Our day out with Thomas

We took Will to see a real Thomas the Tank Engine today. He had a blast, mostly. He's 2, so of course we had a few meltdowns because he was so excited. It was at the NC Transportation museum in Spencer, NC, which is about 45 minutes north of us. The museum itself is really cool and we'll definitely go back. It has trains everywhere and a roundhouse with a working turntable.

Will was in heaven. They had a Thomas engine pulling coaches, Sir Topham Hat, temporary tattoos, bubbles, sidewalk chalk, a bouncy thing, and lots of train tables set up with trains to play with. Will got a Harold the Helicopter tattoo on his cheek. There were lots of booths with fair type food - he also had his first funnel cake! And of course a huge tent set up as a gift shop, which caused our first tantrum. Will wanted to go look at toys instead of getting in line to ride Thomas. He really didn't want to leave the train tables either - I think they may have been his favorite part. Although he did enjoy waving to people from the window of our coach while we were riding with Thomas.

I think eventually it all just got to be too much for Will - trains and toys everywhere! Little Ben was an angel as always. Part of the time he rode in the stroller and part of the time carried him in his mei tai - he was just happy to be outside. It was exhausting for everyone and the kids both napped in the car on the way home.

Here are some other random pictures for the week - nothing else new to report! :)

Fall is here!

It's been so nice out lately I've been able to take Ben outside with Will and I to play. If it's much above 80 Ben's miserable outside - the helmet makes him really hot and he's already hot-natured. I put his Bumbo seat in Will's wagon and pulled them around the neighborhood a few times last week and Ben had a blast. He also got to try out the swing for the first time and really liked it. Will is getting too big for it - he's too heavy to push in that thing! We've got to get a swingset. Will was less than excited about having to share his wagon, but I was proud of how well he tolerated Ben's presence. :)

Ben still isn't sitting up or babbling, so he's pretty delayed at this point. But he's very social and smiles a lot. He loves to read books and he's really interested in different textures right now. He spent about 15 minutes crinkling a plastic bag of wipes to hear the cool crinkly sound. He uses his thumbs a lot to touch and feel things. When we're reading books he takes his thumbs and rubs them across the pictures to try and feel them. He loves this little sunshine because it has crinkly parts and makes a funny sound when you squeeze it.

Poor Will woke up with nightmares about scary puppets last night. There was a particular puppet on the Baby Mozart video that jumped onto screen and really scared him when he was 18 months old - he's never quite gotten over it. He has a really good memory for a 2 year old I think. He saw a toy that he used to play with at his friend Mason's house before Ben was born, and he remembered it and said Mason's name. He's definitely starting to use his imagination. I think that's where all the nightmares are coming from.

We're going to Music Together classes once a week, and Will loves them. The first class kind of freaked him out - there's a lot of singing and dancing and he didn't really understand what was happening. At the end of every song he would say "Yaaay, bye-bye" and try to climb in the stroller. But this week he stood right in the middle of the circle for the whole class and kept grinning at all the babies. He would also go sit right in front of the teacher and sing along with the songs. He's going to have a pretty good ear I hope - he can already carry a little bit of a tune. Ben gets to sit in on all of my violin lessons, so hopefully he'll have some musical ability as well. We'll see!

Brian didn't have such a great week - his grandfather passed away this week. He's been down in Columbus GA for a few days to be with his mom and his grandma. We were so sorry to lose Papa. Our thoughts and prayers go out to Cindy and her family.

Check out Ben's new helmet!

Well technically it's known as a DOC Band, but it sure looks like a helmet. Ben sweated like a madman for the first few days, but he seems to be getting used to it now. He slept through the night for the first time since the surgery last night. which is a promising sign.

The helmet has been a great help when it comes to Ben and Will playing together - it's great protection. I think Ben realizes this too because he's a lot less scared of Will than he used to be.

He'll be in the helmet for 2-3 months depending on how fast he grows. It's only been a week and there's already a shift in the shape of his head, so hopefully it will be a quick treatment.

Finally another update

Sorry it's been so long since I've posted anything new! Ben's not been sleeping well since the surgery and we've been really busy with follow-up appointments and band fittings. Ben had his DOC Band and we brought him home in it yesterday. It's making him sweat - a lot. Sweat was literally dripping off the back of it last night - poor kid. So we obviously got very little sleep last night! But he's napping peacefully right now and the doctors say in a couple of days his body will adjust and he'll stop sweating so much.

Other than that Ben's doing great! He'll eat some small pieces of solid food now like pieces of green bean or northern bean, bites of bread, pieces of banana, etc. They have to be suoer small (like half the size of a pea) and I have to put it in his mouth because he can't pick them up yet. But it's definitely progress! His scar is healing really well and the swelling is almost completely gone.

Will is a hoot as usual. His new word is "can't". If he's watching a movie and gets tired of it he'll say "I can't like this mama". He's started calling me mommy sometimes - he'll run around the house calling "mommy! mommy!". He's watching Babe for the 10,000th time right now. He's learned to use the fast forward button on the VCR and he fast forwards through the scary parts. Which can be pretty much any part these days - he burst into tears watching Sesame Street the other day because Cookie Monster showed up suddenly and it scared him. He literally screamed and ran to me sobbing. Sharks are the scariest thing though - he has nightmares about them. He'll tell me he had a scary dream about sharks and when I ask him what they were doing he says "making noise". I'm not sure what that's about - it would be really interesting to know what's really going on in that little head.

I introduced Will to Tom and Jerry the other day. He LOVES them. He laughs out loud watching them. But I'm thinking this was a mistake because he appears to be acting out some of the stunts using dolls - like knocking them off counters and stomping on their faces and cackling hysterically. So I think we'll be sticking to Thomas from now on. :)

Here are all the pictures - I'm too lazy to arrange them right now! The first are photos from Cranial Technologies; they take pictures every time we have an appointment.