Eli's World

I thought I'd share a few stories that will give you some insight into our exciting life with Eli.

Eli has been into his stuffed animals lately. He likes to pretend play with them, take care of them, talk to them, and take them places. My favorite thing about them is the names Eli chooses for them. He comes up with the best names! For example, he has a penguin named Dorothy, a cat named Miss Catiwump, and a sea turtle named Mosef, just to name a few. His dogs always get special treatment, but for some reason they are all named Puppy.

Eli also came up with names for the two huge lizards that we've seen several times running around in our front yard or on our driveway. I thought we only had one, which Eli named Buster. However, he informed us this morning that there are two lizards, Buster and Ketchup. Get it? Buster, kinda like mustard...which obviously goes with Ketchup. So there ya go, Buster and Ketchup, great names for lizards!

I found out yesterday where the name Mosef came from. As we were reading about Moses in Eli's children's bible, Eli says, hey that's my sea turtle's name! Oh, I get it...Moses/Mosef...close enough right? So maybe the names do have some meaning.

Which leads me to the next story. Once again we were reading in the children's bible. This time we were reading the story of baby Moses floating in the basket in the river. At the beginning of the story is says something like "now there were many people in Jacob's family. They were called...". John was reading this and paused not really expecting Eli to fill in the blank. Then Eli chimes in with 'Israelites'! We've never talked specifically about the Israelites, just read about them in the stories. Wow, I think that's pretty impressive!


And the final story has to do with bad luck. The other day Eli was playing in the playroom when we hear a loud crash. I walked in to find Eli in tears because his piggy bank broke. For some reason he thought it would be a good idea to throw his piggy bank across the room. As I was trying to calm him down and dry the tears, I told him we could look for another one at the store, not really expecting to find the exact same one. The next day we were in Target not even there to look for a piggy bank, when Eli spots some piggy banks just like his old one but in different colors. Eli picked out the orange one with black dots. We were excited about our find! When we got home, Eli got his piggy bank out of the van to bring inside. As I was unloading the rest of our things, I hear the same sound I heard in the playroom the day before. Eli tripped and fell while bringing his piggy bank inside, and it shattered! I couldn't believe it! It was sort of funny and sad at the same time. Eli was upset, of course. So the next day, we made another trip to Target for yet another piggy bank. They actually took back the broken one and let us get another one. I think it's because I told them what happened and they felt sorry for Eli. This time, Eli picked out the orange one with stripes because it looks like a tiger. Hopefully we'll have better luck with this one. So far, so good!

Jed's new skills

Jed has been crawling on his hands and knees for a couple weeks or so now. He still prefers to scoot on his tummy because he is faster and better at scooting. His crawling skills are getting better and better though. Here he is starting to crawl on his hands and knees then back to the commando crawl. He's fast!


Jed has learned to clap!


Jed does this "dance" when he's standing up. Pretty funny! You'll see him wave at the end of the video. His wave is usually just a hand up in the air, but recently it's been evolving into a more recognizable wave with hand opening and closing.

Our new ride

We are now the owners of a minivan! It's a 2007 van with 23k miles, dark gray outside, light gray inside with leather seats. I have said that I would never drive a minivan, but that was before I had kids! They're just so darn practical and convenient!
I'll miss our Ford Focus Wagon with the turtle top. It had so much character. But the repairs on that car were adding up, and we didn't want to pay to get them fixed when the car was on it's last leg anyway. John said the car was on hospice. The past few weeks the a/c hasn't been working well and with this heat, that is definitely motivation to get a new car! So, we searched and searched online for different kinds and decided on the minivan. We are very happy with it!
Eli loves it as well. He does miss our other car, though. His face lit up when I told him we were going to get the van we just test drove. However, he stopped in the middle of building with the blocks (we were playing in the play area at the dealership) and asked me if we could pray for our car. So we said a little prayer about how thankful we were for our car and how it kept us safe and how we'd miss it. So sweet. We traded the Focus in by the way. I think the van will be well-loved, too!

Art

Eli's interest in art has grown lately. I don't know what sparked that interest, but it's been great! He now loves coloring in his coloring books that he's had for a year or so and he begs me to paint or play with play-doh daily. I love it! The fact that he enjoys coloring is nice for me, too, because he actually stays in one spot and is quiet for several minutes! One down side of all this is that for some reason, Eli thought it would be fun to color on the walls in the playroom and his bedroom. I thought we escaped the coloring on the walls stage with Eli, but I guess he waited until he knew better to do that. He got his crayons taken away for a week after that. We'll see if he does it again! Here's a picture of some of his paintings:

Crazy Boys

I haven't blogged much lately...just haven't had the time or the impetus (John just taught me that word, I've never heard it before. I looked it up on dictionary.com and it seems to fit). I love my husband! : ) Anyway, it's not like I don't have things to blog about, it's just that these boys are active so if I don't keep up with the blogging, it gets overwhelming! So here are some pictures to give you a little glimpse into the craziness that goes on around here.















Jed found a marker and thought it tasted good!









Eli "cleaned" the mirror with his toothbrush and toothpaste















Where's Jed?

Movin' Up in the World

Jed is pulling up! He started pulling up last week, and this week, he's a pro! The next level of baby-proofing has begun. He's already pushing the buttons on the electronics and computer, etc. All the memories of Eli doing the exact same thing are coming back. It's a fun, but tiring stage! He's very mobile and has been for quite some time, and he's not even crawling on his hands and knees yet!


















At Jed's 9 month appointment this week, he actually went down in percentiles on the growth chart. The doctor said it was probably because he's so active and his metabolism is going nuts. She didn't seem concerned. That just proves that he is one active little guy! By the way, he's 19 lbs 15 oz (25-50%), 28.25 in (50%), and his head is in the 75-90%. Jed is very curious and active, I think more so than Eli. I love when Jed pulls up on something and then he smiles and does a little dance like he's so proud of his accomplishment. I'll try to get a video of that one. Then after awhile he'll start to cry because he gets stuck and realizes he doesn't know how to get down.










Eli's discovering how to baby-proof, too, and put his things even higher where Jed can't reach them. Eli is very into Curious George right now, so he told me we should call Jed Curious Jed. Funny!

Tadpole Camp

For the last two weeks, Eli has been going to summer camp! He doesn't seem old enough to do that does he? His camp, Tadpole Camp, was for 3-4 year olds. It's every day from 8-12 at the Austin Nature & Science Center (one of our favorite places to go in Austin). I knew he would enjoy it because Heidi was his teacher! Heidi is our friend who has been taking Eli on outings twice a week in the mornings since Jed was born to give me a little break. Heidi is the one who told me about the camp. I originally signed him up for one week, but since I had insider info, I found out that there was an open spot for the next week and signed Eli up for another week! Apparently no one on their waiting list called back. Lucky me!


The first week was called The Green Thumb Gang where they learned about plants, gardening, and nature in general. The second week was called Dinosaur Detectives where they learned all about dinosaurs. At the ANSC there are some rescue animals, a pond, and a huge sand pit with dinosaur bones for the kids to find. So at camp, Eli got to not only learn about plants and dinosaurs, he also got to meet the animals, splash/swim in the water, hike, dig for dino bones, and do several arts and crafts projects. He absolutely loved it!

I've enjoyed the past two weeks, too! It's been nice to have just me and Jed time. I've felt so free! I have missed Eli, though...seriously! It'll be nice to get back to our "normal" life again. He has swim lessons again in a couple weeks, so we have that to look forward to!

Here's Eli playing in the play area outside and one of his little classroom inside. They have a cool setup with lots of construction trucks, places to paint, water play, and many more things!














Also, there's a preschool at the ANSC during the school year, and Eli's on the waiting list. We'll be lucky if he gets in for the fall...fingers crossed!

Beach Vacation

Last week, we got to take a family vacation to South Padre Island, TX. We went with Mammy and Steve and Brynn and her family. We had so much fun that I think we're going to make it a regular trip every couple years. It was both relaxing and full of adventures.
We got to play on the beach or at the pool each day, we got to go see some dolphins, ride go-karts, see lots of hermit crabs, see a pirate ship, watch a backhoe clear some sand, watch bungee jumpers, boogie board, and many more.
Eli loved playing in the sand. He told us he was building a construction site and working hard. He liked going in the water as long as one of us was holding him, and he loved the waves. Jed loved the water and sand. He liked digging with his fingers. He also kept trying to eat the sand and trying to put his face in the water. Jed has always loved the water, so this doesn't surprise me.
Jed and Eli didn't get sunburned at all, but I think they were the only ones. Good job putting on their sunscreen, Dad! The boys also did great with all the traveling and being off of their daily routines. I was impressed and very thankful! I think having their older cousins there to entertain as well as plenty of open arms to pass them to was helpful. All in all it was a successful trip. I can't wait until we go back next time!

Visit to the firestation!

As you probably know, Eli is a huge fan of firetrucks and all that goes with them. In fact lately, Eli has been keeping his fireman jacket (the topcoat) and his helmet in our car in case there's an emergency and we need to go fight a fire (which happens to be about 95% of the time we go anywhere). Our car has become a ladder truck with sirens (aka,the dome lights) and all. What an imagination! Well last Friday, we got to make a trip to the firestation and see everything up close. Eli was trying to hold back his excitement and his smile as usual, but this time he couldn't contain it! He soaked in everything they explained. He got to touch the firemen's gear, see the inside of the firehouse, see all of the equipment on the truck, go inside the truck, "drive" the truck, and spray the water hose! The visit ended perfectly when the firestation got a call, and we got to see them take off in the truck with the lights and sirens blaring. Amazing!

Trucks on our street!

Eli got the opportunity to watch construction trucks right in front of our house! They are resurfacing the streets in our neighborhood. Work started first thing in the morning, and Eli didn't want to miss one minute of it. It was funny because he was not wanting to get dressed, but when I said there was a dump truck outside, he was dressed and out the door in literally 5 seconds! He got to see a dump truck, a paver, an oil truck, and a roller...oh and the construction workers. He kept saying, "Mom*, I'm exciting!". I got a picture of his exciting face, too. Eli is now asking me when "his" trucks are coming back. Their work is not done, so I hope we can see them when they come back.

*For about a month now, Eli has been calling John and I Mom and Dad. No more Mama and Dada. I still get an occasional Mama or Mommy, but it's mostly Mom now. I was hoping to drag the Mama or Mommy out longer, but no luck! He sounds so old calling us Mom and Dad!