Discovering Eggs and What's Inside

We had our usual Easter Egg Hunt around the yard at mom's house on Sunday, which I look forward to every year. We actually managed to not lose any eggs this year! Carina and Dante looked super cute in their "nice clothes". Dante did a good job hunting for eggs. This year, he was also excited about what was inside...

Fast forward to Tuesday evening, no nap, been a handful all day, "Mommy, help Dante open eggs?" as he proceeds to try and eat all the chocolate that he sees in the basket. Even as we continually deny him the chocolate before dinner, he just keeps grabbing the eggs and trying to open all of them to find more! Note to self - hide the basket next time! Maybe he figured out what he needed to stay awake and not nap. Which he hasn't done for a few days now.

We have never really given Dante candy - we just don't have a lot of it around and never thought to give him any. Aunt Laurie was probably the first one to introduce him to "nem-anems" and the rest, well, is history. The kid LOVES them. So, we have occasionally indulge him in trail mix that has some m&m's, as well as raisins and peanuts ("see, it's not so bad for him, with the nuts and all...right?!"). But, to find eggs with some m&m's in them? Holy crap, I thought his head was going to explode!



Tonight, Dante read the Elmo potty book to me. He is so cute how he memorizes the books but certain phrases are fuzzy to him, so he just makes something up. We're not having much luck with the potty thing. He just doesn't want to sit there. He thinks he's missing out on something else. Even if we are in there with him alone. He had been doing OK and trying sometimes, but the more active Carina gets, the more Dante regresses to get attention. He has taken to making up nonsense sounds just to sound like her. It's very frustrating, because at the same time, he has started to talk in full sentences and has figured out his pronouns for I, me and you pretty well. I can't believe he is going to be three next month!

We need to get Dante into a speech and language evaluation, and then back for another hearing test soon (the Cisplatin chemo has the added side effect of significant hearing loss - Bonus!). I have noticed recently that when Dante is pronouncing certain things or reading and concentrating more that he seems to strain or have trouble with his mouth making the sounds. Hard to describe really, and only a parent would notice, so I'm wondering if it's just developmental, or related to the hearing loss.

Carina had her 9 month appointment last week. (She turns 9 months old tomorrow!) She's growing well, although much smaller than Dante was. She is around 25-50th percentiles in growth, whereas Dante was always 95th or more. She got her shots and the girl didn't even flinch! She was almost like, "Is that all you got?" Everything looks good. Dr. Patranella was telling me I could start feeding her more solids and I told her that we already were because Carina has been basically demanding to eat what we're eating. Today, she ate an entire waffle! She is crawling so fast lately, that she might not actually walk soon, like we thought, because she's figured out she can get there much faster by crawling. She is cruising around the coffee table and such, very proficiently now and nothing is out of reach. When we child-proofed the house for Dante, we didn't actually do much. He was one of those kids where you said, "No" and he left it alone. As long as you were playing with him, he didn't care to get into anything. Carina's not buyin' into that. "Are you kidding?! Look at all this stuff! I gotta get into that! and that! oooh, and that! hey, what'ya got in yer hand there?- lemme see it...."