Cliffhanger

A while back, Kelvey and I watched a show on TLC called "The World's Strongest Toddler" and were pretty amazed. It's about a kid that has been diagnosed with Myostatin Related Muscle Hypertrophy, a condition that gives him greater muscle mass and incredible strength. He is faster than the average kid and was reportedly able to do pull ups by age 2. I don't know how or when it could have happened, but I am pretty sure that Eli and this kid crossed paths at some point, words were exchanged, and some one was slapped in the face with a glove symbolizing a gentleman's duel because Eli is determined to prove that this "world's strongest toddler" is nothing but a punk.

As you can see by the picture Eli has been working on his arm strength and is now able to hang on me without support. He also has developed enough leg strength and dexterity to climb up me. I couldn't find any info on whether this ability is normal for kids his age, but we may need to get him a little baby harness and climbing gear for rock climbing at the Barton Creek Greenbelt soon.

Put your gun fingers in the air!

Eli may not be able to talk yet, but he has developed a pretty efficient way of letting you what he thinks is cool and interesting . . . which is just about everything he sees. A few weeks ago he started pointing at stuff and looking at us to see if we see the same things he does. When we confirm that the object is, in fact, awesome, he will try to reach out and grab it. If it is something he is not allowed to play with, then he will just repeatedly point at it and look at us until he or we get bored and move on to the next coolest thing in the room.

Eli's favorite thing to point at is the ceiling fan. The ceiling fans have been off the entire winter season so he had completely forgot about them until our first warm day of the year when the nanny turned on the one in his bedroom. He initially freaked out at seeing them and would cling onto us in fear and confusion, but he quickly remembered that he used to love watching the hypnotic spin of the ceiling fan blades when he was a wee baby and he cannot take his eyes off of them again. Now when ever he enters a room, the first thing he does is point at the ceiling smile. Then again, maybe he's just trying to say, "Big ups to my boy Biggie, R.I.P.!"

Giggle Box!

Now that Eli is much more mobile these days, he is beginning to explore the world around him as much as he can. He crawls, climbs, and pulls into a standing position as much as he can to reach great new heights and take in new views of the world. Fortunately for him, all of the window sills in our house are at the perfect height for him to grab onto, pull himself up and peer out the window. Lately, he has been more amazed by the window glass than the splendid wonders of the great outdoors. I have no Idea why he loves to bang on the glass so much but the joy he gets out of it is beautiful:

Zombie Baby Returns!

Yes, Zombie Baby has returned and this time he has a taste for soft poly-cotton shirts. Eli has recently learned how to bite and has been chomping down hard on our shoulders every time we pick him up. He still doesn't have any teeth yet so most of his bites just feel like soft pinches, but every now and then he will get in a good one. When he bites us, he likes to pull on our shirts with his gums until the shirt snaps back out of his mouth. We are pretty sure all of this means he is teething so we are preparing ourselves for extreme fussiness and sleepless nights. Hopefully, Eli will get through it pretty easily like he has with just about everything else.

Old Man River

This past Sunday was such a beautiful break from all the cold weather and rain that we decided to take a family trip to Walnut Creek and enjoy the sunshine. Ever since Eli was born, I have been anxiously awaiting the day that he would be old enough to take a trek down the river with me and share the bliss of the great outdoors. Unfortunately, Eli is still a little too young to go splashing around in the water with me and the dogs, but he seemed content in sitting with his mama on the river bank watching the dogs and I playing fetch and chasing each other around. Kelvey tried to get Eli to dip his feet in the water a little but I guess it was a little too cold for him because he wouldn't keep them in for very long and kept trying to lift his legs up. I'm happy to see that he is willing to at least give it a try. Hopefully by summer time, when he is a year old, he will be comfortable enough to hit up Barton Springs for a brisk swim in the 68ºwater. By the way, for those of you that are jealous of our beautiful weather, here is what our fine town looked like 2 days later:

That's right. Over 2 inches of snow fell in central Texas. Crazy.

Float like a butterfly, Bark like a seal

Last week we had our first big sickness scare that lead to a hospital visit. Eli and I were packing things up to visit Kelvey at her conference in Houston and were a few short hours away from leaving when Eli started getting a little weezy. He didn't have a cough, fever, or even a runny nose so I wasn't worried too much at first. Within the next 2 hours, Eli's weezing got much worse and soon it sounded like he was breathing through a kazoo. He was obviously uncomfortable and when he tried to cry the only sound he could make was that of a barking seal. I figured it may have been croup, but since I have never experienced it before and was worried about the rapid decline of Eli's voice, I started to worry that Eli may have been choking on something. I called our pediatrician's on-call nurse and she agreed that it may be croup but told me I should take him to the ER due to his distressed breathing.

Even though I wouldn't let Eli touch anything in the waiting room, he made the 2 hour wait bearable because he was still in good spirits and enjoyed watching everyone else. After being seen by 3 nurses and being told by each of them, "It's probably just croup," the doctor finally checked out Eli and determined that, in fact, it was croup, a virus that causes swelling of the vocal chords. He put Eli on a nebulizer, gave him some steroids to reduce the swelling, but also ordered some chest x-rays just to make sure he hadn't swallowed anything. This was the WORST part of the whole night. In order to hold him still for the x-rays, Eli had to be strapped into a contraption that made him look like a crying baby stuck in one of those vacuum tubes at the bank drive-thru. Thankfully the x-ray technician worked quickly and Eli calmed down once he was back in his papa's arms. After 6 hours at the hospital, Eli was sounding better and was cleared to return home. The next morning, Eli was back to his usual spritely self. Kelvey was a little upset that she was not around to help care for Eli so she caught an early flight home to be with him.

Since hospital visits aren't the best Kodak moments, here's a picture of Eli sitting in a laundry basket:

Pants are for suckers!

Eli has been so active these days with all his crawling and climbing that it is tough for his pants to keep up with him. This weekend he was climbing over the back of the couch so much that his pumping legs actually had him wiggling out of his pants! The picture doesn't do the scene justice because his pants would actually get around his ankles in just a matter of seconds.

It's getting a little tough for us to keep up with Eli as well. His crawling style is still a little unorthodox, but he can get around the entire house with relative ease now. Usually he is just trying to get his hands on the unobtainable (outlets, wires, shoes, dog toys and water bowls) so he keeps us on our toes in trying to pick things up before he can get to them . . . or at least before he can get his mouth on them.

When all else fails, Eli turns to his new favorite toys . . . the doors of our media console and dog crate. He has learned to open and close the doors and loves to swing them back and forth or bang them shut. He also loves to pull all the board games and DVDs out of the cabinets, which is fine since he cannot open the cases yet. It's cool to see Eli exploring and trying out new things, but it is scary to think how much trouble he can get himself into with all of his crazy energy.