Eli's 2nd Christmas!

I may have said it before, but for me, one of the hardest things about being a mom is not even getting to half of the things I want to do on a daily basis. I had SO many things planned for Christmas.... finishing Eli's stocking, making everyone scrapbooks, making homemade ornaments. I thought I was on top of things. I even started my Christmas cards back in October!!! Lol... that didn't stop me from mailing them (and not even all of them! Sorry to the 23 of you I didn't get out in the mail in time) out on December 22nd. Sigh. But that's ok - I've learned to just let go what I can't do and be happy with what I can. :) And maybe if I start working on some of those handmade things NOW, they will be done for Christmas next year :)

At any rate, we had a really nice Christmas this year. Mike had the 23rd off, which was great cause we got to spend the day as a family (complete with a trip to Trader Joe's...mmmm...love that place!) and get all of our Christmas wrapping, etc, finished. We treated Christmas Eve as our family Christmas, so we woke up as if it were Christmas morning. We had all of Eli's presents out and his stocking ready, but all my child wanted to do was brush his teeth. Haha. "Look, Eli! Presents!!!" "Teeth? teeth?" lol. So after that, I gave Eli his stocking. He took GREAT delight reaching in and discovering his new cars, trucks, planes, etc, from target. He ran off to play with them and that seriously could have ended his morning. He was totally content to just play with those 5 $1 toys I got him. Lesson learned for next year. I had to keep dragging him back to his stocking. I had to hide the stickers from him or it would have taken us hours to get through everything. (He likes to take off each sticker and put them all on his hand). Then we took a break to read some stories and eat breakfast.... then went back to the presents.

I thought Eli was going to be allllll about tearing into his presents this year, but to be honest, he couldn't have cared less. He enjoyed the fact that they were stacked up and used them as a road/mountain for his new prized cars.... but we couldn't get him to understand that there were toys in there for him. He even accidentally knocked one of the boxes over and insisted on stacking it up right where it had been. Daddy had gotten him a little LeapFrog laptop that says the alphabet, and that was the one and only present eli opened on his own. He really surprised me by sitting really patiently while we un-twined and un-taped all of the toys he got (Do they really have to reinforce the little twisty things THAT much?). He loved his new garbage truck and delighted in pushing it around on the couch over and over again. Most of the other things we gave him were books, and he didn't even look at all of them cause of his excitement over his cars. He also got some new cars, trucks, etc, for the tub, which he is thrilled about.

We made it to Christmas Eve mass at our church (we decided to go there instead of going to midnight mass with mike's family since eli wouldn't be able to stay up that late) and Eli was fairly well behaved. :) We then headed over to Mike's family's house to celebrate with his parents, sister Carol, and cousin Bambi. We had a great time hanging out, going over the family tree, and skyping with relatives in the Philippines. They went to midnight mass and when they came home, we watched old videos of Mike and his sisters when they were little. I can't believe I was able to stay up til 3am! We woke up at almost 9am (I can't believe we were the last ones up! Thanks, Eli, for sleeping in!) and opened presents with the family. Mike and I gave Eli his ride-on motorcycle and realized we had committed a maaaajor parent error by not pre-assembling the "motee! motee!" He tried his hardest to be patient, but he couldn't contain himself and kept carrying the frame off (sans wheels) to sit on and "ride." Super cute. Mike's sister Ann and family came over and Eli had great fun playing with his cousin Jaymin. It was so fun to be with little Linamarie on her first Christmas! The Nieves family got Eli a train AND a dump truck, so he was in heaven. After watching some more family videos, we headed down to Maryland.

We made great time and got to Maryland around 5:30. My Mom and brother were there and we opened presents and hung out until dinner (turkey!! mmm!) was ready. Eli had GREAT fun driving his new little trucks (thanks, Grandma!) around. He only made it through about 1/4 of his presents before we put him to bed.

The next morning (Christmas part 3), we headed over to my Grandma's to see all of MY cousins... tons of people were there and we had a lot of fun! We came home and hung out with my uncle marty (who got Eli a thomas the train set!!! Biiiiig hit) before having Christmas dinner part 2!

Because of the big storm (the blizzard of 2010) up in NYC, we decided to head back on Tuesday instead of Monday.... that meant an extra day to hang out with the family. Eli loooooooved playing with his "mananeeeee!" (tito tommy) and nana. And I got to go out to a movie! woohoooo! And dinner! Woooohoooo!

Ok.... Eli just woke up from his nap. I left out a million things and wanted to say more, but that'll have to do for now. Happy New Year, everyone!

Eli's visit with Santa!

I was really excited about Christmas this year since Eli would have a much better understanding than the cute blob Eli of last year, whose main mission was to eat as much wrapping paper as he could. :) I tried to read him a lot of Christmas books to get him ready for the big day, but he wasn't too interested, except for his ever-present Elmo's 12 days of Christmas book and his new "tanna" (santa) book. Me, Mike and Tita Carol (visiting from California!) decided to take him to see Santa at the Staten Island Mall a couple days before Christmas and I'm so glad we did. The line was super long since we had waited til the last minute, but Eli did pretty good. He enjoyed looking at the snowmen, taking peeks at Santa, and watching all of the other kids in line. He scarfed down 5 chicken nuggets, which kept him busy for a few minutes... and before we knew it, it was almost our turn! We were NEXT... that's when Eli started to LOSE it. After all that time waiting in line, he just couldn't take it any more. He pitched an all out "I'm-not-going-to-sit-here-for-one-more-second" fit and managed to get out of his stroller seatbelt and stand UP in his stroller. Great. Daddy took him to run around for a minute, but then it was our turn! Mike handed Eli back to me and I said - Look! Santa!!! We walked toward him, and I heard Eli say (in a tiny voice)... Nooo. Uh oh. That's when I knew this wasn't going to be an easy picture. Now I'm not one of those moms who needs the super cute, everyone is smiling, santa picture. I think the miserable ones are even funnier. So I put Eli in Santa's lap and he LOST it... wriggled all the way out of his lap, screaming bloody murder. The picture taking girls were trying to jingle bells and get him to smile, but at this point, there was no hope. I yelled - please just take it! take it!!! This would have been the PERFECT shot. Picture, if you will, a shocked santa trying desperately to hold onto a SCREAMING child... shirt up, diaper showing... compleeeete melt down. The girls were like - your son is falling! I yelled again - It's OK! JUST TAKE IT!!! to which they replied... ma'am, your son is falling... that is NOT ok! I realized I wasn't going to get anywhere, so I ran over to replace my screaming child higher in santa's lap. They snapped the picture, I rescued Eli (who immediately stopped crying and even wanted to say Bye to Santa) and we left. Lol. The result? A classic child screaming in santa's lap picture. :) I can't WAIT to show him this picture when he gets older. :)

Almost Christmas!

I really can't believe how quickly my three days at home with Eli go each week. Maybe it's cause I have been so busy getting ready for Christmas, but I really feel like our time is just FLYING by. I took a few notes this morning so I wouldn't forget the latest and greatest Eli things....

-Every morning, after he sings to himself for a few minutes and says "apple tree" 50 times (there are apple trees on his sheets), he stands up in his crib and says "HELLO" until I wake up and greet him. He then says "HELLO!" and either talks about the things he sees (usually "Hat" "Moon" (on a painting we have in the room), "Da-da-dee" (Teddy Bear)).... or goes through his vocabulary.... or says "Out." Over the past few days, he had been saying "Pay" "Pay"... I thought he was saying "Pee" and got excited... thinking he was telling me to change his diaper.... and then I realized he was really saying "PLAY" as in "I want to go play!" So cute. I then become super horrible mommy and gasp...force him... to get his diaper changed.... and then he takes great fun in saying "die" (down) and having me help him down off the bed. He then runs out of the room into the living room, in search of "WILEY! WILEY!" or "TAR" (his cars) or "motee" or "da-da tree!" (christmas tree). This morning, he wanted to play "pa-da-dee" (basketball) right away. Some mornings, he hightails it right to his highchair, saying "EAT! EAT!" lol.

He also enjoys watching the cats eat their food. Now that I'm pretty confident he's not going to try to touch their food (he just points and says "ditty!"), I let him help me feed the cats in the morning. He likes to squat down really low right next to the cats and is fascinated by watching them eat. Cliffy won't go anywhere near Eli, so this usually gives Riley a chance to get a bite or two in before Fat Cliffy decides he'll brave the monster for the prize. This morning, Eli decided he wanted to ride his toy ambulance up and down Riley's back while she was eating, and as you can imagine, she was not too thrilled. lol.

A dilemma I face with this child once and sometimes twice a day is his perplexing hungry/not hungry act. He'll yell "HUNGRY" or "EAT! EAT!" and then run over to his high chair and dramatically try to climb in, crying, acting like I never feed him. I'll say "are you hungry?" and he always screams "NO!" and runs away. I then say "Ok, you tell me when you're ready" and he instantly runs back over and tries to climb into his chair. I go to lift him into his chair, and he'll scream bloody murder, refusing to sit down in his chair. Sometimes, he's even screaming "HUNGRY! HUNGRY" during this refusal. Great mystery to me. I always say - you're really confusing mommy right now! Sigh.

If I don't have blueberries in the house, we are in TROUBLE. Alllllll he wants to eat are bowdies. I'm seriously suprised this kid isn't a slight tinge of blue. He could seriously eat 1-2 cartons of blueberries a day if I let him. After he's had a few handfuls and I cut him off, he has a maaaaaaajor hissy fit and screams and cries and refuses to eat anything else.

We moved our coffee table back to where it's supposed to be, and Eli loves it! Now other than the window sill, it's his new favorite place to drive his cars around. He likes to try stacking his cars on top of each other to drive around and gets horribly frustrated (and cries like a wuss) when one of them falls.

He's standing and jumping on the couch ALL THE TIME now and I don't know what to do to get him to stop. I've tried yelling, ignoring, distracting... none of it works. It's to the point now where I can no longer leave him to play while I cook dinner...because he ALWAYS climbs up onto the couch. I've caught him a few times trying to go over the back of the couch, reaching for a ball or something else that has fallen back there. Sigh. Boys. Any tips?

We're working on colors, and sometimes I think he has them down, but most of the time, he just calls everything blue. I'm pretty sure he's saying Pink and Purple...and on a few occasions, he's said "dead" for red. But then he'll throw out the blue card and I doubt that he knows anything. Sigh. In good time!

He LOVES hiding from me, me hiding from him, peek-a-boo type games and chasing me places. It's SO fun and he giggles uncontrollably. Super fun.

Right now, he has a bad little cold and in an effort to keep him propped up, we decided on Wednesday to let him sleep with us. NEVER again. I got head-butted 5 times (can't believe I don't have a black eye!), kicked countless times, and pushed to the veeeeeery edge of the bed when he decided to sleep sideways. At three something in the morning, he sat up and grabbed all of his books from my headboard.... HA. Sorry buddy... I'll read to you another time! He's feeling better now, thankfully.

One more week til Christmas!!!

December in NYC...and good news!

First of all, I wanted to share the good news.... Eli is going to be a big brother!!! I'm 12 weeks along and we had the nuchal scan today.... everything looks GREAT! Baby looks like a baby now and is developing right on track. Baby is measuring a week ahead of schedule. The due date was originally June 18th, but they might change it to June 13th. We'll see. Either way, Eli will be just over 2 years old when his sibling is born. We (well, I...) decided we're not going to find out the gender this time, so we'll all be surprised when it comes out! I secretly want a boy cause I've had so much fun with Eli, but everyone and their mother seems to want a girl. Either way, we'll be very happy. I am going to lose my mind for a year or so with them being so close in age, I'm sure... but I wouldn't trade it for the world. Woohooo!

After the doctor's appointment this morning, Eli and I set out for some December in NYC fun. We ate breakfast at the breakfast buffet in Whole Foods (lol... all Eli wanted were triscuits...but that didn't stop me from eating all of the food I got for him), browsed through Williams & Sonoma (one of my favorite stores, but one of Eli's least favorite), wandered through the outdoor holiday shops at Columbus Circle, walked over to the Plaza (Eli loooooooved all of the horses lining Central Park South... he was screaming NEIIIIGH, NEEIIIIGH! If it weren't $50 for a carriage ride, I might have taken him on one), meandered down 5th avenue looking at all of the windows and sparkly diamonds, then went over to see the tree!!! I've seen better, but it's still pretty fun to see a tree so big. One year, it will be fun to take Eli ice skating there. We walked by Radio City and much to Eli's delight, we saw about 10 Elmos and 2 Cookie Monsters (Maaaaa---deeeeee!) wandering around looking for people to pay for pictures. Eli was thrilled (though a bit confused) and kept yelling - ELMO! MAAA-DEE! My favorite moment was when I heard a 5 foot Elmo say to me.... "hey...lady...picture." Haha.

Coming home on the train, Eli was flirting with the ladies as usual (THANK YOU, people, for talking and "playing" with my son on the train.... so he doesn't scream his head off). He also discovered the joy of looking at me upside down... he thought it was the funniest thing in the world, and we did that about 300 times. A guy playing the guitar got on the train right when Eli was about to lose it... I've never been happier to hand over a dollar when he was done... kept Eli occupied for a good 4 minutes!

Eli's most favorite things in the world right now are blueberries and grapes. If I don't have a bowdie or dape on hand, I'm out of luck... full out scream-fest.

My child loves wearing gloves. He also loves wearing his winter hat. I realize I lucked out, and I realize it's short lived. The challenge with the hat/glove wearing, however, is that if we stop moving for more than 30 seconds, they all come off. I guess he figures we're staying and it's time for him to de-robe. Lol.

He's sleeping now and I should be using this time to do the 50,000 things I have on my to-do list, but here I sit, uploading pictures/blogs while watching Top Chef. :)

Random Thoughts

There are so many things that I don't want to forget about this time. So many. Here are just a few of them....

When we get home after being at work or out, Eli responds not by running over to us to give us a hug, but by screaming and jumping and going to find the closest ball so he can throw it to/at us.

He is OBSESSED with blueberries ("bowdies"). He would eat an entire pack in one sitting if you let him.

Tonight we had a pizza delivered, and when he saw the box, he pointed and yelled "PITA!" Once we opened the box, he ran and got his play fork from his kitchen and continually stabbed it and licked off the cheese. When you give him a piece, however, and tell him to take a bite, he takes the teeeeniest bite possible. He doesn't like things that have sauce on them.

He is a climbing MANIAC right now. He's learning how to climb EVERYTHING.

He also loves JUMPING. Especially on the bed.

He's getting much better about reading non-board books. I still can't really read the words and have to instead point out the pictures, but still... he's not trying to rip the pages anymore.

Whenever we go to Target, the second he sees the checkout ladies, he says "bye" on repeat every 5 seconds. He wants to get the HECK out of there. Luckily, he's cute and he can get away with being super annoying. Lol. One time, the lady was like "How bout this? I'll tell you when it's time to go."

He knows how to say "Christmas Tree." We're going to get a little one on Friday in hopes that if he knocks it over he won't do too much damage to it.

The WORST thing in his life is having his diaper changed. He can't deal. He flips out. It's getting even worse than it was before. He is SO difficult to contain.

His two favorite books right now are a Sesame Street sign language book with Bert, Ernie and Linda..... and a book about cows called Clack Clack Moo Moo. So fun!

He is also obsessed with eating Annie's bunnies and will scream "MONEY! MONEY! MONEY" until you give him one.

He's getting much better at coloring with his markers "Madadee!" and cries to color ALL the time.

He loves to dance and it's my favorite thing ever to watch him do it. He also still loves to play his flute "doot" (recorder) and often dances to his own music.

:) :)

Almost December!

Wow.... today is the last day of November. I honestly still feel like it's September. This holiday season just started and is already going by sooo fast. Guess I'm not going to have Eli's stocking needlepointed for yet another year. lol.

So since the last post, we survived our first 911 call/ambulance ride/trip to the ER. Eli got a super high fever and had a seizure... scariest thing I've ever seen. Luckily as soon as we got him the hospital and they gave him Motrin, he started feeling better. I knew he was going to be ok when I asked him what Chewbaca says and in a tiny little wounded voice he said "mwaaaa." :) There are absolutely no connections to febrile seizures and any kind of neurological problem and he got better right away. Scary to think that it could happen again the next time he gets a fever, but at least we'll know what to do next time (PLEASE don't let there be a next time!).

Eli had his 18 month checkup and all is well! He's now in the 75% percentile for height (which I think is a little off cause I don't think his head was quuuuite touching when they measured him) which makes sense cause I've noticed that he's gotten as tall as or taller than a lot of his little buddies. My skinny little guy is only 21 lbs though, which puts him in the 5th percentile for weight. I'm not concerned, though, nor is the doc, cause he eats an insane amount of food and he pretty much doesn't stop running around during his waking hours.

He LOVES playing his "flute" (recorder) and rocking out to any flute music he hears. Lol. He has this new cute little dance where he nods his head up and down and then steps back and forth. He also likes to sway from side to side in a super exaggerated way.... I love watching babies dance!!!

He's picking up so many things every day and it amazes me when he copies/repeats things we say. My favorite things to hear him say right now are "maaaaaddddddiiiieee" (in a deep monster voice) when he sees cookie monster..... and when he whispers "daaaaaa da deeeee" when he sees Darth Vader. Much to mike's delight, he can now consistently name Luke, Yoda, Darth Vader and Princess Leia. :)

He still loves football/basketball and is happiest when he is throwing a ball or driving his cars around. He still looooves motorcycles, so we bought him a ride-on mini motorcycle for Christmas - can't wait to give it to him! He saw the box today and started yelling "MOTEE!!! MOTEE!!!" :)

Heading to Maryland tomorrow through Friday to see my friend Kerry's new baby Ethan, have a birthday lunch with my Grandma and to see my mom! Super excited! Eli's coming down with a cold, though, so I hope he's not too much of a crankster. :)

Halloween Part Two... and beyond!

Guess I wasn't so timely in getting back to the Halloween stories!

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The saturday before Halloween, we drove out to meet up with my friends Jessica and Stacey (from PT school) and their boys. Three of us + 6 young boys = crazy fun! We met up at a playground and had tons of fun catching up while running after everyone. No one was hurt, and we even managed to take a big group picture!

Halloween morning, we went over to my Grandma's to meet up with the family... so fun to see everyone!

I thought we were going to have a Halloween breakdown because after he woke up from his nap, he was a toooootal crank monster. I dressed him in a cute little fall outfit and took him in the backyard so we could play in the leaf pile I had raked...and he threw a FIT. He just stood there, screaming. I thought he'd enjoy raking and he refused to even LOOK at the rake. It took about an hour (and a few snacks) to calm him down, and by Halloween time, he was in a great mood. When it got dark, I put him into his cow outfit and he was ready to go! I was SO proud of my little trick-or-treater!!! He held Mike's hand (he NEVER holds hands) as we walked up the street and held his little pumpkin bucket with his other hand. He'd climb up the steps, knock on the door with his little baby fist, wait patiently for it to open... then take ONE piece of candy (I thought for sure he'd try to take a whole handful), put it in his bucket, say "Bye!", then leave, ready for the next house. He made it to about 20 houses... I couldn't believe it! It was the best time, ever, and I'm so glad we decided to go to my mom's for the holiday.

.....

Now for the latest updates...

Eli's new obsession is with Sesame Street. I found a bunch of Sesame Street books and he LOVES reading them. His favorite used to be Elmo, but now he LOVES Ernie. The kid wakes up in the morning saying "Eenie! Eenie!" because he wants to read his Bert/Ernie/Linda sign language book. He now calls Grover "Dodee," Cookie Monster "Madeee," and seems to think that both Bert and Ernie are the same guy. Does anyone remember the magician's name? Anywho, it's really cute and I'm really thrilled he loves sesame street. It'll be fun when he gets to watch it!

The love of sports continues, and he is constantly transforming things into a bat. His play food...especially his carrot and his corn....are his favorite bats to use. He'll scream "BAT! BAT" and start swinging, then go and get me a ball to throw at him. Of course he has no idea that he's supposed to actually swing the "bat" at the ball, but he loves to stand there in his little baseball stance.

I call him Buddy a lot, so now he says it all the time. Whenever I ask him if he's my buddy, he'll yell "budddddddy!" I love that. :)

One of his favorite things to do is put one of his many hats on (he prefers to wear it so that it partially covers his eyes) and then push his stroller around. Today, I caught him putting his Elmo doll in the stroller to push around. Super cute.

At night, before Eli goes to bed, we've taught him to help us clean up his cars by telling him "It's time to park all of your cars!" We go around saying "Park your cars! Park your cars!" and he scrambles to put them all away in the little car carrying case. LOVE it. :)

Let the adventures continue!

Halloween!!!

What a fun-filled week in Maryland we had! Thursday morning, we took Eli to his first play.... one called "Egg and Spoon" that was intended for Toddlers. There were about 10 or so kids Eli's age and a bit older there with their parents. We sat in a circle on the stage and the two performers did a really great job at engaging the little ones. They'd go around with "butterflies," "fish," and a whole litany of things the kids could touch and be tickled with. The kids were also invited to come up on stage to touch things (after the actor made the mommies promise to go get the little ones if they wouldn't return to their seats). Our favorite part of the show was "night night time" when the actors passed out pillows and blankets and had the kids pretend to go to sleep for the night. All of the little kids snuggled up in their blankets and laid in their mom's lap.... except for mine, who upon hearing "sleep" started SCREAMING "NOOOO! NOOOOOOO!" hahaha. One of the actors had to come over and comfort him, telling him it was just pretend and it was fine if he didn't want to go to sleep. Hahaha. Another favorite part of ours was at the end when the bird finally "hatched" from the egg. It popped out, sang a little song, and then went to say bye bye. All of the little kids were waving and saying bye! Then I heard a panicky/sad "bye??" from Eli and I knew he was about to turn on the waterworks. Eli in general has a hard time saying goodbye to people (he gets really sad!) and it became clear that would be the issue with this little birdie, too. The bird went back into it's egg and eli started wailing - Noooooo! BYE?? nooooooo! Thank goodness for the actor who is no doubt very used to dealing with this age group, and he had the birdie pop up again to say one last goodbye to eli. The other actor swept in with her violin and played it right in front of Eli to distract him while the bird was put away. It was a great show, a great introduction to theater, and the perfect amount of time to spend (45 min) at an event. Kudos to the Imagination Stage in Bethesda.

Thursday, we also went out to eat at one of my favorite restaurants....the Mongolian Grill. A quick shout-out to all of the restaurants that let kids eat for free. This place let us get him an adult size stir fry and a trip to the salad bar for this kid... meaning I got to give eli the full smorgasbord of "ok, so you won't eat chicken today? well I've got it covered with 50 other options so HA."

We also went to Cabin John Park (where I used to go as a kid) in hopes of riding the super fun choo-choo train around the park. Sad that it was closed for the day, but happy that we got to play on the fun playgrounds. Eli had a great time banging sticks on the play drums with Daddy. There was a cute moment in the park where a father was playfully carrying off his 7 or 8 year old son to the parking lot. he was hanging the kid upside down, and he was screaming (all in fun). Eli picked up a stick and ran over to the man....tooooootally trying to save the kid from his "evil" clutches. It was SO CUTE. The parents of the kid were laughing and let the kid down so Eli could see he was ok.

Eli has LOVED playing with his matchbox cars for about a month or so now, so I knew that when we got to Maryland, he'd be in for a super treat. In one of the closets, I found two cases of my brother's old matchbox cars and let eli play with them. He was SO excited when I opened up the box and he saw all of the cars. He spent the next 5 days vrooming them all over the place and endlessly crashing them each off my mom's couch onto the floor (making sure we were watching each time, of course). I brought back one of the cases with us.... I can't wait to show him that it's here. :)

Friday morning, we woke up and went to Butler's Orchard, a local favorite and a place that I used to go as a kid. They do it up for Halloween (as all orchards should!) and was 10,000 times bigger than I remember it being. We're talking halloween themed slides, a corn maze, little tractor races, farm animals, hayrides, a barn.... the whole deal. We had GREAT fun riding little john deere tractors around, and my mom even got into it, racing around on a little tricycle. The only downside to the day was that it was FREEZING and we were completely unprepared for the cold in our little jackets. Poor Eli was really cold. At one point, we went into the barn to warm up and I thought Eli would have a great time running around jumping in the hay. HA. My child refused to move and just stood there, screaming. So much for the cute fall barn hay picture. He felt the same way about the hayride, unfortunately, but he did have great fun looking at the tractor that was pulling us. He LOVED seeing the goats ("Dote!!!") and seeing all of the pumpkins ("ANNA!").

Ok.... to be continued cause my little buddy just woke up for the day! He's in there saying "mama?" Off I go!

My little sponge

So this morning, when Eli woke up, he pointed at the painting Mike made and said "MOON! STAR! CLOUD!" I hadn't taught him these things, so I was shocked. I called Mike at work... apparently he taught Eli last night when they were driving home from Lolo and Lola's house (it was dark, and eli kept pointing at the moon). My little sponge!

Today, when we were coloring (translation: taking the top off of the marker and putting it back on over and over again), I gave Eli a Sesame Street coloring book. I didn't know he knew who Bert and Ernie were, but he pointed at them and said "eenie!!!" Yes, he thinks both bert and ernie are called eenie...we're working on it.

He also learned the word "buddy" today... I called him my buddy when we were over visiting Jamie and baby George today and he kept saying "buddy, buddy, buddy, buddy" over and over again. It was really cute. When we were over visiting, he let me know he was hungry by saying "EAT!" and then climbing up and sitting on one of her chairs.

His favorite snacks right now are mini stone wheat crackers (also my favorite!) and cheddar bunnies ("MONEY! MONEY!"). He ate about 20 crackers this morning... hungry little guy!

He's really becoming mommy's little athlete, and is especially good at football. He has a mini football and he gets into a cute little stance and launches it. He can throw it about 10 feet and is usually pretty accurate in where he throws it. It's VERY fun playing catch with him right now, because if he does miss, he'll run after the ball and go get it for me... I never have to move!

He's getting much better at identifying pictures of things.... if I ask him "where's the ...." he will look around for it and then point to it. He's really good at farm things and animals. We still need to work on our fruits and veggies. Trying to work on our colors, but he's not quite getting those yet (nor would I expect him to!).

I had an extremely rare day to myself yesterday (thanks to lolo and lola for watching eli!) and it was STRANGE. Yes, it was nice to be able to do things at my own pace, but I REALLY missed my little buddy all day. REALLY. So the biggest lesson I learned yesterday is that I don't need as many days "away" as I sometimes think I do. :)

First trip to Philly!

It was a big baby-meeting week! Yesterday, we drove up to the Bronx and met my friend Jamie's 2 week old, George! Eli is usually not interested in babies, but he looked at him a few times and even went over and gently touched his head a few times. Progress! George is SUPER SUPER cute and super super tiny. Jamie's only about a 15 min car ride away, so we're looking forward to more play dates!

Today, Eli and I drove down to Philly (not bad...only about a 2.5 hour drive) to visit Aditee and finally meet Arjun! He is such a great, snuggly, cute baby and it was SOOO great to finally see the little guy! He's VERY strong and can already roll over! Eli surprised me by being very cute with the baby. He said baby many times (but always says it under his breath...so funny) and gave him about 10 hugs! When Arjun was down on his mat, Eli sat next to him and played with the Oo-aa (elephant). He also enjoyed playing with Aditee's stereo and tried to find the button that turned the music on so he could dance. He did great on the drive back and continued to point out all of the trucks, airplanes, and busses we passed.

NOT wanting to go to work tomorrow. Have had a great 4 days in a row with my little guy!

17 months!

So, as always, I'm supposed to be using nap time to do a million things, but I decided to update the blog since time seems to be moving so quickly these days! 17 months! Almost a year and a half. Crazy. Really crazy.

So what's the little man up to these days? Over the last two weeks, he's REALLY learned to pitch a fit if I try to put him in his high chair/stroller/crib.... or any place where he can't run around playing with his cars and motorcycle. When he decides he doesn't want to get in his stroller, it is REALLY hard to put him there. One day it took me almost 15 minutes. Sigh. The frustrating thing is that he LOVES going outside. He just doesn't want to stop playing, I suppose.

His latest favorite thing to do is to take his car, his tractor and his new motee (motorcycle) and run them along the couch. He doesn't mind if you're sitting on the couch... he'll happily make the car jump over you. We've taken a short hiatus from crashing things to the ground, but I think that's only because he has now learned to use his little recorder (yes, I got him one because my nephew has one and Eli was able to blow and make music!) as a sword and hit everything in sight with it.

He loves to say "Hungry" and run to his high chair...but then when I ask "Are you hungry?" ...he screams bloody murder and says NONONONO and runs away. He'll go away for about 10 seconds and then realize that yes, he is hungry and does want me to help him, and he'll come back.

He's surprisingly good about putting on his shoes and socks and still likes to bring me his shoes when they aren't on his feet. Let's pray this lasts a little bit longer! he's also very good about putting on jackets! Never fights me on that... go figure.

He's been an eating champ lately and is getting slightly better at feeding himself applesauce and yogurt. Well, I take that back, because he's now learned to dump them over and we've narrowly missed a dump out on the head a few times. He enjoys putting spinach and waffles on his head. My favorite is handing him chicken nuggets... he calls them "Bawk bawks" because of the sound a chicken makes. :)

Much to Mike's happiness, Eli has now learned how to shoot his basketball in the hoop at the highest level. He doesn't always make it, but he's getting pretty good. If you hand him a ball and say "shoot! shoot!" he will go over and shoot it. He's such the little athlete. If you hand him his recorder or his letter T, he'll go get his ball, hand it to you, and then get in a perfect baseball stance. He doesn't get the concept of swinging at the ball yet, but his little stance is so cute! Lolo also taught him how to play golf on Monday. It went ok until he decided it was more fun to pick up the golf ball and throw it.

When we take walks outside, this is the constant running commentary: "MOTEE!!" (motorcycle), "AUDI!!!" (ambulance), "RUCK!" (truck), "DAR!" (car), "ANNA!!!" (airplane), "BUT!!" (bus). That's one thing NYC is definitely good for.... there's never a shortage of fun Eli vehicles!

It's more challenging to take videos of him on the flip cam now because he knows that there are videos of him on there. I showed him one time, and now whenever he sees it, he yells "E-I" (what he calls himself) and runs over to see.

It's amazing to me how quickly he's learning these days. The other day on the subway, he saw a picture of baseball players (just players... no bats or anything) and yelled "BALL!" Another day, he saw a picture of guys with bike helmets on and yelled "BIKE!" He saw a motorcycle all covered up today and still yelled "MOTEE!"

Last night, there was a CRAZY huge fire in one of the stores (abandoned) right behind our building. There were crazy flames and smoke and it took them nearly 3 hours to put it out. I don't think anyone was hurt, but man - pretty scary stuff! Luckily, Eli slept through the whole thing. Though had he been awake, it would have been his greatest joy to see all of those fire trucks.

Mike took the day off yesterday and we went pumpkin and apple picking!! Eli hadn't had a nap and was a little cranky, but loved running through the orchard, picking up apples and throwing them, and taking bites of mommy and daddy's apples. He also enjoyed trying to pick up the really heavy pumpkins and trying to stand on top of them. We tried to pose him for a really cute pumpkin picture by sitting him on top of a big one, but he took a huge face plant in the dirt instead. Lovely.

We're off to meet Baby George today and Baby Arjun tomorrow! Babies, babies, everywhere!!!! My friend Kerry is due in 4 weeks... so we'll get to meet Baby Ethan soon, too!

October

October is here and fall is starting to settle in. Sort of. This fall's temperatures have been very strange and it seems like the only coldish days are the rainy ones. Nonetheless, it's fun to have a whole new set of clothes to dress Eli in, especially the shirts with the hoodies. This kid is OBSESSED with hats. Any time he sees anyone anywhere with a hat, he screams out "AT! AT! AT!" until someone acknowledges him and says "Yes! Hat!" If it's a family member or friend, he is not content until you give him your hat. He loves putting them on (especially when they cover his eyes?) and walking around. It's made for some very cute pictures lately.

Pants continue to be a problem for him... he's still too small-waisted for most of the pants we have, and only occasionally fits into the 12 month ones. The ones he does fit into are too short! Sigh. We're on a mission today to find some of those cincher (no idea how to spell that) type waists... I know they're out there!

I got Eli a little kitchen and he's having a great time with it. He likes to carry around the utensils, answer his pretend phone ("hewwo!"), put all of the bodees (strawberries) in the oven, use the oven door as a way to try to climb onto the counter, pretend eat his bananas, and open and close the doors. Very cute. I'm starting this kid off young - his wife will thank me!

He LOOOOVES matchbox cars. I know, I know, there are small parts not intended for children under 3, but he doesn't try to eat them. We watch him carefully when he has them. He looooves driving them around, especially the "odie" (ambulance) and police car. He loooooves his motorcycle ("motee!!!!") and though he can't quite figure out how to make it drive as well as the cars (those two wheels can be tricky!), he carries it around everywhere.

Last week we finally had to switch his car seat to front facing, because it was getting to be too hard putting him in backwards (in our two door car!) and his legs are getting a lot longer. He loooves sitting forward and now gives us a running commentary on the drive ("DAR! RUCK! MOTEE!!"). It also means the driver is more susceptible to being hit by any of the objects he an get his hands on in the back seat, since he's still all about throwing everything he can get his hands on.

He still loves reading, thankfully, and his favorite books right now are any books involving cars/trucks/boats/airplanes/motorcycles. He's just getting to the point where I can give him paper pages without fearing that he's going to rip them, so I brought down the big Richard Scarry books I've been waiting to share with him. I loooove those books.

He loves playing with his cousin Jaymin and was super excited to get to see him this week. I think he noticed his baby cousin Linamarie for about 5 seconds this week, which is an improvement over previous times. At least he doesn't get jealous when I'm holding her!

We went to Vermont last week and got to stay in a cute little cabin on a farm. Eli looooved seeing the pigs, chickens, sheep and goats. It was raining almost the whole time we were there, so sadly we didn't get to do as much running around outside as we wanted to, but we still got to go for some nice drives.

He's starting to like looking at pictures... every night before we go to bed, he screams "Nana!" and reaches for one of the pictures of my mom I have. I showed him a picture of Rachna and Dexter the other day and he pointed and said "DEDER!" Soooo cute.

He still looooooooves balls and I spend about 75% of my play time with him catching his ball and rolling it back to him. One of my mom's friends gave us the great idea of using a balloon to work on his catching and it's really fun - he's pretty good at throwing it up and catching it! He also learned how to shoot the basketball up into the basket, and daddy even raised it all the way to the top! (about 4 feet up). My little basketball star. You say to him "Shoot! Shoot!" and he gets all excited, runs over, and throws the ball up to the basket. He still misses about 90% of the time, but he's got the right idea!

Today is a beautiful fall day, so we're going to head down to Bryant Park to have lunch with my friend Susan. I can't wait!

Things I forgot to say

Of course the moment I posted my last post, I thought of a bunch of things I forgot to mention. That's always the way, it seems. I jotted down a few things so I wouldn't forget...and here they are!

Most days, I give Eli 1/2 of a peanut butter sandwich and he usually eats about 1/2 of it. Today I put jelly on it for the first time and he was so excited! I saw him reaching into the sandwich with his finger to get the jelly. I think I also have the only child in the world who eats off his crust first.

He continues to say "Uh oh!" whenever he drops something, but now he's starting to also say it BEFORE he intentionally drops whatever he's holding. Sometimes that gives me a chance to catch it mid-air, but most of the time it doesn't. He also says "uh oh!" whenever one of his cars rolls under a table or chair and he can't get to it. He gets REALLY upset and just stands there saying UH OH UH OH UHOH over and over until I come and pull out his missing toy. The funny/frustrating thing is.... what's the first thing he does when he gets his car back? Run it right back under the couch/chair/table where it was stuck, so he can see it disappear and have me go get it again. Sigh.

He LOVES matchbox cars. I went out and bought him 3 more today and he was SO excited. I also picked up a motorcycle (his faaaaavorite) and he was excited beyond words. He just kept standing there saying "motajie...motajie..." I can't wait til we go back to Maryland and bring back my brother's case of matchbox cars for Eli.

Strawberry is one of his new favorite words and he always pronounces it "bojee." If anyone opens up the fridge, he runs over and tries to climb inside, most of the time yelling "BOJEE!!!" He also LOOOOOVES his applesauce and successfully carried off the jar of mandarin oranges to his play area not once but TWO times today.

My child is obsessed with hats. If anyone outside is ever wearing a hat, he screams "AT! AT! AT!" If he's ever reading a book or looking at pictures with someone wearing a hat, that trumps all things. It could be his favorite tiger riding his favorite motorcycle...and the first thing he'd notice would be the hat he was wearing. He likes it when hats are too big and cover his eyes, like when he borrowed his Tito Ben's baseball cap on Monday. He has his little summer hat in his play area and I always catch him putting it on and walking around with it. Most of the time, he likes it covering his eyes and walks around until he bumps into something....laughs...gets up and does it again. Today, he ate two of his meals wearing his hat.

We went to the park today and he surprised me with something I didn't know he knew. At one point, he ran over to the slide, put his hand on it, then quickly pulled it back saying "HOT!" I went over and felt it, and sure enough, it was hot! I didn't know he knew that word, let alone the meaning of it. Yay for knowing a "safety" word!

I read something the other day that said by the time he gets to be 18 months, he'll learn a new word every 90 minutes. totally believable.

My poor little buddy has a bad cold that gave him a super runny nose all day. I was hoping for good naps, but I got baaad ones, which led to a total Eli meltdown this afternoon. Occasionally he will wake up from a nap too early/too cranky and then just SCREAMS and cries for an hour. He wants to be held but doesn't want to be held... wants to read a book but doesn't... There's basically nothing I can do for that hour until something snaps and he goes back to normal Eli. Today this breakdown happened when I was in the middle of cooking dinner... and anytime I'd put him down, he LOOOST it. It was challenging to say the least. Hope he feels better tomorrow!

:)

A day in the life of a 16 month old boy

I wish I had more than 3 days a week to spend with my little guy, but I'm trying to just be grateful for the time we do get to spend together and have been really trying to enjoy every second of it.

So here's what a typical day is like at this age. (Yes, this changes day to day as he learns how to do more things, but this is generally how the day goes).

7:15ish - WAAAKEUP Mommy! Eli always wakes up the same way - he sits (then stands), yelling DADDY DADDY DADDY. He's not calling for Mike, so I don't know what he thinks he's saying. Sometimes he'll wake up saying Lolo (his Grandfather). About half of the time, I can give him his teddy bear and/or Elmo and he will lay down and talk to it for another 15 minutes or so. YAY for Mommy getting a chance to snooze!

7:30ish - HUGE battle to get dressed, so most of the time we just stay in our jammies.

Then Eli runs around to make sure all of his toys are still there. He gets SO excited to see his farm animal wheelie toys (thanks Grandma! he still loves them!) and plays with them for anywhere from 5-10 min before he realizes how starving he is. Then he goes over to his high chair and stands there saying "annnna" (hungry).

Breakfast has been super fun lately since he is getting better at feeding himself! Anything that goes into his Elmo bowl is exciting for him, so cereals he previously wouldn't even touch, he can now finish in about 60 seconds. :)

After breakfast (and the massive Eli cleanup since he doesn't let me help him eat his cereal or yogurt), Eli runs around constantly doing one of the following things.... emptying his bookshelf, running his firetruck off the table over and over, throwing the ball to me, playing with his farm friends, vrrooooming his cars all over the place, asking me to play piggies on his toes, throwing me the ball, climbing things, throwing me the ball, throwing me the ball and throwing me the ball. After all of this, he alllllways climbs into his stroller and screams "outside! outside! outside!" I am never dressed or ready and most of the time he is not dressed or ready either. We therefore hurry hurry hurry so that we can get back in the stroller to go outside.

Once outside, we head to the park or we head to run errands. When we're in the grocery store, Eli loooves flirting with the checkout women and loooves saying Hello and bye to every single person he passes.

For the last few days, he's been taking just one nap, so I've been trying to get stuff done when he sleeps. I'm never successful at that, however, and end up spending most of my "break" online or relaxing/recharging on the couch. It's also my one chance a day to get a shower or eat any kind of meal that involves me sitting down for more than 15 seconds.

When he wakes up from his nap, he eats lunch and then we've been reading, throwing the ball, playing with the new kitchen I got him (!!!), throwing the ball, running around, throwing the ball, trying to climb the couch and jump, throwing the ball..... lol. We try to get outside again... cause running around outside is a good thing :)

He loooooooves playing with matchbox cars and looooves driving them all over the place.... vrooooom, vroooooom, vrooooom.

Tomorrow we have absolutely NO plans and I'm sooo looking forward to it!

Amazing

Some things that this kid does just amaze me. Simple, little things, that I love and am just amazed by. Things like.... today, I got the vacuum out and then went over to clean up all of eli's books so that I could vacuum over there.... I looked over and saw that Eli had picked up the cord and was looking at it. Then he walked it over to the outlet and tried to plug it in! Soooo makes me think of the Sondheim song... "Careful the things you say....children will listen!"

Fall is here. I love fall, really I do. It's my favorite season. But I am just NOT ready to let summer go yet! NOT ready. But still, I went through all of Eli's summer clothes today and packed them up. It's such a different feeling than packing MY clothes up.... because he will never fit into these again. My favorite little outfits.... never to be worn again. If we have another boy, I'll get to see them, otherwise....

We've discovered that Eli loves hoodies. He'll keep the hood on all day and looks so cute with it on.

The adventures continue....

16 months today!

I just wanted to comment that I think it's ADORABLE that Mike dressed Eli in his little Batman hoodie this morning and he kept his hood on ALL DAY. Mike said he even woke up from his second nap wearing it. (I was at work).

Other random comments:

And for bath time this whole week, our new favorite thing to do is line up alllll of the ducks and knock them into the water one by one.

When we're out in public, one of Eli's favorite things to do is point out every person wearing a Hat. "at! at!" Pointing at airplanes is his other favorite thing to do. He can hear them before I do!

:)

Almost 16 months

So much has changed in the last weeks. This age is just fascinating.

My favorite thing about Eli right now is how social he is. Every person we pass in the street or in a store gets a "Hewwo!" and when we walk past, "buh bye!" It's so so so cute and I just love it. It's amazing how many stern-faced people melt into a big ole smile when they get a "Hewwo!!!"

Climbing. He's ALLLL about climbing these days. He still has a hard time getting down from things, but that doesn't stop him from getting up on something in the first place. Today, I broke out his old Learn N Groove Music table and looked over to see him standing on top of it. At the playground today, we literally spent 30 minutes going up and down and up and down and up and down the steps. (P.S.... it's been super fun to be able to go on slides again... I'm glad I'm still able to crawl up those small steps to get up there).

We made an important discovery yesterday. While he's been feeding himself for a few months now, I've still been spoon feeding him the wet stuff.... well, he's been totally refusing to eat anything out of a jar and has even been refusing his yogurt sometimes. Yesterday, I thought...what the heck...and gave him the spoon. The squash that he previously wouldn't touch suddenly became the most delicious thing in the world to him. MESSY as anything, but he gobbled it all up. I think I'm going to start taking his shirt off before he eats. :)

Eli had a GREAT time at the beach! Each day, he got more and more comfortable with both the ocean and the sand... by the last day, he was running to the water (not far in... and he'd still get scared when waves came...but it was fun to see!) and laying down in the sand. It amazed me that he naturally knew how to dig... so cute to see him digging a little hole. Also fun to see him smashing my sandcastles :) (And super fun to be able to build sandcastles again!). We only made it to the pool twice this time... hope to get there a lot more next year! We also took Eli on a few rides at the Boardwalk.... so fun! He went on the airplanes and little train with Mike and the flying doggies with me... the whole time his face was just totally deadpan... but then he really cried when we tried to take him off. So I guess that means he liked it!

On our last night, we went to the go kart place and Eli LOOOVED watching Mike drive around in the car. He kept screaming ... CAR! CAR! So fun.

He's still SUCH a boy. LOVEs trucks, will stop whatever he's doing when he hears a plane or sees a ball....and naturally makes little car sounds when he drives his toys around. He still loves crashing his trucks and cars off of any higher surface onto the ground (sorry neighbors below!).

I don't know if I mentioned this last time, but one of my most favorite things he does..... "Eli...what does Chewbaca say?" "Mwaaaaaaaah." I will never, ever get tired of hearing him say that. We always throw it in when we're running through the animal list with him. He gets SO excited when we ask him to do his animal sounds. :)

He's doing great with body parts, too! We're trying to teach him a new one every day. Today was belly button! :) He's also apparently able to identify letters.... cause he came up to my mom and said H when he was holding an H.... dont know if it was coincidence, but we're trying to start teaching letters now, too. So far he can identify G, H and E. We'll see if we can get any further. It's insane how much they're able to learn at this age.

His new favorite thing to say constantly is "I know, I know, I know." So now I like throwing in... wow, you know a lot of things! Lol - we joke around that he's prepping us for his teenage years. :)

15 month checkup!

We just got back from Eli's 15 month checkup! I was a little worried when we got there, because he was in FULL crankster mood since he hadn't taken a nap in the morning. (We went to a minor league baseball game last night with our work friends and didn't get home til 11pm! Poor little guy slept til 8:50 this morning!!! At the game, he had great fun running up and down and up and down and up and down the steps.... trying to run into the ladies room....trying to get into the service elevator and dancing for everyone). But he ended up only throwing a fit for the assistant (the one who makes him take off his diaper and...gasp...lie down on the scale..the horror!) and turned into a little dancing maniac for Dr. Grant. He's now 31 1/4 inches tall, placing him in the 52nd percentile for height, and 21 lbs, keeping him in the 8th percentile. The doc said she was really worried last time about his weight cause he plummeted from the 50th percentile to the 8th... but now that he stayed at the 8th again, she's fine with it. I told her again that both Mike and I were skinny little kids, so again, she's not worried. Becky has renamed Eli "Slim Jim." :) I don't think he looks particularly skinny except for the fact that 9 month old shorts are still falling off him. He's wearing 12-18 month shirts, but 6-9 month pants. :) It's going to be tough for us in the winter, I think, because the size pants that fit him are going to be too short. We'll cross that bridge when we come to it, though. :)

The doc also said he's very social and friendly for 15 months. (That was after Eli brought her his book and tried to crawl up in his lap!). :) I could have told her that... this is still the kid that wants everyone to look at him and has no fear of strangers. He wants to make friends wherever he goes. :)

Yesterday, he started HUGGING me when I asked him for a hug. I know this one is going to be short lived, but boy is it fun while it lasts!!!

Yesterday he also ate with a fork for the first time. I couldn't get him to eat his tofu at all (I coat it in bread crumbs .... which he loooves), but then I made a great show out of stabbing it with his fork and he was allll about it then. I was so excited.... but then he started taking his tofu off the fork and throwing it. Lovely. I also got hit in the head with more peas than I cared to count. But he ate at least five of them, so I considered it a victory. Anyone have any veggie tips? We seem to be on a veggie strike these days. I used to hide them in his yogurt, but now he's only eating 1/2 of his yogurt. On our meat strike days, it seems to work if I wrap it up in rice (lol... is he telling me he wants sushi?).

We're heading to Ocean City from Sunday to Sunday and I'm suuuuper excited. We'll get to do everything we didn't have time for last time, I hope. :)

15 months old!!!

Today, my little guy is 15 months old. 15 months! I was just looking back at pictures of when Eli was just learning to crawl and it boggles my mind to think that there was a time when he couldn't get around like he does now. This kid is EVERYWHERE. Two days ago, he learned how to climb the pole for his basketball hoop. That's right. Climb it. He can now get up and down from the sofa with ease and using chairs as barriers doesn't work anymore. Because he's gotten taller, he can now reach a lot of things we put on counters and the kitchen table.... and when he can't get to something he really wants, he's learned that he can bring a book or box over and climb up on it to make him taller. He learned yesterday how to take all of the clothes out of his hamper, take the hamper apart, and then drag it out of the room. His great joy today involved trying to get things to land in the kitty litter boxes. So as you can see, we're pretty busy around here.

He's really starting to get his point across and make his needs known. When he wants me to read a book, he'll bring it over to me and push me away from whatever I'm doing until I sit down and read it to him. When he wants something opened, he brings it to me. When I say "time for a diaper change," he knows instantly that that is when he's supposed to throw the biggest fit of all time. He wakes up in the morning saying "baba" cause he wants his bottle. Throughout the day, he's constantly saying (er...screaming...) "otter" to let me know he wants his water. When he puts something he's not supposed to have in his mouth, he comes over to me with the biggest grin you've ever seen. Today, when he was getting restless inside, he started yelling "outside! outside!!!! (sounds like aught-sigh). He can say Hi and Bye on cue and knows that he's super cute when he adds a wave.

he's really taken a liking to his stuffed animals. When I was at my mom's house, I found my old tickle me elmo (that my friends had given me for my 16th or 17th birthday!) and he LOVES it. He didn't really know much about the sesame street gang until then... now he LOVES elmo ("ana"). He has one elmo book and will sit with it for a good 5 minutes... constantly saying "ana" on each page. Tonight, when he was getting ready for bed, I told him in an Elmo voice "Hi Eli!" (wide eyes). "Can I have a kiss?" and he GAVE HIM A KISS! Same thing with the hug. The cutest thing. Ever.

In an effort to remember his cute little words, I'm going to try and remember all of the words he can now say.... (P.S. I am NOT writing this to freak out those of you who have kids who aren't saying much. They're NOT supposed to yet... this kid is just freakin verbal.... it's going to be rough when he's 2!).

Clearly: Hi, Bye, Up, down, duck, moo, baa, mama, dada, daddy, neigh, lolo, lola, tita, apple, no

Words that I can understand: Ana (elmo), otter (water), atsite (outside), baba (bottle), owain (airplane), bapde (tractor, truck), bapdu (bathtub), ite (light), da da dee (teddy bear), nana (grandma), appaju (applesauce), sa (sock), shhh (shoe), shar (shark), naaa (more), iye (riley), deder (dexter), ba (box)...and much to my dismay.... mama (banana).

Yesterday was our 3rd wedding anniversary and since mike had the day off, we took eli to the bronx zoo. I've lived here for 8 years and FINALLY made it to the zoo! Eli was SUPER excited to see the animals this time. His vision is really good - he was able to spot them all - even the snow leopard who was hiding. It was so much more fun bringing him knowing that he could actually see what we were there to see. What I thought was hysterical was when we got to the sections with the deer, he kept yelling NEIGH... NEIGH. lol... yup, I guess deer pretty much look like horses to him. I tried to correct him for a while but then gave up - I'm sure the people around me thought I was a nut, saying - yes, yes - neigh! lol.

His favorite books this week are the don't let the monkeys jump on the bed book (which I read about 15 times today), Elmo's 12 days of christmas, moo baa la la la and his star wars books. When you read him the star wars book with the spacecrafts, he makes all kinds of arm motions when you're making the sound effects.

OH. One big (frustrating) thing is that he now very clearly can tell us when he does NOT want something. He says "nonononoono" and waves his right hand back and forth. As in... "Eli, do you want green beans?" "nononononono." I have to trick him into eating certain things.... he won't even TRY them if he doesn't like the look of them. sigh. And so it begins. Food battles with toddlers.

He has his 15 month checkup next week... more updates to follow!

Last day of July!

It's the last day of July???? Seriously???? I really feel like it's July 1st...maaaybe July 2nd. But July 31st? No...way.

I'm worried that the summer is going to keep going by so quickly and am NOT ready for the cold. I've really had an amazing summer and am going to make the most of every day we have left!

Last week, we got to go to Ocean City for 5 days. We spent the first day with my Grandma and Eli had fun spending time with his Great Grandma! She had uncovered the old Fisher Price Barn that I used to play with when I was little (remember? the barn door that mooed when you opened it? those fences?) and Eli would not put the horse and cow down the whole time. For some reason, he thought it was hysterical to "baaa" with the horse. I'd say no - that's not a baa, that's a neigh! Then he'd laugh and laugh and say baaa again. Friday, we were joined by Dexter, Rachna and Nick. We had so much fun with them! I think we did a pretty darn good job of getting both boys basically on the same schedule. We hit up parks, pools, the beach....restaurants..... we got around! The boys looooved the boardwalk (of course.... they get to run around and get attention from all of the passerbys) and they loved "playing" badminton in front of the house (which looked strangely similar to them running around banging the rackets into the ground....).

Eli loved tasting Orange Sherbert (I refuse to call it Sherbet) and keeping in his new policy of not eating anything that is green, stayed away from the lime sherbert. He was also VERY excited that Daddy shared his Rita's icee with him.

At the beach, Eli did pretty good in the sand. He was cautious walking around (why is the ground moving????) and preferred to stay in one place. He didn't mind sitting in the sand or having sand on him.... and also unfortunately liked throwing sand all over mommy. Making sandcastles was GREAT fun and smashing them was even better. He was very cautious about the water...not quite sure what to make of it.... partly because it was so cold.

Eli's become quite the dancer these past few weeks! Whenever he hears a song he likes, he stops what he's doing and breaks out into his dance. I have videos of it and think there's nothing cuter than babies dancing!

He still LOVES his ball and will drop everything he's doing if he sees a ball. He particularly enjoys throwing the ball at mommy when he is standing one inch away. He'd also be AMAZING at hot potato, cause he MUST throw the ball the second he gets it in his hands. We're working on getting him to understand the difference between throwing his ball and throwing his toys. Not fun to get hit in the eye with a plastic sheep.

His 3 favorite books right now are his 2 star wars books (I think he just likes hearing mommy do Chewbaca and Yoda sounds) and Moo, Baa, La la la. When we get to the La La La page, I do it all singsongy and it makes him laugh every time. He handed me the "La la la" book the other day and then crawled into my lap to have me read it.... 16 times.

We're heading to Maryland next week to visit my friend Chrissy who's in town with baby Rhys from Thailand... and to meet Grandma's new kittens! Should be a great trip!

A typical morning

Thought I'd document a typical morning on my days at home with Eli. Here's how this morning went....

6:15.... woke up because Mike was getting ready for work and I heard the cats meowing for food. Got out of bed as quieeeeeeetly as possible so as to not wake my sleeping baby. Made it out successfully.

6:20... said goodbye to hubby and went to the couch to keep sleeping (God forbid I open the door to go back into the bedroom.... that would have surely woken the little prince up).

7:08...Hear Eli talking to himself. Go back to sleep.

7:15... Hear Eli getting louder, singing now. Get up... warm up a bottle...brush my teeth... come back and hear silence. Thinking Eli went back to sleep.

7:25... tackle the huge pile of "things to do" that has been building up on my counter for about 2 weeks now. Sort through the mail, clean up a mess, find address book, put stamps on thank you cards that I wrote a month ago...

7:45... hear Eli again. Louder this time. Decide to go in. Happy baby this morning! Watch him dance around his crib while singing.

7:55... diaper change. Able to distract him from screaming bloody murder by finding a few toys for him to play with. Becomes a diaper change/game of catch.

8:00.. bottle...cuddle with Eli.

8:05...Let Eli loose and quickly run around hiding things he's not supposed to touch...remote controls, pens, etc. Move things away from the edges of tables, counters, etc.

8:10...Watch him play with his tractor and dump truck...trying to teach him things so am constantly yelling out "what does a goat say? where's your hippo? oops - your tractor fell down..." Etc. It's a running commentary.

8:20... Play basketball with Eli.

8:25.... pick up the farm animals, toys, etc that he keeps tripping on.

8:30.... try to distract him from continuously going over to his stroller, trying to knock it down.

8:35.... breakfast time! Try to cut up fruit for Eli in the kitchen while he's playing with his farm magnets... but...

8:37...he notices me cutting up blueberries and attaches himself to my legs, crying for blueberries.

8:38...manage to wash/dry/cut blueberries with a crying baby attached to me.

8:40.... put Eli in his high chair. Get him strapped in, only to realize... poopy diaper. Take Eli out of high chair.

8:42... screaming poopy diaper change.

8:45... back in the high chair... start to dole out the food. Papaya and blueberries.

8:46... start to prepare MY breakfast. Eli starts screaming for more. Feed eli more. come back to my breakfast. Just about get everything prepared...then he is screaming for more. cut up more fruit for eli.

8:55... sit down to eat my breakfast. Eli now throwing his papaya cause he's done with it. Take away all of his papaya. Realize he doesn't have water. Search for eli's cup. Find it - not washed.

9:00.... wash Eli's cup... fill it with water. Give it to him.. he wants help holding it.... then throws cup. wants more food. go get him a banana. try to take a bite of my food, but he sees it and wants it. Give him part of my bread.

9:02.. manage to take a few bites of my breakfast. Then peel the banana and give it to him... he wants to hold it.... so constant monitoring to make sure he doesn't shove the whole thing into his mouth. Gets to the end and shoves way too big of a piece in his mouth... his lips are even puckered out cause there's so much banana in there. Watch intently, praying he doesn't choke. He swallows... all is well.

9:05 .. take the rest of the banana, cut it up into small pieces... dole it out a few pieces at a time.

9:07... try to wipe eli's hands down cause he has smooshed banana everywhere. eli screams as if I'm slicing his hands with a knife.

9:09... finish part of my breakfast. eli is done. decide to wipe down eli and the high chair and abandon the rest of my breakfast.

9:11... take eli out of his high chair and attempt to find all of the food he threw.

9:12... realize eli is not in the room with me...realize it's too quiet... never a good sign. Abandon clean-up and run to bedroom... find eli opening and closing his drawers.

9:13... watch as Eli opens his drawer and one by one takes out and throws all of the shorts I so neatly folded up a few days ago.

9:15... watch as Eli discovers a basket of my things and decide it's not harmful to let him take things out one by one and carry them to different spots in my room.

9:16... watch as he takes his shorts and places them all over the room.

9:17... realize he's standing still and making the pooping face. Seriously? We just had a poopy diaper.

9:20... clean up MASSIVE poopy diaper while distracting Eli with his ball..monkeys...dog.

9:25... take eli out to the living room and put him down... SCREAMING....realize he is now tired and wants to be held. Leave him there so i can get rid of the diaper, wash my hands, finish cleaning up papaya.

9:27.... come back to crying baby.. pick him up and take him over to read stories. Read 3 books...throw three books from the shelf....read 1... fling one...read one....watch as he takes five more down.... watch as he decides standing on top of his books are a fun idea.

9:40.... decide we'll try coloring a picture for a few people. Find the crayons and the paper... spend the next 10 minutes saying "no, not in the mouth" "over here...the paper, not the floor" "don't eat the paper" "i said don't eat the paper" "not in the mouth" "not on the floor" and then decide coloring time is over. Pack up the crayons and put them away.

9:55... realize eli is chewing something. Tackle him and do the finger sweep despite the sharp dagger teeth, get bit a few times, then rescue the piece of soggy paper he was chewing on.

10:00... carry the tired baby (who is now flailing to get out of my arms) to his crib for nap time. 10:05... listen as he is singing/talking to himself, wondering if he's going to go to sleep.

10:15. Ahhh. silence. Look around the room at the 22 books on the ground, the unpacked bags from yesterday, the dishes, the farm animals, the balls, the tractors... and decide to finish my breakfast.

10:20... finish breakfast. Decide to forgo shower and get online instead.

And that, my friends, was a typical morning in the Flores house :)

Crazy Boy

Anyone have any tips for getting a 14 month old to sit quietly in church? ...pause.... I didn't think so. Tonight was an adventure!!! (We try to go to church on Saturday nights so we can go as a family - because I work on Sundays). He actually sat still in his stroller with only minimal yelling since I gave him a new book about every 30 seconds... but then the natives were getting restless and I decided to take him out of his stroller. BIG mistake. He was EVERYWHERE. Luckily, he took time every now and again to flirt with the ladies in the back row and dance for his old man friend in the back. It's getting REALLY hard to contain him now that he knows how to un-contain himself. :)

Today he learned how to kick the ball. Yes, it appears at this stage that he is merely trying to stand ON the ball, but in attempting to do so, he actually kicked it a few times. Fun. He also learned that he can throw his fire truck across the room. The poor neighbors down below.

He was super excited about reading his train book and his plane book tonight. He's turning into such a boy!

Yesterday we went up to visit Tita Rachna, Tito Nick and Dexter and all of us took a trip to the pool. Eli wasn't too sure about the baby pool except for when his new 2 year old friend came over to play... and he DEFINITELY was terrified of the waterslide... but he really had fun in the big pool bouncing and floating with mommy. I didn't get a chance to put him in his blow up raft/boat thing - can't wait to try that next time. When we went back to Dexter's house, the boys had great fun trying to steal toys from each other, push each other on the big cars and run after each other. Dexter kept trying to hug (we'll call it hugging) eli, and eli was not too keen with that idea. Haha.

Let the adventures continue!

The adventures continue!

Wow - this child is seriously like a sponge right now. It's like I can't teach him things fast enough. He's trying to copy all of the words we're saying...and sometimes gets them! He can now tell us what a cow, sheep and tiger say. When he sees his cow or sheep, he'll run over saying "mooo" or "baaaaa." When he wakes up in the morning or gets ready for bed, he now ASKS for his bottle. As soon as I take him out of his crib in the morning, he says "Baba" (bottle). We tried a sippy cup this morning in place of the baba, but that didn't go over so hot. He only drank an ounce. Ah well... we'll keep trying. Grandma taught him how to say Hippo ("Opo!") and when he sees his hippo stuffed animal, he runs over to it saying "opo! opo!"

He can also now say (though by no means perfectly) orange, truck, riley (haha... it doesn't come out sounding exactly like riley, but it's close). He says "bapde" for bathtub and for tractor. We were at a friend's house the other night and they had a ride-on mower in their garage. he RAN over to it squealing "bapde! bapde!!" When I put him on the seat, he was SOOOOO excited. He's turned into a real truck boy and loves pushing around all of his trucks.

Last night he surprised me by saying "ball" when he saw his meatball (yeah - good luck for me in trying to get him to eat those and not throw them now) and also by saying it when he saw a picture of a ball in a book. I'm glad he's able to recognize the 2D images!

He likes to chase riley around EVERYWHERE now. He starts squealing with delight whenever he sees her and chases her around until she hides. I'm surprised she lets him get so close to her. He's definitely into trying to grab her tail right now.

His new favorite thing to do in the tub is take his watering can, put it up on the ledge (mommy gets wet a lot of the time cause it falls on her) and then put the lid on. He's pretty good at lining up lids! Whenever he gets it on, he screams and claps. Then we knock it over and do it again...and again...and again. Last night he surprised me by grabbing one of his letters and saying "letter!" He's repeated the word before, but this was unprovoked.

This morning was super cute... he ran over to his books and grabbed his new favorite truck book... handed it to me and stood there waiting for me to read it. I asked him "Do you want to get in my lap?" and he came over and sat in my lap. Did he really understand me? I don't know, but it's pretty fascinating to see!

This morning while I was getting dressed, he passed the time by opening and closing three of his drawers and emptying them out. He pointed at his shorts drawer and said "shorts." Freaky.

We had a super fun weekend! Sunday, we headed over to Tita Rachna's house for best buddy Dexter's first birthday! Yaaaay! Eli had great fun running around with the balloons, hanging out in the pool, eating fruit from everyone's plates, playing trucks with Dex and refusing to take his nap. :) After the party, we went to Tito Jerome's place in Jersey to have dinner (yum!) and watch the fireworks. Eli was all decked out in his red, white and blue and passed the hour long wait for the fireworks by walking around making new friends. He loves talking to anyone and everyone and still screams if he doesn't get the attention he wants. He also lets out a girly scream whenever he sees a kid or stroller. He runs up to them and wants to play. He also had GREAT fun walking around wearing Tito Kris's hat... he loves putting on big people hats and taking them off...putting them on.... He likes walking around with them obstructing his vision.

The fireworks were great fun! Eli sat on Daddy's shoulders (and for a few minutes on Mommy's) and was mesmerized the whole time. We were a few miles away from the actual fireworks, so they weren't too loud and were by no means scary. It made for a super late night but it was fun!

It's July!

I can't believe it's July 1st. I'm loving spending the summer with Eli and am afraid it's going to go by way to quickly! Noooooo.

Today was a super fun day. Because of the generosity of my dear friend Wendy, season ticket holder for the Yankees, I got to take Eli to a game today! It was my first time in the new stadium (LOVE IT) and my first time taking Eli to a game! We went with my friend Bridget and her 2 year old daughter, Tara. We got there a little late (I find it nearly impossible to get to places on time these days) and I was truthfully only expecting Eli to last 2 innings or so. I'm happy to report we sat in our seats until the 7th inning!!! He had great fun playing with Tara (who wanted to hold him and endlessly touch his cheeks and give him kisses...super cute!), standing up on his chair to scream at the top of his lungs at the people behind us, eating his first soft (er...slightly hard) pretzel, clapping (randomly...rarely at the right time) and pointing at the jumbo-tron.

In the 7th inning, we went to walk around, which lasted for a while until we found the stairs.... All he wants to do these days is go up and down stairs (he could be there for an hour if I'd let him). So we hightailed it out of there and headed for the Yankee Museum. To get there, we had to take a super long ramp, which is usually super boring... but it was definitely Eli's favorite part of the day. He LOVES running up and down ramps these days, so for him, this was like.... the ultimate ramp heaven. lol. I'd try to hold his hand cause he was running really fast and I didn't want him to hit the concrete, but every time I did, he would stop, pry my fingers off, then turn around and take off again. It wasn't super crowded, so I let him go. He did great! No falls! When we got to the museum, he had GREAT fun running around and trying to look behind the displays and climb underneath the ball display. We posed for some pictures in front of the trophies and then headed back into the stadium. We were having a mini-meltdown and were about to leave when we heard da-na-na-na-na... Mariano's music!!! The whole stadium jumped to it's feet... and we turned around and came right back. We watched the inning...and the Yankees won! WOOHOO!

I carried him the whole way there and back...so my biceps were BURNING. Good workout!

Other favorite things of note these days....

-pulling all of the dishtowels down from where they are supposed to be hanging and twirling them around

-reaching for things on the table that were previously unreachable... he's taller and can reach the edges of the dining room table and anything that's up on the shelf in the living room. This is how he got the remote control one day and tried to order movies on demand.

-trying to squeeze his head into small spaces

-trying to help mommy cook by standing behind her and holding onto both legs so she can't walk anywhere

-opening any drawer that has clothes in it and removing all of the clothes. Silly drawers! Why are the clothes INside...he wonders.

One day last week after a nap, he all of a sudden got quiet. I assumed (HA) he had fallen back asleep. A few minutes later, I heard talking and went in... to find that he had reached his box of diapers, had pulled them all into the crib with him and was opening them and flinging them around. Yup - changed the furniture around after THAT one.

He's starting to copy us more and more and it's really cute when you can see the wheels turning as he's trying to say what we say. His vocabulary now consists of "mama" "Dada" "baba" (for which he is referring to his bottle), "up down" (He says them together), moo, water, ball, shoe, sock and truck.

He still LOVES LOVES LOVES his fire truck (carries it everywhere) and his tractor with his farm animals (both presents from his aunts!). He carries his little farm animals around all day and even fell asleep holding his little plastic cow tonight. He also LOVES playing with his basketball and playground ball. He has a pretty forceful little throw, too - it shocks me sometimes.

Mom is driving up from Maryland tomorrow to babysit for the day - we're super excited to see her!