A sign that we eat too much fast food

We made a trip to the library today to drop off a couple of books that were (over)due. I pulled the car up to the drop box in the parking lot and rolled down the window, which made Eli say those two magic words...

... french fries.

Someone get this kid a dictionary

I am not quite sure that Eli gets the concept of yucky. He knows that some things are yucky, and he knows what those things are, but I don't think he truly grasps what that means. I was sitting here reading Zach's blog when Eli started saying "yucky". I looked behind me and he was heading for the litterbox. I pulled him away and told him, "No, don't touch, that's yucky." Not 3 seconds later Eli had his hands in the litterbox, saying "yucky".

I think this is all a big ploy to get to wash his hands in the sink.

A budding comedian

A momentous occasion occurred the other day. One for the baby book, not that this category is ever included in such things. Eli made his first joke. It was bath time, and he was looking at his bath number book. He was pointing to each number on the page and we were taking turns naming it. Now, there are only four numbers on the page, so we covered each one multiple times. All of a sudden Eli points to something other than a number. Then he looks up at me with this little grin, just waiting for me to name it. "Flower," I said, smiling, and he bursts into laughter.

Toddler humor.

My turn to talk about poop

We may begin potty training a little sooner than expected. Eli has taken to telling us when he has a soiled diaper. I think a large part of it is that he just likes to say the word... poopy. We just introduced that word last week; before that we had just been calling it stinky. This afternoon we were playing when I noticed that he was, uh, filling his diaper. As soon as he finished he ran over to me and said, "poopy," followed immediately by "stinky." Granted, this does not necessarily mean that he wants me to change his diaper. He just likes to let me know that it is dirty. Getting him to the changing table still takes 20 minutes of prodding, bribery, and whining (by me).

Now what do I complain about?

Eli is a pretty good kid. If fact, the only thing that I could really complain about was his sleeping, but that is now a thing of the past. Eli has slept through the night for 4 consecutive days! Honestly, I was wondering if I would ever see this day. I was content to get up with him a couple of times a night for just a few minutes at a time. That was much better than being up for 3 hours straight with a child that wanted to play and talk to you. But this is even better! I find myself waiting for HIM to wake up in the morning. It's amazing how quickly it happened, but I'm glad that it finally did.

Another woman says it all

I have mentioned before that I worry about pushing Eli too hard. It's not that I think he will burn out by the age of four, but that he will be too hard on himself when he is not always perfect. I don't want an 11-year-old with ulcers. I did read some words of wisdom today on Dooce (thanks, Kate!) that not only describe how I feel but give me some insight on what to do about it.

I’m not so sure it’s a bad thing that we tell her that she is beautiful or smart, as long as she knows we love her despite those things. They have no bearing on how much we love her. The bigger challenge is making her feel and understand something that has taken me a lifetime to learn, something I would have rather heard than any comment on my looks or intelligence. I want her to know that she will always be good enough.

Einstein, or DaVinci?

Colored pencils are the current method of choice for keeping Eli occupied while I try and get things done around the house. I can put him on the floor with some paper and pencils and he will entertain himself for 30-40 minutes... pretty amazing for Eli! If I move to another room, he will follow me with his paper, plop right down on the floor and continue to "draw". He went through an entire pad a paper in just a couple of days! Oddly enough, he even understands it when I say, "you can only draw on the paper," so we have very few stray markings around the house. Unfortunately, "paper" includes books, the mail, and Daddy's work articles, so we still have to watch him pretty closely.

Celebration

Eli slept through the night!!!!

A graduation gift to Uncle Tim

Ladies and gentlemen, place your bets. How long until he figures out how to get all the way to the top?

Eli's new binky holder

Today was hot. Have to turn on the air conditioning hot. And I am always cold, so it must have been hot. After Eli woke up from his afternoon nap, he was noticably warm and dehydrated, so we went to the kitchen to get some water. I gave him his cup, and he takes his pacifier and sticks it in my mouth. Not in the "Ha ha Mommy looks funny with a binky" sort of way. Not even a "Done with this, this goes here" way . More of a "Here, keep this warm for me".

It's nice to know that I am needed.

Welcome to the klutz club

It seems that Eli is just as accident prone as his mommy. We were at the park today for our weekly playgroup. Eli had just gotten off the slide (Eli does not actually go down the slide... he just climbs up and down the stairs), and I was brushing the debris from his shoes off of my pants, when I hear a twang resonating from a few feet away. It was the type of sound you hear if you hit your hand against a hollow metal pole. For reference, go smack a swing set or a radiator pipe. After the twang Eli was lying on his back on the ground and had started to cry. I walked over, picked him up, and he had a DENT in his forehead. Not a bump, a DENT! He was lying next to a metal balance beam that was about, oh, forehead high, so I can only assume that Eli was walking along and walked straight into the beam... HARD. My only consolation is that about 20 minutes later, another child did the same thing. Oh, and Eli is OK. Just a small bruise.

This reminds me of an encounter I had with a stop sign (if you don't know this story, Chris would be MORE than happy to enlighten you)...

In honor of Tricia's OCD

The destruction that occurs every day in the Wolf household as a result of hurricane Eli.

Happy

For Eli's first birthday, Uncle Tim gave him an Elmo puppet book. You can put your fingers in the back of the book and make the puppet move his arms and mouth, all while singing "If you're happy and you know it". Consequently, Eli has started calling this book "Happy". I have never allowed Eli the joy of watching Sesame Street. Oddly enough, I did not want Eli spending the entire day watching television. Six straight Baby Einstein videos are OK, but heaven forbid he watch an hour of Big Bird and his friends. No one ever said that I was rational. Actually, I think it is more that Sesame Street has changed its format since I was a kid, so now I am biased against it. Either way, the only reason that Eli even knows of Elmo is through this book. Now, anytime he sees Elmo he calls him Happy.

It's a good thing he applies this logic only to his Elmo book. Who knows what nickname Chris or I would have!

New photos

FYI -- I posted some new photos in Yahoo! photos. Follow the "pictures of me" link and check them out!

Well rested!!!

By writing this post, I am probably dooming myself to several more months of sleepless nights. However, I do have to celebrate the fact that Eli is (almost) sleeping through the night. I know, he should have been doing this nearly a year ago, but after many failed attempts at "sleep training" I had just resorted to the fact that he would do it on his own when he was ready. I have broken as many of his bad sleep habits as I can. I stopped nursing him to sleep several months ago (granted, weaning at ~13-months helped because he no longer has that as an option) and I no longer rock him to sleep. Just a couple of lullabies and into the crib he goes, usually completely awake. Lately he has only been waking up twice a night, and last night he was only up once! By "up" I mean that I actually have to go into his room to get him to go back to sleep. He still wakes up and fusses several times a night, but will often take care of this himself. I am actaully well-rested for the first time in 2 years (I did not sleep very well when I was pregnant... in any of the 3 trimesters. At first I thought it was just a cruel trick of fate, but now I realize that I was just being prepared for what was to come). So I guess the overwhelming message is... HOORAY!

Tricks of the trade

Since Eli now has 8 teeth, he is having a wonderful time experimenting with them. We brush his teeth 3-4 times a day, he REALLY likes biting, and he has discovered that he can scrape them together and they make a lovely fingernails-on-the-chalkboard sound. Even more satisfying is that this last trick makes mommy cover her ears, dance in circles, and scream "stop, stop, STOP!" Determined to break him of this habit, I figured the best way would be to make him think that it does not bother me. Here is the scene the other day in the kitchen:

Eli: (scrapes teeth)

Me: (looks up, smiles slightly, looks back down)

Eli: Mommy?

Me: (looks up) Yes, Eli?

Eli: (scrapes teeth)

Me: That's nice. (looks back down)

Eli: (goes back to eating his lunch)

Wait, did that just work? It must have, because he has not scraped his teeth since. What other sneaky tricks can I employ to get him to do what I want? I will have to think about this!

Baby Einstein

On behalf of all of the movies that he so loves to watch, I have given Eli a new nickname. Mother's prerogative allows me to honestly believe that my child is the most brilliant baby to ever have walked the Earth and to shamelessly brag about him. So without further ado, here are some of Eli's more recently acquired impressive feats:

* He can identify the numbers 2, 4, 5, and 8. By identify I mean he will say their names if you point to them and he will point to them if you ask him to find the number.

* He is learning his shapes. He can say square (kwee), circle (coo-coo), and oval (ho-ho), and can point to these three along with triangle and rectangle on command. I was changing his diaper in the mall today, and while on the changing table he says "square". I followed his gaze and, sure enough, there was an electrical panel on the ceiling in the shape of a square.

* He knows the color yellow. I know, it is only one color, but kids aren't supposed to understand the concept of color until AT LEAST 18 months, so I am pretty impressed. We are working on others.

* He knows A LOT of animals and their sounds, most of his body parts, and lots of foods, all leading to a pretty big vocabulary for his age.

The funny (and slightly frustrating) thing is that he is pretty stubborn and will only do these "tricks" when he wants to do them. So I will say to somebody, "Watch Eli count to four," and then he just stares at me until I feel like the big lying mommy. But I know that he can do them and I guess that is really all that matters.

A trip to the zoo

Chris is on vacation for a few days this week, so despite an impending rainshower, we made the trek to STL to visit the zoo. We have been wanting to do this since Eli was, well, still a figment of our imaginations. So needless to say, Chris and I were pretty excited. At first Eli was unimpressed. We hit Big Cat Country first, figuring that even if it rained, at least Eli would get to see the lions and tigers (his current favorite animals). No such luck. The big cats were nowhere to be seen. We had to settle for a whole bunch of zebra and about 13 different kinds of antelope. I mean, who really cares about antelope? Things got better from there, though. We saw the sea lions being fed their lunch and visited the primate house, where Eli appropriately decided to climb on every bench in sight. After lunch, we went to the River's edge exhibit and saw rhinos, elephants, and a very close encounter with a couple of hippos (they are the ones in the water... not the white shirt).











We rounded out the day with a trip to the children's zoo, where Eli could pet some goats,











play on the playground,











and get completely soaked in the fountains!














Luckily Chris had the foresight to pack a full change of clothes. All in all, it was a very fun trip. The one thing that would make the day perfect would be if Eli slept through the night, but I am not holding my breath.


I think that I will leave that to the other hippos.

Our little monkey

Eli has become pretty adept at climbing. In fact, I rarely have to help him into a chair... he does pretty well all be himself!

Eli in the refrigerator

I just had to capture Eli's version of the word "cucumber." Keep your ears open, because it just sounds like a jumble of syllables. But you will notice that he says it the same way every time!

Defiance

Up until today, Eli has said the word "No" only when he encounters something he knows he should not be doing. For example, he will run up to the trash can and yell "NO" before proceeding to open the lid and remove as many items as possible. And I have always found it really cute, as long as he is not doing something dangerous like sticking his fingers in the electrical outlet or doing a swan dive off the toilet. Today marks a turning point in Eli's development... use of "No" to indicate something he does not want to do:

Me: Eli, turn around and sit down in the chair.
Eli: No!

Me: Eli, stop yelling in the store.
Eli: No!

Me: Eli, stop feeding your pizza to the dog.
Eli: No!

You get the idea. Of course, the hardest thing is not to laugh, because it is still extremely cute. Especially since he is not being malicious; he just wants to see what we will do.

Hooray for Crayola!

Eli loves to draw and color, but has a tendency to ruin all of our belongings or eat the crayons. To try and solve this problem, I finally talked myself into spending the money for some Crayola "Color Wonder" markers and paper. This stuff is great! The markers are specially designed so that the color only shows up on the special paper and NOT ON ANYTHING ELSE! Even better is that Eli has not (so far) tried to chew on the markers, which should be non-toxic but makes me nervous nonetheless. God bless the R&D department at Crayola!

So I am getting through to him

My biggest fears have been confirmed. Eli understands most of what he hears, and stores it in that little brain of his for later. We were driving home from the mall today, and I asked Eli what he wanted for lunch. Keep in mind that I rarely say the word "lunch" to Eli, much less ask him a blanket question like "what do you want" without giving him choices. I did not have to repeat the question, another oddity around our house, since I usually have to repeat myself at least 5 times before I even have Eli's attention, and then another 3 or 4 times before I get an answer. Eli answered me, clear as day... pizza. Well, I was so thrilled about this that we had pizza for lunch, just like he wanted.

Of course this also means that most of the time Eli knows what I am talking about and just chooses to ignore me. I thought I had a few more years until this began!

Keeping up with the Jones'

Eli has a little friend named Solomon that is only 20 days younger than he. This is great in that he has someone his own age to play with, and they have the same interests and reach the same developmental milestones around the same time. It has, however, become sort of an underlying competition for me to keep up with what Solomon has recently learned. For example, today I found out that Solomon is starting to recognize letters. Now, I realize that this is just his parents giving him a name for an object and he remembers that name. It is no different than Eli recognizing peaches or body parts. This realization does not stop me from running out and buying flash cards so that Eli does not "fall behind." In a way it motivates me to push Eli beyond what he would have normally learned.

I am not sure whether this is a good thing or a bad one. I feel that as a parent I should be pushing Eli to learn. I feel especially strongly about this because I am a stay-at-home mom, and quite frankly Eli is my job. But I do not know if this will really help Eli in the long run. I also feel that a child's job is play, and I do not want to be distracting him from his job so that I can feel better about mine. I guess this is one of those parenting things whose results will only be seen in time.

Until then, I will try to keep the kindergarten skills to a minimum. Multiplication will have to wait until he is two.