Fun times

I had the best night EVER with Eli last night. After a day of total crankiness and nap refusal, I went out to dinner with a good friend. When I came home, Mike left to meet up with some friends and I had about 45 minutes or so with Eli before bedtime. We had the best time! It was just one of those nights where you wish you could freeze time. He was hiding from me and then bursting into fits of laughter when he'd pop up from behind the couch and see me.....we built towers together....we read some great books (hop on pop - his old favorite!) together... played with his garbage truck..... When it was time for bed, he was attacked by shadow bunnies. And when it was time to lay him down, he said "pillow?" and laid right down. Amazing! Those are the nights that keep you going, ya know?

20 months old!!!

2011. Insane. Right? In my mind, it's still October of 2010. Before I know it, Eli's going to be a big brother! I've really been trying to cherish every moment I have with this little guy, knowing that soon our lives are about to change completely (in a good way, of course, but a scary way!).

Every day this kid continues to amaze me with the things he's learning. Today, when I was putting on his socks, he told me they were "ded" (red) and then showed me that his hat was "yellow." He's getting pretty good with red, blue and yellow...and will even throw in an orange or two.... but absolutely refuses to acknowledge the words green or purple. He loves shouting that all of the stoplights are "BOO" (blue), even though he very well knows they are red or green. (I know this, because he gives me a devilish little smile each time he says it). Today we also got out our $1 Target animal flash cards and learned a bunch of new ones.... like possum and meerkat. Over the past few days, he's gone from calling cows "MOOOO!" to "Tow" and can now say CAT instead of Mow and HORSEEEEE instead of neigh. He's also surprisingly good at telling the difference between donkeys and horses, which baffles my mind, but hey - I'm grateful he can tell cause I don't know how I'd even begin to explain that one.

His favorite song in the world right now is Old MacDonald.... He says "E--L---I" all day long... which could at first glance be an amazing party trick, with people thinking he's spelling his name...but in truth he is trying to say "E-I-E-I-O" and wants me to sing it. This goes on for a good 15 minutes, with him supplying me with the animal he most wants to hear. Interestingly enough, it's always tiger, then cow, then horse, then chicken. This morning, he wanted donkey and peep over and over again.

Our incredible sleeping child has been giving us a lot of problems going to sleep at night over the past few weeks, often screaming bloody murder for a while before we relent and go back in there. Last night, he was INCONSOLABLE and kept screaming for his water.... "AT-E! AT-E!!!" I brought him his sippy cup and he would NOT let go of it. He fell asleep holding onto it, and even then when I tried to take it from him, he screamed and rolled over to cuddle with it. Fine by me.... most kids want a blankie...mine wants a sippy cup. Go figure.

Our bedtime routine is usually the same... we go into the room (all three of us), dim the lights and lay him on our bed with us. He fights it for the first few seconds but then accepts that it's getting closer and is ok. He then asks to climb onto my back (a game he calls BABOO!) or says "NEIGH! NEIGH!" and climbs onto mike's back. He LOVES being bucked off of the horsey and his rides always make him squeal with delight. Then he demands to read "EENIE! EENIE!", his sesame street sign language book, and now that he's showing such a huge interest in letters, it's getting even more fun to read to him. And WOOHOOO - after MONTHS of teaching, he FINALLY calls Bert by his name instead of calling him Ernie. Then we read "Night Night, Little Pookie" and he goes off to brush his teeth with Daddy. He insists on "brushing" his own teeth, which pretty much consists of him sucking on his toothbrush for a minute. When he comes back into the room, he wants to see the bunnies (we do shadow hand puppet bunnies) and then squeals with laughter when the bunnies come to tickle him. We then put him in his sleep sack, give him three kisses on each cheek (an Eli sandwich!) and put him in his crib. He's always super excited to see and lay down on his pillow, but super sad once he realizes Mommy and Daddy are leaving the room.

What's a typical day like for 20 month old Eli? He wakes up between 7:30-8:00....fights his diaper change, comes out to "PAY! PAY" (play) with his ride-on motorcycle or thousands of other cars.... After about 30 min or so of playing, he decides he's too hungry to go on and yells "EAT! EAT!" and climbs into his high chair (or tries to sit in one of the big person chairs). He eats and then we get back to playing..... which consists of driving his cars around the couch, parking them in a row on the dining room or living room table..... putting the garbage truck man inside the garbage truck and driving him around, then taking him out and getting upset that he's not in there.....reading books (most of which are star wars or sesame street related...his two favorite things right now!), cooking in his kitchen (today he took the coffee cup and "poured" it into a regular cup and pretended to drink from it), climbing places he shouldn't....climbing into his stroller to demand we go "OUTTIDE!"... or throwing his football/basketball/any ball he can find around. Today, he got pretty good at catching, too - that's a first for us! Around 12 or so, he has his nap, which lasts anywhere from 1 to 2 hours on average.... The rest of the day is pretty much the same.

Fading fast.... tired mommy!!! More to come.

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.

:) :)