Alex 10 Months, Alana 27 Months

Alex is 10 months old.  He is one determined boy.  He can pull himself up and walk along while holding things.  He loves doors.  Any door he can find, he will sit there for hours opening and closing it.  This includes cabinet doors.  So all of our kitchen cabinets are always open.  He has also been crawling for the last month, and he is quick!  He likes to eat food off the floor.  We give it to him in a bowl, he dumps it out and eats off the floor.  Alex loves to play with the markers and pretend to draw on the easel.

Alana is finally coming out of her shell at school.  We were a little worried for a while, because she wasn’t as happy in her new classroom.  I think she is making friends and adjusting a little now.  She still plays by herself, and refuses to share anything.  we are trying to teach her to share with Alex.  Sometimes she shares, but mostly not.  She has recently started screaming at the top of her lungs when she doesn’t get her way.  I hope this phase passes.  Her little brother is starting to take after her, and Alex can really scream.  Alana has been going through Disney movies lately.  She went from Yo Gabba Gabba to Bubble Guppies, then Spiderman, Incredibles, Cars, Tangled, and now her favorite every day movie is Up.

So far, it seems that Alex really looks up to his sister.  He follows her around, and even if he hears her voice in the other room, he drops what he is doing and crawls towards her.  It’s really cute.  Alana doesn’t want anything to do with Alex.  But if he’s not around, she talks about him and asks for him.  But she won’t give him hugs, and won’t let him touch any of her stuff.  Also, if anything goes wrong, she blames him.  Like the other day, when she was playing with something and it broke.  Alex was way across the room, and she blamed him.

Alana turns 2

Alana is now 2 years old.  We had a very fun party for her at her favorite place - Bounce-a-Rama.  She had so much fun bouncing and sliding with all of her friends.

Lately, she has been going to a "superhero" phase.  For a while, her most favorite movie and hero was Shrek.  She just couldn't get enough of Shrek and made us watch Shrek 1, 2, and 3 a million times.  We got her a rocking horse and she named it Donkey.

Right now though, her main man is Spiderman.  She loves Spiderman.  She pretends like she is falling and calls Spiderman for help. 

She is pretty much talking now.  There are still some phrases we don't understand, but we can understand about 75% of what she is saying.

She is going through her "I don't like Addy" phase also.  She just gets so mad when he touches her stuff.  Sometimes, when she is mad at him, she goes over and pushes him over and makes him fall.  But then there are times that she is really sweet to him like sharing cheerios and helping him with drinks.

Alex is 9 months now.  He is full on crawling.  He has been crawling for about 2 weeks.  He is also starting to walk on his walker.  He loves pushing it around but we still have to supervise him.  I think walking is just right around the corner for him!  He just had is 9 month check up and is 29.5 inches tall - 70th Percentile for height and weight.

Alex's Baptism & Maui

I spent the last few months preparing for Alex's Baptism, which occurred on Saturday, May 12, 2012 and our family trip to Maui departing on Wednesday May 15, 2012.

It took a very long time for us to finally get the house in order for the Baptism party.  Alex behaved a lot better than we expected at church.  He did not scream or cry.  In fact, he fell asleep in Jeff's arms during the whole mass except for when Father Jerry poured the holy water on his forehead and woke him up.  But shortly after fell asleep.   After he was baptized, Father carried him to the front of the church and held him for a long time. 

The after party was a huge success thanks to Jeff's mom, who really helped us put it together.  Every body was happy with the catering from Bruno's BBQ.

We spent the rest of the weekend packing, and a couple of days later we were on our way to Maui!  The whole trip to Maui and the vacation itself was one big adventure.  It started off with Alex had an ear infection the day before our departure.  He did fine on the airplane and slept most of the way there.  When we landed, he was happy as can be and we even took him and Alana out to the kiddie pool at the Fairmont Kea Lani.  They had so much fun!  Alex loved splashing in the water and Alana was having fun pouring water in cups.  But she refused to get her hair wet, or anything wet if she could help it.  She enjoyed wading in the water, and even went into the big pool with me a couple of times.

Our 2nd day in Maui, Alex woke up with a bad fever.  It went up to 101 and did not go down past 99 even with Motrin.  We were so worried about him, and he was not his happy self.  He ended up being sick for 3 days with fever.  We almost took him to the doctor to get checked out, but his fever finally broke on the 4th day.  Thank you Tylenol!  So with Alex sick, we didn't venture too far away from the hotel.  The farthest we went was to Lahaina, about 2o miles away from Wailea.  Maui was so beautiful, and I think we would go there again when the kids are older.

I have to mention Russ & Grace's wedding we attended on Saturday.  The wedding was at the Makena Beach House, a private house that is rented out for wedding.  The wedding was in the backyard of the house, which included a private beach with sea turtles swimming in the ocean.  It was the best wedding that I have ever been to, and was just so beautiful.  They timed it perfectly so that we would have the reception on the beach as the sun was setting.  It was simply amazing.  

The adventure continues... On the last day, Jeff decided to go paddle boarding and got into an accident with his board.  Needless to say, the board won and he ended up with 9 stitches on his head.  Lesson learned: check urgent care and insurance before you travel.  None of the urgent cares in Wailea accepted Healthnet, and the one we ended up going to didn't accept any insurance at all.

On our last night in Maui, we decided to go to a really nice restaurant in the Grand Wailea called the Humuhumunukunukuapua'a.  Try to say that 10 times fast =p.  The dinner was amazing and we even got to see the sunset as we dined.  It was beautiful.. until Alana got sick all over the dinner table.  Luckily, it was at the very end of dinner and we had already had our dessert and were getting ready to leave.  We were so worried she would be sick on the plane the next day, but she ended up being fine on the plane.  She got sick again a couple of days after we got home though.