Taste and Travel Adventures

Last week the Molloy household was plagued yet again with illness. This time it was the stomach virus, revisited. Seems the stomach bug that Ellie had the week before was somehow passed to Mommy who then passed it back to Ellie (and to Oma and Opa who unfortunately catch the brunt of our icky-ness). We are currently in the process of disinfecting every single surface and item in our house in hopes to finally get rid of this thing. But even with everyone feeling so crummy, we still managed to have a few adventures.

First of all, this week Lucas turned 6 months old(!!!) and we realized that we still hadn't given him his first taste of "big boy" food yet. We weren't in any rush to start him on rice cereal - he seems satisfied with milk and with all the allergy issues our children seem to have, it didn't seem important to start any earlier. But this week we decided that there's no time like the present and whipped up some tasty, very runny rice cereal goo. Ellie and I took turns feeding him, and he mostly spit it out, making raspberries with his tongue. (it was hilarious and we got it all on video, but unfortunately the file was corrupted when we put it on our computer so we lost that awesome moment! boo!) A few days later we tried again, this time with a little bit more success. This time, he ate most of it without spitting it out, though I think he was more interested in the spoon than the actual rice cereal. Since we were met with relative interest and success, the next time I tried mixing the rice cereal with formula instead of breast milk to see how he'd do with that, but he was not having that at all. He acted like I was trying to shove a blanket into his mouth. However, the most recent try went really well - he gobbled up 2 tablespoons of rice cereal and seemed to love it. I can see that the biggest issue for me is going to be that he is a VERY messy eater. Elise was a bizarrely clean eater - she didn't even need a bib - she opened up when the spoon came and the occasional drip of cereal got on her chin and that's about it. Lucas, on the other hand, moves his hand around, lunges for the spoon, sticks his hand in his mouth when it's full of cereal and then wipes the cereal hand all over everything. He got it everywhere - up his nose, all over his clothes, all over the high chair...it was insanity. I am not in any way a neat freak but something about food all over the place drives me insane! Marty had much more success than I did on the feeding front, so Marty may have found his calling: feeder of messy child. Once Lucas starts eating more food more regularly, we may need to start feeding him naked to avoid having to do crazy amounts of laundry. We'll see how it unfolds.

In other adventures, recently Ellie has been really into trains, so we've been taking her down to the train station (which is about 4 blocks from our house) to watch the trains come and go and listen for the the conductors to scream "All Aboard!" which they don't actually do even though we think they should. Sometimes they say "Everybody on?" but it doesn't have the same appeal - it's just doesn't have that train feel. Anyway, this weekend we decided to escape our germ infested house (in spite of the misty rain) for a little travel adventure. We walked over to the train station and took the train to the next neighborhood over. It was a short ride (less than 10 minutes even with of couple of stops) but Elise thought the whole process was extremely fun and exciting. The whole trip she kept saying "we're on the train!" with this wide-eyed joy that only children seem to have.

Once we arrived at our destination, we walked around for a while and did some window shopping (because everything was closed on a Sunday morning!) and then walked over to the bus stop, where we jumped on the bus. Ellie has been on the bus lots of times but since we've switched to a daycare that is not conveniently on the bus route (when she was 14 months old) we haven't taken her on the bus at all. She obviously had no recollection of ever being on the bus because it was as though we were proposing to take a helicopter home. She was VERY excited about being on the bus (possibly even more excited than the train) and really enjoyed pulling on the little string thing to get tell the bus driver to stop (at the bus stop conveniently across the street from our house). Again, it was a short ride, made even shorter because the bus driver was careening around like a mad-man driving ridiculously fast, and it was raining and early morning so no one was getting on the bus (and we were the only ones on it so no one was getting off). And because of the bus drivers' Indy 500 background, apparently, we were going too fast to hit any red lights.

In other transportation adventures, Elise has learned a new skill - she can ride a tricycle! Before the weather turned cold last October, Elise could not even reach the pedals of her tricycle. It seems our little girl did a lot of growing this winter, because not only can she reach them now, but she can pedal too! This is no easy task considering that her tricycle is circa 1992, rickety and rusty (it is a hand-me-down from our neighbor who is now in 11th grade and one of our babysitters). After one afternoon of practicing, she is now racing around the neighborhood, pedaling up hill and down hill and steering around trees and people with ease. Go Speed Racer, Go!