Eli Takes a Stand

Eli has been doing a pretty good job of scooting around the house while holding onto things, but every now and then he gets so distracted by something he picked up off the coffee table that he doesn't always realize that he is standing without any support. Today I was able to trick Eli into standing on his own and was surprised to see how long he actually did it for! I called Kelvey over to video tape it as I tried to get him to do it again:

Hopefully he will be walking by the next post, but for now I am happy enough to see his new parlor trick.

Fun in the Sun

Let me start by saying this: Last year's summer SUCKED. We sweated and cursed our way through a drought filled summer and a total of 68 days of 100+ degree weather. The sweltering heat made for a very uncomfortable summer with little opportunity to go outside, especially with a newborn Eli. Thankfully El Nino has provided us an amazing start to this year's summer (keep in mind this is Texas and our Summers start earlier than the rest of you) and the weather has been breezy and beautiful! This makes for very happy days with our own little nino.

We had a good start to the summer a few weeks ago when we took a trip to Pease Park to join the annual celebration of Eyeore's Birthday, a tradition that started in the 70's when a few hippies decided to skip class and play in the park. FYI, the party hasn't changed much in that a good 75% of the party population is made up of hippies or people engaging in typical hippie activities (if you know what I mean *nudge*nudge*). Anyways, it was a rather lovely day of enjoying the outdoors, people watching, and dancing to pulsing beats of the drum circle:

Last weekend was even better. We woke up, poked our heads outside and said to each other, "It's a perfect day for trip to the ol' watering hole". So we got Eli into his Lil' Swimmer swimming diapers and headed to the neighborhood pool. Eli hasn't been swimming since Aug. 2009 so we figured we may have to carefully reintroduce him to the water again so he didn't freak out and ruin our chances of coming back to the pool again. We slowly dipped his toes in and lowered him in little by little until he was up to his chest in water. It helped that Eli was mesmerized by all the other kids splashing around at the pool. Eli was most comfortable lounging on me like a floaty or bobbing around in Kelvey's arms, but he really loved being pulled through the water while we made motorboat sounds. When it got a little toasty in the sun, we moved to our shady spot under a tree and let Eli explore a little. When we got home we were a little scared that Eli got sunburned, but it turned out he was just a little flushed from the heat, a trait he gets from his mom. Hopefully he won't end up looking like George Hamilton by the end of summer.

Let The Fun BEGIN!

It is officially on like Donkey Kong! After months of crawling all over the dogs, poking them in the eye and chewing on their ears, Eli has realized that the best way to get the dogs to play with him is do something they like. He has always enjoyed watching the dogs wrestle and play tug-of-war, but he has been barred from joining the melee because of the high probability of him getting fish-hooked by a sharp tooth. Well tooth and claw be damn! Eli has been grabbing the dogs tug-of-war ropes and marching right up to them with an offering to play. The dogs were a little confused at first but Bosley (our goofy lab mix) was the first to take him up on his offer. Kelvey and I cringe a little every time the dogs lunge in to take hold of the rope, but Eli thinks it is the greatest thing in the world. He squeals with delight as they begin to pull, but within a few seconds the dogs have yanked the rope out of Eli's hand and he is left lying on the floor laughing his head off. He pops right up, though, and charges at the dogs to grab a hold of the rope for another round. The dogs better watch out though. Once he packs on a few more pounds of muscle from all the chin-ups he's doing, he will be the reigning King of Thunderdome (aka the living room).

Monkey See, Monkey Do

I have to say that I had a wonderful day with Eli and Kelvey today! We started the day with some delicious brunch and then spent the rest of the morning and early afternoon working on the front yard. Eli started out in his exerscaucer while Kelvey and I pulled weeds, but Eli eventually got bored and want to join in the fun. We took him out and he immediately went to where Kelvey was working and started yanking at the grass and weeds too. I guess he had seen me plucking weeds from the yard enough times that he knew exactly what to do. Once he discovered the loose soil aftermath of Kelvey's work, though, his attention turned to getting dirty. It was heartwarming to see him investigating the dirt by running his fingers through it, grabbing fistfuls of it, and crawling all around, not caring about how dirty he was getting. Kelvey and I didn't care either. It was a cute scene, but something about it really struck a chord deep inside me. I think it was seeing him "in the moment", not having a care in the world, and me feeling the same way, knowing that he was completely safe in what he was doing and being able to be in the moment with him. I wish I had been able to take some pictures but we were dirty and sometimes it is best just stay focused on the experience than trying to capture it.

After we got all cleaned up, we took a moment to relax for a little bit in the living room. With Eli there are no relaxing moments as long as he is awake so he spent the time cruising around the coffee table playing with everything he could reach. When he grabbed my phone, I was surprised to see him mimic another one of our everyday motions. He picked up the phone, looked at it for a second, and then held it by his ear as if he was talking on it. It was weird to see him do something so grown up. As we watched him, Kelvey told me that she had also seen him pick up one of my Sunday crossword puzzles and hold a pen to it like he was writing. Makes me wonder what other mannerisms he is picking up from us.

Happy Hobbit Holes

When I was a little kid, I absolutely LOVED playing in my pop-up play tunnel. I'm pretty sure it was an Aquaman themed play tunnel. I loved Aquaman. I even had the green underoos with the matching orange shirt. But I digress. I wish I still had that tunnel so that Eli and I could waste away the day crawling in and out of it, enacting what ever crazy adventures we can think up. I'm sure Eli would thoroughly enjoy it because he has been tunneling through everything he finds as he crawls around and explores the entire house. Some of his favorite spots are under the buffet in the dining room and the end tables in the living room. He'll climb onto the bottom shelf and just park himself there for while as he plays with whatever toy he brought with him or what ever he finds in the general vicinity. Sometimes he looks like a funny little hobbit as he peers out from under the tabletop and smiles as if to say, "Are you still there? Because I'm still here".

Eli's number one spot in the entire house has got to be the dog crate. He will spend hours opening and closing the door, flipping the latches, climbing on the sides, and crawling in and out of it. Sometimes he will crawl right in with the dogs and just chill with them. The dogs love him and he loves the dogs so they do not mind the invasion of personal space too much. The dogs let Eli in their crate, and Eli lets them lick the inside of his mouth. It's a win-win situation.

As long as he is not chewing on the power cords like a little rabbit, we are happy to let him be a free-range baby.

PS: If I can get my mom to dig out the picture of me in my aquaman underoos and socks crawling through my play tunnel, I will post it.

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.!"