't cry, recovered in a couple seconds, and continued playing with more enthusiasm.  I think those little easily corrected spills add to her confidence.

A month ago, we took Nahum to that pool for the first time.  These are some of the pictures from that trip.  Yesterday, we had Shayna's water-wings but she didn't put them on until the end so she was unassisted for most of the time, which is how I prefer her to be. Elijah will throw a fit if one comes near him with a floating device, thankfully as I think they should learn to handle the water without such assistance.

Elijah will also throw a fit if one comes near him with underwear to put on, not-so-thankfully.  Here he is hiding under the table from his pumpkin underwear while yelling, "nooo, nooo, nooo, nooo...."

Happy Birthday to My Baby Boy

Elijah officially turned two-years-old on February 6th.  He's been 2 in my mind for a while so it's nice to have it finally be official.  

We had a little party for him over the weekend with a handful of friends, including his best friend Henry from school.  He and Henry are a month apart in age and share the love of the game Chase, which they play together every chance they get.  They and the other kids enjoyed yelling and running around the house Saturday.  There were three 4yo girls, a 3yo boy, and three 1.5-2ish-year-old (lots of siblings) so it was a very mild gang compared to the usual ruckus.  While the noise wasn't nearly so piercing, they still managed to destroy the house.  Elijah is in love with Thomas the Train and his friends (he has me sing him the theme song at least once each night) so I made him a Thomas cake.  All the kids dutifully scraped every last drop of icing off while only nibbling at the cake.  Luckily, the grownup were not so picky.  (Shayna now asks for a Bambi cake, not gonna happen.)

A few stats about Elijah:

Favorite game: Chase and tickle: Even Shayna can get him giggling hysterically.

Best Friends: Shayna and Henry: I say Shayna too because he doesn't like doing anything without her.  She started dance class, he wants a pink leotard too so he can join her.  She goes to her friend Addison's house and he screams, "Addison, Addison," while trying desperately to climb into their car too.  He loves doing everything she does including wearing dresses and crowns to dance around the house.

Number of words: I have no idea.  He talks, we listen and try to answer.  Some things ("whereareyou?") are like one word to him as he has lots of trouble consciously putting two words together.  Maybe 2-3 dozen but it seems to grow a word every other day at least.

Physical Growth: 35.5" and 31.6lb (he wouldn't let the nurse measure his head, instead he hid under the chairs screaming, "letgo!, letgo!").  It's the first time he's been on the growth chart coming in about 75% and 92%, respectively.

Favorite color: He proudly calls everything, "purple," and seems to be happy with anything.  (Where as Shayna seemed to gravitate toward orange at an early age.)

Favorite song: Probably Thomas and Friends but he'll sing anything as singing is one of his loves.  He's got Baa Baa Black Sheep, ABCs, Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, Wheels on the Bus, and a couple others that I haven't figured out yet.  He doesn't have all the words down yet so he just puts his own sounds in there to keep the rhythm going until he gets to more words he can say.  Plus, he already sings better than Shayna.

Something that astounded me in the last week: He counted to 10.  He usually only says, "A, B, C," then jumps but when I wrote the numbers for Shayna's hopscotch, he beat me to their names each time.

Happy running birthday boy with Henry and Shayna in the back.

Running Princess

followed closely by a Henry and fairy Addison traffic jam.

Singing Happy Birthday to an anxious birthday boy (Gray, Lynn and Dan in background and Izzy next to Elijah).

Probably his favorite part as he loves singing.

He did awesome blowing out the candle...

but did not expect the smoke to fly in his face after.