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.

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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!