Breaking the Cabin Fever

Must escape and brave the cold snow and wind. Minds slowly turning to jelly, muscles atrophying, sense of humor completely lost... Fading fast. What to do? Go to the chaos that is Port Discovery, of course!

We met up with our favorite baby-cousin Dillan and Aunt Val and Uncle Mike for our first family outing to one of the top 5 best childrens museums in the country. And I must say this is an impressive, colossally huge place. This is not your typical museum, it's more of a giant three story jungle gym (this is NOT an exaggeration) with lots of activities for all ages, including our biggest toddlers - our husbands. The museum is filled with lots of rooms with different themes and activities and presentations including a story time oasis area, arts and crafts, with one enormous center that houses a three story jungle gym complete with a zip line, lots of random stuff to clime and swing on, a large water activity room where you WILL get wet,and extremely interactive displays are everywhere throughout. We pretty much stuck to three large areas all geared to infants and toddlers and barely played with all the different toys and things to climb, open, close, turn and crank, lift, lower, put in and out.... It's a toddlers dream.

While there we got to "have lunch" with Dillan who is just starting to learn to eat solids. It is rare that I watch other children eat. I purposely don't do it, I don't look because it's very stressful to know what you are missing out, especially something as basic and natural as your children eating food. But it was fun to watch Dillan scream at his mom for more applesauce, open wide, lean in swat at her hand and the spoon for more. My boys have NEVER shown that kind of behavior as to want to eat anything at all including a bottle when they should have been starving. So to see this healthy happy eating behavior up close was nice, but really hard to watch. But now I have an even bigger picture of how far we are from actually being able to call what the boys do "eating". *sigh*

And I guess Evan was really paying attention to Dillan and the praise we were giving too because he was very eager to eat several tastes of greenbeans puree that I offered without hope of interest. Evan was almost, dare I say it, excited (??) to grab my hand and pull the spoon to his mouth so he could suck the puree off with his lips. He refused to open his mouth, but I'm very please with sucking spoonfuls as the alternative. I would say he took maybe five spoonfuls total, which is rare. And Evan willingly bit off one piece of Baby MumMum, chewed it and sort of swallowed it once it was almost completely dissolved, all without gagging and throwing up. Cameron however was not having it. Period, nothing doing, end of story. So I didn't bother pushing him as he was really still overwhelmed by all the opportunities to play around him.

New Words -
Cameron:
Telephone - pronounced "helephone"
Granny - we've been practicing this for some time
Iguana - pronounce "eh-ghana"
Brush
Eyebrow - points to eyebrow
Spin
Stir
Duck
Quack
Granny
Pop-Pop
Mum-Mum (his paternal grandmother is also called Mom-Mom so this is still confusing)
Stick (particularly in reference to drum sticks and sticks that Chewie brings up on the deck to chew.)

Evan: (I think we are about to start having a language explosion from Evan soon)
Iguana - pronounced "ghana"
Up
Down
Shoe
Bubble
Bow Wow
Moo
Wee Wee
Meow
Neigh
Eye
Nose
Ear
Pop-Pop
Mum-Mum (again this is confused with the name for their paternal grandmother)
Granny (pronounced Gahn)

Here's some pics from our outing and earlier in the week some videos of the boys' antics.

Thanks very much for coming out to play with us today Aunt Val & Uncle Mike and Cousin Dillan. We had a great time and can't wait to do this again soon.



Note to self: Next time we come to Port Discovery bring two changes of clothes, two raincoats, two sets of galoshes (they didn't have any Crocs that would fit my guys), and a big dry towel so we can really enjoy the huge water room to its fullest.




As you can see even the oversized toddlers had some fun too.





My little maestro banged out a melodious little ditty on this xylaphone piano for about 20 minutes straight, much to everyone's pained ears. As you can see my hubby was having a blast too.


Cam mowed the carpet for about 15min he loved this mower so much.






Dad, this ball pit kicks our ball pit's butt.






Ball pits are so much fun....


Until you sink too far down into them.


But Dad, I want to go in there too!



King of the jungle... Jungle gym that is.



The boys physical therapist would be so proud!



Aunt Laura! Did you see these? They're BUBBLES!!















Cameron is easily confused about who and what uses a telephone, but he's obsessed with the concept. We've been reading a great book by Eric Carl called "The Very Quiet Cricket" and at the end of the book the cricket actually chirps. In this you can hear Cameron clearly say "telephone", "no" (his favorite word), and "hello". This video was captured after we stared reading the book the first time because Cameron kept holding the book up to his ear and saying "Hello?". Evan knows better and went to get the phone to answer back, hence the "telephone" ringing along with the cricket "ringing/chirping" in this video clip.


Up & Down


Brushing Teeth - We've been slowly re-building up to putting a toothbrush in the boys mouths. I can not put it in there or they freak the hell out and puke buckets, but let them do it on their own and they go to town. Whatever it takes.


Eat - It is a difficult and beautiful thing to capture the boys in the rare moment when they are willing to take a bite of something solid, chew and swallow without vomiting. Both boys did it several times this day, but I was only able to capture Cameron doing it three times. Here's one of those times, right after Evan had had enough and puked. Usually this upsets Cameron too and he refuses to try, but here he's in a great mood and ate about three more bites with lots of positive reinforcement, imitation and excessive encouragement from me.


And lastly, an example of the boys favorite thing to do lately. Elmo's very own "Spin Around and Fall Down Dance". Cameron clearly says the word "spin" in this one, actually said it several times but mostly after the camera stopped filming.