Happy 3rd birthday Enzo! – Pellegrini Page

Today our big boy turns 3! Although today is his actual birthday, we held his birthday party yesterday afternoon at Chuck E. Cheese in Lynnwood. It was a small gathering consisting of us, the Palmer’s, and the O’Hair’s. Definitely the smallest birthday party we’ve hosted, but that was of no concern to Enzo. As one could imagine, Chuck E. Cheese is absolutely packed on a Saturday afternoon, so while our group was small, there was no shortage of excitement or activity.

We spent a while playing games, then eventually migrated over to the table for food, photos with Chuck, cake, and presents. It was fun and easy, and everyone had a good time. After the party we came home and had a video chat with Nana so she could see him open her presents.

The girls have definitely noticed that we were taking it easy this year because they keep saying stuff like “Who’s coming over today? When will they be here?” When we say no one is coming over today, they’re like “What!? You mean we’re not having a bunch of people over to our house? What’s going on?”

This morning we woke up and came downstairs to open a few gifts, play with new toys, and have breakfast together. After that we had a video chat with Grandma and Grandpa Martin. As usual, Enzo received some really cool gifts this year. Some of the highlights include a light up race car track, a big dump truck, cement mixer, various books, a ukulele, remote control monster truck, and a personalized construction outfit.

We could tell that he wasn’t quite feeling 100% this morning, but Enzo insisted on coming to hockey with Ava and me this morning. This is his third week in a row joining us (by choice), so it seems like some level of interest is brewing. Although there is no doubt that currently his favorite part about going to hockey is watching the Zamboni clean the ice. Normally he loves running all over the place, but today he insisted on me holding him the entire time Ava was on the ice. At one point I made the mistake of sitting down, but he quickly corrected me, saying that I needed to stand up while holding him.

Enzo is also still doing great with his potty training. It’s actually probably not fair to use the term “potty training” anymore because he’s not training at all, he’s just using the bathroom like anyone else. It’s been over two weeks now and we’ve only had 2 or 3 accidents that whole time. So, in other words, birthday presents were reciprocal this year. After all, diapers have been a part of our daily lives for the past 6 years and change, but that’s over now. Re-gifting our remaining diapers felt pretty sweet.

Elise has completely recovered from her cold a couple weeks ago, and has been keeping busy with school and dance. She is continuing to learn letters, numbers, and words, and her ability to hold a pencil has improved noticeably since my last post. My Mom got her and Ava some great workbooks to help facilitate all this learning, and both girls are loving them.

Elise continues to love dance, and I’m already excited for her recital in June. I feel bad that I have only been to one of her dance classes, but she goes on Wednesday’s at 10:00 am, so there’s nothing I can do. I keep asking her to show me things she has learned in class and she’s starting to do it more and more. She is also showing more and more interest in music, so it’s probably only a matter of time before she starts getting into some form of lessons.

Ava is continuing to do great with her reading and writing. She now has 23 of the 45 sight words up on the wall (meaning she knows them). Getting number 23 today was exciting because it means we have crossed the halfway point. We started working on these sight words about 3 weeks ago, with a modest goal of knowing all of them by the end of the school year. Based on her current progress I think we’re going to have no problems meeting our initial goal, so it might be time to start shooting a little higher. Regardless, we are so proud of her and excited to see all the progress she continues to make. The sweetest part about it is that her number 1 goal with learning to read is to be able to read a book to her brother and sister.

Ava is also continuing to have so much fun playing hockey. The improvement she continues to make is pretty amazing. Just this morning I was watching her doing skating drills where she was skating backwards, and jumping! So she’s doing a two-foot hop while skating backwards. Trust me when I say that’s really hard to do, especially on hockey skates. She has no fear though. She loves to warm up by going on the ice (first one out every time), grabbing a puck, and skating laps around the rink while stick handling the puck. Again, not easy, and not common for most of the girls out there, but she is already showing an impressive level of determination and skill.

Guess that’s about it for now. As you can probably infer, everything is good and we’re all doing well. Wishing a very happy birthday to our big boy Enzo! Here’s some photos (and a video) from yesterday. My good friend Leon was taking pictures yesterday, so I look forward to sharing those once they are available.