Thursday morning, we headed to the Children's Discovery Museum. It looked really fun from the outside!
The first area was all about water. Owen loved splashing around and finding all the boats.
Then we stopped in a miniature house.
There is a huge music area, with huge instruments. You can push the buttons on the front to hear the sounds. Lewis wanted to control about 3 of them, and got upset when other kids (or adults) tried to push them. We had to get out of there pretty quickly and some tears were shed.
Luckily, there were more instruments to try. Lewis loved the xylophones.
Owen tried out some drums.
Next, we headed to the indoor excavation site where young explorers could find dinosaur remains. The boys absolutely loved this part.
They could've played in the sand all day.
We saw a few more things, including these magnets.
Then we climbed some stairs to a lookout tower. We could see an interesting view of the city, complete with crane! It was a super fun time. We highly recommend it!!
After a quick lunch at Cheeburger Cheeburger, we headed into the Tennessee Aquarium. It was great! The tour started with a sting ray pool where we could touch the sting rays.
We spent a long time looking at all the fish swimming around in a huge tank. The sharks were impressive, but Lewis liked the sting rays best and kept saying, "Hi, sting ray!"
We finally got them away, and Lewis fell in love with jelly fish. They were in a really dark area and we got no pictures of them!
There was a place to touch sturgeons. Apparently they can get up to 18 feet long.
We were pretty tired after all of that fish, but managed to have some fun swimming back at the hotel. We crossed over the pedestrian bridge that evening and took a break for ice cream before walking back. Owen jogged most of the way.
Last week, we went to Chattanooga, for a little family getaway. Aunt Beth came with us, which was really nice. We stayed at the Chattanooga Choo Choo hotel. They had a nice little package that made it easy to plan. They had trains there that people were actually staying in. Those packages were a bit pricier! The boys loved looking at the trains.
Our package came with a free trip to a model railroad museum. Lewis loves Railroad crossing signs, so we had to take a picture with him next to this one, by the entrance.
Lewis and Owen both loved watching the trains go. It wasn't air conditioned in there though, so we were able to get them out of there before it got too hot.
The kids also got little engineer caps. Lewis was willing to wear his, but Owen threw his off immediately. Stay tuned for more posts. We had fun. :)
A couple of weeks ago now, we went to our good friend's wedding! Derek Holt got married to Abbi Craig in a lovely Orthodox ceremony. I failed to take many pictures, and the ones I got are not very good. The rehearsal dinner was at one of my favorite Louisville restaurants, the Irish Rover. Yum! Above, Justin and Time Jones are catching up with Matthew Wilson.
The real story of the weekend was the groomsmen apparel. It was quite a feat to find a light gray vest and matching pants, but we got the job done with just hours to spare. Special thanks to Rebecca Moore for driving all over creation with me to find them.
Tim Jones provided interesting commentary throughout the reception. He was quite hilarious!
All of the people are looking at someone else's camera, but they are in focus! You can see the lovely bride, Abbi, Tim Jones, Justin, Derek Holt and Glenda Jones (also lovely in her contrasting black). It was great fun to see our old friends and celebrate another marital union!
Last week, Lewis and I got to take a music class through VSA Kentucky. Lewis really enjoyed it. Initially, his favorite instrument was the triangle, but eventually he got into beating on some drums (mostly tambourines with a stick) and a little keyboard. He also enjoyed ringing some bells.
The "Hokey Pokey" also became a favorite. It was really nice to go with him each day for an hour, although we had to re-arrange the schedule quite a bit. Seeing him having so much fun was worth it!
Lewis and I got to visit Chaney's Dairy Barn a couple of weeks ago. We went on a field trip in the spring, but the kids didn't have time to play on the playground. So, we got out early and Lewis had it to himself for a while. I sent him down a steeper slide and he flew off the end, getting somewhat banged up. After that, he didn't want to go down by himself, so we went down the less steep one (it's longer so it was kind of misleading.....oops!).
Part of what I learned at the Verbal Behavior Workshop is that the earliest language is in the form of "mands" or requests. Typically this starts with food. A baby says, "milk" or "cracker" and is rewarded with what they wanted. It is much easier to teach a child the right way to communicate when he is motivated by something he wants, and when he is immediately reinforced by getting that thing. So we worked on this at Chaney's, requiring him to request I go with him each time. All he had to say was, "Come on, mama!" Because he has no trouble with general requests for food, potty etc., these kinds of social mands will be key to his development going forward.
It's easy to let him have it after asking once or twice, but for him to really make the connection of "when I say 'THIS', 'THAT' happens" we have to be consistent. He actually seems to enjoy it.
We walked around in a corn field maze. It was kind of scary!
When we couldn't figure out where to go, we ran out of there! It was tons of fun, and we love the ice cream at Chaney's. You can find it at Spencer's Coffeehouse daily. :)
Last Saturday morning, Hopscotch's Play Place was free for a few hours for Alex's Lemonade Stand day. They took donations to benefit kids fighting cancer. We took advantage of the opportunity to try it out and we took a couple of friends, Judith and Henry Cahoon, to share in the fun.
They all loved it. It was unanimous! Lewis struggled with a few of the bouncy things at first, but once he figured out how to get over certain obstacles, he had a blast.
Thanks to a game invited by Aunt Beth, Lewis actually interacted with some kids (3 or 4 total) for quite a while. They took turns throwing a beach ball of sorts over the wall of this bigger bounce house. Once Lewis realized he would get another turn, he had fun watching the other kids and even giving them the ball when it was their turn. We have been hoping for opportunities for Lewis to work on social interaction with children in scenarios that are really fun and might make him want to do it more. It is tricky! This particular setting worked great for that, on this particular day. We can only hope it will occur more in the future.
Henry built himself quite a castle!
Judith loved the play house area, and really loved pushing around a cart of food! I think she checked out at the cashier at least five times.
Henry spying on the other children.
There was a train table too. Lewis stopped by to check that out before we left. He loves the signs most of all right now. You can see them lined up in the far corner. We are so glad we got to visit this place!
Owen has been busy lately, but we don't have lots of photos to prove it. He's learned how to use a fork, which is helping him with one of his main loves: food. He is a pretty good eater. We went to a fourth of July picnic/cook-out and Owen successfully fed himself an entire hot dog. Unfortunately, he hadn't swallowed much of it. Within minutes, he was wearing the hot dog, and all the other food he'd eaten previously. Our feelings went from elation to disgust rather quickly. But after a quick change, he was good as new, and was up for dessert a bit later.
Owen has also become an extremely affectionate child. After our first round of parenting, this is a big change! We still beg for hugs and kisses from Lewis, and he does give them spontaneously at times. Owen just goes overboard with it and showers us with kisses daily, multiple times. He's very sweet. He has his pushy, whiny moments....but he is two after all.
He has also developed a love for music. He has been singing "Itsy Bitsy Spider" quite a bit, which is really precious because he skips over lots of words. He also loves "Ring Around the Rosie" and has been trying to sing along with our new "Miss Lynn" cd that the Morozovs gave the boys for their birthdays.
This is what the garden looks like now. Our plants have gotten so big they barely fit in our fence now.
One of our baby cucumbers.
A growing zucchini.
Our first two ripe squash!
A plethora of cherry tomatoes.
Our first big tomato turning red. Day one was kind of yellow (7/3).
Today it is orange. Another day or two and we should be able to eat it!
Our pole beans are climbing, but no beans in sight yet.
What we picked yesterday. We've had one nice big cucumber and several cherry tomatoes and snow peas. Beth harvested all of our bok choi and made stir fry. It made room for our squash plants. It's exciting to finally have something to show for all of our hard work!
On June 28th, Lewis turned four! We celebrated the day before with my family (and of course, both boys got gifts at each party because their birthdays are so close together--it's like Christmas, with no presents for the adults).
Some of the highlights:
A piano for Lewis that is straight from the 80's.
A scooter board that he can roll on.
Owen got some playdoh.
Lewis was much more into opening gifts this year. He got some good play modeling videos that will hopefully help a lot with his social skills.
Toy food! Both kids love this stuff.
Because we were on our way back from the lake we opted to get an ice cream cake from Dairy Queen. They did a great job making this Blues Clues cake. Lewis is absolutely obsessed with Blues Clues lately and he loved this cake.
He sang happy birthday to himself and blew out his candles for the first time! Here's the video. (If you are on Facebook, you'll have to go to "View original post" to see the video).
Thursday morning, we headed to the Children's Discovery Museum. It looked really fun from the outside!
The first area was all about water. Owen loved splashing around and finding all the boats.
Then we stopped in a miniature house.
There is a huge music area, with huge instruments. You can push the buttons on the front to hear the sounds. Lewis wanted to control about 3 of them, and got upset when other kids (or adults) tried to push them. We had to get out of there pretty quickly and some tears were shed.
Luckily, there were more instruments to try. Lewis loved the xylophones.
Owen tried out some drums.
Next, we headed to the indoor excavation site where young explorers could find dinosaur remains. The boys absolutely loved this part.
They could've played in the sand all day. 
We saw a few more things, including these magnets.
Then we climbed some stairs to a lookout tower. We could see an interesting view of the city, complete with crane! It was a super fun time. We highly recommend it!!
