April!

It's been a while since I had a chance to update.... mainly because I've been forcing myself to take it easy and have been napping a lot more and doing a whole lot of nothing instead of getting to the list of a million things I need to do before the baby comes. After Eli goes to bed at around 8 or so, I'm generally wiped and I come out to the couch and usually fall asleep by 9. Not much time for myself, but I know I need the sleep.

Two nights ago, I fell asleep at 9 and woke up at 12:30, starving. I went to the kitchen to make myself a little snack and was EXHAUSTED. It was the kind of tired where I even kept one eye closed cause it was too much effort to open it. I had the scary thought of... OH NO... this is what my life is about to be like! I'll be HAPPY to get three hours of sleep. SCARY. I don't think I can do it!!! lol. Mike reminded me that I won't be pregnant at the time, so that should help a little bit. I reallllllly hope this new baby is as good of a sleeper as Eli was, but I know the odds of that are slim.

Waiting any day for Natalie (my college roomie) to have her first baby... she was due on the 6th. I can't wait to find out if it's a boy or girl and what the names are! Speaking of names, I don't know if I mentioned it, but Mike and I have finally and totally agreed on a boy's name and a girl's name! We're keeping them a secret, but I truly love both of them. Yaaaaay for that stress being over. I keep trying the names out on Eli...lol... he can't really say either of them. That's ok.... he'll get it. :)

On to Eli things....

He is COMPLETELY obsessed with baseball. He breathes baseball right now. He has a little bat that my aunt Maureen gave him and he carries it with him all the time. He has very strict rules for when we "play play baseball mommy!"... I must be wearing his blue hat, I must be the catcher, I must be sitting/squatting in a certain spot and he must be standing on our blue workout mat. Lol. He swings (and hits about 5% of the time) and has great fun pitching it back to me. Riley and Cliffy both enjoy batting the little baseball around, and Eli squeals with glee when they do.

His favorite four books right now are "If you give a moose a muffin," "if you give a pig a party," "If you give a mouse a cookie" and "If you take a mouse to school." He looooooves the "moose mussin" book, especially, and delights in eating little muffins mommy makes because they match the muffins in the book. On that same note, I can always get him to drink more milk if we start reading the cookie book, since the mouse is also drinking milk. (And I can sometimes get him to take a few bites of his pepper if I say the Peter Piper rhyme over and over).

He still also LOVES nursery rhymes, though he's letting me read more of his old standbys these days as well.

Music - he LOVES having his music on and we spend our days listening to three CDs.... an Elmo one, a Mickey Mouse Clubhouse one (he looooves Donald Duck and Goofy), and a great CD my mom sent by Laurie Berkman (Mike actually said the other day that he really likes that last CD and doesn't mind listening to it at all). He loves dancing around to the Laurie Berkman CD... it's really cute to see.

He's continuing to express his desires more and more, and usually ends up saying "That one!" when he wants you to do something or wants you to get something. For example, today, he really wanted me to sit next to him on the couch. Sometimes, he'll say "Mommy couch" or "mommy sit there," but today he kept on repeating "that one... couch! that one... couch!" Lol... I guess I was "that one" today. If he wants me to lay down on the pillow next to him, he'll say "that one, pillow." lol. He also MUST have the blue exercise mat out at all times, and he always refers to it as "that one." Today, he pointed to his play-dough and called it the "Blue one" and "Red one."

He knows he's not supposed to go near the litter boxes and is usually horrified to go near there anyway.... lol... if his ball rolls even close to it, he yells "uh oh - poo poo cats!" and makes me come rescue whatever it is that is near it.

He is OBSESSED with pillows and laying down on pillows. He spends a good portion of his day lining up teddy, monkey and max (his three stuffed animals that travel room to room with him) on mommy's pillow, laying down with them, and then covering himself with "that one, blanket." He always says "SEE? SEE?" when he does this, because he wants me to see. When he's in our bed, he scurries up to the pillows and demands to be covered with the blanket.... he calls this "nap, Eli" and does it allllll the time.

When he's going to bed, we put monkey and teddy on his pillow in his crib (Max has to sleep elsewhere... I don't want the whole crib filled with stuffed animals!) and tell Eli that they're waiting for him. He usually says "Monkey, Teddy...waiting????" and then is much more eager to get in there. For nap time the past three days, he's enjoyed throwing them all out of the crib as soon as I leave and then screaming MommMMMMMMMMY at the top of his lungs until I come back in and put them back in his crib. This usually happens 4 times before he'll finally lay down and go to sleep. I'm in a catch-22 there... I want SO much to say - nope, i'm not going back in there... i can't let him have his way with this..... But I know that if he DOES manage to fall asleep without his pillow and buddies, when he wakes up and realizes they aren't there, he won't go back to sleep and I'll get a much shorter nap out of him. Catch-22.

Every morning, when he wakes up, his first words (other than "play play" and "blanket off") are "Elmo, football?????" That's his way of asking if we can watch youtube videos together on the couch. I shouldn't let him do it every morning, but I really enjoy that waking-up cuddling time with him on the couch (he always leans against me when we watch together) and it's really nice for me to not have to run around playing baseball and boo mommy as soon as the day starts. He loves it when we eat bagels together while watching and always asks... "Eli, bagel? Mommy, bagel?" His favorite things to watch right now are a clip on Goofy playing baseball, The Mickey Mouse Clubhouse theme song, Patti Labelle singing the ABCs with all of the monsters/characters dancing, Katy Perry and Elmo doing a song together, and anything to do with Yankee Doodle, Humpty Dumpty or Hot Cross Buns. Lol... he must have picked something up from the Hot Cross Buns video, because for the past few days, he's been walking around with his bowl of snacks in one hand, singing the song. He'll then come around and offer us (lol...demand that we take it) one of whatever is in his bowl.

Ok....this is getting super long, so over and out for now!