Around the World with Arthur

About four weeks ago, Arthur's school asked for people to have friends and relatives send postcards from around the world. They were doing some lessons where they "travelled" to far off places and learned about other countries.


First, I asked a group of international friends I used to work with at summer camp and then I asked my online moms group. It was the moms group that came through big time. Arthur had in his cubby this morning the ten postcards that were sent to him over the past few weeks. He was really excited. Big thanks to everyone who sent one!

Japan: "Konnichiwa from Japan! We live in Zushi, about an hour south of Tokyo. -Katie"

Grenada: "Hello from Grenada!" (with an arrow pointing to which island Granada is on a drawing. Also a cute palm tree drawn in)

Australia: "Hello from Brisbane, Queensland, Australia. I hope you enjoy looking at all the different animals that live on our continent. Have a great day, Jane T---"

Australia 2: "Hi, from Australia, I study Law at this University. Tim T----"

Australia 3: "Hi there, I live near this beach on the Gold Coast of Australia. Regards, Sue P----"

Switzerland: "Hello!! from Switzerland. :) - Jessica (This postcard is HUGE and has the scalloped edges you see)

Swaziland: "Hi to you, from Swaziland in Southern Africa. I have many giraffe living near me! Regards! Denise M----- in Swaziland."

South Africa: "Hi from Grahamstown South Africa! "Hope you all have a very happy day! Love from the W----J---- Family."

Scotland: "Greetings from Scotland! :)"

New Zealand: "Greetings from New Zealand! My name is Melanie and I live in the city of Hamilton. It is very cold here at the moment as it is winter season. NZ has a population of 4 million people. Hope you get losts of postcards from around the world!"

Happy Summer?

Robin's 2 Year Check Up

On the heels of my last post, it's a good thing we're sticking to RF anyway. Robin is still not quite 20 lbs. Today he weighed in at 19 lbs 7 oz. His head and height growth are good. He's 32.5 inches tall. The ped again put me at ease by saying that those two things would be the things that would indicate that he was malnourished. And since those are strong in their growth, he's not malnourished. Plus his iron levels were really excellent, the nurse told me. That made me happy. At least he's strong.

We did a narrative of everything in his diet and the ped is pleased with it and thinks we're doing all the right things and doing everything we can think of to get some extra calories in him. Developmentally, he's fine. There's nothing really concerning about him except for the fact that he just doesn't gain weight.

The ped and I agreed that we've done what we can and it's time to evaluate him further to make sure there isn't a metabolic, parasitic, or immune system reason why he doesn't gain. As the ped said, we'll rule stuff out and in the end we will probably affirm that this is just "Robin"

One tug at my heart though was that although the ped wrote "no concerns" on the chart, also next to that was the dreaded "FTT" notation. It means "failure to thrive". They probably have to diagnose that to get you in with the specialist for insurance to cover it. But if you've ever seen it on your child's chart there's only one word you tend to focus on....."failure". It's frustrating but I know that we're doing what we should and an intervention with a specialist might actually relieve us of worrying about things we can't control.

My gut tells me that he really is just destined to be a little guy, like most of the men on my mother's side of the family. Thin as rails, most of them. It might just be his make-up.

More Rear-Facing Studies

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/31326129/ns/health-kids_and_parenting/?ns=health-kids_and_parenting

For me, this is an easy one...it doesn't harm my children in the slightest to have them rear-facing until the maximum that their seats allow and it could very well save their lives. If it weren't for someone posting about it, I never would have known and so I hope that I can pay it forward to someone else.

I should add that my four year old does not ride rear-facing, but he does ride in a 5pt harness in a seat that goes up to 65 lbs. I do see a lot of kids his age in the backless boosters already. I don't think we'll suddenly see a rash of preschoolers rear-facing, but what I'm hoping is that as more supportive news surfaces, people will stop looking at us like crazy over-protective parents for having our two year olds rear-facing.

I wouldn't be surprised if my middle son is one of those 3-4 year olds rear-facing. He's such a peanut. And with the AAP recommendation changing to the RF to the limit of the seat guidelines, goodness knows when he's ever going to reach 33 lbs anyway!

Vacation

Instead of trying to cram all of the pictures from all of the different places into one post, I'm just going to do multiple posts with pictures from whatever it was we did that day. So start here, and then click on the links and you should get to them all! Kudos if you make it through all of the photos!

Vacation 1 - Travelling

Vacation 2 - Arrival and Sesame Place Day One

Vacation 3 - Sesame Place Day Two

Vacation 4 - Dinner with Big Bird and Friends

Vacation 5 - Please Touch Museum

Vacation 6 - A Tangent

Vacation 7 - Philadelphia Zoo

Vacation 8 - Happy Birthday Robin and Mystic Aquarium

Vacation 8 - Happy Birthday Robin! (and Mystic Aquarium)

Our last two stops before heading home were Mystic. Connecticut and Providence. Rhode Island. Mystic was a last minute choice that we basically went for because of the weather. Other options included Atlantic City (Pier is closed until next week), Coney Island (too rainy), Dorney Park (again, rain), and Six Flags New Jersey (rain, and too exhausting for an end-of-vacation trip).

I had been to Mystic Seaport on a high school trip too many years ago than I want to admit but I had never done the aquarium. Joanne last came when she was in middle school. Since the weather was still icky, and we were tired we chose the option that was in our direct path towards home. A night spent in the Hyatt Place in Mystic shortened our trip home by three hours.

Also, it was Robin's birthday yesterday (Two, if you can believe it!) and we wanted to do something we knew he liked as well as stop at the Providence Place Mall to hit up "Build-a-Bear" because it was exactly what we did for Arthur's second birthday (and what we will do for Maggie's as well). Arthur was excited because he got to pick out an outfit (he chose spiderman) for his existing birthday bear.

Sea Lions being fed:

Where's Frog-O?

Robin waiting for the Sea Lion show (until the sea lions came out of the water inches from our front row seat...then Robin and I had to move farther back because he was a little tense about it):

A cute shot of Joanne and Maggie waiting for the sea lion show:

This is Coco. He's 900 pounds. And he got even closer to us than this:

A Pirahna:

Clown fish (or as the kids call them, "Nemo fish"). I'm sure that every aquarium on the planet has a display of clown fish now. Factoid: Did you know that when the female clown fish dies, the male becomes female? A little tidbit that Disney forgot to mention..ha ha!

This was a pretty cool exhibit on the Ballard expedition. We would have loved to spend more time but there was a gaggle of middle school boys being pretty rough and not really letting the four year old look at anything. So we moved out pretty fast but Arthur did get a chance to climb up to the big pot to watch the movie inside (he's telling us that there is a movie if you look inside):

Petting the stingrays. While their barbs are clipped like fingernails, stingrays are still pretty gentle and don't mind being handled. These were really friendly and would sort of hop up into your hand and nibble your fingers. They were a lot slimier than I pictured them feeling but overall we all really liked this exhibit.

This one kept poking his nose out of the water at us to investigate:

Waiting outside of Build-A-Bear in Providence:

You can see Robin in his "I want that one" pose. (Which was great for us, because we were hoping he'd want one of the more traditional bears):

Robin holding his bear (as I like to call it) "carcass":

Robin putting the heart into his newly stuffed bear:

Washing his bear:

A birthday t-shirt and he's good to go:

Carrying his bear in his bear house:

Waiting for dinner (yes, that's crayon):

Being sung to by the Uno's staff (and also the group of girls that we learned were Mexican students that went to a local boarding school. They were really friendly and groups of them would come up to sing!)

Blowing out his candle (even after the candle was gone):

Vacation 7 - Philadelphia Zoo

We travelled to Philly again on Wednesday for the Philadelphia Zoo. It was still dreary and overcast with spurts of rain but we loaded the raincoats into the carriage and were determined to make-do. (It turned out that it hardly rained at all).

The zoo was large and really well put together. As it says on the sign it's the "oldest zoo in America."

We spent about 3 or 4 hours there knowing that we would need to leave early to make it through New York without getting too hung up in rush hour traffic there. Leaving around 2PM put us in a pretty decent place. We were able to see quite a bit of the zoo and still get a chance for Joanne and Arthur to ride the helium balloon.

On big thing I noticed about the zoo is that the exhibits get you a lot closer to the animals than in any other zoo. The peacocks roam free (which is true of many zoos and heck even Canobie Lake Park) but never have I been able to get so close. None of these photos are zoomed. If I were any closer, we could have touched the animals.

Joanne with her map:

The tortoises (see what I mean about close?):

Robin peeking his head out while riding on my back:

Robin rode on my back for a lot of the trip to the zoo. It gave Arthur a chance to rest his legs int he carriage if he needed to (we had four long days of walking) and it turns out that Robin was afraid of a lot of the animals. When we got too close to the bigger ones, I could feel him digging his hands and clinging to the back of my shirt. He DID like the turtles, tortoises, and anything fish related...so we tried to get him close to those.

Arthur grooming a goat at the children's zoo:

A giraffe...yup, really that close:

Robin taking a break and splashing:

The helium balloon that Joanne and Arthur rode in. It's let out to 400 feet and then reeled back in. There's an operator that rides up (signs say that if there were an "emergency" they could gradually let air out for a controlled decent). It was a very cloudy day but Joanne got a few photos.

That's me and the babies to the left of the star:

The city from 400 feet (in the fog):

The operator took a really nice photo of Joanne and Arthur:

These were wandering around everywhere and they were not shy at all:

Vacation 6 - A Tangent...

This is why Robin stays so skinny...

Vacation 5 - Please Touch Museum (Tuesday)

Tuesday greeted us with loud and bright thunderstorms. We were flexible in our plans and hadn't really intended on another day at Sesame anyway, so we decided first thing that Tuesday would be the museum day and Wednesday would be the Zoo day based on the weather forecast. We did feel bad for the young sad faces joining us for breakfast. We tried to reassure them that Sesame Place was still really really fun in the rain.

After stopping at the nearby Wal-mart for a new camera memory stick (by the way, Princeton New Jersey has the cleanest, brightest, friendliest Wal-mart I've ever seen in my life!) we made our way into Philly.

The last time we went to the Please Touch Museum in Philly it was close to downtown, on the canal and in the Art District. We knew something was amiss when our directions took us past the Philly Zoo and into a part of town we'd never been. Apparently the museum had moved, into a new HUGE building that used to be a number of things but most notably an art museum. The building was beautiful inside and out and sat on a mall-type garden that stretched out pretty far into the street. We get in free because of our Affiliated Museum Membership so it was a budget friendly day too. It was well worth the re-visit.



Robin trying out the "build your own racecar":

Maggie wanted a turn too:

Arthur, Robin, and Maggie in the flame race car:

Robin climbing up with the other little kids in the "build your own 'paper' airplane" room:

Is it me, or did Robin suddenly get taller?

Maggie plays with the mirror:

Arthur and Robin shopping in the supermarket. They really like bread:

Arthur and Robin play in the hospital room (which is really more of a maternity ward type of room..there's about 20 babies and cribs in it):

So close, Robin...so close...

Playing in the really big dollhouse in the turn of the century part of the museum:

Playing in the Alice in Wonderland exhibit:

Robin going down the log slide:

Maggie playing on the swan:

Maggie likes the musical lily pads (That's a duck egg she's holding):

Arthur and Maggie do the "itsy bitsy spider" next to the insect display:

Arthur climbs the rock wall:

Robin takes the Sleeping Beauty display literally:

Robin caught his "fish":

This should give a small glimpse of just how massive the new museum building is: