Verbal explosion

I am not talking vulgarity here. I am talking about the fact that Eli repeats just about everything we say... so now we really DO have to watch our language! Just this morning he picked up the words pants, shirt, toothbrush, teeth, and oatmeal. And those are just the ones that I can remember right now and could understand at the time.

I have been working the past few evenings 5-10PM, and I never thought that I would miss Eli this much. It is only a few hours at a time, but I am not there to put him to bed. It does make me feel better (but at the same time, REALLY guilty) that he misses me, too. He woke up in the middle of the night, and did not cry, but I could hear him say "Mama" a couple of times looking for me. At least I have gotten my name back. For the past few weeks Eli has has been calling me "Bye bye".

Eli has also become quite the climber. Very appropriate given the title of this blog site. His favorite thing to climb is currently the toilet, but he has been known to stand on the coffee table, his activity table, and the kitchen chairs. I am just waiting for him to figure out that he can use the chairs to climb on even higher items. Just makes you want to cover the entire house in safety foam...

Eli update

Well it seems that I am already slacking off on the Eli blog. It has been over 3 weeks since the last post, and obviously I don't remember EVERYTHING that has happened since then, so here are some highlights from the past few days...

I think Eli's vocabulary has doubled over the past few days. Some words he has added (and a phoenetic pronunciation):
apple (bapp-uh)
peaches (pee-pees)
cookie (cook-ee --> funny how this one has the correct pronunciation, eh?)
up (bupp)
I have noticed that a good chunk of his vocabulary revolves around food. You never guess this by looking at him -- Mr. 5th percentile in weight :) Guess this gives me a goal for the next few weeks... teach Eli non-food words! He has also (amazingly) started counting! He can get to 4 by himself, though I don't think he actually associates this with counting objects. He just has the order memorized.

Chris is on vacation this week, so we went to St. Louis for a couple of days over the weekend. Eli is teething... or so we thought! Turns out he may have had a stomach virus that was causing some of his problems. Poor guy just wasn't feeling good. You know something is wrong when Eli willingly goes to bed around 7:00. It seems he is also a homebody, which we knew, though we did not know to what extent! The second he realized that he was home he perked up, and we had such a hard time getting him to take a nap! As for those teeth, two more have broken through. This brings the grand total up to six.

Today we went swimming (indoors!) for the first time in a while. Eli was scared of the water for the first 15 minutes or so. Maybe this is a sign that it is time to sign him up for swimming lessons? He eventually warmed up to it, though, and by the end was having a great time splashing in the water with a giant noodle. We also went to Chuck E. Cheese's for the first time. Boy has this changed since I was a kid! Eli had a great time in the "Toddler Zone" going down the slide, and we only had to take him off the Skeeball machine once! He did manage to take one of Chris' basketballs and run away. Who would have thought he could move so fast with a ball that is almost as big as he is? I caught him just as he was throwing the ball to (at) another child. All in all, a very fun experience!

Eli's super cute moment of the day: While watching American Idol (one of our 2 TV indugences, the other being 24), I turn around to find Eli with a wire wastebasket on his head. He seems to find nothing unusual about this. In fact, he decides to keep it there, and proceeds to walk over to his wagon, take out some blocks and start stacking them.

Watch your step!

Welcome to the first Eli post! I am going to be using this as a record of all of the fun little things that Eli does on a daily basis. It occured to me that the baby books record the big moments in a child's life (first steps, first words, etc.), but some of the things that I really want to remember are the mini events and adventures of toddler-hood.

Today Eli's friend Soloman came for a visit. The two of them were born only 3 weeks apart, so it is a lot of fun to watch them interact. Apparently this was so much fun for the both of them that Soloman fell asleep on the car ride home and Eli fell asleep eating lunch! Poor guy was sitting there shoveling chicken into his mouth, but his eyes were completely closed. He was so tired that I took away the chicken, put broccoli in from of him, and he actually ate it. You know that something is awry when Eli willingly eats a green vegetable.

So concludes your first journey into the monkey house. I hope you will visit often!