I love you, Mommy.

Ahh, the holidays.  Christmas trees, green and red, family, gifts, and great food.  Oh yeah, let's not forget communicable disease.  Groups of little kids become amazing germ distributors, so if you have a toddler, he or she WILL get sick.  No two ways about it.  Our little guy is sick right now.  It's made all the more pitiful by the fact that he can verbalize how he is feeling now.  When you hear Eli, who is 100 miles an hour all the time, say something like, "Daddy, I'm really tired." at 4pm you know something is amiss.  It's not all negative though...  He does become a little more snuggly and last night he whispered in Rebecca's ear, totally unsolicited, "I love you, Mommy."  It was so incredibly sweet that I can't believe she didn't start crying uncontrollably right then and there.  Get well soon, Eli!  We need you full force for the holidays.

Birthdays and Holidays

Eli turned 2 in mid-November.  I can't believe how much he's grown physically and mentally this year.  It's hard to imagine a bigger jump in both departments at any other point in his life.  We feel so incredibly fortunate to have such an awesome little guy in our lives, even though he can throw an epic tantrum occasionally.  :)  Rebecca made him an awesome cake, truly a work of art.  Eli loves construction equipment so he was psyched to see an excavator cake on his birthday.  We had quite a few people over at our house for his party and there were lots of kids running around and playing.  It got off to a bit of a rocky start with a good number of people arriving before he woke up from his nap.  He came out of his room to a bunch of strangers in the house and went into immediate meltdown mode.  After a short stint outside he came back in and all was well.

Christmas is rapidly approaching and even though this is Eli's second Christmas it is the first one where he will be actively participating.  He doesn't really understand Santa Claus but he still thinks he's cool.  He helped decorate the tree this year and is a big fan of Christmas lights.  We'll be in the car and he will ask us to listen to Christmas music.  This year has been really interesting because we have realized that we need to start building our own Christmas traditions for Eli.  Experiencing Christmas through your child makes it so much easier to get into the holiday spirit.  It's going to be a lot of fun watching him tear through presents and get excited about being with family this year.  

I promise we didn't teach him to sing it this way.

For some reason when Eli sings the Hokey Pokey, it comes out "Do the Hokey Pokey, turn your ass around..." I swear we didn't teach it like that but we sure had to get it on film. :)

Bob The Builder

I have been horrible about updating the blog lately.  Life really took over for a while there.  In the meantime, Eli had his second Halloween.  Originally, he was going to be R2D2.  The first time we put the costume on him he seemed ok with it.  The second time (the day before Halloween) was not so smooth.  Rebecca brought him and costume by my work so he could meet everyone.  She tried to dress him in the parking lot and not only was he not having any part of it, he was screaming "Help!" at the top of his lungs.  Time for plan B.  As you can tell from the photo above, plan B was successful.  He went as Bob the Builder from the kid cartoon of the same name.  He was psyched about the tool belt from the get-go and he even won second prize in the little neighborhood costume contest!  Kudos to Rebecca for the idea.

Last year I carved a Frankenstein pumpkin in honor of his first Halloween.  This year I did two because it's easy and fun.  One is Chewbacca and the other is Ash from The Evil Dead.  I think this will become a tradition.  Halloween might be my favorite holiday because it is weird, fun, not too cold, and there are no crazy obligations that go along with it.  It's not about anybody or anything, really.  It's just an excuse to dress up and eat candy.  I can get behind that.  So I'll do the pumpkins and Rebecca has taken on making his birthday cake each year.  Last year she made a train cake that was awesome.  This year's will be even better and made cooler by the fact that he is going to understand what it is.  We are wondering whether it will upset him when we cut it apart.  Who knows? 

Speaking of Eli's birthday, in one week he will be 2 years old!  It's been a great but tiring 2 years.  We were originally planning on doing a small party for him at a park somewhere but Rebecca has since changed it to our place.  She has taken to planning events at our home as a way of forcing work or cleaning to get done on the house.  :)  The irony is that kids are going to come over and undo a week's worth of cleaning in about 10 seconds.  Hopefully the weather will be good and we can play outside.  I can't believe he is going to be 2!  Happy Birthday Eli!!!

      

Eli and his favorite book

Can you tell Eli likes this book? :)

22 months old!

The last couple of months have been very busy around our household.  The addition we did on the house is pretty much done or, at the very least, done enough for us to move into it.  It give our little boy another 400-500 square feet to run in.  He loves it and so do we.  Much needed space.

I have said before on this blog that Eli has a fearlessness that is both endearing and scary.  Over Labor Day Weekend we got to see a new level when our 21 month old was ecstatically jumping off the pier into the Pamlico river.  Bear in mind he had a life vest on and was jumping into the waiting arms of mommy, Uncle Mike, or Aunt Em.  Regardless, if his cousin could do it, he should be able to as well (his cousin is a year older).  I swear this kid will be skydiving by the time he's 10.  I don't know where the risk-taker gene came from.  I'm still scouring the family tree for that.

My favorite new thing that Eli does is jamming.  He will go pick up his little Elmo guitar and then point to me and say, "Daddy, guitar!"  This means I have to go get my guitar too.  Then Eli says, "Daddy, jam!"  That's my cue to start rocking.  Eli dances around with his guitar too and he's even starting to add some vocals in there.  He wrote his first song a few days ago, an ode to Papi Bill (not me, another family member).  When Eli says it, it sounds like Paca Bell.  The lyrics, if I remember correctly, are, "Paca Bell, Pacaa Beeeell, Paca Bell, Paca Beeeeeell."  You get the point.

Only a couple more months until we officially have a 2 year old!  Whoa.

Almost!

Lots to report from Eli-land... Eli is now joining us at the table for family dinners! He will still use the high chair sometimes but now he gets to sit in his booster seat at the table and eat with us. He seems to enjoy it quite a bit and tends to eat well when he does. We have also figured out a new way to get him to eat more vegetables, the ready-set-go! method. Both of us get vegetables in our hands and then it's ready, set, go, we eat them! Pretty funny. When he is done eating he starts sliding his plate and cup as far away from him as he can. Very subtle, indeed.

We have also started sitting Eli on the potty to get the potty training ball rolling. He understands what it is all about and tries very hard. The other day he sat there and was obviously trying to do something. Then he looked up at us and said, "Almost!" Rebecca and I fell about the place laughing. You just never know what you're going to get from him.

Eli's new favorite book is 'The Big Book Of Things That Go." The boy loves that book like you wouldn't believe. He recognizes tons of stuff in it and tries to pronounce a lot of it. Yes, he mangles 'excavator' but you know where he's going with it. We don't expect him to really bust out with 'articulated fire truck' anytime soon but he'll point to it when we ask him where it is. He also loves Thomas the Tank Engine. I can't tell you how many times in a day we hear "Thomas Too Too Tain" around the house. Sometimes it is the first thing he says to me in the morning. This morning the first thing he said was backhoe. One thing is clear, it's time for another Big Book of Things that do something else.