Happy 5th Birthday, Elijah!

Elijah turned five-years-old last Saturday, February 6. He has taken the responsibility of being older seriously by ceasing to sleep during afternoon nap time. Luckily, most days he is very happy to play on his own stopping only to show me the latest train crash he set up or lego vehicle he created.

Elijah has not needed his heart medicine for half his life and we have discovered no tachycardic episodes during that time so we believe he has truly out grow the Wolfe-Parkinson-White Syndrome he was born with.

He still loves trains but has added music, Legos and taking things apart to his passions in the last few months. He will turn on a cd or hook my computer up to the stereo, pick a song, and has slowly taught himself to find the beat in the music while banging on his bowl and box drum sets he creates. The progression was neat as at first it was just banging away while an upbeat song played to being nearly on the rhythm of the song. His favorite music to drum to are a few upbeat  Jewish/Hebrew oriented songs from the CDs we get in the mail via the PJ Library.  If he's just listen or dancing, he loves Eminem, Johnny Cash, or Imagine Dragons with a trial of many other things in my limited collection thrown in. We have added Sunday at 4pm piano lessons for Elijah and Shayna to our busy schedule. Both kids seem to love it plus our friend and their teacher Becky is quite talented both musically and working with little people. While we don't have a piano at home, I don't believe they need to practice yet to continue to develop a musical understand and gain piano skills. They remember what was done the week before, easily add to it, and enjoy listening to the CD that came with their books in-between. (Nahum says that piano lessons will be more readily available in Israel should we be able to live their next year so I hope to continue lessons there then figure out if we need a piano once we return to the states.)

Maya trying to help Elijah with his birthday all-terrain vehicle Lego set.

I was terrified of adding little Lego sets to Elijah's toy collections but after 6 weeks of reminders, he is very good at putting the extra pieces in a container when he is done building as he doesn't want to loose any and is mesmerized by each building project. (Maya is well past the age of putting tiny toys in her mouth too.) Elijah loves rebuilding the car or train set each day (each set has instructions for 3 different vehicle types) and has started to create his own train versions. His creativity is so different than Shayna's so I enjoyed seeing he has found an outlet for it. Legos probably play into his love of taking things apart to see how they work as well as we have about a half dozen trains in a bin that are currently in pieces. The trains, unfortunately, don't come with re-assembley instructions like Legos, and are waiting for my assistance in piecing them back together.  Every time he sees a screw in a toy he has an unquenchable urge to take it out to see what it's holding together and what the inside looks like. He now has his own set of triangle headed screw drivers so he can take most things fully apart.

Elijah takes a train car apart with our tub of disassembled trains on the table waiting for repair.

Elijah still loves school where he has learned to read consonant-vowel-consonant words quite well and enjoys breaking down math concepts Montessori style. (I want to learn more of these concepts as Elijah's engineering brain loves them. I have little idea how they work but would like to have them available when we're in Israel, still only an 80% possibility until we know about funding at the end of the month.) He has taken to the responsibility of walking little Maya into school on days I need to get to an appointment and always greets Mr. Joe and his teachers with a smile and joyful, "good morning," which is a huge change from the last two years. (He would torture Nahum nearly every day in a screaming, bucking power struggle that would occasionally start at putting on shoes at home to 10 seconds after Nahum left him at school. At which point, he was perfectly content and enjoyed the rest of his morning.) It melts my heart each time to watch him take Maya's hand then walk up to school together. (Maya loves school too and we have a wall dedicated to her many paintings.)

Nahum took Elijah on a special trip to the Roanoke Transportation Museum just the two of them for Elijah's birthday morning. Elijah loved taking Nahum all around the model train area and outside where the full size locomotives and cars are kept and just being able to do and see whatever he wanted without any sister interference and having Aba all to himself. In the evening we celebrated with a small dinner party that included his school friend Scarlette and a few special adults. I've forgotten what I made for dinner but the kids loved decorating cupcakes for us all with marshmallows, gummy bears, and sprinkles.

Decorating cupcakes with friends.

Opening the dinner party set of presents.