Christmas!

Christmas. A whirlwind of flying paper, sugar cookies, breakfast casserole and 24 hours of A Christmas Story. Always fun but always draining. This Christmas was quite a bit different than last year's. Last year Eli was barely over a month old, incapable of moving or doing much of anything. He slept through most of it. This year he was running around and getting into everything. You can see from one of the photos that he helped open his own gifts this year but tearing the paper seemed to be a little more important than what was actually under it. His love of all things cleaning equipment has been well-documented and he was given a small broom by each side of the family. This, of course, made Eli wildly happy.

We spent the first two days at Rebecca's family's house and the next two days at my parents' place. Over the course of that time Eli accumulated a lot of plastic things with Elmo on them, including this totally sweet guitar that plays a Hendrix-esque version of the Sesame Street theme song. There's also a button to press so that Elmo talks to you. It alternates between difference phrases but for some reason Eli finds it hilarious every time Elmo says, "You're rocking now!"

The top picture deserves an explanation. I'm kicking myself because I think I left the video camera at my parents' house. This is Eli is Risky Business mode. All we are missing is the sunglasses. He was running around with this broom dancing and carrying on and I've got it on video. My plan is to actually overdub some Bob Seger on it and post it at some point soon. Classic stuff.