The Great Cookie Caper

On a whim today I made monster cookies. This recipe combines all of the great things that you can put in a cookie: peanut butter, oatmeal, chocolate chips, and M&Ms. After the cooled I gave Eli a piece. Not the whole cookie. I know better than that. Just a small piece. I am not sure if it ever made it to his mouth, though, because when I saw him next he had crumbled the cookie onto the kitchen floor and was in the process of stomping through it. What occurred next felt like a scene from Mission: Impossible:

Good Morning, Stephanie. This is Eli, age 17 months. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to catch the running toddler before he reaches the living room and stains the carpet with his chocolate covered socks. This message will self-destruct in 5 seconds. Good luck, mom.

It is amazing how fast you can move when your carpet is at stake. Mission accomplished.

Mommy poll

This is an honest question for any moms (no matter how old your children are) that read this blog:

How do you get your child clean when during every bath they pee in the water?

I can read... sort of...

The source of Eli's klutziness

This story starts out being about me, but is ultimately about Eli.

We were out and about this afternoon when I needed to change Eli's diaper and use the restroom. As usual, Eli and I went into the handcapped stall in the bathroom since the normal sized ones tend to get a little crowded with both of us there. When I stood up, I conked my head on the toilet paper dispenser, which was much higher than usual, and said, "Oh, Jeez!" Eli's favorite word is now "Jeez". It's a good thing I did not say anything worse.

For those of you with babies that are wondering when you need to start watching your language, it is around 17 months.

My favorite part of the day

Every morning Eli wakes up between 5 and 6 o' clock, and I have gotten into the (bad?) habit of rocking him back to sleep and then pulling him into bed with us for another hour or so. My favorite part of this is when he wakes up for the morning in our bed, crawls onto my chest, and lays there for a few minutes while he finishes the waking up process. Who can resist smiling when they are getting Eli snuggles?

Lil' Elmer Fudd

After talking on the phone he goes to hunt that wascally wabbit...

Disappearing signs

All of a sudden the few baby signs that Eli had left have disappeared. The last holdouts, which have vanished in the past couple of days, were "water" and "more". He has a period of maybe a day where he will use the word and the sign interchangeably. Then the sign is gone. This is good, in a way, because I can not always see when he is signing. However, I do not always know what he is saying, so in a way it is more frustrating.

Shocking!!

This is what happens when you need a haircut, Daddy gets bored, and there just happens to be some hair gel nearby...

Happy Father's Day

Over the past 17 months I have watched you grow as a father, and I am so proud of you. Eli could not have asked for a better Daddy. Happy Father's Day!

In lieu of a bath

In general, Eli has mastered eating with utensils. The problem comes in when he gets full, and then gets bored. Stuck in his highchair, the only thing that he has to play with is his food. Not a big deal, unless that food happens to be something other than completely solid. Examples include applesauce, ketchup, and Eli's favorite, yogurt. Since Eli does not stop playing when it is time to get down, I thought I would document the process that I have to use to minimize the post-eating mess.

Here is the "before" picture. Note the upside-down bowl and the yogurt swirls on the tray. This is because Eli thinks that his food can double as finger paint.


First I have to remove any bowls, plates, utensils, and cups from the tray. Unfortunately, this only makes Eli more focused on the paint-like quality of his yogurt.



Next, I wipe the excess yogurt off the tray. This still leaves yogurty hands (as Eli so nicely tells me) that usually mess the tray up again, but this greatly decreases the amount of "free-yogurt" in the area.

Then, I wipe off his hands. I actually have to wipe off one hand and remove the tray and his bib while wiping off the other one. Otherwise, he will rub his hands together and then put the dirty hands on the sides of his chair.

Finally, I wipe off his face (not shown here... have you ever tried to take a picture while wiping a toddler's face? It does not work well), and do a cursory wipe of his hands, legs, clothes, and if necessary, his hair.

The only thing that I have found more successful than this method is to hold him over the sink and hose him down with the nozzle. But then I need to clean up the water mess on the floor...

Before there was Eli...

... there was a wedding!

Happy 6th anniversary to the one who makes all my dreams come true. I love you, now and forever!

Gene Expression

There is no doubt that Eli is related to his Grandpa Kohlmeier. I grew up in a house that had a seemingly endless supply of classical music records, and from an early age I learned a love of Beethoven and Bach. Eli, too, has loved music since before he was born. Music has always been able to soothe him, and his favorite TV show is not Sesame Street but American Idol. Even when we are in the car, music has to be playing. If we ride too long in silence, I hear Eli say "deet deet" from the backseat, which I have determined is Eli-speak for either music or CD. In any case, he says it when he wants me to turn on some music or put in a new CD.

Lately, Eli has become a little more discerning in his music selection. I have three types of CDs in my car (well, four if you count my non-Eli collection): 1) children's songs, 2) Praise Baby, and 3) classical. Eli is not very fond of #1, so we don't listen to them very often. He likes #2, but definitely prefers #3. If I put in Classics for Intelligence, gets this huge grin on his face and starts bouncing up and down in his carseat. The bouncing is pretty cute, too, because I think he squeezes his butt muscles to do it. Classical music is another way that he gets his daily glute workout.

Shadow

In the past couple of weeks Eli has really started to imitate a lot of the things that Chris and I do. One of his favorites is to "talk" on the phone, usually to his grandma (though I am not sure which one). He found the house phone today and was playing with it, so I unplugged the cord from the wall so that he did not accidently call China or 911. When he was finished he left the phone on the floor. A few minutes later my cell phone rang, so he ran over, picked up the house phone, put it to his ear and said, "Hello, grandma?"

At lunch today I caught him dipping carrot sticks into imaginary dip and then eating it, just like I was doing with my lunch.

By far the cutest, though, happened last night at dinner. Eli put his hand to his mouth, made a fake coughing sound, and then said "meep me." We think one of us coughed or cleared our throat with our hand over our mouth and then said "excuse me." He was still doing this even at breakfast this morning.