New gear!

We received a couple more awesome hand-me-downs from Rebecca's sister Emily over the weekend. One of them is a Johnny Jump Up, this contraption that hangs on a door frame with Eli suspended so that he can stand on his feet and jump around. The other was an exersaucer, which looks sort of like a walker that I grew up with. I guess walkers were deemed dangerous at some point so they built this thing that helps them learn to stand and balance themselves. He loves it so far. He's not quite big enough for the Jumper yet.

Revenge!

The Heels beat dook for the ACC Championship on Saturday! Yay! Eli was very happy and celebrated by doing an impression of his favorite player, Tyler Hansbrough. I think he's got it dead on.

Slip of the tongue

Our little guy is showing more and more personality each day. In the last week, he seems to have figured out that he has a tongue. All week long he's been sticking his tongue out at us, no matter what he's doing. Taking a bath? Tongue out. Pooping? Tongue out. Laying in the crib? Tongue out. At least he's consistent.

Eli has another doctor appointment coming up on Good Friday. It will be nice to have a little checkup and find out how much he weighs now. The car seat has never been light with him in it but these days it's getting pretty unwieldy. On a side note, we can hold him on our hip now because he is balancing himself better as well as helping to hold on.

Get up, Stand up, Stand up for your rights

Eli has become a little whirling dervish. Now that he has sort of figured out how to roll over diaper changes have become a little more challenging. He has also started to grab things in front of him and really hold on. That means putting sleeves on him is harder because he keeps clutching the inside of the shirt.

His best new trick is that when he is laying on his back we can hold his hands and when we start to pull forward he will pull himself to a standing position. He loves being upright and is always pushing off with his feet. When he pulls himself all the way up it is usually accompanied by a big open-mouthed smile, like he knows he really accomplished something. It's quite funny.

The end of an era.

We have hit a new stage in Eli's life journey, the Post-Swaddler era. He was always sort of a Houdini with that thing anyway, finding new an amazing escapes all along. Now that he can roll over the swaddler doesn't seem like a good idea anymore. Last night was his first night in the sleepsack and he handled it pretty well for the most part. All of these little mini-graduations seem sad somehow. Maybe it's because every single parent who has ever met Eli proceeded to turn to us and and say "They grow up fast, enjoy it!" and we are trying not to take anything for granted. Whatever the reason, we have learned a valuable lesson in our first 3 months: whatever you get used to always changes and there's always something new right around the corner. Be ready to adapt.

Turnabout is fair play

Yesterday's events were both good news and bad news for Eli. We'll start with the good news. After days of being tantalizingly close, Eli finally turned over on his own. Yay! The bad news is that when he turned over, he didn't realize that he was forcing tummy time on himself. He is not the biggest fan of tummy time and quickly got upset to let us know it.

On another cool note, I also put the pacifier in his hand last night and he held on to it for a while before almost succeeding in putting it in his mouth! He was really just trying to eat his hand but if I had turned the pacifier around the other way I think he would have found it. We have also been putting his hands on the bottle when we feed him to get him used to holding it (our daycare lady will be very happy when he gets to that point).

Eli watches violent television

Last week Rebecca and I were watching Lost (great show, by the way) and hanging out with Eli. We are holding off on him watching TV for a while as we would rather him get interested in the tangible things right in front of him. He's got years and years to be a couch potato but Rebecca and I have vowed not to mess him up this early. We usually have him facing us instead of the TV and we end up watching him and playing while the show is on. During a particularly intense sequence, we got sucked into the show and Eli craned his neck around just in time to get to see Sayid blow someone away onscreen. So, there it is. The end of the innocence*. It's over. We are horrible parents. Can't we just go back to the way it was?

*denotes heavily dripping sarcasm, in case you missed it the first time. :)

For the record, I talked with Eli about what he saw and asked him to let me know he was ok by chewing on his hands. He did so with gusto.