A Few Firsts

Eliza has been hitting some milestones lately (as described in my last post -she's up to 124 words now!) but Hayden has been having a few special "firsts" as well.

First (ha!) of all, she went to her first official birthday party a few weekends ago. She was invited to go to Wheels (that's been around since I was a kid!) to a party in the play area. Think fast food restaurant playground times 100. It was quite the play area! Jason and I both ended up in inside, scrambling across inflatable bridges, climbing rope ladders and sliding into the ball pit. Hayden and Eliza both had a great time. And turns out, even though the ball pit made me quite squeamish with all the urban myths and true stories about what is found inside them, ball pits are very colorful backdrops for pictures!

Eliza was a completely official birthday party guest but she still got to play, and enjoy some pizza!

A second first for Hayden happened just yesterday when she went on her first school field trip. We headed up to Spence's Farm to see animals and learn about farm life. Hayden got a tour of the vegetable garden (spinach! kale! strawberries! onions!), did some weeding to collect chicken food and tilled some soil to find worms for the chickens. She also got to help feed the chickens and ride a donkey. I went along as driver (leaving Eliza to hang out with Grandma) and got to take some pictures. A very successful first field trip!

Getting an introduction from Farmer Spence.

Gathering chicken food, aka weeding the garden.

Finding worms for the chickens. We found some, but neither one of us would touch them. Luckily there were plenty of kids who delighted in holding squiggly worms.

The hungry chickens! Hayden was not a big fan.

Touching a month old baby chicken.

Waiting patiently for her turn. She was one of the last to go (out of 20ish kids) and she did a great job being patient.

Climbing onto the donkey. Throw your leg over and wiggle, wiggle, wiggle.

Showing how good her balance was (Farmer Spence got everyone to do this).

And one final first, putting together a really cool outfit. Okay, she's done this before, but she's just too cute not to share this picture. She was done wearing the matching Fish Class shirt, so she ran upstairs to change and came down in this ensemble. I think the small sized water bottle might have been one of her favorite parts of the field trip.

Minor Milestones

Eliza has hit a couple of milestones lately that are important enough to note here. First of all, she just had her half birthday a couple weeks ago. Happy half birthday to Eliza!


Hayden didn't quite understand the concept of a half-birthday, and was particularly upset that it didn't involve cake. I might try to do something special for half birthdays in the future, but we had just returned from our trip south, so there was no cake to be had. Hayden will survive, sans half birthday cake.

The second milestone is that she surpassed 100 words in her ever increasing vocabulary. She actually did it shortly after our trip south (that was a big trip in many ways apparently!) but life intervened in getting this post up. Now she's up to 116 words, adding more every day. What kind of words does she know, you may ask? The most recent additions to her word list include coat, fruit (pronounced "moot" by Eliza), story, and hurry. Other fun ones include "mo more" (one more), "mopmorn" (popcorn, even though she never gets to eat it!), "weet" (shredded wheat cereal) and rain.

She's also a very polite child. Thank you was one of her first words (though it didn't get recorded till #43 cuz we couldn't quite believe she was saying thank you.). She is very good at saying thank you after you give her something. She also says/signs please with regularity. She has recently started saying "bess oo" (bless you) after we sneeze. And she picked up sorry. I think I must create too many reasons to say sorry because the first instance I remember her saying it, I lightly bumped her leg against the door frame as I went into her room and SHE said sorry! She also says "nice" regularly to Hayden as in "be nice" since Hayden gets scolded about being kind to Eliza on a daily basis. (Why is it so fun to torture younger sibilings about their blankets? I remember hiding my sister's blanket all the time and Hayden loves to run away with Eliza's "gankie" (blankie)).

Eliza is also very food oriented, especially sweets. You can tell she's not a first child since her knowledge of words for sweets is extensive. She knows "no-nut" (donut), and cake, and cookie, and I think I heard her saying cupcake today (we had muffins for snack). I don't really think she gets that many treats; but apparently she picks up on them. Even ones she doesn't actually get to eat like popcorn or juice. Other favorite food words are pancake (signs this), cheese, milk, banana, strawberry, peach, apple, raisin, fish (for goldfish crackers) and even yogurt (signs and says this). Can you tell she likes fruit and dairy products?

no pictures while eating "fish" please!

Two other funny language notes with Eliza: one is her use of the words "hot" and "cold". She says them all the time, and is fairly accurate in assessing temperature - like an ice cube is cold, and a grilled cheese is hot. But she's also a bit extreme about using them. So if something came off of the stove, or out of the oven, no matter how long we let it cool, she will touch it and say "hot!" It doesn't usually slow her down in eating it, but she has to point out that it's hot. And she was taking a dropped ice cube to Blizzard's bowl and started saying cold! cold! over and over in a pained way but just stood there. She didn't seem to get that yes it was cold, so go get rid of it!

The second funny note is that she STILL doesn't say yes. For a while if you asked her a question, like do you want more whatever?, she would say no, even though she meant yes. She's a little less emphatic about saying no, but still doesn't say yes, even though it's quite clear (thru reaching, open mouth and grunting) that she does indeed want whatever you just asked her about.

talking on the "nown" (phone)

Anyway, that's about it with her language. She's not putting more than maybe two words together but she's definitely identifying LOTS of stuff and trying to make herself clear. She also still resorts to crying and feet stamping (so funny, the feet stamping) when she gets upset but she is learning to use words. It's such an amazing process to watch and attempt to document.

posing with Hayden and cousin Charlotte when Charlotte and Lacey were up to visit recently. E was fine with posing for pictures, but she refused to smile or change her expression.

Road Trip (part 2)

From south Georgia, we headed to north Florida to spend a day or so with Sarah, Brad and Logan before making the trek back to North Carolina. Logan seemed much more interested in us this time around, probably since he was on his own turf. And he was great about sharing his toys with two rambunctious girls. On Monday morning, we headed into Tallahassee to get a tour of the university and grab some lunch. The tour ended up being by car, so no pictures, but we did have a tasty lunch at a local Mexican place. We got to sit out on the deck which was great. The TV was showing Dora so Hayden was in heaven. And Eliza tried salsa - and liked it! (and it wasn't even super mild.)

Logan's indoor climber with a slide was a big hit with the girls - especially with Eliza.



After nap time, we headed to a wonderful playground at a local park. I noticed a sign heading in that said it was one of the best parks in the nation! The playground was certainly lots of fun for both kids and adults: a huge climbing set with lots of easy to navigate ramps, swings, tire swings (that fit at least 3 small children!), a misting tent, seesaw and a whole lot more.




I even managed to get a picture of the three kids at the top of one of the slides. Of course, that may not have been the best spot for a photo.... (See picture 2!)
At bathtime, Logan finally consented to a group bath. Sorry about Eliza's psycho eyes, the only other picture I took did not have full bubble coverage.
After bath, Eliza continued our family tradition of naked-try-on-shoes time.

Eliza in particular had a great time at Sarah and Brad's because she got to continually play hide-and-seek with the cats. She'd find one - literally shake with excitement and point/vocalize excessively so we knew what she'd found. She never did say cat, or sign cat, but she really liked finding them.

On Tuesday morning, we had to end our visit and begin the long drive back home to North Carolina. We would have loved to have stayed longer, but we had to get home. I'll admit I was kind of dreading the drive home (mapquest said it was at least 10 hours) but it went amazingly well. The kids are true road-trippers! It helped that we found the best toy for Hayden when we went to tour Cosco, and that Eliza took two naps. And that we were flexible and stopped (twice!) when necessary for poop breaks, and had a special ice cream treat (new discovery - mini blizzards at DQ!).

heh, heh, look at me, I have a marker top in my mouth!

best car toy ever - magnetic paper princess dolls with sticker accessories

(help me, help me - I want to go up the slide!)

What a great trip! Thanks for having us Sarah and Brad! (and Lacey and JT too!)

Road Trip (Part 1)

A couple weeks ago, we headed south to go visit Lacey and family. Originally planned to be a regular occurrence so we could escape the extended winter of State College, now it's just a nice trip to see family, since we also have spring on the way in Durham. And as it worked out, we actually got to experience SUMMER while in south Georgia - highs in the mid to upper 80s!

We headed out Thursday evening after work, and drove out of NC (trying to drum up excitement for South of the Border via the billboards for Hayden. She was less than impressed), through SC (so many cops around!) and into Georgia before stopping for the night around midnight. Hayden and Eliza thought the hotel was great - it was so fun to see the excitement of staying someplace new. A nice counterpoint to my adult perspective that had grown used to conference hotel level quality! They were excited by the long hallway, the possibility of the pool (H: can we go swimming when we come back again?!), and the sharing of beds (one kid and one adult per bed, worked well!). We managed a decent breakfast at the free continental breakfast, brushed our teeth and were on our way by 8:30 the next morning.

Our drive into the night and stay at a hotel strategy meant that we arrived at Aunt Lacey's house in time for lunch, giving us plenty of time to eat and play before nap time. The girls quickly explored all of Jay's toys (he was at the sitter's till after nap) and got comfortable with their surroundings.


For dinner we headed to Lacey and JT's favorite pizza place. The kids enjoyed a walk to the fire department while waiting for food, and all kids ate some pizza. I especially enjoyed the roasted red pepper, goat cheese and local sausage pie. Eliza liked it so much she showed off her fun stuff-your-face-make-yourself-throw-up move; luckily we were outside. Everyone enjoyed some of the famous peanut butter chocolate cookies. Even Charlotte had fun munching on a plastic cup.

The sleeping arrangements worked amazingly well - Hayden and Jay in the same room. And we all woke up the next morning well-rested and ready for fun. Well, except for Hayden, who had kind of a rocky morning. She even tantrumed about going to get fresh donuts!!! (which were ridiculously good.) After breakfast, Sarah and Brad came up to meet us and we all headed out to the goat farm to check out the goats. The kids liked seeing the goats and trying to feed them small pieces of grass, while the adults frantically tried to keep the kids (human kind) from touching the electric fence.


After the goat farm (with H having a tantrum as we left), we went to their retail store downtown (tantrum about going to the store), then to a toy store (tantrum about leaving the toy store), and then aborted lunch plans at the park to go home (tantrum about no picnic and playing at the park that lasted the whole drive home and for 10 min parked in the carport!). We managed some lunch, put them all down for nap and watched some basketball.

Once nap was over, the real fun began - GATOR TIME! Or tractor time, depending on your perspective. Okay, so technically they'd been introduced to the gator the day before, and it was a big hit. Hayden was a little rocky on the driving at first (she drove into bushes and bumped into the garden on separate turns) but she got the hang of it and had a blast. The kids were amazing at taking turns. The theory was that both driving and riding were fun, so it didn't matter which you were doing.

So after nap on Saturday, they actually had water play, because it was HOT - upper 80s. Lacey and JT have the coolest water table that we might need to find for ourselves. Eliza got introduced to the sprinkler. In true, I'll-try-anything Eliza style, she ran into the spray, only to stop short when the water hit her and freeze, while continually being pelted. I'm not sure if she liked it or hated it. She didn't smile, but she didn't cry. (can you see the expression on her face?!) And she did the same thing again after we got her to unfreeze. She was curious to check out the sprinkler when it was no longer spraying. And Jay was a very considerate host, serving Uncle Jason lots and lots of tea.

And THEN it was gator time again. This time, Eliza even got to ride and she loved it. She held on tight just like she was supposed to (except for one time) and would chase after it when it wasn't her turn. Chasing became the official third activity of gator time so that all would have something fun to do as everyone took turns.



Sunday was our last day with Lacey, JT, Jay and Charlotte and we just had fun playing. There were morning pajama pictures, a walk to the playground at the local elementary school, more rides on the gator and just lots of playing.

For dinner we went to one of the few places open on Sunday and enjoyed some delicious barbecue, complete with a side of fried pickles. There were lots of cute pictures at dinner - we must have all been happy with our food!

(this one taken by Hayden, with only a little cropping added!)

And back at the house, as we packed up stuff to head to Sarah and Brad's, we tried one last group picture. First Eliza wouldn't cooperate. Then we got Hayden to smile as it was an "all girls" picture. Then Hayden got mad because Jay joined them. Gotta love cousins.

All in all, it was a great visit. Sure Hayden had her most impressive tantrum to date, but overall we had so much fun. Hayden asked if we could get a pink tractor to drive in our yard, though she did acknowledge that our yard (with little to no open flat space) isn't quite right for that. The kids were able to share a room. I got to eat local collards in a sausage casserole. And Carolina won their basketball games. All was good. Thanks for hosting us!