Playtime with Gracie

These pictures pretty much tell the story. I've mentioned how Eli likes to headbutt the cats... well here's the proof. They also confirm that, yes, Gracie is the most tolerant cat on the planet.

Night Owls

All three of us packed into the car on Friday to head to Greensboro for a cousin's wedding. We went to a hotel where they had the after rehearsal party. There was a lot of floor for Eli to crawl around on and he got to see tons of people. I left with him around 8 to go back to Rebecca's sister's house and Rebecca stayed to hang out. Eli ended up going to sleep an hour later than normal...not too bad, right? Well, imagine our dismay when he woke up at 4 in the morning and would not go back to sleep. Since we didn't want to wake up the whole household, including an almost two-year old in the next room, we opted to get in the car and cruise around. We didn't have to go far before we saw a 24 hour IHOP so we decided to get breakfast to kill some time. At the restaurant, Eli was the life of the place, smiling and flirting with everyone around him. What a little stinker. That 4 am start was the earliest in probably the last 5 months. Brutal. It does look like he's got a couple more teeth coming in so maybe that played a part.

Aaaack! He's a little boy!

Look at that kid! Holy crap. He's no longer this helpless little infant who just wakes up long enough to eat. Well, maybe we still have to feed him and change his diapers for him but he's got opinions. He wants his bojangles on gameday just like dad. He likes Brown Bear much better than Panda Bear. He's got places to be and things to try and climb on. The cats are to be headbutted at all costs.

He's pointing at things now but he does it with two fingers, like a stewardess. Maybe it's emphatic pointing, like he's pointing twice as hard. It really looks like he's flashing a 'peace' sign at everyone, which is pretty cool. We can say, "Eli, where's the fan?" and he will look up and point at the ceiling fan. Neat.

We've seen him take 12 steps now without keeling over. It's really crazy...you can see him getting better at it every day. He spends a lot of time standing up now so it won't be long before he's running around at full speed. Christmas-time should be interesting.

One small step for man...

A while back I posted that Eli took a couple falling steps toward me while Rebecca was out of town. Since then this little boy only wants to be on his feet. He's cruising furniture like a pro, standing on his own and falling less and less. This morning he stood up in the middle of the room with nothing to hold on to and took three little steps before sitting himself back down. It certainly won't be long before he turns into a little baby Carl Lewis, running and jumping all over the place. He was able to walk about 4 feet this morning with me holding on to only one of his hands (not that it looked very coordinated) and he's becoming fairly adept at regaining his balance before he totally loses it and bails out.

I almost got him a Hurricanes jersey at the hockey game last night until I saw that they cost 35 dollars. 35?! If I'm spending that much, I'm going to be the one getting a jersey. I'll have to look online because Eli in a hockey jersey means some really cute pictures.

How do you babyproof against pole dancing?

I didn't think we would have to worry about this kind of thing until at least high school. This past weekend down at Pamlico, Eli discovered a love for pole dancing. No one wants this for their child but he seems to truly love it so we will accept him for who he is and love him just the same. I must say, he is a natural and has decent moves.

Eli is now ten months old! He is celebrating by getting another tooth to help him bite off pieces of cantaloupe. A lot has changed in the last few months but two things remain steadfast, his undying love for cheerios and his yellow hammer. This week he's become a fan of the Kinks, particularly The Village Green Preservation Society. In the 'not cool' column, he's not a big fan of the noisy farm book. I think those animal noises weird him out a little bit. Happy 10 months, little guy!

Another trip to the river

We will be heading down to the river house again this weekend to take advantage of the awesome little window of weather before it starts to get cold. The pier got a little messed up during the big storm recently and needs some work. Eli will also get to hang out with his cousin, who is almost a year older and can teach him some toddler tricks. He is getting more and more comfortable on his feet and you can tell he really wants to be walking around. He tries to spend more time on his feet than crawling and he even stood beside me without holding on to anything for the duration of a book reading the other day. It was really cute just having him stand there beside me and trying to flip pages in the book, transfixed by the Grover pop-ups on each page.

Rebecca refers to Eli as a "risk-taker" which frankly scares me when he's able to walk and run around on his own. Is there such thing as a baby leash? A gentle leader for toddlers? I guess we better stock up on band-aids because we sure will need them. I see lots of boo-boos in our future.

National Lampoon's River Vacation

Labor Day Weekend. Rebecca and Eli made the trek down to Pamlico for some fun in the sun while I had the house to myself for the weekend (I had band practice and a show on Sunday). Over the weekend I wondered to myself if Rebecca thinks of Labor Day any differently now because of the name. For me, Labor Day was November 16th of last year.

As you can see from the pictures, there was plenty of sun and water to play in. I think Rebecca actually got to relax a little since some of the family was down there to help with Eli. My parents even went down for an afternoon because it's not a very long drive for them at all. They got to have to quality Eli time and were fortunate enough to see a new trick... he can pull up on his little fisher price mower toy and take a few steps pushing it across the room. It's quite funny to watch because his body does the walking in installments right now. He leans his upper body over and realizes that his legs aren't coming with him so he's forced to move them forward.

Eli is becoming a little crawling ninja. He's pretty stealthy about it and he's even caught the pets a couple of times, a mighty feat indeed. I did some babyproofing over the weekend that had been overdue, like the foam corners on the table and latches for the floor level cabinets. He hasn't really shown an interest in them yet but you know that's coming.