Party, raisins, and restaurant manners

Shawn was able to get himself dressed before Lilly and I were, so he was able to have screen time while I got ready. He thought that was a pretty cool perk. I wonder if it will stick...
Abby's 5th birthday party was this afternoon at Pump It Up in Schaumburg, an indoor bounce house center. Yesterday and this morning, Shawn was concerned and commented that he didn't want her to be 5. I didn't an explanation out of him, but I think he wants them to always be the same age & doesn't like the idea of her not being 4 with him anymore. But, that's just a guess.
Shawn had a great time though the inflatable contraptions make me more than a bit nervous. There were a handful of minor collisions among the kiddy party-ers, but no injuries that'll be visible tomorrow. (Phew!) Shawn jumped, climbed, slid... and most importantly, burned energy. Perhaps he should've saved a little for the rest of the day, but the setting sun shining in his eyes on the way home just knocked him out.
While he napped, Raj had some IDA business to take care of and Lilly and I were anxious to eat. (A late lunch of cake & ice cream, while tasty, wasn't very filling!) I love that Lilly can eat table food without needing it to be liquified first. I still test her/my limits with bite sizes & textures, but I love the food experimentation stage. Anyway, I started her with raisins that I cut... not much larger than a few molecules - they ARE choking hazards! But she handled them with grace and loved them, so I conceded to slightly larger slivers.
Before long, I was giving her carefully selected WHOLE raisins (under a very cautious eye). I've been trying to use the sign language signs for 'more' and 'all done' any time we eat.  Lilly seems to understand what 'all done' means because when I see her turn away from food and I say/make the sign, she gets reeeeally excited. It's still hard to tell if she tries to sign it herself because her arms move so much when she's excited. (If she likes something a lot, her arms flail and her fingers wiggle and she clearly is NOT done!)
Today, she seemed to understand 'more.' I think she tried to sign it to me by clapping. But, clapping is also a new skill that's about a week or two old, so she might have just been excited about the sweet raisins and clapping. Hard to tell.

Monkey Toes

I hadn't noticed her nice pincer grasp until today! (I always mispronounce it as 'pincher grasp.') I'm sure the sticky raisins helped, but there was definitely a difference in her success when she used her index finger & thumb vs a raisin sticking to the palm of her hand. She'd get frustrated when they'd stick to her hand and she'd give up on them faster when they were harder to coordinate to her mouth. I love watching her figure these things out.

Shawn woke up refreshed and we played around until Raj got home.

When Raj came home, we went out to La Hacienda for dinner. (I was in the mood for Mexican food.) We've had to have a few talks with Shawn regarding appropriate restaurant behavior lately (ie not laying down in the booth, etc.). After our last meal out, I mentioned how people used to stop by our table to compliment how nicely he behaved - and it happened often! Yet, nothing like that has happened for a while. He was able to identify that his behavior probably hasn't been all that remarkable when we've gone out lately. I made sure to point out that we don't expect compliments every time we go out - sometimes people might not be able to stop or might just think it to themselves. Plus, people don't generally give compliments for things that are expected. Daddy and I don't get compliments on our behavior because it's just expected that we know how to act. If we weren't acting like we should, somebody, like the manager, might come over to talk to us instead! I think our talk made an impact because I briefly mentioned it tonight when he started to sway and he quickly straightened up. No one stopped by our table with compliments, but the waiter did bring out fried plantains for 3, rather than just 2 for us to share. (We told Shawn he must have earned his own.) Plus, since it didn't take us an eternity to get through dinner, we even had time to watch Toy Story 2 before bed. Another perk Shawn thought was pretty cool.