Picture Perfect

Eli captured this photo of Jed right after he woke up. Love it!

Jed's Evil Eye

I think Eli taught him this one!

Exercise

We've found out a good way to get ALL the boys' energy out, especially on a rainy day.

B Boxing

Here's a silly video of Jed trying to copy John's b boxing. Just a typical meal time at our hosue.

Chicken Bears!

We've been cheering on the men's Baylor basketball in the NCAA tournament the past few weeks, so I've taught the boys how to cheer for our team. Jed says "ba-beh" for Baylor Bears, and they both know how to raise their paws and yell Sic 'Em Bears! We were trying to get this on video the other day, and we realized that Eli was saying "Chicken Bears"!

Our budding Picasso and his apprentice

Eli is now drawing recognizable pictures! It's amazing to see how Eli's drawings have evolved into actual people and animals with more and more details. It just happened literally overnight. One day it was scribbles, the next it was stick figures. He is also learning to write letters and numbers as well, which is fun to see. I like helping him learn to write, too.

Jed has also developed an interest in coloring and producing art. I think some of it is just because his big brother is drawing all the time now, but it's also because he enjoys scribbling and making marks on paper...or all over stuff for that matter! Jed doesn't get the concept of only coloring on paper. We've found scribbles all over the place lately...on walls, cabinets, cars, toys, etc. We've had to stop letting him carry the crayons around the house for that reason.

Eli is excited and proud of his pictures and loves to show each one to us along with an explanation of what he drew. It's funny when Jed comes to us with his scribbled paper with the same excitement, trying to copy what Eli just said.
Eli keeps producing several pictures and colorings each day now. What do I do with all of his beautiful artwork? I can't just throw it away. We've been putting some of them in envelopes and sending them to friends and family, so be on the lookout!

Unfortunately, you can't see some of these pictures well. Sorry about the poor quality. It's hard to take pictures of pictures.
I've included some of the chalk drawings in the driveway, too.

Can you see the man in the first picture Eli is holding up? He said he drew a man with a big nose, a smile, a chin, and two feet. Looks like Picasso to me!

Family Hike

Last weekend we had beautiful weather, so we decided to take advantage by going on a family hike. The other side of the story is that Jed was sick and would not sleep during naptime, so we thought we could kill two birds with one stone by getting out and enjoying the weather while Jed slept in the backpack carrier. Well, one out of two isn't bad, right? Jed didn't sleep, but we had fun anyway.
We definitely need to take advantage of the Barton Creek Greenbelt more often! It's only 5 minutes from our house. It was a perfect hike for Eli and beautiful! I loved watching how happy Eli was collecting rocks and leaves and throwing rocks in the water. All boy! The fact that we can drive 5 short minutes to go on a hike in the greenbelt is yet another reason I love Austin!

Snow on 2-23-10!

I can't believe this is the second post I'm doing about snow this year. Last time, you could barely see the flakes of snow, but this time, there was accumulation and big giant flakes! (You can see the flakes coming down in the video.) It even lasted for several hours. The boys and I made a real Texas snowman...a tiny little guy full of leaves and twigs...but a snowman nonetheless!

Eli and Mia eating the snow

Twisty, Dancey Britches

I just has to get a video of Jed's twisty britches run:


The kid show, "Yo Gabba Gabba" was a favorite of Eli's and now is a favorite of Jed's. He loves dancing to it when he watches. In the first video, he's actually following the directions in the song to march in a circle and freeze, which I didn't know he knew!

Silliness

Do you remember that Saturday Night Live skit with Eddie Murphy as James Brown singing about a hot tub? Well, the song goes, "It's too hot in da hot tub! Gonna make me sweat-ah!" John included this song in one of his bedtime stories for Eli recently, and Eli thought it was hillarious. (It might be a "you had to be there" moment.) He does a pretty good rendition...


Here's one of Jed cracking himself up:

They Play

Eli and Jed have been playing together more lately. It's fun to watch and nice that they can entertain each other, but with that comes the hitting, crying, not sharing, etc. That's to be expected though, right? The other day they played together in the back room for 30 minutes straight...quietly, with no one getting hurt and the room not getting torn up! I was so excited that this is in our future! I've included some videos of the boys playing...

Chapter Books

Eli is really into listening to chapter books lately! I didn't think this would come until he got a little older, but I'm so glad he likes it. He's a great listener and is able to ask and answer questions about the story as we read. So far, we've read some classics like "Charlotte's Web" and "Stuart Little". We've also read a few others, including "Stories of Oz", which is pretty different than the movie. Soon he'll be reading them by himself!

Recent Photos

Sorry I haven't been keeping up the blog lately. I have some catching up to do!


















Recent pics taken by Eli. I didn't know about most of them until I saw them on the camera!